Communist Hamster said:
But now that the Almighty Tiassa has said no, I'd say the chances of it happening are pretty slim.
I would ask you to consider it this way:
Dr. Lou Natic said:
The only change I'm proposing is that poll results are taken seriously.
You're being taken for a ride. The topic proposal itself is a con.
Poll results are taken seriously, provided that the poll is reasonably actionable. Lou's phrasing reflects a bone he picked with SFOG back in December:
Dr. Lou Natic said:
Open government has been ineffective because it's never been allowed to function.
We're yet to give open government a try.
If there is a proposal for something that the site wasn't planning on doing anyway the poll is closed.
There's never been an open goverment, this subforum is the "make a thread and get it closed or ignored" section.
I disagreed with Lou at the time, "in part because the quality of the Sciforums experience depends heavily on the posters themselves, even moreso than it does on moderation or administration."
I even explained what that meant: "... it is the open government's participants that have largely failed. Given a tool to make their experience better, people chose to whack each other over the head with it."
Which puts the notion of Lou's December complaint in an odd light. There was once a ban topic in which someone got upset at a poster and proposed their banning. The target poster immediately counterproposed, so that two warring ban proposals were available. Now, the thing is that in either of these cases, to vote for a ban would have presented serious challenges to a large number of posters. After all, how can we ban someone one week for something and refuse to ban someone else on the same grounds when the complaint is raised? The ban wars would become perverse popularity contests. The December adjustment to the rules of SFOG, which Lou so gravely lamented, came about in part because these ban wars were dominating SFOG. Hence I asked Lou the question, "Must 'democracy' allow its participants to destroy it in order to be effective? Should any system respect and encourage what damages it?"
And I advised, "The changes to SFOG protect the Open Government concept from the petty and corrupting abuses of narrow politics and willful myopia that make it so ineffective and seemingly useless in the first place."
Lou called my perspective bullshit, and stated that "every thread is closed bar about 4".
• • •
At this point, the story takes on a more direct relevance. Lou's complaint about the number of closed SFOG threads reflected the demand that brought about the changes instituted by administration. Old issues were repeatedly raised as if it made any difference, and bad blood flowed into and out of SFOG.
I proposed to Lou an analogy:
So if I decide to file a class action suit against you on the grounds that you're a complete f@cking moron and detriment to society akin to a social disease, and the court--as it most certainly would--refuses to hear my case, would you describe disdain toward and measures taken against frivolous lawsuits, "not allowing the courts to be effective"?
Lou never responded to that analogy.
I advised Lou to test his theory, pointed out that he was not--and still is not--prevented from proposing the closure of SFOG.
Lou has not responded to that idea. He has not undertaken that test.
I pointed to four topics that defied his characterization: three quorum poll closures with continued discussion, and a topic locked in light of the proposal's adoption. These clearly defied his characterization.
Lou has not chosen to comment on those topics, nor even indicate that he's aware of it.
• • •
In a footnote, I wrote to Lou:
Tiassa said:
It could very well be that fish-clubbing and crab-cramming are in fact what constitutes an individual's positive user experience. I do, from time to time, actually enjoy parts of the brawls I get into with people, but I'm not about to shut any of them up when I can simply stop giving them more consideration than they're worth. Some of the people who voted against various ban proposals did so because to set that particular standard would crimp their user experience far more than size-twelving the ass of our latest headache could ever augment the experiences of the crabmongers. That I believe people are free to cut their own throats doesn't mean I think it's a good idea. And what of you, Lou? You're very well aware of such a conundrum, albeit from a unique perspective.
The "unique perspective" I referred to was a closed topic, an SFOG proposal to use another poster as a banning standard. Given the clear absurdity of the standard and the processes it would invite, and considering that the poll question was so loaded with cynicism that it refused to be taken seriously, it's not hard to understand why the
topic was closed.
This topic is important to understanding the underlying theme: Lou is asking for what has been called in history, "the tyranny of democracy". While Americans are used to experiencing this idea cyclically in social-conservative political agendas, it really is annoying. In the world at large, such notions ought to be held at arm's length, else you get people shouting that they're not equal unless they're superior. In our microcosmic corner of the Universe, it empowers provocateurs to appeal to the lowest instincts and advance the kind of ignorant chaos that keeps so many of our discussions mired in talking points and venom.
For instance, every once in a while, when I think someone's being particularly libelous about some ridiculous minutiae, I whip out the "child molester" argument. It essentially goes, "If we're just going to lie about people, why not say you're a child molester?" It usually manifests itself more roughly, but you can always tell that you've hit close to the mark with it because of the reaction. People get indignant, respond in such a manner as to define their ignorance--okay, their stupidity--because they know what comes if they meet the issue head-on. So imagine one day someone is just tired of getting pounded by this point and tells the guy calling him a child molester to fuck off.
Oh, hey. A hostile use of the word "fuck". Moderator action, intervention, arguments about who, what, and why, and eventually these things spill into the arena of banning offenses.
So what then? Do the moderators intrude on the posters, taking away certain arguments that contain no profanity whatsoever? (What if I made the decree that the "pedophile" argument was off-limits in homosexual-related discussions in EM&J? I certainly have the basis: it's not reasonably demonstrated as fact in any manner that warrants its repetition as a point in support of anything else, and as a generalization, well, it seems to bug people.)
Do moderators then face the wrath of a disgruntled constituency that wants them removed? On what grounds do you tell Porfiry you want a moderator removed? By and large, those issues aren't substantial. When those issues
are substantial, however, they
do get attention. But just like many political folks who are unhappy with a given Supreme Court decision, it's not about substance for many of the people complaining. Lou, for instance.
Lou would have us focus on the closure of topics or disregard for their polls. What Lou would have us ignore is the content of such topics and polls. What he's looking for is a hayseed lynch mob, not any assortment of thinking minds.
How seriously should we take the "
JORO" poll? Was I somehow elitist in not waiting for the outcome of a vote in order to reopen a topic per a member's request? How about the
IQ Test proposal? It was failing, and the discussion pretty much came apart. But, imagine that it was a more successful idea: Guess who writes the standards? Guess who grades the tests? And since we would probably be less than grateful for the workload, how much do you think we would enjoy flunking people's analogies? Seriously, just think about the natural outcome there. Look up at the current Sciforums logo. Think back, if you remember, to the prior. Now think about
who we are? No conspiracy is necessary. We happen to read analogies largely in the same manner, so the outcome would be lopsided. Uh-oh. Looks like the moderators are biased--let's have them replaced. Well, what's the proposal? Will it look substantial to Porfiry? What happens if he reads the analogies like we do? What happens if he says, "I don't see the problem"? I mean, it's one possibility. While we're not identical on philosophies or issues, there is a line of ideas connecting us. No one of us is entirely removed. I mean, think about, say, a right-wing poster smirking that his left-wing nemesis didn't pass; and then he looks around and realizes he's the only one of his favored right-wing cadre that made it through. Now, considering that we don't like to do certain bans, because we're pretty sure that no single poster has ever held eighty-five separate user ID's, I'm curious what would stop the rest of that failing cadre from retesting until they got it. And what point would there be to such a test if the passing members simply ignore that standard and post the same old fallacies, sling the same old mud?
I suppose it's worth mentioning that yes, we do think about these things when we read these proposals.
And we haven't even really gotten to labor issues, except for a passing mention of the workload.
There's no poll to respect in the
A&C moderator discussion in SFOG; it appears the primary question received response.
There's the "
Forum on IS", with no poll, and a counterpoint that the proposal is/would be redundant.
How about "
Post Content Copyrights"? No poll. Issue could probably be moved to Site Feedback.
There's the topic to
require moderators to post reason for topic closure, that is passing, awaiting quorum, largely forgotten by members, and most likely going to be observed and respected by moderators, anyway.
There is a
ban topic that, because it targets someone who is a moderator, is closed according to Porfiry's
December update to SFOG rules.
What about "
The elite ..."? An open-ended, failing poll to create a restricted subforum?
Another
ban topic was closed according to the December update.
Let's see ... there's the failed proposal for a
shout-box. And a discussion of
formal debates without a poll or any useful resolution.
A
topic moved to Site Feedback; a quorum failure for a "
SciArchives" proposal, and no, we cannot seriously expect Porfiry to undertake the fulfillment of an 8-2 vote to "create another completely different site, in another completely different server just for archiving messages that are more than one year old".
That takes us back to the December update.
I do not see in any of that what Lou means by, "The only change I'm proposing is that poll results are taken seriously."
What? What did I miss?
• • •
Before the December update:
• "Impeach Xev" (Locked)
• "Proposal to Ban MacM" (Locked)
• "Ban hotsexyangelprincess" (Locked)
• "Technology: New forum" (Quorum failure, discussion open)
• "Ban Pixel" (Locked)
• "Ban RawThinkTank" (Locked)
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators (continued)" (Locked, no poll)
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators (continued)" (Locked)
• "Member Selective Banning From Posting In Threads" (Locked; proposal failing)
• "Linguistics/Human Communication Forum" (Quorum failure; locked)
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators (continued)" (Locked)
• "Ban Truthseeker" (Locked)
• "Xev as Moderator" (Locked; ban topic)
• "Ban Athelwulf"
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators" (Locked; proposal failing)
• "Ban extrasense" (Locked)
• "A New Forum Just for Relativity" (Locked)
• "Sevenblu's proposal in poll format" (Quorum failure; new forum proposal; discussion locked)
• "Adding an 'abstain' vote to polls" (Locked; merged)
• "Why not an irc channel or something" (Locked)
• "Where is it against the rules" (Locked)
• "Ban Undecided" (Locked)
• "Ban rahul sharma" (Locked)
That's a lot of locked topics. It goes on that way. Ban Killer douche. Ban KillrCarrot. More of Neoclassical's outburst. Ban Skullz, Ban Rods, &c.
What ban topics weren't yet locked for their content or failure or acknowledgment--did administration ignore or otherwise not take seriously ban proposals that were closed for lack of necessity, when a ban was to be applied without the demand of a vote--closed with the December update. Generally speaking, ban topics fell into only a few categories: petty and problematic standards for banning, unnecessary ban requests of spammers, legitimate requests for action regarding trolling and harassment, and people who thought it was funny to try to ban themselves. Overwhelmingly, the ban topics are petty and demand problematic standards for banning. Here I'll defer to our fearless leader: anyone who wishes to argue otherwise can propose an SFOG measure and, perhaps, appeal to him directly.
There are some topics locked for other reasons: their polls are not actionable, or the discussion has fallen away from the topic, or, in a couple of cases because of specific problematic posters later banned.
New forum proposals often fail on quorum demands; we cannot reasonably demand that Porfiry add a new forum or build a whole new website just because a small handful of people would like it.
Thus: the ban topics are generally petty or unnecessary, and there are better methods for handling such issues; forum proposals are having their day; there are topics that propose no action.
What I don't see is the condition described at the outset of this topic:
Dr. Lou Natic said:
The only change I'm proposing is that poll results are taken seriously.
Taking poll results seriously is not a real issue. The proposal effectively invokes a return to the days when Porfiry, Goofyfish, and JamesR could spend the whole day in SFOG and still not get to all the improprieties of the forum, or else start closing topics and suppressing the problem entirely.
And where does that lead us? Right back to complaining about moderators and administration.
• • •
Dr. Lou Natic said:
What harm could be done? If people get banned they could be reinstated once the trial period was over, they wouldn't die. Porn subforums could be deleted and etc.
One of the less-than-amusing things we see when someone gets upset, for instance, is multiple user ID's. Perhaps most amusing, though, is when instead of just mucking up the fora, these people start messaging the moderators to tell us how much we suck.
Frankly, when the proposed month is over and the banned folks are reinstated, how many of them will just get banned again for retribution? Ask around; there are a few members who have taken short vacations for the severity of their responses to superfluous provocation. Entertainment for the folks in the gallery, in some cases. More headaches and nasty messages for the moderators to put up with, and more labor for Porfiry accommodating any porn or other fora invoked by the vote.
In the end, Lou's issue is false. He's standing on a premise that is legitimately questioned, and he has not responded to those questions. What we're left with is an unsubstantiated complaint propping up the notion that Porfiry somehow owes it to this posting community to jump through hoops like a trained poodle. Lou has even proposed that we legalize sexual harassment.
In the meantime, my say-so is no reason for the scoreboard to change, per se. Facts, however, may be a different case.
Let us presume that the possibility comes about that everything is "sane and ordered" through this period.
What would be the difference?
