Notes Around
Gustav said:
wanna help lil ole tiassa out here?
The early lesson seems to be that, as Bells said, "it is a start that has been a long time coming".
Perhaps these changes are more widely welcomed than I had expected.
But it's early, and first appearances aren't always reliable.
As to the reopening of threads, that's up to the WE&P team, but I'm of the opinion that none of the threads should be reopened, not even the ones that have.
The reason for this is that, while people's behavioral credit isn't resetting, we want to draw a clear line between the past and the future. As it is, there are members—some of whom I am sympathetic toward—who just don't seem to understand what's taking place. This is not a conclusion based on anything taking place in this thread, but rather a reflection of the discussions taking place in the Politics subforum.
And they're not going to survive if this keeps up.
Now is the time for people to step back and show some intelligence and diplomacy. They don't have to forgive and forget past offenses by their rivals, but they
should, at this point, recognize that they can return to civility and reason without showing weakness. While it is a petty and even useless fear that diplomacy, civility, and reason are indications of weakness, we recognize that nobody wants to stop until their rivals stop, also. We are attempting to draw that line for people.
The story that String already alluded to is simply that we had a running issue between a couple of members in WE&P, and the situation had gotten so far out of hand that the we were looking at a grim future for both participants. However, one of my colleagues voiced his opinion that one of the participants should go first, and both were unsettled by what I considered an expected result of their policy decisions. As this outcome corresponded with political labels according to a question of bias, I made a couple of declarations about the way the subfora were being run. String and I wailed the hell out of each other for a couple days, and this process here is where we ended up. While we differed about how the situation was being handled, we agreed on some broader ideas, the most prominent of which is that the WE&P subfora are in a state of disarray.
We are attempting to restore order. Or, rather, they are. And they have my full support in this endeavor. And they have the cooperation and support of the administration. Quite clearly they have Bells' support. And Ben's. They have participatory support of other moderators in the backroom. And while we cannot say the support is necessarily unanimous, what we can say is that none of our colleagues have objected.
Consider Will's point to String ....
• • •
Willnever said:
You have just gone on record stating that this set of proposals was put forth by you. Everyone else had some vague idea that "something should be done."
I guess I just don't see the problem with the proposals being put forth by a member of the WE&P team. Really. I intend to be as helpful as I can, but it wouldn't make sense for
me to take point on this; it's not my jurisdiction.
But in the end, this plan to expand the definition of trolling/flaming/goading to almost anything ....
Actually, it's not an expansion but a restoration. The only real difference is that we're specifically invoking
good faith because we're sick of people going out of their way to be offensive and then, when called out on it, splitting hairs to suggest they're not being offensive.
Now, perhaps you find nothing objectionable in the notion that a member might adopt a talking point of the week and insert it into as many discussions—relevant or not—as he can, or fall back to it whenever he feels he's losing his grip on a thread, but moderators are the people who deal with the problems arising from such behavior. And there are a number of members responding to these digressions poorly.
Compared to some of the ideas on the table, this is a fairly mild approach to the problem. Of course, the only reason those other notions are harsh is that enough people resent even basic obligations around this community, such as accurately representing sources and (
gasp! the horror!) actually citing references. Okay, yeah, at the far end of the spectrum is a culling, but that's usually a theoretic club we wield in the back room in order to spur discussion of more reasonable alternatives.
Then again, one of those more reasonable alternatives would be the permanent closure of the WE&P subfora, something we have avoided by a wide margin.
That is not correct. Since the beginning of 2007, I've posted here -- although I haven't been active for at least a year. This is a *username* that joined last month. So to basically everything you just said: nay.
Perhaps you might show some of that understanding then. As it is, you appear quite clueless about the history of this site.
Nor does it help your case when you couple histrionic exaggerations, ignorant attacks, and disingenuous arguments. Post
#65 in this thread is a disgrace.
Quit looking for easy and empty-headed dismissals. Demonstrate some grasp of the issues you're trying to address.
The old motto of Sciforums was "Intelligent Community". The removal of that motto from the top of the browser was not, as I noted to Gustav, a signal that people were suddenly supposed to get stupid.
We give a lot to democracy. Over ten years the one thing we've never been able to do is get people to stop cussing. I gave up on that a while ago and stopped censoring myself. But one thing we're not going to simply give over to mass will is this lowering of the bar. If people want to waste their effort making idiots of themselves, they're welcome to do it elsewhere.
• • •
Acid Cowboy said:
To be honest, I believe the new approach to political discussion will not go well. But this isn't my forum and, as a result, it's not my decision. We can leave SciForums for greener pastures if we don't like how this turns out.
We're aware of a high risk potential for this endeavor. We are also aware that the long-term outlook for success is challenging. However, what is underway is an attempted restoration of the rules that have long been in place, and the only difference is that we are now acknowledging the role of bad faith in creating many of the problems.
So from our perspective, we are, to the one, happy to answer people's questions and help resolve their concerns; to the other, though, it seems that some of these concerns boil down to the idea that certain people just think honesty and decency are too great of burdens to ask of them.
It's a curious path by which this situation is developing.
