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.
What’s going wrong? Well…
One: TSZ’s moderation is so bloody minimalistic that it may as well not exist. In the absence of active moderation, any online forum will eventually degenerate into a troll-and-spammer-infested cesspool; the only question is how long it will take for the last “good faith” participant to bail out. One might term this process “forum decay”.
Two: When assholes are allowed to spew their assholery without restriction, it tends to repel non-assholes. Participating at TSZ is a purely voluntary activity, and the more assholes there are, the more likely it is that J. Random Websurfer, upon seeing TSZ, will think Meh, I got better things to do than get into it with those fuckwads. The more prominent assholery is in TSZ, the more strongly TSZ will repel non-assholes; this is a pretty clear instance of positive feedback, and it’s likely a major mechanism of forum decay.
Three: While it may be a good thing for TSZ’s participants to presume that other participants are arguing in good faith, it is absolutely not a good thing for the site’s administrators to adopt that presumption. Because some people damned well are not arguing in good faith, and that’s all there is to it. The site rules (whether official or de facto) should be formulated with the full knowledge and acknowledgement that trolls and assholes do exist, and whenever they’re allowed to, they can and will disrupt the intellectual discourse that Lizzie seeks to promote. Whatever rules are adopted, the administrators should actively look for ways in which those rules can be abused by trolls, before those rules are actually implemented; because you know damned well that trolls will be actively seeking to abuse whatever rules may exist, and will actively abuse whatever “loopholes” they find.
cubist,
I think this is right. The problem is there has NEVER been a good moderator here since the beginning. And I think that includes Lizzie.
I don’t really believe her when she says she started this site as a way to hear all sides of the skeptical debate equally. I think it has always been about just promoting the atheist agenda, like so many other sites. So you have guys like Alan and Neil who have just been along to aid her in that endeavor.
But Alans display has been perhaps the most repugnant. For one, everyone here knows he has just been dying (along with Neil) to pull the trigger on keiths, because keiths has been critical of them, and they have just been looking for an excuses and they finally found one they can spin to make it sound like their are just making sure not to infringe on any libel laws. What a fucking joke. How stupid does Alan think people really are.
Then when its pointed out that lots of other academics have been attacked on this site long before Keiths called out Swamidass, SUDDENLY the whole libel panic is just brushed aside and forgotten. “Libel laws, what libel laws? Oh thos, Alan says. Well, those are just there for the rich really, nevermind now…” he is such a blatant hypocrite.
On top of all this, Alan just a few months ago announced is is giving up the role of moderator here. Now, like a flash, all of the sudden “I am back! Did I say I wasn’t moderating anymore? What, who where? No, no, that’s not what I meant, I meant…Look, another squirrel!”
Nobody was begging you to come back Alan. I don’t think one single poster said, you know what this site needs, it needs Alan back as a moderator. Not one person wrote that. No one (not even the skeptic faithful choir) said, we need Alan back with his bias and vengeful interruptions, THAT is what TSZ needs more of.
But Alan is never one to let a non-invitation stop him, we have learned that much for sure.
Heck, Mung VOLUNTEERED to be a moderator, when calls went out to replace Alan, so then at least there could be one voice from another side, and somehow no one seemed to listen to him.
So as far as I am concerned, Alan coming back just to take revenge on Keiths, but not giving one shit about insuring civil discourse here-that’s one of the biggest black eyes on a site full of many bruises.
The Guano, Noyau, and Moderation threads concentrate and encourage moral outrage and hence should be removed from TSZ, They should be replaced by private channels to the moderators for complaints about posts or posters.
Moral outrage is a strong emotion that we feel when we hear or read something that we think has violated some moral rule. It can motivate people to shame and punish those who they have perceived to have broken the rules.* The text-only nature of internet discussions increases expressions of moral outrage when compared to face-to-face communication.*
The poster may rationalize posts expressing moral outrage as having a positive motivation, but recent work indicates the motivations are complicated and include some that are self-serving.
Further, expressions of moral outrage run directly counter to an explicit goal of TSZ:
— From the site rules
Expressing moral outrage runs against this goal because it separates people by emotion, and so acts against open, non-judgmental discussion to aid in the discovery of common ground.
Any review of the material in guano, noyau, and the moderators threads will find numerous expressions of moral outrage. Furthermore, concentrating such posts in one thread serves to increase them and the expressed moral outrage since it makes it more likely that others will feel the need to respond to express their own moral outrage.
Hence eliminating these threads should be part of any change to TSZ.**
——————————————
* These points are paraphrased from Arthur Brooks’s “Disconnected” podcast , which also inspired this post.
** This Squawk Box thread is an especially egregious example of concentrated moral outrage, but I omitted it from the list because I assume it is temporary.
cubist,
Amen. Great post.
BruceS,
Not sure I agree about there not being a moderator thread. That seems to me bad for transparency. But no site rules should be allowed to be broken there. If anything, people should be MORE polite in a forum about civility rules and how community is understood here.
And, yes, Noyau is a terrible idea. Should be shut own immediately. And any OP largely about moderation issues, unfair treatment or the like should be guanoed. The moderation forum is perfectly sufficient for that stuff. No need whatever for the rest of the site to be garbaged up. This should be the last one for a generation. As very well said by both of the last two posters here, the more any discussion site gets gummed up with meta discussions the more it might just as well be any nuts site: i.e. it becomes substanceless.
To me, transparency means that posters should be able to ask moderators about their actions. But the channel for doing so does not have to be public. That only leads to an echo chamber of moral outrage.
Many of the posts in this thread seem to take the view that TSZ can be fixed by tweaking the rules and the moderators. Such complexification is wrong. Simplification is needed. That’s obvious from any look at the history of the site and at other sites that do achieve the goals EL has set for TSZ.
The site rules say you should “park your priors”. Taken at face value, this makes no sense. How can one have a discussion without bringing some beliefs to it?
I think that what EL meant was that one should avoid bias when assessing the evidence from conversations on the site and update one’s priors accordingly. Only simplified rules will lead to those types of discussions..
But simplified rules can only go so far… Interesting article at Atlantic on whether one can be trained to avoid cognitive bias.
Lizzie’s off hiking currently but I’m sure she will be thinking about possible changes to her experiment and she is open to ideas.
At least you and Sal took an interest (and Neil) The Elkarte forum is still there. if anyone wants to look. I’ve only just checked and one good point is it isn’t cluttered with spam.
Patrick already suggested”fud”. See here
And Flux.
And SMF
There’s also discourse but I’m not impressed. Too teenage with the badges and voting.
I have put in another request that Lizzie consider a forum, maybe running in parallel to start with.
No, I don’t think that’s sufficient for transparency. Suppose, in a response from a moderator, an annoyed poster gets this: “Why? Because I think you’re an asshole, that’s why.” Or “I don’t feel like telling you.”
The meaning of transparency is pretty clear, and private confabs don’t provide it.
I was surprised by his reemergence myself. He hasn’t explained that at all. At least we know why Patrick is here.
Hi everyone,
Cubist’s remarks on forum decay made a lot of sense to me. So I’d like to propose a simple rule for TSZ: no matter how interesting and/or contentious the topic of a post may be, limit the number of comments to 250 and limit the length of the discussion to one week. That would limit the damage caused by forum decay, without sacrificing any of the benefits that an unrestricted discussion might confer. For my part, I’ve yet to see a thread with more than 250 comments yield any new insights on any topic of debate, and I tend to tune out when I see discussions going on for days and days, so I don’t think we’d be losing anything by implementing such a rule.
What do people think?
Maybe she could use some company?
BruceS, that’s a very nice post and I agree with the majority of what you say. It seems to me though that there is a moral component to every argument.
People generally think that what they are saying is true.
It is in fact that case that …
And people generally think that if what they are asserting is true, that it ought to be believed.
If you don’t believe me, there is something morally wrong with you.
I just don’t know how we are going to escape this and the moral outrage (opprobrium) that naturally follows from it.
For those who don’t believe in objective morality, think again. Your words betray you at every turn.
As far as I am concerned accusations of moral failings are indeed against the rules, but enforcement is grievously lacking.
I think that’s an interesting proposal worthy of consideration. Would the moderators be allowed to close comments.?
😉
There should be a private appeal procedure that allows posters to privately involve all other moderators and even EL.
(ETA: I should have made it clear that if the moderators delete a post, they should privately notify the poster with the reason. I also think the rules should be simplified as I posted at the top of the thread: libel, hate, porn, copyright, using UK laws as basis. So this notification need not be long).
If EL trusts the moderators and they trust each other, that is enough.
I’ve seen many sites which allow comments. They delete comments as they feel appropriate. They don’t have (ETA: public) places for people to complain that I have seen. Except for TSZ. Which is hardly a success story.
I have a distinct feeling that ‘ arguing in good faith’ is subject to Optimism Bias….
I have written about it:
From what I have been able to observe, and even test, to a degree, the great majority of commentators at TSZ, UD and many similar blogs, come here to support their preconceived beliefs… They don’t come here to learn something new, unless it is within their belief system…
Anything that threatens their well-established beliefs is either rejected, mocked or ignored….
This can be easily tested, as I have done many times at TSZ, UD and many other blogs…
Why do people do it?
The easiest way to explain this phenomenon is by what one psychologist calls Optimism Bias.
While studies and experiments proving Optimism Bias are focused mainly on health risks, such as smoking, cycling and how our Optimism Bias affects our decision making processes involving health or injury risks, Optimism Bias can very well apply to the great majority of evolution/ID bloggers…
Just like Optimism Bias studies have revealed that our increased knowledge of the health or injury risks doesn’t change much our view of those risks (our awareness of the danger of smoking or cycling increases slightly) Optimism Bias makes us believe that those dangers are more likely to affect others and less likely us…
Similarly, the great majority of bloggers here often apply the Optimism Bias in the discussions…
They rely on their preconceived ideas. For example:
Evolution must be right and therefore common descent must also be right and so on
ID must be right and therefore evolution must be wrong
Abiogenesis must be right and therefore ID must be wrong
Humans have an immortal soul, and therefore religions that don’t teach it, must be are wrong
There is no experimental evidence to support some views but he/she will use Optimism Bias to ignore it and say that soon there will likely be such evidence… and so on….
Antony Flew, a professor of philosophy and a long promoter of atheism and evolution for over 50 years said the following after he has changed his mind and accepted the existence of a Creator:
” We must follow the argument wherever it leads us…”
In other words, we MUST not use the Optimism Bias and “follow the evidence where we would like it to lead…
The goal of scientific research, as well as religious, should be to find the truth, not to support preconceived ideas… Does it?
To accept this, one has to be honest with himself/herself…
It’s up to each one of us to do”
ETA: whenever people don’t hear what they came here to hear they get upset, they mock, ridicule and complain… instead of providing evidence for their beliefs…
Because in the great majority of cases no such evidence exists, OPs were speculations abound become the most popular… unless someone insists that evidence should be provided…
That’s when the whole hell breaks loose with people whining, mocking and using abusive speech…
About the No Holds Barred test.
I have some reservations about the proposal to suspend the rules for a period in order to try things out. I can’t promise that I would not seek to actively undermine the exercise by trying to generate flame wars.
just sayin’
Speaking of which, I don’t often see flame wars here. Is it because we’re such great people?
Don’t mix the role of admin with moderating actions.
It’s still the case that I have limited time during the summer months, especially August, but I agreed with Lizzie to act as caretaker on back-office stuff (as it doesn’t take much time) indefinitely. The heatwave means stuff I should be doing can’t be done so… As walto knows, I did also make some effort recruit new admins. But Neil has been carrying an unfair burden (no slur intended to VJT or DNA_Jock, I’m sure all those who have TSZ’s interest at heart are grateful for any input) recently. In the out-of-the-blue situation that developed, I felt I had to intervene. We’ll have to wait for Lizzie’s thoughts on that.
I recall Patrick asking me “are you serious?” when mung made his offer to join the admin team some time ago. Well, why not? If mung is serious now, I’ll see Lizzie is made aware.
If I haven’t already mentioned it, Lizzie has already stated in discussions she intends to collate, streamline and perhaps amend the rules set.
I am interested. But you guys would be taking a risk because my actions will get noticed. A lot of stuff that slides by today wouldn’t. Adding me would be a tacit endorsement of stricter application. Elizabeth might need to monitor me for a while.
I say though that we wait to see what changes if any are wrought to the site rules. But keep me in mind.
I guess what I could do is post a links in Moderation Issues to posts that I think I would Guano so that folks could get a feel for what they might be in for.
Mung,
I’m reading that as a serious offer. I’ll pass it on.
And to me.
Funnily enough, early on in TSZs history, I suggested threads should close to comments after a certain time (it’s an option in WordPress software) to cut down on spam. We have pretty good spam protection now and (with a few exceptions – cue mung) leaving threads open indefinitely has not caused a problem. And TSZ comment threads can stray a bit off-topic sometimes with little harm done.
I’m not sure what the advantage would be but…
Lizzie’s blog – Lizzie’s choice! 🙂
Sorry–not convinced that’s sufficient. Anyhow, I agree with the rest of your suggestions.
Hahaha. Awesome.
“Let’s have a drink, mate! I love you!”
“WTF? That guy?! Are you out of your mind?!”
So typical. Quintessentially Painesque.
FWIW, I wrote this just a smidge over three years ago.
If anything has changed, it’s that it’s gotten a bit worse. Now we have this squawk thread and J-Mac’s meta thread too. It’s just all either moderation talk or complete garbage.
A tale of two forums:
This is about the two forums (both using forum software) where I have spent considerable time:
Forum 1: Any post complaining about moderation is immediately removed. Any user who persistently posts complaints about moderation is banned. There is a private channel for raising and discussing complaints about moderation. Overall, this forum works pretty well.
Forum 2: There is a “whine” thread. This forum has had occasion melt-downs due to complaints about moderation.
That goes without saying, trolls will be trolls.
walto,
Also this:
General comments:
(1) We should switch to using forum software rather than blog software. It is better suited to the kind of debates that we have.
We could also keep the blog, with new blog posts only for public discussions. There could be an associated forum thread when there is a new blog post.
(2) At least for blog posts, all new posts should require approval before publishing.
(3) Public discussion of moderation is a mistake.
Moderation will always be spotty. That is the nature of the beast. We allow the police some discretion on whether to write a ticket. We allow umpires some discretion in when to call a penalty. Moderators also need some discretion. And there will always be disagreement as to whether they used their discretion appropriately.
(4) Moderators need the ability to suspend a user for a cooling off period.
(5) There should be a channel where a user can privately contact the moderator team to protest a decision.
Come on, walto! Why don’t you face the facts?!
What are you afraid of?!
TSZ was set up to speculate about what evolution could have done, and not to review experimental evidence proving evolution… If such evidence existed, it would be in IDiest face constantly… Just look at the bacteria LTEE. This is the best Darwinists have and bacteria are still bacteria…
Look at C. Venter’s mycoplasma experiment that was announced as if it was a creation of an artificial life… It’s bs and even Venter said himself…
Show me at least one of the bloggers here who has done anything even remotely close to Venter’s… and yet, because of his experiential work Venter doubts not only common descent, he even said that ‘there would have to be thousands of common ancestors that don’t look so common…’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c43ckMLN50Q
What we have here at TSZ is an attempt to support an ideology that is presented as science… It’s supposed make the supporters of Darwinian ideology feel good… It’s not going to prove ID wrong or Darwinism right…
It’s impossible… WE. Lonnig has proven over 40 years of experimental work that mutagenesis experiments do not produce anything new… a tomato is still a tomato and a dog still a dog…
Mutation breeding, evolution, and the law of recurrent variation
http://www.weloennig.de/Loennig-Long-Version-of-Law-of-Recurrent-Variation.pdf
99% of people here at TSZ couldn’t careless what the evidence is, IF IT CONTRADICTS THEIR BELIEFS…the proof of Optimism Bias…
All the discussions here are bs because in the end they lead to one main premise: we would like TSZ to function as long as our belief system is safe…
That’s why keiths got banned, that’s why my OPs got censored, and that why the discussion on the new rules drags on pointlessly…
BTW: keiths deserves the ban but not for exposing Dr. Swamidass’ unfounded beliefs…
This thread was 5000+ comments long. If you were to put certain people on ignore like Glen Davidson, Keiths, Entropy, DNA_jock, you’d actually see it was a quality thread and it was maybe only 2000 comments long with the ignore button. Some people high up in the ID community were impressed with some of the exchanges:
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/common-design-vs-common-descent/
Similarly for a Thermodynamics thread:
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/in-slight-defense-of-granville-sewell-a-lehninger-larry-moran-l-boltzmann/
Both topics were highly technical and required discussions of that depth and breadth.
Hey Sal,
I’ve read the thread on thermodynamics and some of the comments…
I have a related question:
In your view, in the expanding universe, is its entropy/information increasing or is it constant?
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in the universe increases with time… If this is so, the information in the expanding universe constantly increases too…
Where does the information come from to describe the constantly expanding and changing universe? The information to describe the state of the universe at the big bag doesn’t equal the information to describe the universe now, does it?
No it doesn’t.
No??? I thought it did…
So entropy in the universe is constant? Or does it decrease with time?
J-Mac, you have made a number of references to “Optimism Bias”, when I think you would be better served by sticking with “Confirmation Bias” which is even more widespread and recognized. That’s what I think you really mean, anyway.
If you are a Christian, yakking on about people’s psychological tendency to believe the version that promises the better future seems like something of an own goal .
Mung,
Can the same information describe the state of the universe at the big bang and the state of the universe now?
Give me one real reason why I should care what you think…
You don’t even know what Optimism Bias is…
I don’t believe things will get better when Elizabeth returns. 😉
Mung,
Here is my favorite experimental physicist, Dr. Maybe, speaking about the 2 Law, big bang and entropy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGs4C60FR68
A story like that has gotta be true…
Going for a workout… I can’t read the same thing over, and over again…
J-Mac, I’m not going to derail this thread talking about entropy. Maybe a new OP is called for. 😉
I really hope you’ve got that programmed into a macro. Save you a bunch of time, since you don’t care what anybody thinks, and that remark constitutes about 75% of your posts here.
I mean, if you DO happen to care what one or two people think here, why not just email them your insights instead of clogging up this place with stuff that seems incoherent to everyone else? I mean, you seem to keep forgetting that 98% of the populace here (call them “the sentient cohort”) doesn’t care what YOU “think” either.
Pretty much got the possibilities covered there. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Interesting argument, the repeated communication of a point which is about moderation would not be discussing moderation if phoodoo’s admitted arguing about moderation could be thought of as the equivalent of performance art.
Likewise not actually insults about Neil’s family but an artistic exploration and exposition of the point that under the thin veneer of courtesy in society lies a drooling cretin ready to emerge at any provocation.
I can see that. And I am all for encouraging creativity from phoodoo. It is common knowledge that his palette was always pretty limited ,lacking nuance or substance. But lately, and I take no joy is admitting this, it been sort of sad to see the struggle.
Perhaps but have you considered that Neil, seeing that phoodoo’s art,while interesting in a what one might describe as a childish, even infantile, way, was standing at the precipice of another humiliating defeat, created a lifeline.
Through the use of warnings and then guano ,he created a dramatic tension which gave the boring repetition of theme depth. Phoodoo,to his credit, quickly added additional layers to his victimization,” he was just quoting people”, and by the evidence that we are still discussing it, the art gained immortality.
Shouldn’t we then conclude that if Neil is guilty of anything, he is guilty of caring too much?
I agree though without any moderation clarity of unenforced rules seems to be a moot point.
I do like this thing about performance art.
How do we get from moderators suck to the laws of thermodynamics?
newton,
🙂
newton,
He’s quite the drama critic too!
I was asking mung and not making statements… Can you see my original statement in comment to Sal?
Or should I point you to it?
Sorry… I have been trying to get the answer from Sal on 3 different threads now….
Does everyone agree that there should be no free speech for racists?
I feel like you are running away… I was really hoping you, or Sal, would correct my views…
Why don’t you start an OP on the theme?
I could be fun in comparison to the farmer’s wives’ association nonsense….