The Glade 4.0

The gloves are off in this forum, right?

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Yes go ahead, I'm fully expecting it.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Fair enough.



I find this hugely confusing. You want people to use the ignore function rather than report people, but then when it's pointed out it doesn't work, you say you don't want to shield them from content. Not only does this seem contradictory, but content isn't really what people are (mostly) annoyed with.

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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."

Yeah, well over a year ago. The difference being that I know I acted like a jerk and deserved it. Monty, not so much. Monties **** since then has been all his own doing. I remember telling farsky at the time he let us back in that it was a mistake.

Clear things up for you?

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

The purpose was never to be "fair." It doesn't, in the end, matter what is "fair." As we were only really moderating reports, and the vast majority of reports were either of Monte or by Monte, he was going to be in our sights more often than others. Is that fair? In some respects yes--the inability to get along with others is the main point here--but from other perspectives certainly not. It wasn't necessarily objective actions themselves that make him a bigger problem.

But it was still essential. The moderation was not there to preserve some sense of fairness or justice. It was there to try to keep the community together. The basic fact comes down to, in this forum: we either end up losing Monte, or we lose just about everyone else. Monte is not essential to this community--no one person is. But if we lose too many others, then this community no longer exists. If Monte can avoid being enemies with everyone here, then he should stay. But he cannot. He has never shown an ability to get along with anyone with any opposing viewpoints to his own. He also was very careful to make his attempts at being personal hard to pin down, to make moderation difficult. He excelled at finding ways to offend as many people as possible without often crossing the line when it came down to defined rules. This was why there was subjectivity built into all this -- if a moderator felt someone was attempting to walk the line, to circumvent the spirit of the rules, we could act on it.

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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
█ ♣ █

I, as in I, Dash, do not believe that I personally (or any mod) should shield the forum from words or ideas. You can feel free to shield yourself if you so choose. Meaning if you dont want to hear it, self moderate. I dont believe that is my decision to make or that others should be able to browbeat the collective into drowning out an opposing view.

As for things like insults, well that's just a case of my personal preference which I'm sure I'm getting a lot of hate about right now I just dont see why you need a moderator to arbitrate who flamed who, who started it, does it conform exactly to the rules posted in section B. Why do you need someone to hold your hand? Then we're back to the "Dash you said these were the rules and I'm getting dinged by the mods for saying this, when it's clearly not in violation" or "I think soandso is out to get me" or the people who just leave because they are fed up.

The whole reason I even own hosted space is because the chick who ran our last boards went crazy and decided to moderate EVERYTHING we said. She'd ding us for mild insults in heated political arguments. I had my posts deleted, edited. I got banned. None of the people involved in the arguments wanted any intrusion. All we wanted was a forum where we could say what we wished. If you couldnt handle it you stay out. So I said eff it and got my own board and everyone followed.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Again though if it IS only Monte... he is currently banned.

By the way Khross is taking a while with this after asking if the gloves were off, I hope he's not looking up new insults for me. Hmm.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Maybe he's looking for a pair that fit better.

Hellfire is little more than a bundle of parallel resonating frequencies in the shitroom of the internet. Sometime shortly after Sunmoon sold us out to IGE, we stopped caring about communication and started speaking from our soapboxes with the mentality that whoever screamed the loudest, spoke the longest, and refused to concede was ultimately right. Hellfire is the endless filibuster of internet epeen politics, and Montegue's presence or lack thereof is not going to change that any time soon.

What has changed is the level of patience afforded other posters ...

I have none for Beryllin when it comes to any issue relating to homosexuality. I have little for Montegue on issues of economics and whether or not HIGCC is actually science anymore. There are issues where I simply don't have the patience to listen when it comes to a LOT of you anymore. And I know I'm not alone. We sit here dismissing each other left and right, hiding behind logical fallacies and the same tired arguments. So, if you want Hellfire to get better, then delete Heckfire, because we don't need it, and moderate the **** place like its actual debate.

Don't have a link? You get a 24 hour suspension. Keep repeating it? We take away your right to post in this forum.

Make an argument ad nauseum? You get penalized.

It's not a lack of civility killing Hellfire; it's a lack of actual discourse. And I'm just as guilty as anyone, because I got tired of everyone dismissing actual posts with actual research and actual thought because they didn't like what I had to say. Well, **** that bullshit ...

You want Hellfire to work, then the kind of moderation needed is the kind of over the top policing of language, logic, and rhetoric that EJ uses for their TheoryCrafting forums.

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Khross,

I think in part, the problem stems from how long we have been arguing with each other. When you know someone well, your arguments tend to get volatile faster, with assumptions about the other party(ies) taking up a larger portion of the space than your actual argument.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I think some of that would help and some would not work.

So, let me see if I am grasping some of the arguments. Monte is going to cause people to leave despite the fact that he has been around since Glade 1.0? His postings would have already driven everyone away by now if that were true, no?

People can argue that he is worse now but I think if we pulled the archive or someone tracked down Sunmoon I think we'd find that Monte has stayed true to character throughout all the iterations.

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^ this QFT.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Khross:

Not what I expected but ok. I dont know anyone willing to, or capable of such moderation. I dont know how big a segment of the Glade would be interested in participating in that. I mean on the old Politics boards I was a mod on we had individuals nominated for a semi-formal debate on a chosen topic, but even that was point, counter-point, rebuttal and final word. Then people voted, and the votes were down to ideology I would presume.

Now those were cool, and you had some good people debating and who could be persuasive and make you think, but yeah you'd have to set that up yourself or someone could step up if they wanted to. If you want to limit Hellfire to only those tight restrictions ala EJ again not sure who'd be left or what they'd discuss. You could challenge people to a debate and I can sticky them I guess? But not sure who would moderate that all parties would find acceptable.

As to your thoughts on what's killing Hellfire i will add them to the list, and I dont disagree with you by the way, just pointing out there are multiple theories on why things are bad, or worse, or whatever, and what to do to rectify it. What you say about lack of discourse is absolutely right, coupled with some other things... and moderators arbitrating who flirts over the line in the sand wont change things.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

In my opinion, what some of the problem is when posters attack opinion. Most of what I say around here is my opinion and little more, and I don't see much difference between attacking someone's opinion and attacking the person themselves. This is why for the moment I like the heckfire forum. There, I can express my opinion and be concerned less with being attacked for thinking differently than most here do. One thing I do know: In heckfire, I'll be closely considering whether to report posts that I feel are an attack. It's a rare, rare thing for me to report stuff, even with the vile crap that gets hurled my way occasionally. Those days are gone.

I don't disagree that people should be able to say what they really mean, and that editing posts or deleting them (which IMO is never acceptable except to remove things like porn, illegal material, spam, or possibly threats of actual violence against others) and getting banned over mild insult is too much.

Nor do I think that moderators should ac on every Hurt Feelings Report; as I said if the reports are bullshit, tell those submitting the bullshit to stop it or there will be action.

You can't, however, have any kind of discourse in a forum where people are supposed to "self moderate", except maybe in the highly professional arenas already mentioned any more than you can when the banhammer is an ever-present threat. Self-moderation doesn't work because A) the ignore function is inadequate and B) when you ignore bullshit, it takes on a life of its own and starts cropping up in every topic.

Even if you succeed in ignoring posters you don't like, the effects of their posts creep into those of the people you do wish to talk to. It makes discussion harder when you've got people on ignore because what you are responding to is being affected by something else, like half a phone conversation.

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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."

Something like this?

Sorry I have no idea why your post made me think of that, but the urge to add it was irresistable.

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Actually, I don't think we would. Monty's politics have not changed greatly, but his level of vitrol certainly has. It's gotten worse and worse, and what really causes it is that he thinks he's got some crushing argument on some matter, and that once he proves us wrong on that, he can just assume we're all wrong on everything else as well because we lost credibility or something.

Then he posts it, and it gets shot down because it's some absurdity like the whole Jesus Scope thing, or trivial like the recent Pat Robertson thing, or he doesn't undestand what's actually going on like the Israeli White Phosphrous discussion on 3.0. I mean shot down bad; Monty gets pwned by his own sources and links almost weekly.

That's what sends him into a tizzy of condemnation and dragging thread after thread off onto a rant about what a victim he is: He gets his *** kicked and rather than learn from his mistakes he just goes into full-blown lecture-and-prostlytize mood because he just "knows" he's "RIGHT" and we're all badwrongevilpeople wo just won't see how "objectively" racist, evil, hateful, or wrongheaded our ideas are.

It's definitely gotten worse as his level of frusteration has gone up, because he hasn't learned to improve his techniques. On those occasions he's made a genuine effort, it's lasted a few days and he gives up because he thinks if he just posts rationally, provides a few links, and makes a halfway decent argument then we should jsut all concede everything. He just does not get that his ideas are not the crushing light of Truth he thinks they are.

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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."

Oh man that's good. I never saw that.



That particularly got me for some reason.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I, for one, have no interest in having a debate forum. Debate is not for exchanging ideas and sharing viewpoints. Debate is a competition about the mechanics of arguing. IMHO, the problem with Hellfire is that everyone is trying to debate and "win". And they are completely fine using whatever tactic to try and win that argument. Certainly, I've been guilty of that myself. I'm sure many will point to my exchange to LK for an example (even though they would be wrong, Coro was right on the money for my intent, harshly worded tho his explaination was). But by and large when I post, my intent is to share my views on a subject for one of several reasons.

1. Showing that there are differing opinions in our community
2. Expressing where I think someone is wrong-headed and why
3. Sharing my viewpoints in the vain hope that it might broaden peoples minds

There is a great deal of truth in this. On the other hand, we've heard entirely too much from the "why can't you just agree to disagree? why are you guys always trying to win" crowd. That's just a thinly veiled "why can't you just shut up and not have arguments I don't want to read?"

The fact of the matter is that if you can't point out why you disagree with a view, there's no meaningful exchange going on.

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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."

THE CAMEL RETURNS!!!

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Holy shitsnacks!

Never really totally left, it was just my choice to remain silent 'till I had something to contribute. Wanting to express my feeling in the "In Memoriam" thread is why I joined up on this particular incarnation of the glade.

And, since I've gone this far... in for a penny in for a pound, eh?

Only one simple rule need apply in any discussion for it to remain civil - no personal attacks. The problem is, there are people who identify with their positions and when that position is attacked, they feel personally attacked.

i.e. -

a: "Mus" is a stupid name. What, are you trying to speak with your mouth full of hash?
b: No, your ears are full of hash!
a: Hey, I didn't call YOU stupid... but that was a personal attack! You said "you"!

... and so it begins all over again.

I say just don't moderate this section of the forum. Let the folks do whatever they want.

As I think I've proven, you don't have to play that game if you don't want to.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Ahh, I so missed the Llama-analog.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Stricter rules for debate are generally the answer, but no one will want to moderate that.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn