From the evidence available -- which so far amounts to that one video -- if a reasonable person were forced to decide which side was in the wrong, then I believe that the officer would be so deemed. But do you know what's great? We don't have to choose right now. We don't have to rely on just this one piece of (rather suggestive, but still only one-sided) video. Other witnesses can be interviewed, and there may be more video yet to surface.
In other words, the position of a person honestly looking at this so far ought to be "Gee, that looks pretty bad. Is there anything else to this story?"
I am legit curious as to why the "honest" position is always one of reserved judgment, but I can't actually ask that question and, ironically enough, get an honest answer.
EDIT: Also it's pretty cool that he's on the verge of accusing anybody who's made a judgment as lying, but in such a passive-aggressive way that calling him out is impractical.
it's surreal, it went from vaguely civil to all caps flames after just one sentence!
I guess at least in forums, you have a chance to write a whole post before the other guy starts his response so it feels like it takes longer to escalate.
so yeah my latest post in that tpm thread looks like vomit. i want to edit it into something respectable but blargh i don't feel like it
anyway thx bakustra! solipsist is a word i've been looking for for a while
for whatever reason i kept thinking that definition went with the word 'sophism' but i knew that wasn't actually right, so i just avoided using the word altogeter
B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:
I'm going to disagree with you and say that the overall problem with N&P is less that the echo chamber is far-left and more that there is one in the first place, but it'd be pretty difficult to fix that one. Remember, all bans that aren't from instaban-worthy infractions have to be approved by Mike and only the two admins can ban in the first place, so you can't even deliver slaps on the wrist to cool stuff down or stop trolling/shitposting beyond splitting posts off or threatening/delivering permabans. Basically, disciplinary measures are fucked.
I did say it was a shitpile to start with, but one can't deny that if you agree blindly with whatever shit people like Degan, or Crossroads, or Infodump Atheos just spew off at a certain time every month, then you don't have to do silly things like back up your claims. It is also humorous the crackdeown on being an internet toughguy yet Stas (a mod) uses an Avatar that says "behead bankers". The D in SDN stands for "Double-Standards" these days.
B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:
I'm going to disagree with you and say that the overall problem with N&P is less that the echo chamber is far-left and more that there is one in the first place, but it'd be pretty difficult to fix that one. Remember, all bans that aren't from instaban-worthy infractions have to be approved by Mike and only the two admins can ban in the first place, so you can't even deliver slaps on the wrist to cool stuff down or stop trolling/shitposting beyond splitting posts off or threatening/delivering permabans. Basically, disciplinary measures are fucked.
I did say it was a shitpile to start with, but one can't deny that if you agree blindly with whatever shit people like Degan, or Crossroads, or Infodump Atheos just spew off at a certain time every month, then you don't have to do silly things like back up your claims. It is also humorous the crackdeown on being an internet toughguy yet Stas (a mod) uses an Avatar that says "behead bankers". The D in SDN stands for "Double-Standards" these days.
want to make crossroads flip his shit?
say that you don't think pixar is really that great
B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:
I'm going to disagree with you and say that the overall problem with N&P is less that the echo chamber is far-left and more that there is one in the first place, but it'd be pretty difficult to fix that one. Remember, all bans that aren't from instaban-worthy infractions have to be approved by Mike and only the two admins can ban in the first place, so you can't even deliver slaps on the wrist to cool stuff down or stop trolling/shitposting beyond splitting posts off or threatening/delivering permabans. Basically, disciplinary measures are fucked.
I did say it was a shitpile to start with, but one can't deny that if you agree blindly with whatever shit people like Degan, or Crossroads, or Infodump Atheos just spew off at a certain time every month, then you don't have to do silly things like back up your claims. It is also humorous the crackdeown on being an internet toughguy yet Stas (a mod) uses an Avatar that says "behead bankers". The D in SDN stands for "Double-Standards" these days.
Well, to be honest, I'm not sure that the back-up-your-claims model really works. Looking at SomethingAwful's N&P equivalent, which enforces it much more strictly, and it's still a cesspool, just one where people bog down in semantics arguments for dozens of pages. Besides, my belief is that it stems from the failure of any sort of disciplinary measure and the legalistic approach to rules and enforcement, and that any effort to clear out the echo-chamber would be doomed without deeper changes.
EDIT: Actually, the thing with Tucker in the HoS right now is an example of dysfunction- he admitted that he was posting as Aniron here, and yet they couldn't/didn't do anything because they "didn't have solid proof".
Supermods are flat-out forbidden from banning anyone except spambots and invading trolls without Mike or Dalton's personal say-so. That's fallout from the DataPacRat debacle.
EDIT: And a little surprisingly, maybe, but Mike never seemed to like the idea of giving mods the power to issue temporary bans. I guess he thought even a temp ban was too serious a punishment without his say-so, but I always thought it would be a useful tool in the mod arsenal.
Phantasee wrote:I think the Datapackrat travesty has made the admin a little ban-shy.
Well, that probably calls for broader disciplinary measures and efforts to restore confidence in the moderating and administrative staff. If they didn't have only a choice between "ban", "warn", and "lengthy temp-ban", then it'd be easier to deal with situations like Tucker (e.g. a poster that's an unrepentant dick) by giving him a week or a couple days or a day off every time he started shit, proportional to the actual offense, rather than the current situation, where actual punishment only comes after a series of offenses. Restoring confidence in the moderation staff would probably be a lost cause in that most people probably trust them about as much as they usually do and we, on average, will only be satisfied with kicking most of them out, but that's a secondary measure. And if they do end up accidentally punishing someone, they probably should have easy ways to contact administration to allow people to plead their case (e.g. if some dumbass weeaboo gets mistaken for Trekdestroyer, they can email administration and get things cleared up. As it is, only half the admins and supermods have ways to contact them outside of PMs).
RedImperator wrote:Supermods are flat-out forbidden from banning anyone except spambots and invading trolls without Mike or Dalton's personal say-so. That's fallout from the DataPacRat debacle.
EDIT: And a little surprisingly, maybe, but Mike never seemed to like the idea of giving mods the power to issue temporary bans. I guess he thought even a temp ban was too serious a punishment without his say-so, but I always thought it would be a useful tool in the mod arsenal.
Yeah, Edi mentioned that a while back, and apparently all bans have to go through Mike according to Dalton and Thanas on the previous board. It's unsurprising, since the majority of temp-bans prior to the Senate that I can recall were all like six months or a month. I mean, he could do it SomethingAwful style, where mods can only temp-ban for six hours at a time on their own discretion, and anything more severe has to go through an admin, but of course that might not be practical without more administrators.
I'm still not convinced technical means are even necessary to really moderate a board. On the majority of the places I go, which are all small communities, mind you, and most don't talk about news and politics, but still, there's virtually no moderator action at all, and literally no software techniques.
The people just lead by example, and have enough respect that if they say "you should step back for a bit", enough people follow that it can act as a de facto lock. Even if someone still stirs shit, if nobody replies to it, that's the end of it.
adr wrote:I'm still not convinced technical means are even necessary to really moderate a board. On the majority of the places I go, which are all small communities, mind you, and most don't talk about news and politics, but still, there's virtually no moderator action at all, and literally no software techniques.
The people just lead by example, and have enough respect that if they say "you should step back for a bit", enough people follow that it can act as a de facto lock. Even if someone still stirs shit, if nobody replies to it, that's the end of it.
Yeah, well, that depends on the size and nature of the board too. Like, here, we don't need any moderators as of yet, nor any admins beyond you, because all we need is someone to run maintenance and theoretically kick people out if they're bad/socky enough. But we're small and close-knit enough for that to work, because we're all usually chill. SD.net, as it is set out to be, (e.g. argumentative) needs some kind of moderation, though they could probably ditch having separate mods for all the fiction forums or even having separate moderators except in special cases. Or if Mike decided to shift away from the argumentative ideological foundation, then you could probably run it with two or three admins and a report button that they let you use alone.
EDIT: Honestly, if I ran a forum, there would be one rule that I would have to include: anybody who cares about postcount is not cool enough for this forum. Then I'd probably try to hack in whatever you did to make postcounts random.
Even on SDN, I really think they'd do a better job if there were knowledgable, skilled debaters acting as moderators. They'd read the threads, but not participate in taking sides or anything.
As it is right now, let's say you have some idiot misusing a fallacy. An objective judge could step in and correct the logic, or maybe say say "you're being unreasonable here". If that person is respected as knowing what he's talking about, that lets you move on. If (not to kiss too much ass but whatevs) say Bakustra or RedImperator suggested I was being an ass, I'd be willing to reassess the position, since you guys are generally pretty ok. I won't necessarily concede anything, but I'll take that second look.
But the way it is, it's just a "see who quits repeating himself first" match, since even if the mods step in, I'm not going to believe they know any better than I do anyway! And, they have a bad habit of throwing away any appearance of objectivity by coming out with the flames and/or threats right off the bat. I don't need some ultimatum - just a little kick to step back for a minute.
I don't react well to flames and threats, and I doubt most anyone does. Once that shit starts, even if you're right, there's still that part of me that wants to drag it out just to spite you.
And if your moderators are inspiring trolls, they've gone Worse Than Failure. (omfg the Real WTF!!!!!!11)
now let me tell a grade school story before my super late bed.
In grade three, I was the king of brilliance. No boy or girl could be my equal, and I fucking knew it. Always done first, always done best.
Then, I went to grade four, and was in the SMART KID CLASS. To my surprise, someone actually finished a test or something before me!
I commented to the girl next to me (Anna, someone whom I'd know and respect for many, many years to come) that "he couldn't have gotten a 100".
And what did she say? "Not necessarily." And yeah, a fourth grader said those exact words. I find that kinda bizarre, looking back.
Anyway I remember that event better than anything else from that year. She didn't have to attack my points or anything. She simply didn't accept my assumption, which caused me to question it too.
Was it possible that I was wrong? Was it possible that I wasn't the best?
No, of course not; don't be ridiculous. But, for a brief moment, I considered the possibility. And I consider that to be one of the defining moments of my superior intellect: two little words from a fourth grade student. And I guess whoever it was who beat me. I don't even recall that. Not important; if Anna didn't say anything, I would have simply continued to assume that he cut corners. I would have used it to reinforce rather than question my worldview.
Two words can have a much bigger effect in convincing someone than a hundred lines of flaming porcupines and moderator threats.
(hilariously, later in school, I actually did start cutting corners to achieve better time, something I continue to this day. Is it worth spending twenty minutes on the test to get the 100 when I can spend ten minutes and get a perfectly respectable 96, daydream for the rest of the time... and get in ahead of everyone else? Nah.)
adr wrote:Even on SDN, I really think they'd do a better job if there were knowledgable, skilled debaters acting as moderators. They'd read the threads, but not participate in taking sides or anything.
Wasn't this what was supposed to happen on SDN? I don't know how admins pick mods, but often it seems that respected debaters are the people who get turned into mods. And in principle, SDN mods aren't supposed to moderate threads that they are participating in.
Oddly, your suggestion (that they calmly correct mistakes) strikes me as forcing the moderators to participate in the thread. Sometimes bad arguments are bad in subtle ways, and it can take quite a bit of writing and thought to explain what's wrong with them. By the time a moderator has done that, he or she is as much a participant as anyone else in the thread.
