User tinoesroho has been given a timeout for attacking other users.
I’ve often pointed out that one of the first lines of defence for indefensible arguments tends to be to ridicule, demean, or attempt to disempower your opponent. That way, you don’t have to argue the merits - you can instead drown out the message.
It is a dirty and underhanded tactic, and one that does not belong on the BBS - especially when trying to support the causes of inclusion and tolerance in your message.
Can I make a small suggestion? I don’t know if this is too time intensive.
Can you include avatars when time out ing someone?
A lot of people I don’t recognize the name. I just see a picture, and usually register a positive, neutral, or negative sentiment. (And usually if it’s negative I stop assuming good faith and flag their ass).
I ask because you mentioned that not enough people flag earlier, so this may be a bit of a hack to call attention to problem users
Edit: I understand this may be a “simple” ask that’s a heavy engineering lift / annoying to do manually hence couching my language.
User Brian_Pi given a permanent vacation so that he has no further need to feel compelled to visit the land of “censorious”, “feckless asshats” in the future.
I would suggest linking the profile, but there may be obvious problems with that that I’m overlooking.
When you’ve no more fecks to give
Hello - I had a post in the “travelers getting one-use keys in Hawaii” get held for approval. I presume a bot flagged it, and while it is kind of long, and does have cursing in it, I’ve done both of those things in the past and not had them flagged.
I’d like to know what happened so I can avoid that in the future. Thanks.
Did you happen to use the words ‘troll’ or ‘sealion’?
Those words can trigger a hold…
Thanks - I appreciate the response.
User sluggo has been given a timeout for resorting to ad hominem in defence of their position, repeatedly. Don’t do that.
If folks don’t agree with, or misinterpret your position, well, it’s text on the internet. Clarify, or accept that not everyone will agree, and move on. Don’t make it personal.
User jerwin given a timeout for melting down over moderation of their comments, followed by lashing out at both moderators and other users.
User space_monkey anonymized at user request.
User andrew_singleton has been asked not to return after unloading on another user for what appears to have been years of pent up anger.
I’ve said this before but - hello, internet! Not all people are not going to agree with what you say or how you say it. People are also going to say things you don’t agree with, either. Your choices here are to 1) engage with respect, 2) don’t engage at all, 3) use the ignore feature if you really don’t want to deal with that user or 4) move along.
Alternatively, if you feel a post or user violates the guidelines, flag their post, and we’ll investigate. You’ll note none of those options include derailing topics by attacking others.
User waterloonie given a brief timeout for tone-policing members to “not care so much” in a place they come to to, presumably, not care so much. Which begs the question of why they felt the need to point out people were caring too much in the first place, but hey.
I think don’t post stuff you don’t care about, and/or for topics that warrant frivolity, don’t suddenly care about stuff you weren’t caring about before are probably good rules to live by.
User Rindan given a timeout for levelling attacks at other members.
User CreekyOne anonymized at user request.
This post is, probably, the most personally upsetting post I’ve had to write here.
User Karl_Jones has been permanently banned from the BBS.
It appears Karl maintains a third party site where he keeps a record of his posts. That’s fine, but at one point, he chose to post a quote from another BBS user to their site. This user requested that their name (but not their comment) be removed from that site.
As I mentioned in my earlier post on this topic, this is a public forum, and folks are free to copy the post of the BBS elsewhere. However, we also expect that users of this BBS will treat fellow users with respect and honour their wishes should they not want their posts on another site. While we can’t control third parties or their sites, we can choose to remove users from the BBS who will not extend this small measure of kindness to their fellow members.
Additionally, users (and Authors) who choose to identify as female face increased acts of misogyny, intimidation, and mistreatment online. I have personally witnessed this sort of behaviour in the sort of comments, email, and other posts directed towards female Authors on Boing Boing itself. But even here on the BBS, we have been called in to see Private Messages sent to female users often written with extreme amounts of abusive language not repeated to users who do not openly identify as female. As the user affected by Karl’s actions, in this case, falls into both cases (being female, and having faced online harassment in the past), I asked this user to consider the request in this light and simply remove their name .
Karl did not respond to either my request, nor the polite request of the user themselves. Instead, they chose to double-down, by creating a profile page for the user on their site, and creating more entries. At the same time, they also decided to brand the request as a request to “self-censor.” This, more than anything else, tells me what I, as a moderator, need to know about this user - that another member’s name had apparently become property of Karl - that despite the request asking only to remove a name, and not either Karl’s own words, nor even the quote he was responding to, they apparently considered that something they owned enough that a request to remove it was “self-censoring”.
At this point, my course of action from a moderation standpoint was clear, but to make matters worse, I was then directed to a post where Karl had specifically asked permission from another user to repost their content . Apparently, users he respects are given the right to choose how their name and words are presented, but not users who identify as female. or that are otherwise undeserving.
I am truly, truly amazed, disheartened, and angry that another user’s name would be such a point of contention. However, IMHO it goes to show how entitlement, privilege, and systemic bigotry can take even simple requests and produce ugly, terrible results.
I’m sorry this had to happen.
But having gone and looked at the guy’s site, this is by far a good move. You’ve made BoingBoing a better, safer place for this action.
I’m not going to link to it here but suffice to say, while it’s okay legally to post comments here, cyberstalking is most definitely against the law.
EDIT: Also, having looked at this site, I change my opinion I had earlier about ignore being functionally good enough. It’s absolutely not, and this guy’s site and his continued harrassment after the fact and before of users who present / are female is clearly signs that I was extremely wrong, and so I’d like to apologize to anyone who I wronged with my ignorance/arrogance. It was out of line, and it wasn’t done with the knowledge I have now. I have that knowledge now, and I don’t know why I thought BB was immune from that behavior when I’ve seen it so often in other places. That’s entirely on me. I like to think I’ve been low impact on this site except for occasional dustups about ads, but if I have wronged you, I’d like to personally apologize. I don’t ever want to be seen like that user that hosts that site.
User OldSilverFox Anonymized at user request.
