A million people can’t be wrong!
As so often pointed out, the software is designed to be community-regulating (with, I guess, some mod and owner oversight), so comment flagging is going to be driven by the prevailing winds of ideological affiliation.
I find that a major problem with rhetorical interaction is that often, when introducing a concept which doesn’t seem to immediately fit with the implicate consensus, the idea can be so automatically rejected by the memetic defence mechanisms that it smacks of groupthink.
All sorts of value judgements are being made inside that snap reaction, the weight of many hours of prior interaction, the familiarity of the commenter etc. Often, the memeplex is reacting for us in these circumstances. Not that I’m accusing people of being unconscious in their discrimination but really, I ask y’all, how often do you really want to interrogate the entire foundations of your ideological structures?
Conversation can work like that, for sure, but it (at least for my part) takes a lot more effort to go through from the beginning to the end every time I’m challenged on something. Especially by someone with whom I am not familiar or have had previous, perhaps heated, disagreements.
No joke, this place is better than most, if not all. Calm, considerate interaction, holding on to one’s temper and outrage and occasionally throttling it for the purpose of the conversation is more likely to be found here, I truly believe. But it’s a two way street, and sometimes the fully packed busses splash the pedestrians with gutter water as they flee aboot down the established byways.
Bring an umbrella and be prepared to use it in rainy weather. And don’t chase after the bus, swearing and kicking at it. You’ll get run over.
Anybody spare some chaaange for the bus. Honest guv, I just need to get home and someone stole me wallet. Just need a few pence mate.
No definitely, me too - it’s just most of the time people have been nice enough not to flag me for whatever weird ideas I come out with. While there can be some unwillingness to accept other opinions at times, I think people here are pretty good at separating the clueless from the trollish. Which is a good thing, because like many guys have said at different times, I’ve actually learned a lot here and am glad that people have patience with questions and comments that they’ve probably heard dozens of times before. It’s not that I have no confidence in my opinions, but I didn’t start reading and commenting on BB in order to change other people’s minds.
So so so much better than other places (looking at you Kinja!)
I’m not sure I agree that there’s a lot of groupthink. From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem to be mere disagreement or out there opinions as much as it deleting of truly outrageous and possibly harmful ideas. Wont some people be more prone to this just by the nature of the personality?
I like it here. The people are generally good and open to debate and other ideas and when they’re not then we need the mods and the ban hammer. Or do we want BB to turn into the average newspaper comment section?
Oh aye. I really just meant that it can smack of groupthink to the recipient of a community push back. It can seem intimidating when lots of people suddenly all pull you up on something, especially if ypu are not cognisant of it being radical or wrong for whatever reason.
From my perspective I dont think I’ve often or really ever seen an overwhelming surge against something that couldn’t be rephrased or amended to be less prickly without losing the well-meaning content except in cases, where - as you say, someone is trolling or being obviously idiotic.
I’ve seen it. The angry cop throwing the student thread for example. Some people seem to just come here to share the wealth of their brains and have no room or time for anyone who challenges them. Which is the opposite of the spirit of the place. In cases like that banhammers seem appropriate. First rule: don’t be a dick.
There’s no such thing as viewpoint neutral moderation because there’s no such thing as viewpoint neutral censorship. Moderation, for better or worse, is a benign form of censorship. The dynamics of censorship necessarily cater to a viewpoint. That’s why government censorship is so pernicious to begin with. What you are describing as an ideal cannot exist: Censorship without viewpoint. You’re simply confusing your particular viewpoint as being objective.
This is why I still think a block feature would be useful here. I tend to think of blocked content, along the line of “A user you have blocked has posted something. Click here to view?”, as acting like trigger warnings - letting you make an informed decision whether or not to participate in a discussion.
The counter-arguement, that you should be able ignore another user without technology, ignores the point that certain pairs of users are triggers for each other and treats those triggers as lesser than violence, gore, puppies, etc…
I don’t have much to add except it is generally, in my observer only opinion, more effective when a Mod Warning is issued publicly to Get Your Stuff Together. @falcor does a great job of getting his bipeds back into line without making them a snack.
This would be great. As it would for deleted comments: “A comment deemed in violation of community standards has been blocked. Click here to view.” As I said above, some of the deleted conversations were instructive in various ways, and time consuming, so it’s been frustrating when they simply disappear forever.
I will say at least for those of us in the thread you all are great, while not always posting something I necessarily agree with but you state things in reasonable and clear manner (well maybe @popobawa4u can be a little confusing but that’s part of what I like about it).
You don’t tend to get uptight and such and often say wait this gonna go nowhere lets just agree to disagree and leave it.
I thought we had both of those - a place to mute other users (but maybe you and @fiddlingfrog mean something more?) and I have seen a flag pop up to view thingie, but maybe they don’t hang around very long?
I’ve seen my kids grow up and leave home. I’ve been to at least two countries that no longer exist. I started programming with punch cards, and now work with the latest version of Visual Studio. I’ve walked through a fully grown forest, that I once planted from seedlings.
But dammit, not having posted anything that would get me suspended or banned here makes me feel OLD.
