The first post in this series can be found here:
In part 2, I had planned to discuss why I think the rules aren’t having the desired effects. I still plan to do that. However, in gathering my thoughts, it occurred to me that no one (to my knowledge) has ever made explicit the rationale behind the Guanoing of comments. I think the topic is worthy of an OP of its own.
Lizzie introduces Guano this way:
Comments that seem to me to be in violation of the game rules will be moved here, and closed to further comment. Do not regard having your post moved here as a reprimand, merely as a referee’s whistle.
My question: How exactly does this promote Lizzie’s stated goals for the site?
But the idea here is to provide a venue where people with very different priors can come to discover what common ground they share; what misunderstandings of other views they hold; and, having cleared away the straw men, find out where their real differences lie.
Is the purpose of Guano to punish those who post rule-violating comments? Is it intended as a disincentive for the future posting of such comments? Is it there to protect readers from seeing such comments?
I’m interested in reader’s opinions on what Guanoing actually accomplishes and how it promotes (or doesn’t) the stated aims of the site.
For the record, I generally find walto’s comments more insightful and useful than keiths’ but I’m not going to delete either.
As is obvious, there can’t be rule changes without a sincere interest in changing them by those with the power to do so.
Lizzie’s statement of the unalterable position that nothing shall disappear (except stuff she deems to be worthy of disappearance, like porn, etc.) is a constraint that makes it easier to see what’s possible in the area of improvements.
We can see that what will happen to posts deemed (by somebody) to be uncivil is that they will be moved, and we can also infer that if no posts will be disappeared, no people will be suspended/banned.
As there was little interest in either my suggestion for the introduction of some sort of democratic process for the taking of (what little) or in RB’s for public vows, that leaves two items
1. What shall be the rules the violation of which will result in having ones post moved to Guano? and
2. Who will determine whether there has been a rule violation–and how will they make this determination?
Not much leeway here certainly, but I still think something could be done to improve matters. For 1. I’d eliminate the two (poor) current rules regarding ad homs and good faith and replace them with something like this (seen on many many sites).
1. People are expected to act like civil adults here. Assholish posts may be moved to Guano and repetition of them makes this action more likely.
For 2, I think agreement by the mods (especially now that there’s a theist there too) is a good process, them all being good folk. I think anybody (including one of the mods) ought to be able to bring a post (or series of them) to the attention of these “elders” and the latter group should act on it when they get a chance–allowing an alleged perp to make a case why not in the moderation thread first.
That completes my moderation-type sermons. 🙂
Deleting other people’s comments is wrong in itself (except for the most egregious spamming, porn etc). I’m surprised others cannot see the clear distinction between quarantining a comment that is outside a clearly defined (and it could be, with some sustained effort) set of parameters, and obliterating it. As Petrushka so laconically puts it, it is the difference between housekeeping and censorship.
This was the point I have been suggesting. Let’s make the aims and goals the important things. We all want a free and open exchange of ideas. We don’t want to censor opposing views, we want to confront and challenge them. We want to conduct our exchanges in an atmosphere of mutual respect and honesty.
All the rules need to say is something like: “Comments flouting the aims of this site may be moved to guano. Objections can be made in moderation issues”.
I have not been reading this thread closely, but from what I have seen the issues arise from two conflicting goals.
1. A set of posting rules which require judgement on the part of the moderators. The impartiality of the moderators has been questioned.
2. The desire to remove posts which violate the rules from the threads in which they appear but yet not to delete them entirely. The posts remain easily viewable in Guano, making the deletion pointless IMO. Indeed, one could argue that some posts seemed to be written expecting such action.
My suggestion in the past has been to eliminate any rules that require judgement, but Dr Liddle is not in favor of this. So here are a couple of other ideas.
1. Remove the posts to a thread which is not viewable except by moderators. Further, when a moderator deletes a post, the moderator most not only specify that it has been moved, but also specify the rule that was broken by the post. That would provide the public transparency but also remove some of the motivation for guano-bait posts There could still be an appeal process, but it would be conducted on a private thread.
2. Another idea would be to appoint someone who has complained about biases in the moderation to be a moderator. The moderators would then have an internal thread to discuss disagreements.
I like this.
Reciprocating Bill,
The bloom will wear off that rose in a few days and you’ll be arguing with yourself in Guano not long after.
walto,
(Interesting. Sometimes autocorrect wants to make your nym “alto” and sometimes it suggests “waltz”.)
You’d still need to provide that operational definition for “asshole”[1] to make the rule objective.
[1] Yes, I know the first cut is “Someone who asks for an operational definition of ‘asshole’.”
Alan Fox,
I don’t disagree with what I think you’re aiming for here, but as stated that could result in a lot more comments being moved to Guano.
Probably safest to move all his posts there right now.
Waltzing Alto
Lizzie,
Thank you for your emphatic affirmation of that principle. It’s one of the very best things about TSZ.
Lizzie,
That was karma tapping him on the shoulder.
Lizzie,
Hence your endorsement of Petrushka’s housekeeping metaphor.
Would you regard the following as a fair summary of your position?
1. You don’t want to control what people write, and moving comments to Guano is not intended to punish or shame them.
2. You don’t want to control what people read, which is why you’re adamant about not deleting comments.
3. You do see moving comments to Guano as a housekeeping function that keeps the “living area” clean, so that people aren’t forced to step in shit as they they move about.
I think most of us read guanoed posts, so they available and visible. They are not censored.
A short time ago one of my posts was moved to guano by accident. I was a bit surprised, but I think it is childish to wine and complain about shit that simply does not matter. This site is entertainment (occasionally educational), but it is not life itself. There are more important things than unfairness on the internet. Or even mistakes on the internet.
I think the simplest and most transparent approach is to simply move offensive posts to guano and leave the placeholder in the main thread noting that the comment has been moved and a link to it. I realize that this violates one of Liz’s rules (not editing a commenter’s comment), but it would be completely transparent, and the original comment is never lost. It also gives the offending commenter the opportunity to re-word the comment to comply with the rules.
Example:
Acartia on december XXXXXX
Moderator: This comment has been moved to guano (linkypoo).
==================================
The idea of an appeal process is noble but because we all have real lives (well, most of us), by the time an appeal is reviewed, the thread will have moved beyond the relevance of the initial comment.
petrushka,
I doubt that anyone is losing sleep over this.
As for whining and complaining, you do your share, including in the comment you just posted.
I’d be all in favour of that if it was easy. Unfortunately it isn’t using the plug ins we have (it allows “move” but not “copy”.
I do normally leave a comment of my own in the thread saying posts have been moved, though.
Yes, although I don’t want to over do the “shit” metaphor. I would prefer to phrase it as:
3. Ido see moving comments to Guano as a housekeeping function that keeps the discussion focussed on content by removing intervening posts that are not.
Yes. I’m a little wary of rules that are TOO vaguely worded, as it leaves more leeway for interpretative differences. I think it’s helpful to have something a little more specific.
For instance, a lot of sites have a “don’t be a jerk” rule. I’ve never known it work.
My sense is that such a rule, for all its vagueness, is preferable to the ad hom and good faith rule here, which don’t make a very good proxy, I don’t think.
I wasn’t advocating vagueness, just brevity. If the site aims (which I share) are expanded on, the rules don’t need to repeat them.
My own from a while back “would I let my mother read that comment” worked for me (especially my own comments).
Point is well-taken, Alan, thanks.
I will ponder these suggestions. Bit short of time right now but with luck (who am I kidding?) things will ease up after this week.
Aside from asking if I would want my mother to read my posts, I have a personal guideline. I try to make one and only one point per post.
There are good reasons for breaking this occasionally, but the reasons ought to include considerable effort to create an essay, a broad and well supported argument.
keiths:
Lizzie:
Yes, the “Guano” title is unfortunate, because it strongly implies that the comments therein were judged to be shit.
Setting aside questions of technical feasibility, it sounds like the ideal solution would be a software solution in which:
1. Comments would not be moved to Guano, but simply tagged as Guano, so that…
2. …readers who desire “housekeeping” services would see only the comments that were not tagged “Guano”, and…
3. …readers (like me) who do not desire “housekeeping” would see all comments in their original contexts.
You wouldn’t be controlling what people write or what they read, and people could either opt in or out of the moderator-supplied “housekeeping” services.
Yes I like this. One internet trend that is not going away is a customized experience. I believe some fora have tools where you can make certain people’s posts not appear to you as a user – this would let people also make their own “Guanos”. Ewwwwww.
That’s why I would have separate repositories for off topic posts, defamatory posts and offensive posts.
I can’t recall but a handful of posts that would be so offensive as to qualify for the label guano.
But lots and lots of off-topic and name-calling posts.
Yes, that kind of thing is quite appealing.
As I’ve said, I would really have liked something like the Daily Kos architecture, but I ended up with WordPress because I couldn’t find any software that would do the DKos thing.
Maybe not, but I know that you do. 🙂
You asked the purpose of Guano. I was able to explain the purpose of Guano from the sentence you left out of your quote. Ergo, quote-mine.
Mung,
No, you weren’t.
That sentence does not indicate the purpose of Guanoing comments:
I think the rules need something that says if the admins don’t Guano a post that it doesn’t mean they endorse it’s contents. There seems to be some doubt about that.
LoL. I love TSZ. The answer is no.
Lizzie has spoken. Guano is a joke. It needs to go.
It’s only reason for existence is so TSZ won’t be like Uncommon Descent.
It’s time to stop sucking that teat and grow up.
The 800lb gorilla is still in the room. There is no way the admins can be even remotely fair about this. It’s not just that they don’t move posts that are Guano to Guano even when they do see them, they can’t possibly see all the posts that are Guano. And sometimes they deliberately look the other way. You may as well flip a coin when deciding whether to Guano a post.
I have an idea, let’s change the name from Guano to Heaven. That way all these good posts can go to Heaven instead of Guano.
Mung:
Hardly. Even without Guano, TSZ is nothing like UD. We’d be ashamed if it were.
You’ve got that backwards. It’s time for UD, and particularly Barry, to grow up and stop banning and deleting right and left.
But we agree it’s time for Guano to go, right?
The idea that posts are not sent there because they are morally offensive is just ludicrous. I’m with others here who have expressed no interest in trying to live a lie.
Hi walto, I promise not to be an asshole.
All the whining and boohooing about fairness.
We are infested by metrosixyearolds.
It is strange how someone can be attacked and only the response to the attack gets put in Guano
It is also strange how someone can stand up to the blatant hypocrisy of this blog and get out in moderation ;}
Frankie,
Please try harder Joe. Your posts are the least interesting of the ID proponents, by several orders of magnitude.
Elizabeth or anybody. Still dumb here.
I posted a title and subjectr. On the right the only thing i found was to press “submitt for review” i hit it twice yesterday but don’t see it. Is it rejected, not reviewed or what did i do wrong. No I forgot to keep a draft.
oh well. i will try again if i get some advice. I saw no “publish” word.
Robert,
The next step is to send a PM to one of the admins or Lizzie to ask us to publish it. I just did so. Thank you for your contribution.
You missed the step about posting a message to moderation issues to remind us to look.
In any case, it seems to now be published. So somebody has taken care of the matter.
Elizabeth or anybody Still dumb here.
Oh yeah, lots of still dumb here. More than enough for everyone!
Admins, please move to Guano phoodoo’s recent posts from the Morality for dummies thread:
” … braindead moron’s skull …” [referring to RichardHughes]
“… not discussing in good faith…” [referring to Lizzie]
The quality of this site is at risk. I’d like more posts and comments from people like Tom English, Joe Felsenstein, Mark Frank, Elizabeth, Allan Miller, David, fg, walto, KN and other scholars here and less useless spam from Gregory.
One way to reduce the clutter is to let thread authors set the rules of discussion. For example, a discussion can ban Gregory. Nothing is stopping Gregory from starting a thread and opining whatever he wants. There is no censorship. He just can’t heckle a thread. He can start a thread and invite people to be insulted by him. If no one shows up, it’s his tough luck.
Someone can ban me from a discussion. No problem. I can start my own discussion.
The issue is that people are demanding their writing be read when no one is interested in engaging.
If this policy were adopted, this site would clean up real fast. Just try it for a while. What is there to lose?
I think this is an awesome idea. I’d add that such a person would always be able to comment on the thread in question from the peanut gallery (aka Noyau). Such a change could improve the site dramatically, I think. But, as it’s dramatic move, and subject to abuse by, say, one who strongly disagrees with the person being threatened with thread dismissal, I’d again push for the agreement of at least three admins.
stcordova,
I oppose this idea. This is supposed to be a site for open and honest communication with the goal of understanding the root cause of our disagreements. If you want an echo chamber, there are plenty of other places that offer that. Having different rules for different threads would balkanize the site, not to mention increasing the volume of spite posts and meta comments.
What would we lose? Just the whole culture of the site.
+1. We’re agreeing more and more, Sal!
Oh, please.
Sal,
Sure!
Like Patrick, I think this is a bad idea:
Sal:
If you prevent someone from participating in a thread, that is censorship.