Q&A, Feedback, Suggestions, Requests... - Page 5

quote No Vacancy

And Chirovette again there's no need to lament that people ignored your self moderation suggestion, if someone ignores it chances are they don't believe it's worth responding to. It's not like I'm deliberately ignoring a gem of a suggestion simply to remain a thorn in your side.

The problem I had was that it was my main point! In some ways it reminded me of Final Blade (not that you guys are anything like him, mind you!). Because you were all responding to something tangential and ignoring the MAIN points we were making.

quote No Vacancy

It won't work because there will always be people who ignore it. I can't control anyone but my owns actions. It's no good me moderating myself if a hundred people refuse to, it's not a viable solution to your problem because I can work till the cows come home trying to hold back extremists only for you to tank the thread because I couldn't steer a discussion of many people off my own back.

I agree and really cannot offer a good solution.

Perhaps, and this is just me thinking out loud here, I can talk to Wo and Curt and maybe lighten the rules a bit on memberating. Because in a sense you guys are in a precarious position here. If you admonish members to get back on a forward moving road, then you may be afraid you will be accused of memberating, which is a "bannable" offense. So you shut up and deal with the nonsense of circular discussion. Maybe we can figure out a way to allow members to have more say in policing the threads by allowing a certain amount of memberating here, within reason and ONLY in those specified parameters. But again, I will need to talk to Wo and Curt about this. I don't want to just make a major rule change without discussing it with my co mods.

AGH!!

I was first going to say what an excellent solution this is, but after trying to type something in my dysfunctional house I realized that I can't do this really.

So since I'm awfully incapable of doing this, I'll just leave this to The Hobo (which I doubt you'd have any problem with).

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Now that we've solved that problem, I'm going to just give my opinion of having Wo's rule of making the 'million-quotes' posts unacceptable implemented.

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One last thing which isn't really about what's being currently debated here. We're having people attacking and exploiting our forum with these ads. It's becoming far too annoying. I'm hoping these 1 post members posting ads are IP banned. Or something else that can help is putting a very small post limit required to post in the forum (maybe as small as just 20-25), reaching this post count shouldn't be anything difficult for anyone and it should deter advertisers.

Even the Anime Forum gets the spam bot plague. Usually I get an email notification for new threads, so I can always quickly get rid of them. They're obnoxious but they're not so bad if taken care of quickly.

Chiro, would a possible solution to the abuse problem be that you specify that self-moderation reports should only be used if you're in the position of a third party mediator? As in, as a rule, you don't report someone in a set of returns that you're a part of. I imagine even the best of us might sometimes not realize they're having a circular argument. It's not a perfect solution, but I think that policy would help.

quote ChiroVette

1. Yes I DO believe that eliminating ALL circular threads will encourage more participation...

This is the Thinker's Lounge, and it used to be known as Intellectual Exchanges. And yet topics are being limited to the least controversial topics. How is enforcing the arbitrary opinion of a moderator about when a controversial topic should be discussed and how it should be discussed encouraging diverse opinions and open minds?

I am as frustrated by "born again Christians and Atheists" as much you, ChiroVette, but even that sentence you said reveals your personal opinion on the controversial debate. How can we trust any one or three moderators to keep the bias out of their eyes when they are deciding if a debate is going somewhere or not? Is the debate only going somewhere when there is a strong Agnostic voice?

Circular debates, and people who don't add to the discussion may be a problem that should be dealt with. But there comes a point when you must ask if the cure is worst than the disease.

quote

Everyone in this forum already knows that there is a first post rule, well all the regulars do, at least. So it is understandable that someone new or who doesn't post a lot here might do a sort of drive-by thread creation like we are trying to avoid, right?

But here is the flip side: since the regs all know what the deal is, maybe it would be better to NOT POST in those threads until they are addressed by a mod. Maybe, instead, report the first post, and we can address it immediately BEFORE the discussion takes off. I mean the regulars in here have seen Wo, Curt, or me close a ton of threads for that reason, so why post at all knowing this is going to happen?

So now all discussion with simple openings should wait until it is filtered through the moderators' standards?

I am a regular member, I even moderated Intellectual Exchanges with Koloth for a while. When I saw you closed the Overpopulation thread, I went straight to the stickied Forum Rules and found NOTHING stating that posts needed to contain an opinion, backing evidence, and must not post another person's opinion for discussion. There is a link to the old, old, rules that says something close to that, but even when those old rules were actually The Rules and not just guidelines it was never enforced so harshly. Closing down newbies' posts when the Rules Sticky doesn't inform them of this new rule is not a good way of making this place accessible to newbies.

The Overpopulation thread was fairly concise, he presented his opinion with supporting evidence and asked for discussion. You take away free discussion of controversial subjects in the name of making the forum more accessible to newbies, but then you suggest that starting posts be reviewed by a moderator, and that they must not have a neutral tone.

The policies that have been implemented are at odds with the stated purpose of making this place more accessible, and worst of all are at odds with the very purpose of this place: the open minded exchange and debate of ideas.

As per the policy of keeping quotes to a minimum, I only partially quoted you. Since you have not bothered to tell me which part of which quote you are referring to and how I misrepresented you, I will now attempt to guess. I will provide the rest of the context of your quotes if it makes you happy:

quote

1. Yes I DO believe that eliminating ALL circular threads will encourage more participation because it would make the forum appear less elitist and off-putting. But I think we have arrived instead at a fair compromise.

All this adds are your reasons for eliminating circular threads. My opinion that eliminating discussion does not draw people in and is contrary to the goals of this forum still stand. You then talk about the 'compromise' you made, which is a discussion I am not a part of, and doesn't matter to me. I am judging the ideas by their own worth, not in relation to other people's ideas of how the forum should be run.

If you are talking about this part of your post:

quote

2. As for moderator assisted self-moderation, I actually addressed that pages ago! lol It was one of the ways I SUGGESTED that threads that statistically remained mired in quicksand could become LESS circular and more forward moving. That also was completely ignored by everyone but robotbear and my fellow mods. Although in your defense as well as STG's, I understand why. You guys came to the discussion a little later and I certainly understand why you would NOT want to read all the walls-o-text pages leading up to it. So, I think it is a great idea. Yes, to answer your question, that could easily SAVE threads from extinction! I mean look at the abortion thread. It is an absolute abomination of two or three people pontificating their party lines. There is NO DISCUSSION going on, NONE. So if you guys want to do what STG, yourself, and me are suggesting, try it on that thread! See if you can get people to turn around their behavior in it and move the discussions FORWARD! Succeed and guess what? I will tank the thread at 30 or so pages and start a new one. Nobody will be happier than me! The same is true for all the currently closed threads on God, atheism, afterlife, scriptural proof, and so on. But I caution you: Good luck getting "born again Christians" and "born again atheists" to stop going round and round! Because short of banning people for it, which I really do think would be draconian (though I would LOVE TO lol!) it's a tough thing to do.

But God bless you guys if you can pull it off! I swear I will dedicate a heartfelt THANK YOU THREAD to you if you can!

You provide more reasoning for why you think so called 'circular' threads should be eliminated/restricted. I have not misrepresented that this is what you want to do, and my central point as stated above is still relevant.

You also talk of "moderator assisted self moderation". Since that is not the current policy I am not discussing that.

Perhaps you mean I misrepresented you by thinking that you disagreed with born again Christians and Atheists. I figured the quotes around the names meant you found both to be laughable, however if I was wrong about that I apologize and will remove it. That being said, my main argument had nothing to do with which side of the religion debate you fell on, my main point was that all moderators have an opinion and it is ludicrous to think that they will be able to keep their bias from coloring their decision of when a debate is circular or not.

If that is the misrepresentation you speak of, I will take it back, but my main argument still stands.

Here is the next post I take a quote from:

quote

You bring up an interesting point, and I understand what you're saying. Let me bring up a flip-side to that point, though: Everyone in this forum already knows that there is a first post rule, well all the regulars do, at least. So it is understandable that someone new or who doesn't post a lot here might do a sort of drive-by thread creation like we are trying to avoid, right?

But here is the flip side: since the regs all know what the deal is, maybe it would be better to NOT POST in those threads until they are addressed by a mod. Maybe, instead, report the first post, and we can address it immediately BEFORE the discussion takes off. I mean the regulars in here have seen Wo, Curt, or me close a ton of threads for that reason, so why post at all knowing this is going to happen?

By the way, here is an interesting aside: IN EVERY instance except one that I have closed a thread because of a poor quality first post and asked the thread creator to edit the first post and add some of their own opinions, guess what happened? They did what I asked and I re-opened the thread! We are talking about maybe a dozen threads I have re-opened and am only now waiting on one which is closed now temporarily.

So perhaps the policy is working better than people think and the only reason this is getting so heated is because ONE THREAD and because it just happens to be the last one I temporarily closed?

(your quote of another user was removed from the above quotation)

You did advocate that people report opening posts that do not have a clear opinion on the subject and/or don't have some original material right? And you did advocate that no one should post in those threads until it is cleared with the moderator, right? If so, I don't see how I misrepresented your position.

Maybe you are talking about the bottom paragraph where you insist that this is all about only one thread (the Overpopulation thread). Well it's not, if you read my earlier post in this thread I also take issue with your closing of the Third Gender thread, and moreover I take issue with the idea of closing threads for these reasons in general.

Excuse me for excessive quotation, but I see no other way to address the idea that I took quotes out of context when you will not tell me how I misrepresented your opinion or which part of your quote I took out of context. I can keep guessing, or you can tell me where I misrepresented you and/or address my main points.

Arjy, honestly that was not something we ever discussed with the forum, but something that Wo, Curt, and I talked about when he came up with creating the current Abortion thread.

ChiroVette, I find it very disrespectful of you to ignore me.

Since you will not tell me how I misrepresented your posts, I will restate my position without quoting you or your opinions at all, and just addressing the current policy and recent moderating decisions:

How is enforcing the opinion of a moderator about when a controversial topic should be discussed and how it should be discussed encouraging diverse opinions and open minds? How can any one or three moderators keep their biases in check when they are deciding if a discussion is circular or not? Is there any neutral way to decide if a discussion is circular at all?

Circular debates, and people who don't add to the discussion may be a problem that should be dealt with individually. But there comes a point when you must ask if the recent cure is worse than the disease.

Also, why is an opening post a bad thing if it doesn't state the asker's opinion right off the bat? A lot of people prefer to open a thread in a neutral way so that the thread is not biased towards responding to the OP's initial opinion. How is opening a thread with a quote from an article, famous person, or other source that sums up your opinion and spurs intellectual discussion a bad thing? I understand closing threads that are not understandable, or threads that seriously open with "Abortion, discuss", but many of the threads that have been closed recently have a lot more than that. And again, this is actually scary to newbies.

The stickied Forum Rules have nothing stating that posts needed to contain an opinion, backing evidence, and must not post another person's opinion for discussion. There is a link to the old, old, rules that says something close to that, but even when those old rules were actually The Rules and not just guidelines it was never enforced so harshly. Closing down newbies' posts when the Rules Sticky doesn't inform them of this new rule is not a good way of making this place accessible to newbies.

The policies that have been implemented are at odds with the stated purpose of making this place more accessible, and worst of all are at odds with the very purpose of this place: the open minded exchange and debate of ideas.