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Whyâs she got three arms, and what is she doing with that guinea-pig?
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How is it that clicks go up when that happens? Whatâs the mechanism?? Always been interested, never discovered. Low lazy level of research, to be frank.
People jump in to correct and/or ridicule and/or argue and/or defend and/or agree. Others respond to them, And so on.
More clicks is not necessarily evidence that a community is working well. It does, however, impress advertisers.
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Right - so itâs more clicks on the page? Rather than drawing in more people from outside the bubble?
Thatâs what I would expect. Iâll be interested if Iâm wrong.
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Part one is the incendiary headline designed to get readers to click through to the article. Next, few baiting lines in the text to prompt folks to add a comment in support of more careful consideration. Already some new clicks there. Next, the reader, having commented, reads the thread and becomes inflamed that others disagree and ups the heat on his own comment and conviction. The final straw is the reader coming back over and over to see if his opponent has responded. ( This is what I hear happens on those kinds of forums.)
Isnât this why the internet measurers came up with âUnique visitsâ or what ever they call it. To combat click bait? I remember from when I looked into it several years ago that Google has two kinds of ads and ways of measuring that take this into account. Low cost âevery click countsâ and higher cost âonly the unique visitors count.â I wonder if the low cost variety drives the sort of thing we are talking about.
So the place is filled with ads for Red Bull, caffeine pills and candy?
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Basically what technogeek said. You get factions that go back and forth. Conflict makes things interesting. If you are involved in the conversation, you are hitting refresh to see the new posts. If you are just viewing it you are hitting refresh to see new posts. Occasionally it will pull in others from another site when someone cross posts âLook at what this idiot is doing on this site.â
So the main thing we saw was upticks in page views, and while that might be the core community refreshing, it meant they were spending more time on the site overall.
Unlike a lot of paintball forums, we had some pretty bright posters. The owner of the company was an engineer, there were many certified techs who were on the forum, and we had other posters with engineering backgrounds. So the site was known to cut through the hype when it came to technical issues and products.
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Stop glorifying Antinous. He was prone to delete posts when he was losing an argument so it looked like he had the last word/witty comment/argument.
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The problem is that youâre looking at this from the perspective of improving dialogue and promoting conversation.
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A heckle button. I like it.
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I disagree with that characterization.
I think we was likely to delete posts he felt were over the line, despite the martyr/persecution complex the affected already over-the-line commenter would often adopt.
He had no problem pointing out debate points and styles that were fallacious, commenters that were not here to raise debate, and he spent a lot of time performing the unenviable task of skimming the turds from the punchbowl.
But he was also pretty good about shooting you a private note to let you know that you werenât actually a martyr. Heck, after the Boston bombings he inquired about my well being out of the blue because re remembered from years back that I live in greater Massachusetts.
Invariably though there are those who saw Antinous the moderator only through their own lens of outrage, and they only saw him when they were incensed, in the moment at which time it was already personal, so of course it was him taking it personally. Of course it was him, I mean, It couldnât be you, right? You never take arguments personally and have distorted impressions and extreme expectations, right? Only other people do that, yah?
You in the general sense, maybe you personally, maybe not. Your call, itâs just a theory.
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At some point many of these posts belong in the BBS design meta thread. Many of them belong absolutely nowhere - cowsâ relationship with BBS is not appropriate public discussion fodder, nor is any users.
A catch-all thread of moderation whyâs and howâs may certainly be a good feature, but this thread has become bizarrely far reaching.
Iâd say âramblingâ. Iâd also say, judging from my experience on other systems, that this is typical of such threads, and actually productive; weâve turned it from a discussion of a single moderator action (which, I agree, is personal and arguably shouldnât have been dragged out in public, but thatâs what the thread started as) into a general discussion of moderation policy and practice (which I think is EXTREMELY appropriate to help folks who havenât moderated understand how itâs done and to help folks understand the less-than-obvious points of how this particular board is run).
In other words, I think your core complaint is late and the rest is in fact the result of addressing that complaint.
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Damn, I still really miss him. 
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What about the sort of people who drop hints and share personal anecdotes that add up to a rather clear character assassination of another user of your board?
I ask because I see what you did there, and I would like you to please address your intent in starting a paragraph about a specific user and winding it up with your opinion of how other peopleâs have in your experience needed to have boundaries imposed on their conversation, out of love, else they may stray into unlimited personal attacks because of their obvious mental illness.
What mental health issue are you diagnosing/ treating here? Is that your area of expertise? You sure itâs not just ad hominem? Sounds like bullying from here.
Strong opinions and a temper are not a mental illness. Theyâre quite human. Compulsions are human too, as is projection. Whatâs not loving is labeling other peopleâs behavior to marginalize them or their opinions.
Iâm pretty offended by what youâve said. Not because it hits close to my home, but in that way where I get offended by people in glass houses throwing stones at people because they too live in glass houses. We all live in glass houses.
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I agree. It definitely read as âHmmm ⌠maybe Cowicide has a mental illness.â
I could tell he was getting more and more impatient with certain topics, but I could always understand where he was coming from. Also, Cowicide has been posting at BoingBoing for years and no one seems to be saying that this ban was years in the making, so I highly doubt he should be accused of âindulging a mental illnessâ or that he is going to âgo off the rails againâ.
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No; not a judgement. My father is bipolar as is my stepson and I volunteered on a listening hotline where about half the callers were mentally ill. Because of my upbringing, I have a lot of comfort with a lot of behaviors that other people donât tolerate well; itâs a blessing and a problem too to not always be so protective of myself. One of the nice things is I have a lot of âcrazyâ friends!
I am not a mental health professional but I have noticed certain trends from interacting with people. Also I joke that Iâve had so much therapy that I almost am a therapist; yes, I am fairly well schooled on mental health.
I have observed a similarity in the way people will fixate on themes when they arenât coping well. I call it âcyclingâ Iâm not sure what the real term for it is or if there is one. Iâm not sure what is happening with Cowicide but when other posters comment that after getting involved with Occupy he has gotten fixated on certain political themes, it sounds to me like someone who is cycling on that topic.
I think a lot about how to help people who have problems and I see that discussion boards, like everywhere, have people who have mental health issues . I am happy that they are finding community and enjoy conversations with people who challenge my point of view.
Yes, I think that people who have mental health problems do sometimes do a really poor job of assessing their own situation and I wish that I could be more proactive in helping adults with mental issues. I donât want to be able to go back to the bad old days of forced mental institutions, but I would like to figure out a way to have a loved one become involved in caring for an adult who cannot see how their own behavior is self destructive. It breaks my heart to see someone that I love stay sick who could be helped, someone whose illness gets in the way of them finding their solution. Itâs a problem I havenât found a solution to, but I do feel that our mental health situation has swung too far the other way, to letting people remain ill which does not seem very loving to me.
People who are not currently in a good place and donât have the skills to assess how they are affecting other people are sometimes helped by direct, frank feedback on how they are making people feel. Thatâs what I learned on the listening hotline in coping with some of the more difficult callers. A lot of people take advantage of social norms to impose on people in an uncomfortable way. Sometimes itâs very helpful at least for the person being pushed this way (if not the person doing the pushing) to say, âhere is how you are making me feel,â and sometimes itâs good to say, âYou hit my limit and so now I have to break off our interaction until I can be less reactive and more genuinely kind in my interaction with you.â
I wish that term werenât so loaded. I really really really wish that.
Maybe he does; maybe he doesnât. His behavior has been consistently making people uncomfortable, so, yes, possibly. Or, at least, maybe it would be helpful to treat him as someone who right now is not quite capable of judging how he is affecting people whatever we label that.
I still want to be around him; heâs still an interesting person.
