The Glade 4.0

You sound like my Dad :p

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Let's be realistic. People can't use the report function because doing so does not help. Dash long ago hobbled the moderators to prevent them from actually doing anything. Don't bother to report anything, because Dash doesn't care and believes in letting people rant as they see fit, civility be damned. Even Montegue would still have been around had Dash been around to provide input when all four of us plus Mookhow agreed enough was enough. And since that time, three of the four of us are no longer moderators. One doesn't even post here anymore.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

And yet there's a significant number of people turned off by the state of the discourse. So while you (and others) fail to see a problem, it is clearly a factor driving people away.

Anyway, I don't see a solution. Obviously, the people who are, let's say, "rough around the edges" do not see a problem, they are not going to change their posting behavior. Since very few of us are interested in censoring others, the problem will remain.

I don't understand why some people need to act they way they do. Perhaps it's a function of being anonymous on the internet - I don't believe that a lot of what is said would be said to someone's face. I know some things said to me and others would result in missing teeth if said to my face. I generally strive to keep that as my standard - would I say this to someone's face? It helps.

The motivation is needed to log in. It's not a matter of actively leaving the board. I have no one on ignore (I think it's unnecessary - you can ignore or not reply to a person or statement without doing so if you have a bit of self control), but if you find yourself needing to put lots of people on ignore, why bother logging in? I don't think I would ever "leave" the board, I may just never get around to or feel like logging in.

I don't feel particularly hobbled in my moderation. I'd argue that you're living in the past with respect to your opinion on reporting things.

And I'll also add that even in the absence of some official ban or sanction, a moderator can do a lot to actually *moderate* **** if it's pointed out to them.

I don't read every thread here, I peruse things that interest me. I don't see when people post objectionable content.

But I'll see a report within a few hours, and be able to check in on the thread and see what can be done. And the earlier on that report comes in, the easier it is to manage the thread without extreme measures.

It's been my experience that an impartial third party (read: me) can do an awful lot by sending a PM asking someone to tone it down if they're going overboard. That option goes out the window, most of the time, if everyone else flies off the handle.

But the truth is, in the year and a half I've been a moderator, we've gotten *maybe* 5-10 reports. But people get pissed off a lot more often than that.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

NephyrS:

IMO, most of the issues stem from general rudeness and disrespect more than from something that can be easily moderated.

For example, we see less "you're an *******" and more "you are incapable of critical thought".

While both are obvious insults, one is easier to moderate than the other. I would not report either.

To be fair, a good number of people who post here may agree and not take offense to being called an *******. Telling them they are incapable of critical thought, however, that's going to cause a war.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It is a factor driving people away, but that factor is as much about the sensitivity of those people as the rudeness of others. For the most part, the "you can't think critically" comments stay in Hellfire. Most threads outside Hellfire do not involve any real rudeness.

There's also the fact that the Glade is simply getting older and for a lot of people there may not be as much of a reason to come here anymore. As that reason disappears, rudeness may seem more noticeable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I wouldn't mind getting a report on the latter, Arathain, although it's your choice to report it or not.

If I got a report like that, I'd send PMs to both of the people involved, asking one side to remember that such a statement can upset others, and the other side to remember that it's just one persons opinion.

Like I said, there's a lot of moderating that can be done *before* things blow out of proportion.

If, however, someone chooses to respond to "you are incapable of critical thought" with something similarly descriptive, there's rarely a significant chance of recovery.

I think it's important for everyone to remember to take a step back and a deep breath before they post, as well as to give other posters the benefit of the doubt. The discourse here is such that things like "you're incapable of critical thought" has just become an average rejoinder to the discussion, and just like any phrase, overuse desensitizes people to it. It's unlikely that the person who used it meant as cutting or scathing of a criticism as the person who received it took it as.

Take Talya's point, above- some people have no problem being called an *******. Heck, it's a common enough rejoinder among my colleagues at work- it just doesn't mean that much when we say it.

The board, as a whole, seems to have lost a lot of perspective, and general understanding that we're different people with different backgrounds, and that our interactions here are only a small subset of our lives. On the one hand, people that normally are pretty blunt in their daily dealings think that some of the board members are too sensitive. On the other hand, people who are used to much more polite and measured dealings think that some of the board are crude, rude, and socially unacceptable.

Neither of those viewpoints is absolutely right or wrong, they're just different.

The level of discourse often found in Hellfire would fit right in at Oxford or Cambridge in academic settings, for example, but wouldn't have a prayer of flying at many of the Ivies in the US. It's a difference in culture. And being understanding of that difference and allowing some leeway for it is necessary, on *both* sides, imo.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Here's what it's really coming down to for me:

What rests in the scales is, on one side, the people who are leaving because they're fed up with the behavior that goes on around here, and on the other side, the people who would leave because they don't like being told how to behave. As far as I'm concerned, there's no contest. I've long been of the opinion that the only thing that can possibly save the Glade in the long run is a selective blood purge. Because here's the thing: it's going to get one whether it likes it or not. Either some moderator is finally going to flip their **** and just start unilaterally permabanning the problem children, or else the problem children are going to run off everyone actually worth listening to. It's really just a question of which kind of poster you'd rather lose. The only reason I haven't taken it on myself to be the one 'flipping their ****', is that I don't feel like I "own" the Glade and because I know that if I did, Mookhow would wind up having to deal with the fallout.

This place hasn't really changed in ten years? One, I disagree with that. Yes, it's the same people engaging in the same dickish behavior that they've shown for years. That much is mostly true. But it's more concentrated now because they've run off large portions of the population who don't act like that. But even if it's true that the Glade hasn't changed, has it occurred to anyone that this just might be a damning statement? Most of us were probably 19-23ish back then. I'd like to think that maybe we've all grown up a little since then and learned how to act more like adults. Moreover, at least back then we were little more than just recent acquaintances with little reason to have any particular attachment to one another. I'd also like to think that maybe ten years of shared experiences -- even if it's just "on the internet" -- would engender a little more respect than we had for one another when we are all just some_dude_who_plays_a_ranger_01.

I just don't get it. I don't know why people think that they're such special little snowflakes that the board should have to put up with their crap at the expense of losing members who don't act like raging dickfaces. Really? What makes you so special that we should choose you over them? What exactly have you been contributing to this board that would make any non-Sperglord value your content over theirs? Is it your shining personality or your interesting, well-reasoned posts? Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take the "overly sensitive" posters over the likes of you any day of the week.

FarSky:

I think you (and maybe Kaffis) make me "GOOMH" more often than other poster. This is one the few times when I wish I could say otherwise. But the truth is, your comments closely echo the thoughts I've been having for some time now. I'm not sure if there's a solution to the way things are, or if the culture here has become intractable. But I have the uneasy feeling that you're just a little further down the road than I am.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It's very hard to take this post as anything other than "sooner or later I'm going to flip out and ban people I don't like." Perhaps it would not seem this way if we could ditch the "unmoderated Hellfire" and return to the moderated version.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not really. He even explained why he would never be the one to do it. Me, though? I'll nuke this ***** from orbit.

He explained why he hasn't done it. That's not quite the same thing.

As for you being willing to "nuke this ***** from orbit"... I'm unsure exactly how anyone is supposed to take either of these posts. Stathol just got done talking about how he'd much rather have the nice but sensitive people than the raging dickfaces. Disregarding the fact that in some cases the sensitivity is the raging dickface behavior (not always), we had a moderation system in place that was, in point of fact, pretty good at dealing with raging dickface behavior until it was scrapped for reasons that remain a mystery to me in their underlying reasoning, if not their nature.

Are you suggesting we might see a return to that? That might be a good idea; the first thing to do in reigning in the dickishness would be to not have a forum where it's a complete free-for-all and everyone gets to treat everyone else as if they were Monty.

If you're not suggesting that, then I'd be interested to know what exactly you're getting at here.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not getting at anything. It was a joke. There's not going to be a purge.

In other words, Lenas was trying to lighten the mood. No one is going to go crazy and ban a bunch of people.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

::snicker::

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

No tv and no beer make Mookhow something something...

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One of you should just start a Survivor style thread where we vote people off the island if so many really feel that way.

That way if people want myself or others gone, they can just say so and be done with it.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Fair enough.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Awww... but I just binged.

Are you saying I'm going to have to exercise instead?

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Holy shitsnacks!

jumping up and down in a pink pony suit is great excercise!

... so I've heard

Being overly jerky or overly sensitive isn't a black and white issue... it's about trying your best to play nice, but at the same time take everything said with a grain of salt.

Come here because you enjoy it, not because you feel obliged to do it. Of course some people enjoy feeling obliged...

I joined The Ranger's Glade in July 2000, if I remember correctly. I have "known" most of you from all of the iterations of the Ranger's Glade since then. I am always sad to see someone leave, because you are all a part of my "extended family".

Some times some of us are bad...some times some of us are good...most of the time we are all getting along nicely. Let's not lose each other because of misunderstandings!

NF and LK may your God bless and keep you and your family!

/group hug

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

I am not clicking that link.