General Moderation Topic

Agreed. I made my case for a direct-democracy alternative then, and I stand by it.

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User swiftyfive has been banned from the BBS after a repeated pattern of finding (or making) incendiary or provocative posts that were explicitly intended to derail or upset others.

I’ve said this before: I work hard to ensure that unpopular opinions that are otherwise within our guidelines are supported here. That’s not what happened here, repeatedly. Instead, an (often infammatory) counterargument is dropped into an established conversation, usually without context or explanation (and importantly, without a personal opinion from this poster), and then fireworks ensue.

That’s not about “having a discussion”, that’s about kicking over anthills.

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It’s a potent symbol. A guillotine that’s used in 1793 can reliably be taken to mean, “conversations made impossible by the rich, getting bloody expensive”.

A year later, the same guillotine shows a lot more wear, and would instead symbolize, “let’s kill every intellectual we can find who’s likely to slow us down”.

But like using any swear words or sarcastic meme, you have to read the room and discern the context. I’m pretty sure anyone on this board who’s arguing in good faith, is going to use it in the first tense. The Trump supporter who thought it would be a good idea to display a gallows while capitol police were beaten to death? I wouldn’t trust them with a guillotine any more than a rope noose.

It takes a really thick blogger not to pick up on that difference in context.(edited to clarify: yes, that’s meant as irony)

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And nothing of value was lost…

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Thanks again for all the hard work you do, and happy VDay!

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12 posts were split to a new topic: The passage of time

All this swift and competent moderating is seriously impeding my testing of the ignore feature.

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Oh, ‘Ignore’ isn’t just for obvious fail-trolls with no lives; it’s also useful for perfectly cromulent members posting in good faith with whom we simply don’t wish to engage because we don’t enjoy it.

When it works properly, that is.

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User Wally has been banned.

Thanks to the various members who brought up this user’s past posting history before they attempted to antagonize in this topic right here. This user had a history of direct attacks, rules-lawyering and tone-policng in just about every topic they posted in. They posted infrequently enough to fly under the radar, but thanks to some detailed flag comments from you folks, the situation was evident in retrospect.

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I must say, this one kind of caught me by surprise. I once had a run-in with Wally in which he threatened that he would have me banned (and I half believed him…one of my posts got flagged, then one of his, then he started calling for the mods to come clear everything up…), but I just chalked it up to someone having a bad day. The whole thread got so heated that it had to be locked up prematurely. I kind of gave him a wide berth after that, but I didn’t sense any ill will. He was quite prolific with his posts, and it never occurred to me that there was a pattern of such behavior.

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Unfortunately some people act very differently toward different other members here, as it sounds like might have happened here then. Very often along specific biases too that make it much easier for some to see. It’s something worth remembering, which is part of why it’s so valuable to listen to different commenter’s experiences.

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It just goes to show that not being an asshole 99% of the time doesn’t make up for that 1% of the time when somebody is an asshole. Or perhaps, not being an asshole to 99% of the people whom one encounters…

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Continuing coronavirus happenings (Part 2)


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User RandomDude has been asked not to return after going after characterization and responses to his posts as an “attack”, then deciding to derail the topic over the moderation of that content - something the user had previously been given a timeout for doing.

I’ve said this before, but the BBS (and, indeed, most forums) aren’t lecture halls. Don’t post in them if you don’t want your words to be criticized by others, or if you believe your words can only ever have one interpretation and those who see them otherwise are “attacking” you.

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And another “thank you” to the mods. Yesterday, I found a rather unhinged screed in my email, a BBS reply to one of my posts. (ETA: Strangely, it wasn’t really directed at me personally.) By the time I logged back in, the thread had already been cleaned up.

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for the record, given that i was one of those individuals who was “gone after” in that topic, i have to say that i am always willing to accept criticism for any comment or reply i put out here. i fully understand that whenever i write something in a more or less public space like this forum that i will be subject to anything ranging from praise to criticism to silence. i am willing to accept that because discussion and debate require give and take, sometimes spirited give and take.

at no point have i ever claimed to be or posed as some font of knowledge and wisdom whose words must be respected. there are times when i have some experience or expertise in a topic and i generally explain the nature of that when i comment from that position but even then i do not claim to be omniscient. sometimes i am a fountain of ignorance and am perfectly willing to say that. sometimes i am wrongheaded and, once i realize it, i am eager to apologize and change my mind. there have been times in discussion here when i have changed my mind during the course of a thread, stated so within the thread, and even retracted comments or replies in which my errors needed to be eliminated.

the thing about this place that makes it so remarkable is that between the flag system, the leader system, and our moderator we have a place where discussion and debate is not only possible but where they can flourish. i want to thank everyone who makes that possible from @orenwolf to our leaders to the discourse team who wrote the code for this forum.

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Me, too! And I was also grateful that by the time I saw it and came to see what the hullabaloo was about…

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It’s going to be so weird when the late shows go back to having audiences again…

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Some folks have such miserable lives that they will actually spend years online trying to spread that misery to others, and then they act surprised and butthurt when their toxicity is disallowed.

I’ve seen it time and time again on many sites, but the BBS definitely has had the most effective mods out of them all.

Thank goodness for Orenwolf, Falcor and all the other stellar moderators we’ve had over the years.

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