I sense a disturbance in the force.
This thread is for people to tell me what they think is going on, going wrong, and what they think we should do about it. I’m listening.
Lizzie
[Edit added 18.40 pm CET 20/08/2018 by Alan Fox]
As the comments have ballooned, Lizzie would very much like members to summarize their thoughts and suggestions into one statement and there is now a dedicated thread, “Summaries”, where they can be posted. Please just post one summary and please do not add other comments. You are welcome to comment on other people’s summaries in this thread. The idea of the “Summaries” thread is to make it easier for Lizzie to get your input. Comments judged by admins not to be summaries will move to guano.
Members who would rather keep their thoughts confidential are invited to use the private messaging system. Lizzie’s address is Elizabeth.
We never would be having this discussion if this was UD, so by that measure we are better.
This isn’t the free speech zone. 🙂
Some speech is against the rules.
Ah. So you are a conservative. 😉
Pure unadulterated bullshit. And without a lick of actual evidence.
More bullshit. Can’t you just smell the hypocrisy? The stench of it is sickening.
There is no penalty for calling someone else out for quote-mining. None.
And there is no penalty for calling someone a liar either. There are merely moderators, blowing their whistles in the wind.
I should clarify, not all are pointless and whiny. Some just pointless and some are just whiny. Some are neither.
All in favor of fairness, they are whiny if the argument is “It is not fair I was guanoed even though I broke the rules it because someone else wasn’t.
If you break to rules it is fair you got guanoed no matter what anyone else does.
Never in their judgement if we are able to judge by past experience.
Some perhaps, some seem just to be effort to sir the pot.
No argument there. If I a make a comment that belongs in Guano and it ends up in Guano then that is what I expect to take place. No one should have an expectation that a rule-breaking comment won’t be sent to Guano.
Yet we have people here arguing that rule-breaking comments ought not be sent to Guano. Their remedy is to do away with Guano and allow the rule-breaking comments.
No objection there. But that wasn’t the case I presented. So I’m not sure that you’re actually responding to my post at all, even though you quoted me.
Poster A says that poster B is lying, or dishonest. A mod sends that post to Guano.
Poster A says that poster C is lying, or dishonest. No mod sends that post to Guano.
Poster C wonders why both posts by poster A were not sent to Guano. Don’t both posts violate the rules?
It’s not a case where the post by poster C was sent to Guano. It wasn’t. It’s not a case where Poster C is complaining that his post was sent to Guano. Poster C made no such complaint.
If I call someone a liar, I know that breaks the rules. I don’t complain that my post is sent to Guano. And I certainly don’t argue that it was justified, and therefore should not have been sent to Guano.
This can be done without actually calling them dishonest. It can be done without actually calling them a liar. If you simply must call them dishonest, or a liar, this can be done in Noyau.
People who simply ignore the avenues available to them and who pretend as if they do not exist are not sharing the same reality as the rest of us.
In addition, what someone believes is dishonest may not actually be dishonest.
And finally, accusations of lying and dishonesty are moral judgments, which, as we all know, are totally subjective.. Sadly, some posters think they are making an objective statement when in reality they are merely offering an opinion that expresses their own subjective moral code, which is hardly binding on anyone else.
What should the admins do about such posters?
[yes, it’s a trap]
Mung,
This post is absolutely correct.
Mung,
This post is pure unadulterated bullshit.
It frightens me somewhat that the same person can be so correct one moment, and so hopelessly wrong the next.
DNA_Jock, you’re part of the problem. Become part of the solution.
Welcome to your membership of the species homo sapiens.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, DNA_Jock is a god.
TSZ is a great place for origin discussions and for some philosophy stuff.
It is FREE enough on these subjects. not everything is free especially other subjects. thats okay. i was asked not to talk about other political/social stuff.
No problem.
As long as origin stuff is free thought and speech.
I notice unjust accusations from some posters against the bosses. if some were right they were trivial and not worth mentioning.
The silent majority like TSZ. It does better then many origin blogs/forums.
its hard for people to get along on important serious intellectual subjects of contention.
if you can’t be at peace with TSZ then you can’t be at peace with any blog in the universe.
I never hurt peoples feelings or comment on others. am I better then other people? or just know how to get along and keep my mouth shut.
Moderators respond by banning poster C.
😉
Eventually poster A is placed in temporary limbo for his many disruptive comments and his friend shows up to loudly protest the action as fascist censorship.
peace
Oh no! Can’t you see? It’s just like 1984! His life has been ruined–and soon they’ll kill him!
Awful fate for a well-scrubbed choirboy (‘My mistake!’). Fortunately, there is a man, a good-spirited and true-hearted follower of (some of) Paine, who will not only stand up to the murderous Commissars of doublespeak here, but will buy one and all a friendly brew.
May the brotherhood hoist a pint in good-fellowship as they curse their comrade’s ill-treatment! Thank the fates there are some among us who still value Liberty and Truth!!
Totally agree.
Definitely. Decisions should be data-driven. The issue, of course, is what should be measured. One KPI could be the number of comments that would have gone to Guano under both approaches. That’s a lot of work for the admins, and a bit subjective. Another is the number of off-topic comments, but without Guano there won’t be nearly the amount of meta-discussion. If it’s possible to measure, I suggest engagement, both in volume of comments and number of unique participants. Let the site run under my proposed rules until Elizabeth returns in November and see if there’s an improvement or drop off.
What do you think?
I think the goals are more important than the rules and, as I described in TSZ is Broken, the rules don’t currently support the goals. I’ll pick on colewd since he was heavily involved in the couple of threads I read. There is nothing that will ever convince him that he is wrong. He refuses to answer direct questions. He refuses to address evidence that refutes his claims. He moves the goalposts constantly. He restates previously refuted arguments. What he doesn’t do is park his priors by the door, nor does he participate in good faith. Usually, he manages to do all that without violating the letter of the rules. That’s much worse behavior than what gets moved to Guano.
That’s a fair point, but given that phoodoo has been censored for attempting to discuss moderation and that comments in Moderation Issues have been moved to Guano, the distance between UD and TSZ isn’t as great as it once was.
It could be. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be. The number of people here who want to prevent others from speaking is disturbing.
I hope Elizabeth will side with Enlightenment values in her ultimate decision.
I’ve got to strongly disagree there. After reading a couple of the more active threads end-to-end (not something I recommend to the faint of heart), I see DNA_Jock, Rumraket, Corneel, Joe Felsenstein, and John Harshman as the best that TSZ has to offer. I don’t know what value they get out of dealing with people who can’t understand the science and wouldn’t change their minds if they could, but they are definitely part of the solution.
Hahaha.
Patrick,
Oh, Jeebz. Just send them some money and hugs. Kisses too!
Weird though, that the person you really really REALLY most want to share a brewski with is the non-enlightenment value guy, mung. Hmmmm.
You never cared too much for KN on the nearly-Paine enlightenment front either, IIRC. I guess he didn’t make your drinking list OR your enlightened list. 🙁
Me neither {sniff} 🙁
Censorship, for sure, fascism not so much. It’s just petty abuse of admin privileges, apparently motivated by personal dislike of a particular member, that demonstrates that some of the admins don’t value freedom of expression. When you say “I support free speech, but….”, you’re saying you don’t support free speech.
I’m not personal friends with keiths, I only know him from interactions here. I’ve already noted that he can be abrasive. That doesn’t mean he should be subject to this behavior. How long do you think you’ll last if the rules are changed to allow keiths to be banned?
At the end of the day, this is a tiny blog focused mostly on a failed religious idea masquerading as science. Nonetheless, for a little while, it was a worthy example of how valuable discussions can take place among people with very different views, without censorship. Sure, it could be noisy and annoying and even infuriating, but that’s the price we pay for free expression and overall it worked. I was pleased to have a place to point people, even if I was no longer participating. I can no longer do that in good faith.
I hope Elizabeth chooses to align the site with that vision again. It won’t change the world either way, but one tiny bright light is a great reminder that censorship isn’t the only option.
Then you started abusing your moderator status.
My God, the sanctimonious bullshit is soooo deep in these posts. I’d ALMOST forgotten that side of you.
It was not intentional
The answer the second is yes by definition, the answer to the first is I don’t have enough information on why the second was not sent to guano.
One way to assure all posts are examined is through pre-moderation. It destroys any continuity of conversation and increases the amount of voluntary servitude of the moderators but it would eliminate one possible why.
C ‘s questioning the moderation is the exercise of free speech,it might be nice if he did not dredge up every past event from the beginning of time in support his speculations on the motivations of others, but everyone has a style.
The “how” of C’s wondering however is constrained by the rules. Rejection of those constraints is of course a choice ,but to then complain about A not being guanoed as some sort of justification for his own behavior , makes him a whining whiner in my view. A victim in other’s.
No problem for me, questioning moderation is a major difference in this site. I repeat ,it is not the questioning ,it is the how you do it.
Me either.
Well, I think everybody has noticed that enforcement is stochastic; “spotty”, some might say, “intermittent” even. But with a couple of notable exceptions, most commenters recognize the encouragement to self-editing that even intermittent policing provides.
Also, in certain cases, the following factors may be at play.
N.B. Cherry-picking a few blue cars that did not get speeding tickets does not constitute evidence of bias. You need to fill out the matrix for a decent-sized representative sample.
Patrick,
By A/B testing, I was thinking of some sort of side-by-side comparison, not a cross-over study, which would be problematic. It would involve allowing additional threads under Noyau rules.
The mechanics of this could be tricky however: I foresee shouting over the fence problems, and a whole new category of trolling. Also note that Noyau-rules reduces but does NOT eliminate moderation decisions and thus the opportunity to whine about moderation.
Need to think about it more.
You forgot biased and discriminatory
peace
Or you need to point out that folks on the police force either dislike the folks driving blue cars or not are around very much.
peace
I think that if people stopped responding to Bill that he would be rather harmless. If you are in a discussion with Bill and you feel he is not participating in good faith you can just suspend the discussion. No one is forced to respond to anyone else. Ignore is always an option. I just fail to see how any new rules or added “liberties” are needed to deal with such a case.
I don’t know that it would even be against the current rules to express an opinion that someone is not posting in good faith.
What I find interesting is those people who think someone else is being dishonest, or untruthful, or not posting in good faith, yet they continue to debate them. 🙂
This is true. Now if there were only some evidence of cherry picking.
I have seven years of observing the bias at work here. Lots and lots of cherries. So, obviously, I am a cherry picker. 🙂
You mean people who want to silence Bill, and Salvador, and fifth, and J-Mac?
I support free speech. Isn’t that why Noyau was created?
I agree. I think the same applies to keiths.
The rules explicitly say that people are supposed to assume others are posting in good faith, so I think that, even phrased as an opinion, it would be against the rules.
That’s some good evidence that we’re evolved apes, right there!
It was actually sort of created in error. I was looking for someplace to post random thoughts because some other place I habituated was closing down. Not knowing what Sandbox could be used for (I thought it was just for trying out latex and stuff like that) and not wanting to start OPs just to quote a poem or make a joke, I suggested a forum for that purpose. Maybe Lizzie thought I was looking for someplace to flame. So that’s what she created. I still used it as a catch-all place for awhile, but nobody else did, so it exclusively became someplace to call people assholes without getting in trouble. I think that’s kind of ridiculous myself, but that’s what happened.
🙂
I think I have seen cases where one poster has said to another that they are going to disengage because they thought the other poster was not posting in good faith and that was not sent to Guano. Maybe I will take some time to look through Guano and see if any such post has ever been sent to Guano.
Perhaps you are thinking of cases where someone comes here and deliberately or always does not post in good faith. I think you and I have even discussed that before.
Or at least put C under pre-moderation if C breaks the rules repeatedly in the process of “wondering”.
keiths has probably been on and off my Ignore list more than anyone else. When I can’t tolerate him any more I put him on it, but eventually I take him off again.
I don’t think he should be suspended, I’ve expressed that and my reasoning. Beyond that I don’t know what I can do. Apparently he was seen as disregarding the mods. So right now it’s where it’s at.
In an non moderation thread and ignored warnings to use the proper thread. Not sure one has any right to have his rule breaking comments published. Once published is a different matter.
One I believe was the post than still failed to be found acceptable by moderators. The others I believe were posts released by mistake while keiths was under suspension.
Maybe, Joe tested the limits of the experiment back in the day. Phoodoo is still posting. It seems like a bad argument by that data alone.
Did his friend also protest that many times A deserved to be guanoed but he wasn’t, therefore the moderators are prejudiced in his favor?
Yeah, right. His friend is kind of busy right now demonstrating just how enlightened he is. He’s got to stay focused on Liberty or we’re all in peril! He’s also due at some ‘Hillary was way worse!’ meeting.
Maybe try him again later on that.
Lizzie,
When the hottest topic in The Skeptical Zone is, year after year, The Skeptical Zone, you ought to know that there is something terribly wrong with the structure of the forum.
WordPress is the wrong platform. Alan Fox has looked at some alternatives. I know just enough to say that some of them are vastly better than what you’re presently using. Patrick, who seems still to be interested in TSZ, would do a fine job of preparing a report on some of the possibilities.
Do please bring a technology upgrade in your Second Coming.
Is your ‘math’ going to save the world then?
You have gotta go quantum now pretty boy…or else…
Or else what? These days, vague threats coming from the likes of you are not to be ignored. Are you going to park outside my home, gun me down with your AR, and sing praises to God Indeterminate?
Of course, you will say now that you were merely joking. But the problem is that I have good reason to believe that if the online persona you have constructed is not itself an elaborate joke, then the person entering the text is indeed deranged. The notion that I should not say as much, when confronted with a threat, is ludicrous.
What do you see as “problematic” about it?
I received an email from keiths about this specific proposal. Here it is in its entirety:
He followed that up with this subthread and this subthread.
Is your primary concern that lack of moderation could result in quality participants leaving TSZ? If so, that can be easily addressed by making it clear that this is a three month experiment and asking people to comment in Moderation Issues if they choose not to comment again until it ends.
You also need to consider the risk of losing quality participants due to overzealous admins. That chases people away for at least two reasons — first because of the volume of meta-discussion and second because no one wants to spend time writing something that may be arbitrarily censored.
The only moderation required by Noyau-rules is watching for the Bannable Offenses. That’s far less effort than Guanoing and generates far less meta-discussion.
This isn’t much to ask. It is possible to have a self-policing community. The current software doesn’t support that perfectly, but the Ignore button does most of what’s necessary. Social opprobrium can do the rest. All of the admins appear to be very upset about keiths in particular and their desire to control what other people can write and read in general. I very much hope that Elizabeth will take a step back, apply her usual calm and thoughtful approach, and keep TSZ free of the arbitrary and capricious “moderation” that has grown in her absence.
You mean you take responsibility for your own experience at TSZ? How can that be? 😉
You’re making me think you might not be a bad admin after all. You and keiths together would be an interesting team. (Yes, I’m serious.)
BTW, “disregarding the mods” is not against the rules (as I’m sure you know). If that’s the justification for his suspension, it shows just how much this is about ego and how little about what’s best for the site or most aligned with Elizabeth’s goals.
Technically, phoodoo wasn’t discussing moderation, he was making a point about moderation via the equivalent of performance art. Annoying? Absolutely. Rule breaking? No. That was just one example of admins taking a bit more power for what seemed to be a good reason at the time. It’s a good example of why clear rules are required.
It has long been a rule that comments in Moderation Issues are not moved to Guano. This was a clear overreaction by the admins.
I think it shows that the current admins let their egos get in the way of doing what’s best for the site. This is all about personality differences with keiths combined with a willingness to control what other people write and read. I hope Elizabeth comes up with rules that err on the side of free expression.
Tom,
I apologize for not including you in my list of people who bring real value to this site. I didn’t see you active in the couple of threads I reviewed. When I was participating here, I made a point of reading everything you wrote.
I’m interested in TSZ being available as a resource. I think it will be a much less valuable resource if the current administration trends continue. If Elizabeth would like a summary of possible alternative platforms, I have the background and willingness to provide that to her.
Regards,
Patrick
I’ll note that keiths is ascribing a motive to Alan. I did not think that was Alan’s motive at all.
My take on the situation was that these “no guano” threads were very difficult to moderate, because a high proportion of posts were against the rules. So I took Alan as wanting to reduce the moderation cost for those threads, and to also reduce the amount of backlash (complaints that would be posted to the Moderation Issues thread) that would occur if those threads were heavily moderated.
I’m a theist. I believe in the existence of rules that don’t exist. 🙂