I guess we each make our own choices on this based on our experiences. Far be it from me to say that your way is wrong because mine differs.
Some people who were longtime members have walked away (or were asked to leave) in the past, asking that their IDs are either deleted or anonymized. I did not want to make that choice either.
Whether its called bias or not, theres a set of widely shared common views here and thats great for them but not always for me and so I just engage rarely. Seems to be better for all that way.
This discussion has also been had multiple times in the past.
What I know by now is that others have their firmly held thoughts and thats that. Sometimes the echo level exceeds anything Lee Scratch Perry could have dreamed of but again, its not my house and thats been made quite clear.
A few of my posts were deleted in the past years. I rarely understood the exact reason why they were and did not get a response when I asked why.
Keep in mind that I am probably older than most of the members here, that I am not american and that my command of English, although sufficient for discourse, is not quite at the level of a native speaker. I learned English at school from people older than me who themselves learned it in an era where some commonly used expressions or words were not as offensive as they may be nowadays. I tried to catch up, but it is almost impossible to correct completely.
In addition, because of my different background, I have a different sensitivity. I refrain from posting on subjects specific to the US, like domestic politics or TV programs, because I am not competent to contribute. In subjects which happen on the whole planet, like sexism unfortunately, I may contribute but may find it difficult to make myself understood, even when I agree on the core values.
That’s the thing about communication online- you assume my age and my background- but what do you really know. How old is younger than you? 40? 50? 60?
To those complaining that “it’s an echo chamber, differing views get shut down.”. I must ask: and which views are yhose, that you would otherwise voice?
i’m nearly 60 myself. most people my age in texas are fox news addicts while i’m a left-liberal democrat who wishes he could vote for aoc. you really can’t make assumptions about folks demographics based on their opinions.
Depends on how you use it. There are currently about five people on my Ignore list, with a variety of political views. What they do have in common is a propensity to make bad-faith or disingenuous arguments and/or regularly express disrespect to the community as a whole. That kind of “echo chamber” enhances my experience here.
Oh, I agree. I can see why the feature is there and as I say, I’ve used it myself.
But I do think it does have the potential to insulate oneself from other views. Intentionally so and since each user decides that for themselves, that’s their choice and fine.
But the relevant post was about “echo chambering” and whether the discourse system might tend to increase the likelihood of it, so I thought it worth mentioning a feature that I think does have that potential.
I used to spend more time here, because I appreciate the articles and I wanted to give back to the site. I thought that I had some knowledge about privacy in computer systems that could interest people and could report on hacker conferences. Bees as well, obviously. I also have posted some cooking recipes in the relevant thread.
If none of this is wanted, I will just simply read the articles.
Often, posts are deleted because they quoted or at least responded to a post that was itself deleted. That’s how I lose my posts.
And don’t worry, young man: there are quite a few people older than you on this site. What we know is that if we use the outmoded language we were taught in a different generation, and there has been a new and improved understanding on it, someone will tell us and we will gain the opportunity to change how we write for the better. Learning is a lifetime activity.
I’ve had a few comments that got moderated, and all of them needed it. I’m glad they’re not still out there representing me. No problems with the moderation of the site.
It does seem to me that the range of diversity in opinion in the forums has narrowed a lot, and that BB itself has become way more political (and uniformly political) than it was 15 years ago. I guess that’s just how things evolve as our society polarizes. However, I’m typically only in threads for the main site’s blog posts, and so I probably miss out on the bulk of what goes on in the forums.
Sometimes I wonder if people are flagging conservative viewpoints as a way of suppressing them, with the justification being that the conservative perspective in this country is inherently prejudiced. Thus any post in support of the conservative viewpoint is loaded with implied prejudice even if none of it is expressed.
It seems like we get into this same type of discussion about what are the trust levels and how does flagging work, over and over like clockwork. I think part of the reason may be that the information on that isn’t obviously available, so every so often someone who wants to understand it all winds up asking a whole lot of questions (as @AndreStmaur has here) and that may feel tiresome to other users.
The info is hard to find—it’s not readily found under the FAQs or in the Community Guidelines or the About page. Usually some Regular or another, relying on memory I think, dredges up a link to a past topic. Also, it’s hard to know if the explanations found in any past topic/discussion are still current.
I think it could be helpful if that info was collected in one place, and clearly linked to from some main place where people would normally be looking for it.
(One issue of course with posting info like that, is keeping the info up to date. e.g., the About page currently lists Falcor as moderator. So on the other hand I can understand posting as little info on the workings as possible and so having as little to keep updated as possible.)
Some of us are old enough to remember when the word “conservative” actually meant conservative, not reactionary (or fascist).
Just because someone claims to have a certain identity doesn’t mean they do. What do they say, and how do they say it?
In other words, no, you are absolutely wrong when you state that “conservative” viewpoints are flagged here as a matter of course, just for expressing a conservative perspective. The question is, do you KNOW what you’re saying is wrong, or are you reacting out of ignorance and fear?
Discourse’s time-limited ignores change the dynamic of this a little. Most of the time when I’ve ignored someone it’s because they’ve annoyed me too much in the moment - a temporary distance to let myself calm down is very useful.
I don’t think a conspiracy of proactive flagging is needed to cause a place to trend in a given political direction over time. It’s more that, when a place leans a little one way, people with differing views will get confronted by more people than those with the same ones, which can drive folk off. The effect adds up over time.
I just don’t think that’s the case here. I see comments get hidden because they violate the site rules on stereotyping or victim-blaming or name-calling, not because they’re (usually also) expressing a politically conservative point of view but because right-wingers tend to do those things more often than left-wingers do. As often as they’re flagged here, they’re pushed back at and refuted in replies – either way, neither is suppression of conservative political viewpoints in general.
That said, there’s no doubt that the commentariat here tends to lean more to the left socially and economically. Not surprising, given that BB’s publisher and Authors lean in the same direction. And while liberals and progressives are certainly capable of violating the site rules as defined by the site owners and enforced/interpreted by the mods with the help of the Discourse system, they just don’t end up doing that as often as modern conservatives and capital-L Libertarians do.
What really frustrates certain people with “unpopular” or “contrarian” views that violate the rules is that this BBS platform, in contrast to most others, has both highly professional and highly involved moderators and a system designed specifically for and based on feedback from said moderators. Furthermore, the regulars here, who seem to have decades of experience on various forums, are well-versed at spotting all the shoddy tricks they pull and aren’t afraid to call them on it or flag them. Between all that they can’t get away with the behaviour they’ve been able to on other forums.
This happens, and is probably the greatest cause of ”disagreed” flags. However, as I mentioned, the incidence is low. far more often, the flagged post is in violation of our community standards and is removed for that reason, and it just so happens that a large majority of those posts happen to contain conservative viewpoints for some reason.
As a moderator, this trend has been clear as day. I may do up a Boing Boing post on it sometime, because the approach being taken by either side of the divide, especially in terms of new users, is vastly different in terms of civility, and has to be a product of conditioning in other venues. It’s fascinating to me.
At least in the American context, those reasons aren’t obscure. Since 1968, the GOP has positioned itself as the duopoly party for bigots and sexists and victim-blamers (usually via dog-whistling. See Lee Atwater). And since the 1980s, their “free”-market fundie allies and affiliates have openly embraced the use of bad-faith and fallacious debate-club arguments (see Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, or countless other bitter conservative nerds who never got over HS) and outright lies (see Leo Strauss and the neoCons) and now driving trollies (see the current White House regime) to forward their agenda. American left-wingers aren’t immune from these malaises (e.g. the sexist subset of BernieBros or tankies), but they express them far less often.
That these behaviours and attitudes would carry over into online forums, and that they’d come into direct conflict with this particular forum’s well-enforced community standards is entirely predictable. Whether you agree or not, add me to those who’d like to hear your take based on your experience in the trenches.
