I miss Cowicide. He always brought the goods to the argument. Isn’t that what everyone wants around here?
It doesn’t make sense to me. It seems personal and inappropriate that a member should be banned because of a disagreement with someone in charge.
Maybe time will allow those involved to re-consider and reach out to him (or her.)
It makes the place seem a little uglier and not as much fun to participate. One might think it was on purpose, but I can’t figure why.
Huh? he’s gone? that’s terrible. who’d he piss off? or is that just an assumption? I can’t tell from how you’ve worded your post.
Yes, he wrote me a note in a thread explaining that he had been killed off. He re-registed under Cowicidal to tell me that. That post is gone. I just looked for it.
I hesitate to give the name, but it was coding-horror.
Lame : (
Probably in threads I did not participate in. I have taken to avoiding the argumentative threads since they just piss me off.
I am beginning to feel it is the over-reliance on rules of good conduct that is ruining the community. It gives too much power to people who can play that edge. I think a healthy “You are an asshole.” should stand once in a while if it sums up the problem.
I’m also sorry to see him gone, and though I can understand how not everyone would think so, it feels as if people who bring much less have been left around. But of course I can’t know anything about what has been done with PMs, and any argument between him and @codinghorror would be one where I have heard one side and the other has been kept private.
What entirely surprises me is that such a prominent if controversial poster - nearly a thousand posts - could be banned or suspended with no outward sign at all. The brief attempt to say some things as cowicidal is the only way to know anything happened; it’s not like his posts were taken out, and even his user page gives no indication. That applies to outright trolls who definitely should have been and possibly were banned, but maybe simply went away, too.
I understand the philosophy here is “not to leave toxic waste”, but this kind of indistinguishability doesn’t seem like that. It seems like any commenter can be disappeared by any mod for reasons, and even if it happens those reasons might be good and anyone would know if they are pushing it, that everyone else should be in the dark really hurts any feeling of community for me. Shouldn’t someone interested be able to at least tell who is here?
As I have said repeatedly, I am not a moderator here. I will only delete egregious spam when I see it. Anything else I just flag, like any other member of the community, and let the real moderators @Falcor and @Felton handle as they see fit.
Therefore, any claim that I banned anyone is incorrect.
The reason I hold moderator powers is really a technicality – to assist the BB folks with the Discourse software which is still beta.
Hm. I found Cowicide guilty of deep snark, but didn’t come across a battlefield. Didn’t read everything he ever wrote though.
It has become more trolly. Something in the air.
In my darker moments, I feel as if there is “astro-trolling” going on, some kind of exterior agency sabot in the works.
Can we have more Microsoft v Apple / guns + NRA / sexism / sexuality hot topics to see if we can … ferret things out??
EDIT: I want to make clear I love Snark. The snarkier, the better.
Snark is a very good response to sloppy thinking and ego motivated bloviating.
The moderators need to realize that honest discourse often results in angry responses and it distorts the results to remove them.
We have now seen what looks to me like a personally motivated banning of someone who made a strong and consistent contribution. My feeling is that ultimately it was motivated by an ideological disagreement and not about Cow’s personality or lack of control over his posts. He made excellent contributions and obviously spent a lot of time putting them together. This irked people he disagreed with and he was called out for axe-grinding by a leader of this site. Is it axe grinding to make relevant and researched posts? Only if you disagree.
I am finding the atmosphere as promoted by coding horror and the mods to be counter productive of good community. It has some of the flavor of StackOverflows “asshole” ethics where you can be deleted for the slightest infraction. This may be appropriate for an informational site but is just not right for a casual conversation like we have around here.
With you on the snark. Totally.
I had a clash recently, and quickly found myself being dragged into the underworld by accusations built on accusations built on hearsay and false premises, and just plain wrongness. It was ugly.
But part of the joy of BB is that very smart people filter and respond to reign things in. It’s more like Greek discourse in an open senate than a standard loud blog. Taking people on intellectually is fun, challenging, and rewarding.
I enjoyed Cowicide’s posts, didn’t see any specific stuff around the banning, but C is a critical thinker with the rhetoric to substantiate their views.
There is more “open menace” than in the Disqus version, where I think the (I know, other topic) thread arrangement meant affrontery and ego puffing were quickly caught and appropriately snarked at. There was less bullshit, less rampaging around shouting “me, me, me!”.
It’s trolly. Less jolly. Some key pillars of debate / comment have receded or departed. I feel that happening to me, which is sad, because I adore BB commentary.
Telling someone to get their facts straight, even with a fyouck or cyount thrown in, isn’t so bad really.
@codinghorror didn’t ban Cowicide. I did. If you want to know why, @Thecorrectline’s comment at the beginning of this topic pretty much sums it up.
Because the place was just about to collapse from his attitude? There isn’t a problem that needs correcting unless it is the fact that rules are making this place a fucking bore and dominated by whiny kids with not much life experience and plenty of training by academics to be so sure of their silly opinions that they would call out our editors for word usage and spelling errors.
Lighten up. There is no problem here that requires a banning.
He was not banned by coding horror. And he has not be banned forever. He was also not banned for disagreeing with “someone in charge”. You were not given the full story.
Not to mention deleting his comment to me that was not offensive in any way unless you are afraid of repercussions.
I can only speak to what I was told. And you didn’t say a word.
You know on the whiny kids? I keep suspecting some law prof has egged his students to practice their argument techniques here! Only lawyers could be as tl;dr as I’ve seen come down the falls in some topics.
We can all only speak to what we were told. But as adults we are aware there are two sides to every story.
OK, I love you guys really, but error is error and bias is bias and that is what I see happening. There is a definite trend toward the conservative in the moderation and what I see as an attempt to steer the community in that direction.
You may need to trust me on this and consult the others about it. We humans are most terrible at ferreting out our own bias. Isn’t that a big topic of conversation around here.
Start taking it to heart.
Cowicide was banned after a series of hostile and insulting posts and the threatening tone of a private message. Because of his valued contributions, the moderators thought about it long and hard. I approved of the ban after seeing the messages in question. The duration of the ban is up to the mods.
No, Cowicide’s behavior was unacceptable. Trying to cast that (hopefully temporary) problem as a matter of board politics is just silly. Rather than try and convince yourself that we’re conservative operatives manipulating the Boing Boing hivemind, you’d be better served by a crisp, refreshing look at the specifics and tone of our forum rules!
To be fair, I did notice Cow getting very stroppy, but I liked him despite that. Given his quite clear activism, worn very proudly on his sleeve, I can see how he’d get that way, given what one has to endure if you believe (as most here do, from what I see) in those kind of causes, I can kind of understand it. Hopefully, it can be sorted. his heart was definitely in the right place. I’ve gotten het up and had posts deleted before, it’s easy done.
