So a clear line. Do you feel its fair to place the entire burden of a conversation on the reader 'deciding' to be offended, or is there also blame to be had on the posting individual creating content with an intention to cause harm?
And if this line does indeed exist and its a 'grey area' where do you draw the line?
I will yet again point to the very specific thing that you keep ignoring which is the intention behind the action.
Someone being offended by a post is not the same in moderation as someone posting with intent to offend someone.
You keep skipping this very specific clear issue and cutting to the reaction people have while ignoring the intent of the person posting.
Can we acknowledge this one very specific issue and how critical it is to this conversation?
The major issue you are ignoring is there is a very massive difference between someone being offended and advocating to silence a position they disagree with and someone going out of their way to intentionally be offensive.
I strongly disagree that debating is just a toxic environment. That is a very absurd point imo. Just consider our current conversation. While I feel you are arguing 2 absurd unreasonable points we are having a healthy conversation without me saying "Well your ugly and your mom dresses you funny."
Healthy conversations can be had by adults and healthy moderation can exist without acting like the site is an oppressive police state.
And the very basic truth is- this site will set its standard of behavior. And depending on what that standard is it will grow or it will loose members. These are things to discuss and I feel an absolute on either side is unreasonable but framing the situation as "Well you disagree with this person so you are trying to get them banned" or "Any moderation of speech is oppressive like North Korea" is massively missing the mark on having a productive conversation here.
I feel that is a pretty bad strawman.
Promoting a healthy social environment in a social community by punishing bad behavior is not the same as an oppressive dictatorship.
People choose where to spend their time socializing and debating. Why should they choose a toxic environment? And if mods are not addressing toxic behavior what do they really even exist for?
As I said a few days back- at the end of this situation its not a question of if this community will loose members. But what members will be lost. What are the communities goals? To make an intellectual debate focused community? Or maybe to just have a reddit level shitposting community where you get trolled?
Or maybe there is some middle ground to be had. Some healthy balance but with standards enforced without people acting like any moderation of speech is on par with an oppressive regime.
Well said.
For the life of me I do not understand why people can not separate the concepts of having the right to say something and not suffering consequences because of it. It would be amusing to see the same principle applied to a relationship.
"Yeah honey, I did say that I wanted to sleep with your sister but free speech so its unfair for you to break up with me!"
Given this will be used to structure future policy I am going to point out 1 very simple concept-
A community can deal with having good rules. A community can deal with bad rules. A community can not deal with ambiguity.
Whatever you go with please make it clear in the rules / code of conduct. While I do not think allowing rage baiting trolling helps create a community that promotes intellectual discussion and encourages the art of debate in any way it would be better to have that clearly stated than deal with some vague grey area that will just piss everyone off in the long run.
Im basically the head of SC2 mafia although that is largly dead now. At one point it was the largest community there was.
A discord channel Political Debate I structure policy, dig into systemic issues and mediate problems between staff or users as well as advise. They call the role an Omnbud.
There is a suicide support form and an autistic community I moderate although I am not comfortable saying what they are
I managed HEAT for quite a few years. It was a competitive gaming group that had various levels of success.
There is a few streamers I am a mod for either on their streaming platform or their other outlets. I am not sure how many streamers and some are no longer active but theres 3 discords.
ToS I was involved in for a while. They actually created their entire game based off the mod Dark Rev made for SC2 mafia. I later took over developing that game and worked with them to create some FM stuff to pair with their regular stuff
Im also the Chair for the house committee at my Legion. Basically has the function of dealing with 'incident reports' between veterans and moderating in real life. Same sort of deal passing out bans and sitting people down talking about rules but with drunk veterans.
There is another one called spooks I run but its more of a real life focus of capable people that dive into pretty ugly situations that need attention. Weird thing but we have managed to have a pretty good impact on some real world stuff. Started after I dismantled an abusive rehab center in Thailand and just grew into a goofy thing
I might step in on another debate community. Was asked to last month but my time is pretty stretched and they want me to start as an admin. I don't think I need more shit in my life at the moment.
Theres more but ehh, A lot of it is nerd shit from back when I had time to play games and such. And many projects I tried to help get going but just never took off.
I never even spoke with you until after I voted man..
In my vote my conclusion said "I would favor a perma-ban with an option to appeal after a measure of time."
That makes a modified sort of temp vote with the ban only being lifted after a conversation. I like to use that in moderation because it allows a user to recognize and come to terms with never being allowed back followed by understanding what happens in the future. Its a very effective tool in moderation to prevent future issues I have had great results with.
From memory most of what I saw was people focused specifically on free speech and not feeling a perma was justified. All or nothing sounds like a pretty weird position I do not know if I have ever seen before.
If your taking requests and bans are off the table consider a goofy punishment. Required to play through "TV Archive" streaming it on discord in no skills mode. Its a miserable game about putting thousands of scrambled up movies on shelves.
Would have a sort of elegant karma of them getting enjoyment by making others frustrated and upset for their entertainment and then being forced to be frustrated for others entertainment.
I am curious, something that has not been mentioned that could influence peoples votes. What exactly happens assuming the vote goes as expected and there is no perma ban. Was this voting between an absolute perma-ban vs a lengthy ban or was it between a perma vs absolutely no punishment?
I just realized I had assumed that there would be some secondary action yet nobody has ever said it.
Potentially. I do not know what they truly believe.
Typically a lawyer may totally feel their client is wrong but defend them. Or they could be representing a company working to screw someone over while personally being against it and just doing it as a job.
So I guess it depends on if they really hold the view they argued. I enjoy arguing points I do not personally believe simply because it forces me to better understand a view I do not believe in
Lol. I did consider saying something about that.
I honestly did not simply because I do not mind having a slightly higher burden to process a perma-ban, even if its absolutely a massive conflict of interest. May as well allow the Prosecution and the Defense to also vote at that point.
(Which honestly in this specific situation would not be an awful thing. There is always a potential that one or both sides have an opinion different than the side they represented..)
Oh, I was not talking about the offensive tag in relation to Remy at all. I am disagreeing that it even comes close to doing the same thing as creating a separate unmoderated section.
Just for an example of why the Offensive tag does not do what having a separate section does- Lets say you are the person with the offensive tag and I am some bitchmade snowflake with thin skin. Your posts are hidden from me and I do not click them, but others do and we are in the same conversation.
I am making points and you decide my points are invalid. But being 'offensive' you say "This Helz guy is such a moron my brain cells are committing suicide just listening to them. Someone tell that guy to shut the fuck up already"
Keeping in mind I can not see this comment having not clicked, but others can. Then lets say people react to your comment-
Person 1- "Lol! Savant is cracking me up"
Person 2- "Dammmmnn.. Helz just got owned"
Person 3- "Yeah, I agree with you"
Now I am toxic behavior I am dealing with and I have never opted in. I am not even slightly protected from being insulted and recognizing that people are laughing at me as an offensive member I have specifically chosen not to interact with is still damaging my experience.
In this way a tag that hides a comment does not even come close to doing the same function as having moderated and unmoderated areas imo. Thats simply why I disagree with you saying the function already exists on the entire site when I spoke about unmoderated areas.
So this is largely a personal opinion but I do not think that even remotely accomplishes the same thing.
Having a separate section means that the toxicity with people being trolled and getting upset and everything that goes with it is in a specific area. People opt into that.
By having the offensive label you are not sheltered from that negativity. Sure, you have to choose to see exactly what offensive thing is said by one account but you are now still dealing with other people responding to bad faith behavior, getting upset, and very likely starting to cross lines themselves meeting the toxic user with their own level of behavior although they do not have the same label.
That does very little to create a clean environment like sweeping the dirt under a rug and calling the room clean.
I get your point. I even made a similar point in my vote. How if a rule technically exists but is not enforced its allowing the behavior.
I really think this thread is healthy for the site in general. It brings up some challenging questions about the way forward. I will also say though, I can not see this site doing that well if it wants to become a serious debate site but also is totally ok with hard trolling, disrespect, and rage baiting if its allowed everywhere.
Something that worked well in one community I was in was there was a specific section that was unmoderated. The majority of the site was moderated and they had a specific area where talking shit and trolling was totally ok with almost no moderation. Obviously things like real life threats would still be addressed but it allowed both behaviors to exist to an extent protecting the community from toxic trolling while also allowing it to exist in a separate place for those who were into that.
The issue in this discussion I keep coming back to is that fighting to allow voicing opinions some would find offensive I understand 100%. I very much dislike the entire mindset some people have of "I am offended so you are wrong." But this utterly and completely misses the entire difference between saying something with the intent to offend vs voicing what you feel is an uncomfortable truth.
They are not the same. One is a good faith actor voicing an uncomfortable point and the other is a bad faith actor seeking to cause harm to others.
One should be protected as freedom of speech and the other should be unacceptable conduct that clearly violates the connotation of this sites CoC.
"All you had to do was clarify yourself and I'll take you at your word. I'm not used to others taking me at my word."
Im going to assume there is a miscommunication. I very much did clarify when I said this-
"I absolutely in no way intended to suggest anything of the sort. I was making a comparison between how the concept of free speech is totally erroneous in this situation. How such an awful thing is totally legal to say in society but is something that should be considered absolutely unacceptable in a community working to establish healthy interactions.
I apologize if you in any way felt that was directed at you."
Im assuming you did not read that when you doubled down the second time which is what gave me the hard assumption you were just trolling.
"This comment you just made was toxic. I'm willing to take you at your word and you can't do that for me? Does that really sound right?"
Well given the context of my above statement I hope you can understand my response. After I directly both clarified and apologized giving you the benefit of a doubt you doubled down pushing that I told you to kill yourself.
Given what I said in my vote I found it very hard to believe you actually thought that was the case and after I directly clarified as I did I felt that there was simply no question you were acting in bad faith.
In this moment the only way I could see this situation as anything but you rage baiting right there is if you simply did not read that post I made.
And you are right that I participate here in bursts. I generally jump between projects and have periods of inactivity. But discounting the harm caused by pointing out I have not been around in a few weeks is not a great response.
You asked me to consider my vote and that is what I have been doing during this interaction. I apologized and clarified after your initial accusation just to stay on the safe side in case you actually believed that even though I was offended and really did not believe you held the view that I was telling you to kill yourself. I have never even had a conversation with you prior to now to even have any bias against you after all.
But then with your second response after I clarified I felt you were baiting to cause harm. The exact behavior that made vote as I did to begin with. And as I responded to you in the statement you called "toxic" I was suddenly in the exact shoes I was thinking about when I voted for your ban. Thinking about how in that moment I wanted less to do with this site so I directly conveyed how you made me feel in that moment.
Maybe I am wrong and it was just a misunderstanding with you not reading a post. But if there is anything I have learned in over a decade and a half moderating and running communities its that time will tell. If it is just in your nature to troll and cause harm for your enjoyment your colors will show in time. Then 1 of 2 things will happen-
1- It will catch up with you.
2- The community will enable the behavior and embrace the toxicity. Its growth will be hindered and certain kinds of members will find other places to go.
But the truth is either way this community will loose members. Its just a question of which ones and what its goals really are.
Anyways, I do hope I am wrong about you. I think this situation will go your way and then it will be up to you to prove me right or wrong. But it really is taking everything in me not to call bullshit on your narrative that you genuinely thought I was telling you to kill yourself. Its not a big deal but I think anyone who reads my post will draw the same conclusion that you were just rage baiting again.
And I think you should accept some accountability for causing harm to others for your enjoyment and accept why exactly you are in this situation.
I very much do not appreciate you acting like I was telling you to kill yourself and I really do not even slightly believe you think that is the case. But this is exactly the sort of toxic behavior which makes me believe this community would be better off without you. I will flatly say even interacting with you right now in this moment makes me want to spend less time on this site.
But hey, thats pretty much your thing. Pushing buttons to get reactions for your giggles even now. You do realize its kinda foolish in your situation right? You could easily not get a perma but be handed a 1 year ban instead. Demonstrating the exact same problematic behavior that got you in this situation as your ban is debated is kinda amusing when I think about it.
But just for giggles, What part of my reasoning in my vote do you disagree with?
I am curious- Why are so many people caught up on free speech? Its a very different thing to say "This position is unacceptable" vs "Taking a position with intent to cause harm is unacceptable."
I absolutely in no way intended to suggest anything of the sort. I was making a comparison between how the concept of free speech is totally erroneous in this situation. How such an awful thing is totally legal to say in society but is something that should be considered absolutely unacceptable in a community working to establish healthy interactions.
I apologize if you in any way felt that was directed at you. I do not think my vote will matter much on the outcome but whatever happens I hope you recognize in the end you can only edge rules and mess with people so long before it catches up to you.
I will again say that I have a lot of respect for how this community is handling this situation. I do not believe I have seen this done before by a mod team and it looks like a very healthy way for the community to provide reasoned feedback on how they feel the community should handle rule enforcement.
I will also apologize if my vote made it sound as if I believed that all of Remys posts were rage bait. I do not even slightly believe that and I could have been more clear. Not that it matters but it bothered me enough to mention rereading my own post.
Although I do dislike drama I do like how much engagement this topic has created
Yeah, I am sure many will struggle with that. I do not even know who the person is being judged so the only thing I have to go off is the merits of the arguments.
Super cool that this community solves issues this way. I will try to keep up with this thread but I just have a lot of respect that this sort of open debate conversation is held instead of just having decisions made behind closed doors with questionable results.
Its wild how many communities even tell their communities to shut up and its not ok to even talk about moderation. This is great.
@Savant
I do get that 100%. I honestly very much dislike it being a thing while the debate is going on and feel that should 1000% be hammered out before a single argument is made.
But I am specifically asking how White Flame drew the conclusion that Alyssa did not create disproportionate burden in their framework. I do understand sticking to it but I do not see how anyone can look at their initial framework and say "They placed two obligations on their opponent and only one on themselves" and not acknowledge that is slanted.
I am totally open to hearing how I am wrong but forgive my autistic nature when I say I am kinda stuck on it. Not arguing this because I have some stake in the situation, I simply would like to understand given WhiteFlame and Alyssa themselves genuinely seem to see things differently so I must be some level of ignorant here given neither should have a bias against a neutral vote.
@WhiteFlame
I am learning and had to dig through the voting standard to see that my vote in this topic was poorly justified. But while I absolutely acknowledge I am a flawed human being and I have zero emotional attachment to my neutral vote I am curious how you drew the conclusion that an unfair standard was not established in the framework. It truly seems black and white to me that 2 obligations were placed on pro and only 1 on con before considering the massive topic shift that came with it reframing good and bad into 'good or bad for Iran'
I would like to understand so I can stay more in lines with whats considered fair here in the future.
@Alyssa
Well for the first bit its pretty simple. You very clearly in black and white said something. That did happen. You could argue that you shifted the goal post later to something else but there is not much up for interpretation there. Not a big deal but 100% you placed an additional requirement on your opponent as well as shifting the focus of the debate cutting out a massive scope of consideration.
As for a debate we could go there. I have no problem arguing the pro or con on that subject although its a pretty dry one thats been very well covered. I do need a bit of time before taking on more obligations. Beginning of next month would work for me and if your interested in that specific topic we can hammer out the framework. I would very much like to avoid arguing about the win conditions mid debate and really, I have no idea how people can even have a debate without having those details set in stone.
@Alyssa
We will simply have to agree to disagree about you placing an unfair standard that favored you in your framework. I agree that there is nothing you can say to change my opinion. In black and white you did so and if I had simply misunderstood you that would have been clarified 5 or 6 responses ago.
You are asking a very complicated question thats rather difficult to unpack. I will try to do so though.
Answering out of order do I think objective morality exists? Yes. Peter Singer's framework of the drowning child is a good point to move around. Lets put this at 3 levels
1- Any moral person would save the child. Low-no personal cost to a huge benefit (Call this Good)
2- A less moral person may decide to let them drown and take no action because they do not want to make a minimal sacrifice such as getting their clothes wet for the huge benefit of saving an innocent life. (Call this Neutral/selfish)
3- An evil person may revel and enjoy watching the child suffer/die or even take steps to make it worse (Call this Bad)
Morally speaking you can draw lines independent of a persons religion or culture or anything of the sort.
That said, for the much more complicated question "What do you think is good and bad, in the context of the topic?" Ton of messy to unpack here. I will give a series of answers with focused application
To the individual Good generally means things beneficial for them. That in mind what would that translate to for a number of groups?
a- To Iran regime loyalists this probably means whatever makes them money and helps push their will upon the rest of the world while keeping power
b- To Iran citizens this probably means whatever gives them a better quality of life and more safety
c- To the regional nations this probably means whatever creates stability and prevents violent aggression by Iran
d- To the regional citizens this probably means whatever just keeps them safe
e- To the global economic community this probably means whatever stops Iran from harassing global trade lines
f- To the global political community this probably means whatever enables economic sanctions to do what they are designed to so less lethal options than war can be used for effective pressure
g- To the global citizens this probably means whatever stops Iran from supporting global terrorist organizations and causing violence so they can have personal safety
h- To the American power structure this probably means whatever stops Iran from supporting their enemies, hurting their allies, and hurting the US economy
i- To the majority of Muslims in that region I think restructuring of Iran is a positive in their view given the damage they have caused to the Islamic community
j- To a very vocal sect of Muslims I think good means spreading the word about harm caused to Muslims
j- To a specific sect of Shia Muslims this probably means spreading their message with violence and overthrowing the coalition of nations fighting Iran
k- To anti Trump/ anti republican people this probably means whatever makes the republican party and Trump look bad
l- To KKK / White Supremacist's / Anti Jewish people its whatever enables harm to Israel
I could go on but I think 'good' leverages on the interests of the persons group and each group will have their own take. And again, limiting the discussion of 'good' to just 2 groups- Primary between pro and con for what was 'good' for Iran and secondary for just pro requiring good for the region was a decision. I won't say good or bad but it was an absolute shift of context that itself altered what the meaning of good was and what could be argued.
@Alyssa
I am engaging with what you are saying. I disagree that the site rules are clear. There is nothing I am looking at that says creating a framework mid debate is ok. There is also nothing saying that its not. This is about as clear as mud in the voting standard and I am defaulting to whats generally expected in debates outside of this site in my interpretation of the rules.
I do get where you are coming from. I also feel that its a 'gotcha' mechanic if applied in the way of "Mid debate anyone can modify the rules of the debate and what they say is law unless the opposing party disagrees." Thats just ugly twords the spirit of debate as well as making the contest itself a bit of a joke that can be modified as you go.
Independent of that do you even disagree with me that you imposed an additional requirement on your opponent that you did not impose on yourself or that you totally shifted the scope of the debate declaring "good" as specifically "good for Iran"? Really, Do you even want to say this is not very simply true?
While I dislike you saying I am not listening to and engaging with what you are saying I do disagree that site standards are clear on this issue and would absolutely encourage advocation to make them more clear if you feel this is the case. But I absolutely think its a silly position to allow modification of win conditions as conversations happen. This should be declared in absolute prior to a debate and agreed upon imo.
You will never see a formal debate that allows this nonsense outside of bullshit political debates (which are generally not even debates at all and more people rambling vague rhetoric at etchother)
