As the original Moderation page has developed a bug so that permalinks no longer navigate to the appropriate comment, I thought I’d put up a page for continuing discussion on moderating issues. The Rules can be found there so anyone with an issue should check that they are familiar with them.
26th June 2015: the bug has now affected this page so there is now a new Moderation Issues page here.
William,
If you feel insulted when someone calls an idea of yours crazy, that’s fine. The rules are not intended to protect you from that. I’ll remind you again: Lizzie has made it clear that ideas and arguments are fair game. A site called “The Skeptical Zone” could hardly live up to its name by insulating ideas from attack.
William,
You could, but it would be better if you would explain how “your idea is crazy” and “you are insane” are functionally the same. The function of sentences involves their meaning, and the meaning of those two sentences is different.
Otherwise, we could never speak of a sane person having a crazy idea.
William,
I replied to this on the naturalism thread, since it isn’t about moderation.
Christopher Hitchens already came up with the rule for such situations:
I for one would love to see this image as the sole response to comments that fail to support their assertions.
There’s always a “but”.
With all due respect (and I mean that — I’ve enjoyed your participation here), you either support free and open discussion or you do not. No excepts. No unlesses. No buts.
You seem to want a forum run by benign dictator philosopher kings. There are plenty of such self-appointed kings (and queens) to choose from around the ‘net. I very much do not want that. The only person who should be able to choose which posts and comments I read is me. This place comes much closer to the free expression ideal of Usenet. I would love to see some of the old newsreader tools like threading, read marking, and, especially, personal kill files available on this forum. That would eliminate the need for most of even Lizzie’s minimal rules.
“you either support free and open discussion or you do not. No excepts. No unlesses. No buts”
Sure. The question is what constitutes “free and open discussion” and what means there are to best foster it. As Hobbes said, before there was a civil contract, man’s life was nasty, brutish and short.
Free and open, though.
EDIT: ” The only person who should be able to choose which posts and comments I read is me.”
That’s fine. The problem is that if you can’t stop others from posting libels or falsehoods or whatever, your laissez-faire attitude will not allow you to choose which posts and comments OTHERS will be able to read either. There’s always been a tension between freedom of speech and libel laws, hate speech laws, yelling fire in theaters, etc. It’s no good to veer too far to either side, IMHO.
I do think though, that there should be lots of kinds of forums available. And if people enjoy the rough and tumble, dissembling, weaseling, altering others’ quotes, hearing denials of obvious truths regarding what has taken place there, etc. it’s good that they have places where that kind of stuff is viewed with equanimity–or at least as part of the game, or a necessary cost of doing biz or whatever. I’m daintier than that, myself, but I think you’re right both that (i) a dainty site requires a “king” or council or something–because I don’t think you can ever get a batch of rules quite right or specific enough, and a ton of process for this kind of stuff isn’t really worth the trouble, and (ii) that one runs the risk of throwing out a few wheaty comments for a bunch of chaffy behavior if one is quick to expel people. I’ll even add (iii) sometimes the only people who keep a forum active are the schmucks there and when they get banned, the whole place falls asleep. So, as I said, it’s a difficult balance. I would not like to be a moderator myself. On the other hand, I WOULD like to know about a few more of those places that you say are run by philosopher kings.
Alan,
I agree. In my experience, the people who really like moderation and want more of it tend to be the ones who aren’t very good at marshaling evidence, formulating coherent arguments, and otherwise defending their positions. They rely on moderation as a compensatory crutch and as a tool for censoring inconvenient viewpoints, while the more competent commenters don’t feel the need for it — they can handle pretty much whatever comes their way, short of obvious and gross violations like the outing of anonymous participants.
UD is notorious for this “hide-behind-the-moderation” attitude, but you’ll see it on many moderated blogs, even including some of the lightly moderated ones.
The particular link is relevant to a topic Keith started on methodological naturalism so I will post it there.
For the open thread, I had an envisioned a list of links of interesting reading with maybe a one sentence summary provided by the poster. I am assuming that many people would want to post such links.
If not, the idea is pointless.
If so, then giving them all author rights would lead to a lot of short posts that would clutter the board.
If no one else has ever expressed interest in this, I’ll just continue to use Sandbox if there is not already an existing, relevant thread. If other people start doing the same thing with Sandbox,, then maybe the idea could be revived.
“Free and open” is self-explanatory. Anyone can post anything. No one can censor or ban anyone else.
Please don’t try to redefine a very clear concept.
We’re not talking about physical interactions. This is just words on a screen.
That’s a feature, not a bug.
The best response to bad speech is good speech. Setting up someone or some group as arbiters destroys free expression and eventually leads to fora becoming echo chambers like UD.
The first one that comes to mind is Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True site. I don’t always agree with his moderation decisions, but he seems to value the kind of civil discussion you prefer.
I’ve heard good (and bad) things about the JREF forum but I can’t speak from personal experience.
Most heavily moderated online venues seem to descend into self-reinforcing cliques like UD, though. I’m much more comfortable with places like Usenet’s talk.origins newsgroup and the raucous, occasionally vulgar, Slymepit, where the flowers of some amazing discussions bloom in the rich organic matter provided by trolls, flamers, the delusional, the ignorant, and those of questionable sanity.
Patrick,
My favorite Christopher Hitchens speech.
BruceS,
I see what you are saying, Bruce. What about a page where people could post useful links with a succinct summary. We could call the page “Useful Links” if that isn’t too pretentious.
keiths,
Impressive stuff! Who was his opponent and what was the result? Googling takes me to a later debate Hitchens (when he was quite ill) had in Canada with Tony Blair.
That was a magnificent speech, thanks for posting the link.
Probably not a man who would be willing to grant an assumption of good faith in the face of evidence to the contrary. 😉
Patrick,
Thanks for those links.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts if you check any of them out.
On a slightly different moderation topic, what do you think of rating systems like the karma points on Reddit and Hacker News? They seem to offer a way for online communities to police themselves.
My only problem with such systems is that they are currently too simplistic. Rather than seeing a single rating that represents an average across all participants, I’d like to see a rating on each comment based on the responses from people who have rated other comments similarly to how I rated them. That has the potential to eliminate the worst of the spam and off-topic comments while reducing the risk of creating an echo chamber.
Patrick,
What do you think of resurrecting “The Penguin Colony” that got scrambled when the old internet service managed to screw everything up so magnificently? It seems easier to keep track of wide-ranging and ongoing discussions in a forum rather than a blog. Nothing is off-topic as anyone can start one without it seeming as portentous as a blog post.
Also finding an old comment or thread is not user-friendly in WordPress. Lots of typing could be saved if retrieval of old comments was simpler.
Given the groundswell of support for the idea, ie the lack thereof, I think it should be considered one of those ideas that sounded good (to me) at the time, but are not worth pursuing.
Patrick,
I don’t have much experience with those +/- systems, except for the comments to articles on newspaper links or consumer reviews. My first thought is it would make things worse–everything post would be the subject of a kind of plebiscite.
I will report back once I check out the sites you provided. But I have a question for you. You seem very sure about “The best response to bad speech is good speech” and I’ve been wondering whether this is an empirical claim based on experience with sites you’ve seen being wrecked by excessive moderation, or a personal preference of yours or a claim about inalienable rights, or what? I mean, if you think about the old yelling fire in a crowded theater thing, it seems like some people simple might not mind a lot of people yelling “Hey stop that, you bad person! So many of us revile your behavior!” at them. I’d think some people would get off on the attention.
That didn’t work all that well, in my opinion.
I do think that our discussions would work better with forum software, rather than with blog software. But switching would be a lot of work, and most of us would prefer to be continuing the discussion rather than working on conversion to different software.
Alan,
It was a student debate sponsored by the Hart House Debating Club at the University of Toronto. Here is a longer video that includes the students as well as Hitchens.
I haven’t found anything that indicates what the results were or whether there was any judging at all.
I just watched the first half of that Hitchens speech, which was enough for me. I’d have been willing to debate him on that subject (though he’d have ripped me up, no doubt).
Some thoughts I have on that first half:
1. I personally don’t believe in natural or inalienable rights, in much the same way that some of you don’t believe in objective values, so it’s my view that a case has to be made that utility (of whatever type is pushed) is increased by unfettered speech, and I wasn’t convinced by Hitchens’ that Holmes was wrong. He doesn’t actually make any argument, just wise cracks, mostly.
2. I take his treating all speech as the same—Yelling “fire” is the same as writing an op-ed piece denying the Holocaust or evolution, is a dangerous conflation. Either it cuts for unfettered speech, in which case, everybody loses the price of their theater tickets for no reason at all, with no consequences for the hollering dickhead, or it cuts for over-regulation, in which case unpopular positions don’t get heard. Both results are bad, IMO, and result from an unwillingness to make reasonable distinctions.
3. If we ask, as he does, “Well, then, who shall we trust to be the censor?” I answer, The same folks we trust to enforce other laws. Any enforcement of laws is dangerous, whether they involve speech, murder, theft, or whatever. In fact, it’s my view that it’s probably easier (or should be) to moderate an internet site than to put people in jail for life (or even execute them) based on whether some action was intentional.
Anyhow, eloquent and clever as Hitchens was, I’m with Holmes on this matter (or at least await something better than the mention of a few Yiddish speaking socialists to convince me. While his views likely will give comfort to Libertarians, who believe (I think rightly) that the same sorts of arguments could be made for the elimination of laws of nearly every kind, I think that the question of free speech, like pretty much every other question of public policy is a difficult, nuanced one, and there are no simple answers.
A couple of days ago, I ended a comment with this:
Alan insisted that I remove it…
to which I responded:
Alan replied:
I’m bringing this up not because that particular moderation decision was a big deal — I was easily able to rebut Walt without those two sentences — but because I think it represents a misapplication of the “address the post, not the poster” rule.
First, I did not assume that Walt was upset, I inferred it from his comment. Next, the rules don’t prohibit commenters from making remarks that the moderators happen to regard as “unnecessary and provocative”. Third, and most importantly, I was not calling Walt a hothead or a dolt; I judged from his comment that he was upset and I implied that this was affecting his judgment.
To regard that as a violation of the rules would be absurd, because then we could never say things like “you haven’t thought this through carefully enough” or “that makes no sense”, because the first is directly about the commenter and the second necessarily implies that the commenter is not making sense.
As I commented to petrushka:
Alan agreed…
…but I think that Alan didn’t interpret the rule that way when he asked me to amend my comment.
Again, this particular moderation decision was of little consequence, but I think the principle is quite important. The rule was not intended to protect commenters’ egos or to shield them from criticism. Rather, I think Lizzie was trying to prevent discussion from devolving into name-calling slugfests in which the focus was entirely on people and their virtues or flaws, rather than on the issue supposedly being discussed.
So your baiting was successful in this case. Make a notch somewhere. You and Gregory deserve each other.
For those who don’t read Guano:
Both keiths and walto (alphabetic order) are on a 24 hour cooling off period.
Please take personal disagreements to email.
Now we have the answer to the long-standing question of “Where’s Walto?”
Who says that we achieve nothing here?
Glen Davidson
Neil Rickert writes (in Guano):
This is a gross abuse of your administrator privileges, not in any way consistent with Lizzie’s clearly articulated rules for this site. Please restore the ability for keiths and walto to comment immediately.
I will contact Lizzie about this now.
Neil,
Patrick is right. You are way over the line.
When you revoke someone’s commenting privileges, even temporarily, you are censoring them.
Your job as moderator is to enforce Lizzie’s rules, not to invent your own, and especially not to invent ones that give moderators the power to censor. It goes completely against the spirit of TSZ, and it can be found nowhere in Lizzie’s carefully crafted rules.
Do you realize that you have just censored a discussion of free speech? Has the irony of that escaped you?
I commend Hitchens’ excellent and impassioned defense of free speech to you. Please watch it.
I disagree. A “time-out” may not happen to be specifically covered in the rules but it is clearly within the spirit of the rules to discourage the kind of unsavory slagging match which just erupted between walto and keiths, the antithesis of the discussion “with minimal tribal rancour” which Lizzie calls for.
I don’t see that anyone, including you, Patrick, nor me, keiths nor walto, are harmed in any way by being deprived of the chance to witness/participate in a flame war under the guise of
sophisticatedargument about freeze peaches.Because of course the only worthwhile lesson to be learned here today at TSZ is something about freeze peaches 😛
Jesus, isn’t there anyone on the internet who can refer to the concept of “censorship” correctly, in context?
How about a little self-censorship? And how about a (secular) display of decent manners and empathy towards the rest of us who have no desire to scroll past your slag?
Although whatever Neil tried must not have worked since keiths’ comment is visible before 24-hours, I certainly hope Lizzie’s answer — if we get an answer from her — is that she totally approves of Neil’s valiant attempt to restore civil discourse in accordance with the spirit of this website.
Walt,
In response to your series of (unfortunately, now Guano’ed) comments:
What does that have to do with our dispute? You told us that you’re “with Holmes on this matter”, and that you need something “better” than the false imprisonment of “a few Yiddish speaking socialists” to make you reconsider.
That’s appalling. It was ridiculous of Holmes to jail those people for protesting the draft, and ridiculous of him to draw an analogy with yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Your Jewishness does not entitle you to minimize the suffering of “a few Yiddish speaking socialists”.
No, I don’t. I think you are dismissing the rights of “a few Yiddish speaking socialists” as if they didn’t matter. See above.
This is pitiful, Walt. I never claimed to be smarter than Plantinga, and you know that perfectly well. I simply pointed out his mistake and backed up my assessment with a detailed argument, which you have been unable to rebut.
It’s another baseless accusation. What were you saying earlier about misrepresenting other people’s posts and “the preservation of intellectual integrity”?
hotshoe,
Have you forgotten that Lizzie founded this site in response to the rampant censorship at UD, including her banning? A “cooling-off period” imposed by a moderator is exactly the kind of censorship she has tried to avoid here. Comments are sacrosanct at TSZ, as Alan points out. That includes the making of them as well as their preservation.
Right, because “free speech” is defined as the freedom to say whatever hotshoe thinks you’re entitled to say, and nothing else. If hotshoe thinks it doesn’t qualify, then don’t complain — you aren’t being deprived of anything worthwhile.
I’m surprised at you, hotshoe.
The ‘context’ being that censorship is only censorship if it deprives someone of the right to say something that hotshoe considers important enough to merit expression?
Free expression takes precedence over the perceived exertion of your scroll finger. Also, I invite you to take a closer look at the “slag”, this time keeping track of who said what. I was calmly awaiting the end of Walt’s tirade, which went on for more than 25 minutes, before responding to him. To suggest that I needed a “cooling-off period” is absurd. Commenters shouldn’t be censored, period; but they most definitely should not be censored because of what their interlocutors write.
Right. Who could object to Neil’s “valiant attempt to restore civil discourse” through censorship, or the government’s attempt to protect the nation by jailing those who would presume to protest the draft? When an authority does something “for our own good”, who are we to question?
The 24 hours is not quite up. But it is a new day, so I have removed the changes that I made.
As hotshoe has surmised, they did not work anyway.
And re the socialists, the point is, doofus, that Hitchens’ conflation of ideological speech with yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, (or with me pointing out that you aren’t that bright), is no better than Holme’s making them out to be the same thing. I’ve already explained this here and understand you won’t get it this time either, but what the hell.
If you haven’t already contacted Lizzie, when you do, please let her know for me that I think Neil was quite right to temporarily snuff us, that it was a classic flame war instigated by an anonymous baiter who gets a kick out of getting peoples’ goats, and a really angry respondent who was basically just name-calling. I can’t believe that she set up her site for that kind of crap. Anyhow, I didn’t mind at all. We probably both deserve to be banned, but if, as NBA refs often do, you only whack the revenge-getter, I’d completely understand. I’ll leave the whining about the awful (awful!) treatment we’ve received here and how it shows the extreme harm to the public interest that can result from requirements of civility to those who may wish to take this matter up with the U.S. Supreme Court when they’re finished wiping the floor with Plantinga.
“We must not be gagged, hotshoe!” (He’s not only surprised, but appalled!!)
[Edit: BTW, Patrick, I’d still be interested in the basis for your belief that freedom of speech may never be abridged in any manner. Do you think it would be a violation of a natural right ?]
keiths,
For anybody interested, I took this stinky bait, and responded to its faux highmindness (and really excellent use of selective quotation for the purpose of misrepresentation) earlier today. My response was moved to Guano.
I’ll leave it to the author of the above (highly caring and deeply patriotic–but not in a narrow nationalistic way [oh no!] but only in a broad Hitchensian how-to-make-the-world-better-by-allowing-unfettered-freedom-of-conscience way) to provide the link. Not because I’m lazy, but because I’m nice that way: he so much enjoys adding links.
That’s nice. It is important that you be able to do so without being silenced by someone else, even when you’re wrong.
No, such an action is explicitly against the spirit of the rules. Unlike UD and some “progressive” blogs that aren’t worthy of mention, TSZ values free expression.
How would you know? That’s the essence of why censorship is repugnant.
Your disdain for the principle of free speech is noted. While I find it reprehensible, I would not remove your comment.
If you want to assert that the word censorship can only apply to government actions, I’m willing to work with that definition ad arguendo. It doesn’t make the willingness to restrict the free expression of others any less of a character flaw.
I support the choice of any participant here to censor themselves and to ignore any other participants’ comments. Your choices should not be binding on others, though.
Neil’s action wasn’t valiant, it was oppressive. I sincerely hope that Lizzie, should she have time to comment, will reaffirm her commitment to free and open discussion.
…and all else that is good and pure and noble.
Bloody hell!
Just checked in and this is so disappointing.
Perhaps Lizzie will find a moment to try and pour oil on troubled waters. I see it is a fond hope that everyone could enter into the spirit of Lizzie’s aim to encourage dialogue across disciplines and across political outlook and religious persuasion.
Alan, I think that the ugliness of this brouhaha shows that one ought to be just as skeptical about the unalloyed good that is supposed to necessarily flow from unrestricted speech as one is about any other religiously held tenet. That an articulate speech by someone one respects contains some amusing ridicule of opposing viewpoints should be considered no more dispositive than a beautifully crafted sermon by an evangelical. The more moving or entertaining the rhetoric, the more careful and skeptical listeners need to be.
While I have seen a number of sites that use moderation as a means to squelch dissent, my free speech absolutism derives from two primary sources. First, an application of the golden rule. I would not want what I can say or hear, what I write or read, to be subject to someone else’s control. Accordingly, I will not try to control what others say, hear, write, or read.
(Apropos of another comment of yours, I trust the people who enforce other laws the least as arbiters of expression. Those with the most power should be subject to the most open criticism.)
Second, I value the truth. I want my understanding of the world to be more and more accurate every day. Censorship removes possible sources of learning and error correction. It’s far better to put up with some chaff to avoid losing what could be very valuable grain.
This is a good place to note that, while I reject the suppression of free expression, that does not mean I think that actions should not have consequences. In the canonical example you mention, if someone speaks falsely and causes economic or, obviously worse, physical harm to others in the theater, they should be held accountable. If they genuinely thought there was a fire, that accountability should be less than if they were being deliberately malicious.
A similar accountability applies in cases of libel and slander. The concept of defamation per se recognizes that some types of lies result in measurable, material harm to an individual. The person causing such harm should be held accountable. No one should, however, be prevented from speaking or writing pre-emptively.
You’ve defined the classic Internet troll.
Why the snide tone? What do you find so offensive about commitment to a principle that you choose to respond with emotion rather than logic?
I don’t see anyone claiming that unrestricted speech is an “unalloyed good.” Like (apocryphally) democracy, it is simply better than all the alternatives.
Patrick,
I’m sorry. I guess I thought the language of your dismissal of Neil’s action was kind of hifalutin’. My questions, which you’ve now answered (but hadn’t when I wrote my snide comment), were about what you think makes those particular rights sacrosanct, and I guess I don’t think it’s as obvious as you do that, e.g., the truth is more likely to emerge at an internet site if posters are allowed to misrepresent each other or call each other names than if they’re sanctioned for that kind of stuff.
Re your approval of people having to take consequences for their actions with respect to “fire” yelling, libel, etc., I don’t think that’s the approach of the traditional radical free-speecher. My sense is that, in America at least, suits and threats of suits are one of the most commonly used methods to shut people up who have opposing views. I really have no idea, (and maybe somebody here does know) but I’d guess that, e.g., Hitchens was against common law decisions allowing plaintiffs to recover for libel or slander, for the same sorts of reasons that he opposed consequences for “fire!” pranksters. So if you’re OK with such “consequences,” you may not be as absolutist about free speech as I believed.
My own views on this matter, as on most things, are unsettled, unsure, unnecessarily nuanced, confused, byzantine, and, in the end, probably wrong.
[EDIT: BTW, I was just thinking about this remark you made earlier which is relevant to what I just wrote above: “Free and open” is self-explanatory. Anyone can post anything. No one can censor or ban anyone else.”
If people can post things only under threat of possible suits against defamation, libel and slander, I’d think a lot of people might not consider the debate perfectly “free and open”–in spite of your suggestion that these are perfectly simple and obvious concepts that ought to be clear to everyone.
That’s in their own hands.
I was raised on a dirt farm in Maine. I don’t do hifalutin’. I will do pretentious prick when properly inspired.
I don’t like that either, but that kind of behavior says more about the person doing the misrepresenting than it does about the target of the misrepresentation. Based on my time on Usenet, starting before the Internet was available outside of the military and universities, it seems to me that observers figure out who the dissemblers are pretty quickly.
You’re not wrong that the legal climate in the US is not ideal, particularly with respect to SLAPP suits. I consider myself an absolutist in the sense that I do not support any prohibitions against anyone expressing themselves. If someone is objectively, materially damaged by someone’s else’s actions, I see no reason why the damaged party shouldn’t have recourse simply because the damaging act consisted of speech or writing.
For example, claiming that someone is a child pornographer or a rapist is defamation per se. Even if the claimant has no objective evidence whatsoever, the target of the claim can be damaged beyond any ability to recover. There will always be the “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” thought in the head of anyone who is exposed to such claims. The issue isn’t then about freedom of expression but about material damages stemming from a particular behavior that just happens to be expression of some sort.
That is qualitatively different from the case of a pseudonymous participant on an online message board calling another participant a poopy head.
You’ve piqued my curiosity about Hitchen’s position. Please let me know if you find out anything before I have the time to look deeper into this.
That’s a fair point. I believe it is more an issue with the legal system than with the principle. If someone falsely accused of libel could recover legal costs from the accuser, it would go a long way toward preventing abuse.
Alan Fox,
Yes, of course.
Walt,
I don’t know Hitchens’ position regarding libel and slander, but I didn’t get the impression from the speech that he necessarily “opposed consequences for “fire!” pranksters.”
I thought he was objecting to the false and ridiculous analogy that Oliver Wendell Holmes drew between the draft protesters and “fire!” pranksters, and suggesting that the opposite analogy — that the protesters were in effect shouting “fire!” when there really was a fire — was more appropriate.
keiths:
walto:
What’s with all the false accusations, Walt? Readers can check your original comment, you know:
As I wrote earlier, when you said I had claimed to be smarter than Plantinga:
Neil,
Why were these two comments of mine Guano’ed yesterday? Link, Link
I asked you about the first one yesterday, and you dodged the question:
It isn’t obvious at all. What rules were violated by those two comments? How do you justify moving them to Guano?