Partly this but to expand, when I have flagged comments by a particular user, no action is taken ever so I kind of assume that as @codinghorror says above its up to the whims of the moderators. In short it seems futile, especially when the person whom I’ve flagged is an obvious darling of the community despite patterns of crappy behavior to those who cross the party line.
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Mostly I don’t flag much because when I do usually I get no reaction.
And frankly, I don’t have much confidence in the moderation more generally. Outsiders are banned swiftly if they push the right buttons, but established users become too big to fail. This isn’t limited to users with whom I disagree. Some of the users I like a lot all in all can be serious assholes and it will never be held against them because they are firmly in line with BB orthodoxy. Then there is the little menagerie of resident contrarians that is allowed to do things that would get newcomers banned. I assume that is supposed to pass for tolerance.
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I dunno, I’ve seen a long time user banned forever for racism. One incident.
(This happened a while ago. What was said was fairly unambiguously racist, to be fair.)
It’s probably helpful to bear in mind that you’re dealing with multiple people at BB, not all of whom necessarily agree on the specifics of exactly how moderation should work. They are individuals.
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This has been my impression, too.
I flag spam and when people cross the line into name calling and such. But I feel I should flag unto others only as I would have others flag unto me. I have seen flagging explicitly used by “Regulars” on Boing Boing BBS to censor viewpoints rather than to flag for lack of decorum. I’ve also witnessed a number of liberal-minded blog forums I used to frequent descend into militant echo chambers, where the hoard would gleefully dog pile on people for daring question the status quo, with emotions running high and and care for facts and logical argument a distant second. They became, and remain, vicious and reminiscent of Alt-Right crapola. I will continue to be cautious with my own flagging. I don’t wish to see the BBS go more down that rabbit hole than it already has.
I’d add that having a special, secret lounge where the rarefied group of around 136 “Regulars” can talk about new users behind their backs (eg. the thread for Regulars only, “Kvetching about the usual trollies”) is a recipe for, unintentionally or not, encouraging the othering of less frequent posters.
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Same here. The bulk of the activity on BBS happens while I’m asleep, at work, or working on other projects. I mean, statistically that’s probably true for all of us but I think a fair few people BBS during their business hours and I can’t really do that.
As a practical example, Shark Bites Boy Wearing Shark Repelling Magnetic Armband posted while I was at work or asleep (I’ll figure out which when I get to that thread) and there’s 67 posts in it. That looks like one probably filled with jokes and stuff so it probably won’t take long to read but during the period between Brexit and the U.S. presidential election, we had multiple threads going to 300+ posts their first day. By the time I get to it (if ever … those presidential election threads I mostly skipped), it’s all over.
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I don’t know if that’s a joke on the words “party line” or if you are being snarky or what. The last person I recall who didn’t like image only replies (shaddak?) got banned.
Yeah, but he wasn’t necessarily a user popular with the Boing Boing BBS cool kids, if it is who I’m thinking of.
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Now i am not sure if I missed that or if I forgot.
[quote]It’s probably helpful to bear in mind that you’re dealing with multiple people at BB, not all of whom necessarily agree on the specifics of exactly how moderation should work. They are individuals.
[/quote]True, but that makes it al the more important to try to communicate some sort of policy beyond whimsical one-liners.
And if you are going to suggest that such a policy should emerge from our flagging behavior, then I don’t see it working around here.
Anyway my reasons for not flagging much are BB reasons, not Discourse reasons.
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He got banned for his sexist crap posting that women are prizes to be had. Then doubling down on it when he came back despite the rest of us saying to him hey we like you but knock that talk off please.
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Indeed. Prefer this forum over Metafilter for that alone (MF likes to shut down tangents, instead of letting them be or forking).
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It’s funny how often it’s things like “My opinions are too far outside the echo-chamber for everyone to handle here” rather than “You know what? Maybe I was just being a fucking dickhead.”
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I didn’t mean to imply the ban was over his dislike of image only replies. My bad if that’s how it read.
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I do know that wasn’t a question.
@codinghorror, the author of the software is a notable disliker of it too. What a fascist regime that bans it’s own creator for impure thoughts. Except that doesn’t happen.
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Any of those “popular kids” spouting racist garbage? even once?
“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
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I perceive it more as “punching up” vs. “punching down”.
That is, some people get a bit more protection because they are in a protected class.
As a straight white man with a Wikipedia entry I don’t personally have a problem with this – the more powerful you are, the more OK you should be with being criticized and brought to task. It comes with the territory, and it’s not unfair, it’s a responsibility I welcome because I am playing on the lowest difficulty level there is.
(also something I learned from BBS over the years, by the way)
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There’s a non-sequitur.
Not really sure what your point is given that I never suggested any such thing, nor did I suggest that people should not be banned for spouting racist garbage.
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not in the context of comments indicating that who it was was someone spouting racist garbage.
has it occurred to you people to ask, rather than assert, when you’re not sure?
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Still not sure what your point is, or what I said specifically that you think you are responding to.
well there’s that.
in this context:
you were responding in that very comment to someone telling you it was one thing, and you said it was ‘another thing’.
What a non sequiter on my part to point that out to you? /s
i’m going to disengage with you, thanks.
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