I’ve suggested solutions before. You don’t like them. Others have suggested them with better nuance. They weren’t implemented (and I assume you didn’t like them or staff here didn’t like them). There is no point in doing another cycle on them. The BBS seems to function basically the same as it did a year or more ago so if there have been changes in how accounts or signups are handled, I haven’t seen them. Seeing solutions shot down (whether for great reasons or bad reasons) makes me not inclined to try again.
So, I don’t think it is a bad attitude as much as the gatekeepers of the site and (AFAIK) the one fellow who writes the code don’t like any of the solutions people have suggested. So, either people either need more out of the box thinking to find better and different solutions or just accept that it isn’t in our power, as members here, to change these particular things. I’m going with the latter.
I’m not being pissy about it. I just don’t see how my giving my opinion or discussing it more is going to affect a change so what’s the point?
There is zero evidence that this is true. Why just today, we finally implemented badge filtering per user, which was specifically suggested here many months ago. I can point to literally dozens of Discourse features and tweaks that came out of BBS, which was our first large scale Discourse beta site!
As I said earlier:
Hard problems are sometimes… wait for it… hard. It takes time to figure them out. Start with the risk of algorithmically blocking Brianna Wu from commenting on a BB entry about her because she happens to be a new user. I consider that a serious problem, something we have to have a solid and well understood solution for. Perhaps you disagree.
I think she’s one user out of possibly hundreds arriving for a thread and she should be able to get a moderator to turn on her account. The number of times that will happen (once or twice per controversial thread) outweigh the possibility of a horde of people showing up to trolley. That doesn’t seem, to me, to be a great burden on the moderation staff to respond to a direct ping from a new user for “flip my bit please, this thread is about me.” I gather you do think that is burdensome on volunteer staff.
Are you helping now? Where? Maybe you missed the other threads (there were at least two) where I commented at great length about this over the last year when this stuff was hashed out. I don’t recall you participating then.
I do await your proposals.
and I would say what I think of you but it would just get flagged and moderated away, since you and I butt heads several times a week on the same BS.
So much hand waving here. It’s very easy to say “make work for other people” when you don’t have to do the work, or be the person who is auto-blocked as new.
I feel like you are attached to “your way” of solving this problem, and dramatically throwing up your hands and shouting CLEARLY NOTHING CAN BE DONE when I gently point out that there is a severe cost to what you’re proposing. It’s a very inflexible way of looking at the world.
I was impressed last night that you’ve included logic that shuts off a thread if there is too much flagging. The more I dig into Discourse, the more impressed I am with it. Kudos!
Reading: It’s good for you! By not telling everybody things can only go one way or blindly sticking to one argument and not digesting and responding to new information that comes in (a proclivity you have that is hard not to notice) I get to see other people’s comments and don’t discourage new ideas.
Besides, I’m not convinced that @codinghorror isn’t on a positive trajectory here.
I’m sure I think your opinion on the matter is super-important! And are you referring to the ‘you deciding everything has to go your way and acting like everyone else must be an idiot and not liking getting called out on it’ bit?
I mean, sometimes you’re cool and all, and you might be great fun to play CAH or Superfight with, but if you want to avoid people rubbing you the wrong way then don’t post a public forum with things that other people might not agree with (or just tell people how wrong they are) on a public forum that’s for all of us. Or be less sensitive. Or more flexible. Or nice.
So, there’s lots of options! It’s just that none of them happen to involve either of us getting a pass if we say something dumb.
(I couldn’t find a proper shrug icon so here’s some fish flags!)
+1 and thanks again. It’s been years since you implemented this conversion and yet you still are available to engage. We sure don’t always agree, but it’s clear you iterate with passion and sincerity.
Your responses to what has been suggested has actually prevented me from focusing on the topic at hand, which I thought was something to do with the mechanics of conversation, but clearly we’re still at ego stroking. I sense it.
Sometimes all it takes to make a potentially productive discussion about productive solutions into a pissing contest about one individuals personal preferences is one individual driving trollies. I totally agree.
If there’s one thing @enso isn’t it’s snarky. Dude’s a straight-up destroyer.
I like his flip-the-bit idea and whilst I appreciate @codinghorror wanting to keep mod work to the bare minimum, surely there could be ways that authors or relevant authorities and subjects could make their presence known to the mods in some kind of a way that proves their identity. And wouldn’t that be better than essentially offering up the currently implemented free reign to just impersonate such a person (for authorities and subjects obviously, not the actual writers)?
I don’t know what that proof might take the form of… maybe a verified twitter account or an email from their publicly avowed address or something?
The gamergate stuff was particularly irksome, especially as the environment here really leans toward the piñata theory of dealing with arseholes. Often the majority of the community, especially those who tend to be willing to engage with said arseholes, seem to prefer to strangle the poster’s argument, rather than their comments. I’ve certainly noticed a few such people recently publicly state that they’ve “had enough” or something to that effect but even then the sentiment usually emerges in relation to a specific person within the context of a particular argument or thread.
I guess what I’m saying is that perhaps particular tags for certain posts could be selected to represent hot button topics and that those posts could be subject to limits on brand new accounts and maybe even accounts which have received more than a certain threshold of flags within topics that have previously been tagged as hot button?
I admit that I don’t pay much attention to the tags that the authors implement but I’ve for sure been left with the impression that the writers do actually consider this as part and parcel of the writing process already, so we wouldn’t be pushing more work back up the pipeline to them for our benefit.
So, my suggestion rests upon a stack of precarious assumptions but that’s my two cents.
What’s the goal of people who engage with the arseholes even though it’s obvious that they are arseholes?
I guess it’s to sharpen invective and argumentation? I guess I might be slightly conspiracy minded because I often suspect that brand new accounts making fairly obviously weak arguments are deliberately attempting to produce such an immune response to bullshit they’ve heard out in the wild, but maybe I’m just a suspicious type of person?
For one, I like the atmosphere here, especially when it’s geared to producing the immunity vectors I mentioned. Seeing the community generating logic is fascinating, and I obviously don’t mind a bit of disruption and snark (or destruction!).
Hopefully we can keep all that good stuff whilst also ensuring that people who really, really want to participate can still have 3 days to give it a go whilst sharpening their arguments over the suggested 2 day waiting period.
They’re also welcome to take part in the community and create their own thread if they want to debate such things… rather than just attack a specific author, the author’s ideas or (and I realise this is particularly pukesome but it often appears to be the trolls viewpoint), we who they see as the author’s defenders (rather than people who also happen to have been infected by the same meme). Not to say I don’t learn good stuff here, just that the hate for some of the authors seems to spill out over to any other commenters who share their ideas…
