The Glade 4.0

"Held accountable" does not mean "held accountable for ideas Monty disagrees with, or even ideas that almost everyone disagrees with, like your example. It means being held accountable for the way you discuss the issues; do you actually discuss or do you just repeat yourself, antagonize everyone else, and make a douchebag of yourself?

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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."

Really, you're going to deign talk to us about accountability and owning our words? You, the man who launched into a blank diatribe against every non-Montegue poster on this forum based solely on your perceptions of our various and sundry political ideologies? You're going to do this, Montegue?

Why don't you "own" your words for all the lies you've spouted for the last 4 years? Why do you continue to ascribe positions to people and tell us we're liars when we refute you broad claims of what you tell us we believe? You're going to say no one is held accountable for their words as if it's some travesty ...

You are the single largest recipient of freedom in this regard.

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On the contrary, it happens when the mods have wide powers to do whatever they please, if there isn't some sort of blanket policy against moderating in the first place. You need to have specific rules both to prevent mods from claiming aomoen is being an asshat just for being unpopular, and so that it's perfectly clear when someone is trying to use the system as a weapon.



That's a major problem, then with your idea. It relies on the mods having a "light touch" but if they don't, it creates even more problems. More to the point, agenda-driven caricaturing and trolling aren't the reason for moderation on a forum like this; those things are self-policed by people making fools of themselves in front of the community and getting called on it. That's not the issue. The issue is taking things like blanket statements about "libs" and claiming they're personal attacks, all the while making similar claims about conservatives, and doing this over and over in every damn thread, where the whole point is notihng other than making yourself feel cool by telling those dang conservatives where to get off! It can just as easily be the reverse, too, and has been sometimes.

Either way, it isn't the content of the discussion that's ever been the real problem. It's been the refusal to discuss.



That's the thing; if you piss people off by posting the "Conservatives suck" story, that's their problem. However, when they dismantle the KOS story for the blogshit it is, if you get pissed off, that's your problem. Neither of those things is what create a need for effective moderation. What creates a need for moderation is not only refusing to address the cricticisms of the KOS post, but simply repeating them in ever more hytrionic language, and impugning your opponents personally in the process, and making a habit of doing this in every damn thread.

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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 don't think I can fill out that cup, LadyKate.


With respect to rules...

I haven't totally firmed up an opinion on that, but I think it bears pointing out that, while I don't think any one person "owns" the Glade. this is ultimately a private community, not a public resource. I'm all in favor of having some explicit rules and guidelines, but it is more or less true that if you publish a rule list, a certain percentage of people are going to use them as a floor, not a ceiling. I think that if there is going to be a set of stated rules, one of them needs to be the "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" rule. Or, in other words, I think that the moderation staff needs to have enough latitude to lart people when they're clearly just intentionally flirting with the line for the sake of being a technicality douchebag.

Like I said, we're trying to design a healthy community, not engineer a government, here. If we were, I'd be insistent that the rules were "bright line" issues, as Khross might put it. That does, I admit, introduce an element of potential abuse. However, people arguing for page after page about whether or not they're technically breaking any rules is just as detrimental to the quality of the discussion here as simply breaking the rules outright. And frankly, part of being a non-socially-retarded adult is being able to get along in a moderated environment without pissing off the mod staff, even if it isn't entirely unbiased and/or you don't entirely agree with rules and policies. Annoying one mod? Okay. But if you're pissing off the entire mod staff, then (unless they're just complete idiots) you really do need to curb your behavior, rules be damned.

There are several IRC channels I frequent that have some rules which I think are pretty stupid. But you know what? I cope with it. Because ultimately, what I get out of those communities is more important to me than having my way 100% of the time. Life is full of compromises. The cold hard reality is that no one can have their way all of the time, and you can't make everyone happy simultaneously. That's a given in a community of pretty much any size. But let's not cut of our nose to spite our face. It's true that we can't have perfection. However, I do think that the next best thing is achievable -- a community that finds a reasonable balance between people being able to express their opinions and debate one another, and having a decent quality of discussion that doesn't run people off.

Things will get a bit heated from time to time. That's understood. I don't want to see things over-moderated any more than anyone else does. Just keep it within reason. Put your posts to a litmus test. Before you post something just ask, "will this post contributed positively or negatively to substance and tone of the discussion here?" For now, Hellfire remains essentially unmoderated, and that's all I can really ask you to do.

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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.

Postscript:

Quite a few people have said that the problem around here is that we've all known each other for too long and that no one is going to change their opinion, etc.

I don't entirely agree with that, but I think there's an element of truth to it. The operative question, then, is what is this community doing to either attract or repel new members?

There's more at stake here than just whether you personally give a crap about whether someone calls you names or what have you. The overall tone and quality of the of the discussion here impacts the health of the Glade in ways that aren't quite as directly obvious as people getting pissed off and leaving the Glade over individual exchanges.

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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.

I suppose I'll annoyingly respond with a question - why would we want to attract or repel new people?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Because the few people we've managed to attract in the last couple of years have been pretty cool?

As I mentioned, some feel that the community is stagnating, and that this affects the discussion detrimentally.

From a purely practical perspective, the Glade, like all communities, does occasionally lose members, or have members lose interest and become less active. Either way, if we aren't attracting new members at the "replacement rate", then the Glade will eventually go extinct.

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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.

Hmmm...artificially increasing glade participation with regulation.

I'm in.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Farther,

Writing rules for this place is impossible. No matter how granular, and detailed you get, people will find ways to skirt around them.

Just go find any one of the hundreds of threads where people debate the definitions of words, mostly creating their own 'usage' to support their cause.

For example, if you wrote that rule you suggested, there would be a subsequent 25 page thread debating the definition and usage of the words 'implied' and/or 'tolerated'.

Making rules for this group is pointless...

The only thing that has any hope of success is to identify a dictator who enforces whatever their own ethics and morals are, and dealing with it. It will piss off some people, and perhaps chase a few folks off, but it is the only way to there will be any consistency...

I am a member of many 'themed' sites much larger than this one (thousands and hundreds of thousands of users) that have rules as simple as "be nice, and no cussin'".

Beyond that, the only rules that would be effective and enforceable with this crowd are the 'no spam, no porn, no advertising, etc...' types of rules.

And, ultimately, they will be enforced along political lines.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Proof? c'mon you are the one making an accusation. Where is a single shred of evidence? You are trying to convince people the moderation is biased against you, so where is the proof?

And "if" you are telling the truth, wow, you survived against the entire board moderation being against you? How did you do it? It must be some kind of internet miracle!

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

No, they wont. They'll be enforced along **** lines.

As I have said several times, Monty is my inspiration. The man has been suspended and banned form different versions of this place enough times to convince me that I can say and do anything and be eventually forgiven.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Oh, dude, you've been holding back? ****, this is the Glade. Anyone with proper conservative cred can get away with all kinds of ****.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Anyone with Lib cred can too. I don't recall any instances of Aizle, RD, Xeq, or TheRiov being disciplined beyond possibly a warning. I also know of quite a number of warnings issued to people with "cred".

It isn't about being conservative or liberal. It's about being able to interac with other adults without the temper tantrums and victim status.

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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 only person currently banned is a conservative. Just sayin'.

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I gathered I was being simplistic in my suggestion. It seems to me that people who are friends will have respect for each other even in the midst of heated debate, and so simple rules would be enough. I guess I'm catching on that many of you are not friends by any definition I am aware of.

It's...complicated.

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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.

I hate people too much to like all of the folks on this board.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

You, sir, have forced me to ponder my sig for the first time in a while.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah. Like a 10 year marriage....with a butt load of spouses...all Gladers....

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

There a certain amount of respect I have for everyone who posts here. I don't engage with people I detest, there's no value there.

I think part of the back and forth IS a sign of respect - You're not going to engage the more intellectual here with 3rd grade logic and you won't get anywhere with the ones with forceful personalities by being a milquetoast. You just go toe to toe and don't back down, it'll be seen as a sign of weakness, and nobody here is weak...which is part of the attraction of the place.

I even have some measure of respect and admiration for our local problem child, though I don't think he returns it... but that's part of his charm.

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In time, this too shall pass.

One thing I have learned is that everyone is big and brave on the Internet. This place is no exception in that regard, it happens everywhere. Most people are blatant hypocrites. Most people say things on the Internet that they would not say to your face. I have my own filters, so to speak, and I love the search function here. Used wisely, you can generally tell who is honest, just by searching, and who talks out of their ***. I'm learning about the people here, now.

The difference here, I think, is that most of us *would* say the same things to each other in person that we say here. A lot of forumites have met in person.

We're much closer than your average forumites.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.