Note: Suspension

[eigen]

Hi all!

For the first time since the board has formed, the moderators have had to issue a suspension for continued personal attacks.

I'm posting here in the interest of transparency, and am happy to answer questions via PM.

Alternately, if you'd like to use this post as a catalyst for discussing moderation policy on the board, we can do that. Every time we've brought up a more robust moderation policy, it's been shot down by vocal posters. I want to re-iterate that the moderation team (I'll go head and speak for the others here) would be more than happy to enforce a more robust policy surrounding constructive and productive interactions between members and tone of discussion, but won't do it without the support of the fora community, broadly speaking.

[Puget]

Thank you-- I think this was clearly the right decision. We can have free expression and still agree that vile personal attacks are not allowed.

[Hibush]

Thanks for taking appropriate action. Personal attacks, even if not against them, drives people away from the marketplace of idea. We can do battle over the merits quizzes, elbow patches and political trustees without resorting to that sort of thing.

[Istiblennius]

Thank you moderators for working through this difficult situation.

I'm sad that it happened, but relieved that perhaps we can begin to return to a community of healthy academic discourse. maybe some of the folks who have stayed away will return.

[clean]

Actions have consequences. 
Hopefully the offending party will take time to rehabilitate. 
But if not, Im sure that there is a step past Suspension. 

Thanks to the Mods for the work that you do. 

[Liquidambar]

I don't know what happened, but thanks for your hard work, mods.

I, for one, would not mind more moderation here.  It's gotten to where I have to avoid half the threads because they're the same old arguments from the same people.

Recently I wanted to have a thoughtful discussion about a complex social issue.  Instead of asking about it here, I asked on the off-topic subforum of a hobby message board I'm on.  It's far more strictly moderated, so I knew I'd get better responses.  Imagine contrasting how we construct gender identity with how we construct racial identity, discussed on a nail polish board.  It wasn't exactly that, but that's close enough to illustrate the absurdity.  I could have a thoughtful and informative discussion there but not here.

[ciao_yall]

I thought the conversation on these boards today seemed much happier and healthier!

[mamselle]

Thanks for all you do.

I'm sorry it came to this, but unaddressed《anomie 》has serious consequences for all...(Durkheim,  I believe).

M.

[Caracal]

I don't know what happened, but thanks for your hard work, mods.

I, for one, would not mind more moderation here.  It's gotten to where I have to avoid half the threads because they're the same old arguments from the same people.

Recently I wanted to have a thoughtful discussion about a complex social issue.  Instead of asking about it here, I asked on the off-topic subforum of a hobby message board I'm on.  It's far more strictly moderated, so I knew I'd get better responses.  Imagine contrasting how we construct gender identity with how we construct racial identity, discussed on a nail polish board.  It wasn't exactly that, but that's close enough to illustrate the absurdity.  I could have a thoughtful and informative discussion there but not here.

Honestly it was such a bizarre and creepy thing to write that I felt more...icky, than personally attacked, unless there was something else I missed. I went back to my normal policy of not clicking on that person's posts.

Whenever this question of moderation comes up, people bring up this fear that enhanced moderation is going to stifle discussion on here. Really, I think there have only been two people on here that have been problems. The one that brought up this discussion is more of a classic troll-to be fair he does seem to hold genuine views and occasionally wants to discuss something-but mostly is motivated by a desire to rile up people who don't agree with him-which often leads to racist comments at worst and pointless interjections at best.

The other example was someone who was more subtle, sometimes reasonable and well informed, but just couldn't seem to see the difference between disagreement and personal attack-a trait which seemed to lead to long term campaigns against various people they saw as evildoers.

The thing those people had in common is that they were fundamentally uninterested in actual discussion. The goal was to rile people up, or show your dominance over them, it wasn't to actually engage with what anyone was saying. When people are doing that, it inspires bad behavior in others-at least it does in me. If I think someone is deliberately misleading others about something I wrote, I'm inclined to call them a liar. If I think someone is saying something demonstrably stupid just to irritate people, I tend to say they wrote something dumb. There's no way to engage in a constructive argument when the other person is motivated by things that have nothing to do with that. Obviously, these kinds of responses aren't useful and its better to just disengage from these people, but that can be hard. It also isn't likely to encourage potential new posters to stick around if they don't know who they are supposed to ignore.

The point is, I think it would be easy enough to craft a code that isn't about trying to carefully regulate everything, but focuses on patterns of specific bad behavior in ways that would let us deal with problem posters before they escalate things.

[downer]

These are tricky decisions. Thanks to the mods for this and their work.

I see two separate issues regarding the fora.

First, there has been some rudeness and personal attack. That's been relatively uncommon.

Second, there's the problem of discussions devolving into overfamiliar debate between the same posters again and again, making it tiresome to try to have a discussion. That's a frequent occurrence.

I support a heavier hand with moderation.

[bacardiandlime]

Second, there's the problem of discussions devolving into overfamiliar debate between the same posters again and again, making it tiresome to try to have a discussion. That's a frequent occurrence.

Yes that is very tedious, and certain users either start debate-bait threads or hijack every other thread to these rants. Part of the issue might be that we are a smaller crowd than on the old fora. Things move slowly so it's easier for one or two people to dominate.

[marshwiggle]

I find these discussions difficult because I have no idea what people have in mind as to what should be moderated.

What I would find useful would be if people gave examples of posters they *frequently strongly disagree with but who have not crossed any line that they think should apply.  It's really hard to tell whether people want to moderate behaviour or ideas. The first is reasonable; the second is not.


(*For instance, there are lots of people that I've disagreed with; I have no idea whether any of my posts would have led to being removed under "stricter" moderation, and if so, on what grounds. Without any more concrete grasp of what is being advocated, I have no idea whether I'm in favour or not.)

[RatGuy]

I've had to "hide" a few posters (or whatever the term is). If it were an easier process, I might add a few more to the list. The hobby forum I visit have mods who hide posts for antagonist, dismissive, or other violation of terms. I don't know what the suspension or banning process is, but I've noticed some posts will get deleted. When that happens, the poster's name also gets removed from the post (so there's none of the drama of 'its that dude again').

It feels to me that, within the last 6 months or so, activity on The Fora Dot Org has slowed, and there are only a few threads I read anymore that don't devolve into sniping and trolling. FWIW, some of the academics I follow over on Twitter have said that they plan to head here once the Musk era truly begins on that platform.

[marshwiggle]

I've had to "hide" a few posters (or whatever the term is). If it were an easier process, I might add a few more to the list. The hobby forum I visit have mods who hide posts for antagonist, dismissive, or other violation of terms. I don't know what the suspension or banning process is, but I've noticed some posts will get deleted. When that happens, the poster's name also gets removed from the post (so there's none of the drama of 'its that dude again').

It feels to me that, within the last 6 months or so, activity on The Fora Dot Org has slowed, and there are only a few threads I read anymore that don't devolve into sniping and trolling. FWIW, some of the academics I follow over on Twitter have said that they plan to head here once the Musk era truly begins on that platform.

(Perhaps slightly off-topic, but related...)
If an open-source algorithm is used for moderation on Twitter (as Musk has suggested), where presumably community members can at least suggest tweaks, how is that a bad thing, since it in principle means anyone can see exactly why a post or poster was censored?

[mamselle]

But in some cases, I don't want to have the kinds of images or ideas left in my mind that some posters are capable of leaving.

It took me a bit to figure out the <snip> business, but I was very grateful, whatever it was, not to have to come across it, knowing what it was likely to have been like.

(As far as Musk and Twitter go, I'll be getting rid of my account there shortly. They might as well have sold it to Trump.)

M.