Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
Just working around the page bug.
Law of unintended consequences.
One day you will build something.
Obviously Mung prefers his moderation arbitrary, silent and in the dead of night. And based on the viewpoint of the person rather then how they are saying what they have to say.
A set of blind moderators would do a better job of moderating this site.
Really? Is text to speech software that good for the blind now? Awesome! How do they know which bit of the screen they’re clicking on?
I haven’t had time to read many of the threads in detail this weekend until today. I did skim through about twenty pages of backlog this morning. Are there any comments in particular you think should have been Guano’d?
Nice to see that this site is still run by two-faced cowardly moderators.
It is OK to attack me but it isn’t OK for me to respond in kind. What a bunch of pussies
I just love how the moderators have to protect their own. It’s like having mommy around to ward off the reality of their kids’ ignorance
A question for the mods.
I took the walto pledge. But then a bunch of the regulars here started acting like complete asshats and I started responding in kind. My bad for that.
Do the mods have any intention at all of enforcing the rules?
Posts which insult others belong in Guano. If people insist on insulting others they can always take it to Noyau. Isn’t it past time to drop the hammer?
Assuming you want to improve the level of discussion at the site.
Given Frankie and Mungs displeasure, I think It would be great if they started their own blogs.
If Elizabeth’s stated aims for this site are not going to be respected or enforced the sooner everyone knows this the better. You know. Honesty. Integrity. Anarchy.
Mung,
I just got home after a long week where I mostly caught an occasional pageful of comments on my phone while traveling. I’ll work my way through the backlog until the wine clouds my judgement (or slightly after, wine being tricky that way). If you have any specific comments or threads you think violate the rules, please provide links.
Patrick, I appreciate your attention, but really this is one of those meta-issues. I have no intention of pointing out violations of the rules.
My question is, given Elizabeth’s constant absentee status, what do the remaining mods want to see for this site?
Have you all dropped any pretense of “address the post not the poster”?
What happened to the promise of a theist moderator? Johnnyb had agreed, IIRC. It’s months later.
BTW, I don’t think I ever mentioned how much I enjoyed Patrick’s response (Roughly, “I don’t feel like answering. Sorry.”) to some questions on the Libertarianism thread, after he had complained (maybe 400 times) about the lack of integrity Erik had shown by not responding to a couple of HIS questions. Classic.
Respected? Enforced? An idea catches on or it doesn’t.
Johnnyb has admin capabilities.
That’s a conundrum. It’s Lizzie’s site but if she’d rather be elsewhere…
I guess I find my enthusiasm waning a little.
Has he done any actual administration? Has he lost interest?
I haven’t come here much lately, but it’s probably a bit worse than I remember. E.g., Frankie posts more now, and pretty much every Frankie post I’ve seen has been comprised entirely of insults. That’s true of many of Richard’s posts too. And, natch, Gregory is the same as always. As I’ve always said, clear out some of the cess and it could be very enlightening site.
But alas.
Gregory’s not been here for a while. Mung has got the Walto tacit approval, though!
The ignore button enhances the reading experience.
Nice to see you, hope you are well.
Sal hasn’t quite figured out that him not seeing the solid scientific rebuttals to his YEC stupidity doesn’t mean the rest of the readers can’t see them. 🙂
What any particular admin wants for the site doesn’t matter. This is Lizzie’s site and her rules clearly restrict what admins are allowed to do. If any one of us were to step outside those rules, the others are available to fix the problem. Also, while Lizzie isn’t actively participating, she’s a mere email away should any major issue arise.
I haven’t. I’ve just had a week and a half where I didn’t have the time to read every comment. That’s one reason why we have more than one admin.
Mung is mung. He’s generally wrong, but I don’t think he’s here mostly for the purpose of insulting people he disagrees with. Sometimes he succumbs to baiting, though. I do that too–hard not to. Anyhow, nobody is here for my seal of approval, I don’t think: but you could look over the last, say, couple dozen of your posts and see what the content is there for yourself. I feel like you think you’re fulfilling some sort of moral obligation to fling shit at those you know to be mistaken/confused. You enjoy that, obviously, but what other good does it do? Do you think it helps the site?.
And I mentioned Gregory because I just saw a typical nasty post of his, stalking KN. If he hasn’t been here much, that’s good thing, certainly.
Re the ignore button, I plumped for it repeatedly for at least a year, and I DO use it. It’s definitely lowered my own blood pressure. So *I* benefit, and I remain grateful for the function.
But the site? Is IT improved? IMHO, it continues to suffer from the theory that no forum can be any good if it practices “censorship.” The view is, apparently, that no courtroom should ever be cleared, every speech-maker should have hecklers, etc. Like a number of problems (in this country, anyhow) it follows from some sort of weirdly religious “natural rights” consideration that is believed to trump utility. The actual truth of the matter in my view is something like the opposite. You can’t have good discussions, due process, useful speeches, etc. without some degree of civililty being enforced.
I think the site is more active, and I think that is in itself better.
I replaced the mouse with the worn out scroll wheel, and now have little trouble with Frankie, et al.
I think the site is grounded in biology, whit theological and philosophical issues flowing out of biological issues. We’ve had a lot of biology recently, and I like that.
I have particularly enjoyed the threads that involved programming and testing of programs. There’s something about that process that defies attempts at bullshit.
You may be right, petrushka. I may not have perused enough threads to have formed a decent opinion. I do see the regular devolution of nearly every discussion into shit-slinging, but maybe there’s a lot of substance I’ve been missing prior to that. In any case, elimination of the shit-slinging would be an improvement, IMO.
It’s called a scroll wheel. It’s the most important part of a mouse.
Much more useful than arguing about people and their intentions.
Indeed; the minimum necessary to promote a useful exchange of ideas.
Hi Walto – hope you’re well.
The animus level (personally at least) is actually driven through some of the computation threads that where mine. You go to some length to show the power of GAs and that the “answer isn’t smuggled in” and you still get pissyness from the sidelines without any real engagement.
Also, the revelation that Barry is less that truthful with his commentary has been brought up to Mung, with the charge that he should do something about it. He seems to value his place in the ID community more than ‘doing the right thing’. Obviously this has not been good for relations, as we (well I) have no intention of letting it lie.
I think it is more important to enable people who wish to exchange ideas usefully than to worry about those who don’t. I do not think it is particularly onerous to ignore posts that do not contribute.
Agreed!
The “ignore commenter” is a wonderful tool for people (like myself) who lack the will-power to ignore incorrigible nonsense and personal attacks.
The question here is whether there’s any better means of enforcement besides posts being re-classified to Guano shortly after the harm is done.
Ideally. I would perhaps prefer a site where moderation is a bit heavier — say, a “three strikes” rule where, if a commenter shows a persistent habit of having his or posts sent to Guano, then at some cut-off point, the commenter doesn’t get to post automatically but rather has his or her posts cleared by a moderator.
But this is time-consuming and annoying for all concerned. Under real-world constraints, I’m fine with the rules and moderation as they are.
I understand how one might view it that way, but I do not. I see it as a strictly utilitarian experiment in freer speech. Whether the experiment is a success or not, it is perhaps “too soon to say”.
😉
I disagree. Civility is over-rated, perhaps vastly so. The problem with the rules of TSZ, under hypothetically perfect enforcement, is that the forum is open to infantile trolling and ceaseless thread-jacking. Whether this makes the forum intolerable is up to each commenter, individually. As I often say to my teenage daughters: “You are only responsible for your own behavior.”
I will admit that I fall far short of the ideal that I am promoting here. I know that I should not ridicule or pour scorn on certain posts, but it is just too much gosh-darn fun. As I occasionally say to my teenage daughters, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say”.
<turns irony meter back ON>
walto:
Sure you can. A good discussion requires just two willing participants, and a useful speech only one. No enforcement necessary.
petrushka:
I agree.
petrushka,
Yes. When you write code, you’re laying your cards on the table. You can’t be ambiguous.
Which reminds me, I need to post my selection-vs-drift version of Weasel.
The Walto tacit approval. Priceless!
🙂
And every one of your posts that brings up Barry or what I ought to do over at UD belongs in Guano. They are ad hominem and having nothing to do with discussions in threads at this site. Lizzie made that clear by shutting down my thread and Salvador’s thread.
Patrick set the precedence by hounding Erik incessantly for weeks. Gregory’s posts get sent to Guano but not yours. It is certainly due to no skill on your part that your constant insults go untouched.
You even admitted in one post that you had no interest in discussion. A confession to being a pure troll. I would put you on permanent Ignore but on occasion you actually do contribute something of value.
Do you recall when people actually tried to bait me into saying that and I refused? Or is there a different narrative running lose in your brain somewhere.
Do you recall who suggested the idea of writing tests? I think I do, but I don’t remember anyone actually coming through with any. Perhaps their claims couldn’t actually be tested.
If someone comes to visit the site, what does Elizabeth want them to see? Has she abandoned the site and her vision for the site? Is TSZ really going to die before UD? Maybe God is real.
This would not work for the very simple reason that posts that belong in Guano are not sent to Guano.
🙂
I think this should be allowed if it addresses the post. It’s the personal attacks and personal insults that violate the site rules.
There are posts in Guano that don’t really belong in Guano, and it’s pretty clear that certain people are being targeted.
I ask again, given Elizabeth’s decision to abandon the site, is it going to just be anarchy, or do the mods have a vision for the site? Do the mods even talk to each other?
I am doubting that she has decided to abandon the site.
We can indeed have ‘discussions’ just utilizing scroll wheels and ignore functions. No doubt about that.
Yes what makes a site tolerable or intolerable is whether people can tolerate it. That seems like a pretty low bar to me though. The point of civility isn’t just to ensure that discussions are tolerable I don’t think. It’s to create an atmosphere where they’re likely to be good–enlightening and enjoyable to all who have any interest in learning something. E.g. would you make it your daughter’s responsibility to tolerate insults (or issue her ear plugs)? At some point doesn’t the requirement of civility by all parties make more sense?
Absentee slumlords don’t abandon their sites either.
Absentee landlords collect rent from the residents. Elizabeth pays rent on behalf of the residents.
Mung has hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean.
Elizabeth pays taxes to maintain her slums. Her residents are the least of her concerns.