Dr Elizabeth Liddle conceived, created and grew this website to the success it is today. It was a new idea. Many other sites can be found where a particular worldview is being promoted or a particular sphere of interest draws people of like interest. TSZ was intended to address the problem that Lizzie saw first-hand at other sites I and many others watched her participate in. Her being turfed from one well-known ID blog was partly the catalyst to trigger this venture.
However Lizzie’s inclusiveness, readiness to put all her energy into taking all at face value in an attempt to achieve real understanding must have sapped her enthusiasm and she has been an elusive figure her in recent times. A huge distraction, I believe is that some participants don’t share her optimism that listening can be as effective as talking when promoting ideas. Dialogue has always been Lizzie’s aim; attempting to see and understand a different viewpoint.
To that end she framed a mission statement, supported by rules of engagement to facilitate productive discussion between people of widely differing opinion. She decided to be a benevolent dictator, inviting participation from anyone with an opinion to voice, news to bring for discussion, scientific discoveries to announce and explain, philosophical arguments to popularize, even religion to promote or criticise. Personally, I think this was a brave and worthwhile effort in view of the increasing polarisation that pervades modern politics and that entrains extremism, insult and ad hominem rather than reasoned argument.
During Lizzie’s absence there has been some dilution of these ideals and the signal to noise ratio has declined. I hope that Lizzie returns soon to reaffirm the ideals she set out originally. I suspect that the wrangles over moderation, argument over moderating decisions, enforcement and non-enforcement of rules don’t encourage her return. So I’m proposing a solution.
I invite ideas from anyone who shares Lizzie’s ideals on dialogue (or who doesn’t) to propose in the comments any suggestions that they think would help to improve how TSZ operates. The rules could possibly benefit from being collated in one place, as later amendments are scattered over several threads. What about a competition for the most concise and elegant summary of the aims, rules and guidelines? On her return, Lizzie could pick a winner, or she could cherry-pick from the best efforts and this would also save her time and hassle that she could better spend setting the World to rights.
So, ideas please!
My first plagiaristic attempt at a rules summary:
Attack ideas and not the people who hold them!
Another idea that Neil has suggested is to add a forum format. I also think this would be good to try. In fact I already did set up a forum using the Elkarte template to act as a demonstration. I invite all interested members to play around with the functionality. Anyone wanting to tweak it, just PM me for the permissions.
Edited 26/01/2018 17.41 CET to add an on-line poll:[democracy id=”2″]
So no practical help then in the short term?
I came back to this comment to agree with keiths that moderation is a big part of both the written and actual rules. It is on topic for this thread.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
For me it’s about improving the quality of the posts and comments. Unfair application of the rules will eventually cause the high quality commenters to participate less and encourage the low quality commenters to participate more. That’s the beginning of the end for the site. For purely selfish reasons, I would like to see that reversed.
ALurker,
There’s no rule about being on or off-topic in general but there is a specific rule that moderation issues are discussed only in the moderation issues thread. Discussion here is about what works and what doesn’t work in general and what might be done to improve and encourage rational discussion across a wide range of view.
We are all egoists here!
Making statements that are completely false should be against the rules.
Then you found out that you had none, and made that clear to the rest of us. Game over.
fifthmonarchyman inspires an additional rule:
Commenters are expected to support their claims with reason and data. Failure to do so will result in repetitions of those claims being moved to Guano.
(Yes, this is a serious suggestion.)
I really, REALLY hope you’re joking. phoodoo as a moderator would destroy TSZ in days. The only good that could come out of it would be that the high quality commenters would leave en masse and perhaps end up at a site where the rules are encourage them rather than people like phoodoo.
Certainly for the Thomists it is, but any religion that requires faith acknowledges that reason and logic can’t get you all the way there.
I say it’s not a claim.
Does that mean you are accusing me of lying?
peace
vjtorley seems like the best possible candidate from the theist side, if that’s important. Of course, the disk space for Moderation Issues answers would need to be increased. (I kid because I love, vjtorley.)
of course you know that biblical faith is something adding force to an argument in addition to reason and logic.
It’s simply trust in what you have concluded based on reason and logic.
peace
It was about an attempt to teach religion in public schools. In science class, no less.
I live in the US and the bumpkins haven’t learned anything. They’re still trying to get their religions into public schools.
What a surprise, another one you’ve got backward. If there were evidence, reason, or logic supporting the existence of any god, I wouldn’t be an atheist. It was the lack of that which led me away from my faith.
No one was ever argued into being a theist. That’s all about feelings and desires (and family).
You know there are historical records of that data, right? Check out Weather Underground. It’s a fun site.
I have a humble suggestion.
Why not limit the the number of comments a person can make in a particular time frame?
How about 5 per day for everyone but OP authors? I know that I post more than I should simply because I feel the need to respond to every single question and slight.
A limit would force me to focus on what I feel to be the most substantive comments and let the rest slide.
That alone might serve to bring up the quality of the discussion here
peace
keiths’ delivery can be crusty but certainly not deserving of banishment. He contributes far more to the meat of the discussion than either J-Mac or phoodoo.
Another rule suggestion: Moderators should not demonstrate bias against any participant.
That is where my data is “mostly” coming from.
The problem is that they don’t share past forecasts AFAIK.
They disappear just as soon as their accuracy can be judged against actual data.
peace
I did not qualify faith but essentially what I said.
If you know for sure your logic is true then why is trust, a feeling, necessary?
We need to take this elsewhere
What would you think about making it a rule? When someone demonstrates they aren’t parking their priors, the comment goes to Guano?
I think this one is important, despite the grey area. It’s also important to be allowed to address the poster when their behavior doesn’t support rational discussion.
How would you recognize it without calling it out. This is why I think the rule should be “participate in good faith” rather than “assume good faith”. The change allows the moderators to take action against bad actors.
The “About this site” page allows that already:
“My name is Elizabeth Liddle, and I started this site to be a place where people could discuss controversial positions about life, the universe and everything with minimal tribal rancour”
I’ve given a few in this thread. For example:
Enforce parking your priors.
Enforce behaving in good faith.
Enforce supporting your claims.
Disallow clearly dishonest statements.
Moderators should not show bias.
I’d add:
Make all rules clear.
Enforce all rules fairly.
Do not allow moderators to add rules ad hoc.
Disallow repetition of refuted claims.
You’re going to need more moderators.
No one, aside from the site owner. The moderators are already responsible for the quality of the site, this suggestion just makes it more explicit. When you let idiots post comments that ignorantly mock high quality commenters and then Guano the high quality commenters when they get fed up, you’re making the quality worse. Nip it in the bud.
Certainty is a gift that is not that often bestowed in this universe.
Faith is the gift given persons that allows us to function in a world where certainty is not ubiquitous.
Consider it an oracle that solves the halting problem
peace
Here’s the definition:
What you say is wrong. I don’t care why and choose not to speculate.
You make the point that this rule would need to include definitions of terms and a reference to the expected standards for rational discussion. It still wouldn’t let you avoid supporting what you say.
It seems that discussions like that follow me around for some reason at this site. 😉
peace
I’m not doing what is described in the definition for claim instead I’m assuming
quote;
verb (used with object), assumed, assuming.
1.
to take for granted or without proof:
to assume that everyone wants peace.
Synonyms: suppose, presuppose; postulate, posit.
end quote:
from here
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/assume
Now if we were to have a rule against assuming or presupposing that would be interesting
peace
That would certainly benefit you, thanks to Brandolini’s Law.
The bullshit asymmetry: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
— Alberto Brandolini
So you’re simply assuming your conclusion. That’s a logical fallacy and has no place on this site. TSZ is for rational discussion.
It’s not a conclusion it’s an assumption I’ll abandon it just as soon as it’s been demonstrated to be false
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
peace
What about all the other assumptions you do not hold that also have not been demonstrated to be false? What’s different about all those?
um……. I don’t hold them
duh
There are probably an infinite number of possible assumptions and a finite number assumptions that we actually hold.
peace
Given that, is it possible that the assumption you do hold is not quite true? True enough to be convincing to you but given the infinite number of very very similar ones, unlikely to be the actual one?
Can we conclude this idiotic thread now?
Here’s my view: Everyone should stop crying about rules and moderation. People should be allowed to say what they really believe, even if that belief is based on an assumption that the opposition is “acting in bad faith”. I really don’t approve of the attempt to get ffm banned, or silenced, or his posts guano’d.
He’s simply telling us what he really believes. I think what he believes is borderline psychotic and delusional, but it seems to me he’s being honest when he says it. I appreciate that. I’d much rather talk with an honest nutbag, than with a con-man and charlatan like Sal Cordova.
All this crap about what kinds of assumptions we should make about what the other person is thinking/trying to achieve is artifical and nobody lives up to it. It really just looks to me like a convenient tool to use to try to goad people into breaking the rules so you can silence them by force. And I hate that.
The future of TSZ should be to get rid of these stupid rules that really only serve to stifle discussion. Much more energy is spent arguing about rules and moderation than on actual discussion about the issues. If you don’t want to argue with deluded people, why are you even here? And yes I know all you creationists would say the same thing. So let’s just drop all the stupid pretense and get back to the various subjets.
Is presuppositionalism insane?
Is there common descent?
Is natural selection a coherent concept that can be verified empirically?
I don’t feel a need to have to try to force the opposition to talk to me in a certain way. If I get tired of hearing their shit, I put them on ignore for a while.
Thank you for your time.
/Rumraket
What ultimately makes a discussion website are the participants.
To the extent the moderation policies and rules drive away good participants and lets bad participants persist, the website dies. The problem is deciding what is good and bad, because tastes are all different.
But, let’s go back to VJTorley’s thread where both Dennis Venema and Richard Buggs made an appearance and Joe Felsenstein and Tom English and John Harshman were present. That’s a good thing to have.
That’s why I think, as far as rule changes, certain threads should be policed heavily. Needs change from discussion to discussion. I don’t believe in one-size fits all rules for every possible venue.
That’s why I advocate, thread authors run their own threads and set the rules and who can participate. If Franken-JoeGallien doesn’t like the way I run my thread, nothing is stopping him from creating his own thread and running it the way he wants. Uniform moderation and equal opportunity participation is a means of forcing people to read Franken-Joe drivel. If a would-be Franken-Joe shows up, he can start his own thread, but if no one wants to engage him because he’s such flame-thrower with no substance, that’s his problem.
This rule change is fair. Everyone can get on their own podium with their own auditorium. Readers are free to visit the venues they want to participate in. If they don’t like the policies of the thread author, they can simply go to another thread run the way they like, or better yet, start their own thread and run it the way they see fit. That’s easier than having a mod at TSZ doing all the moderation work.
That’s a good list,
I really don’t see how this would be possible. We all have buttloads of priors, and parking even a small fraction of them is hard. Enforcing the parking of priors would require moderators indulge in motive-mongering of the worst sort.
That’s not actually a rule. Same enforcement problem as above.
Aha! This one I like. See below.
One man’s clearly dishonest statement is another man’s, err, gospel truth.
Well, I think they should show slight bias in favor of minority views. Emphasis on slight.
This is difficult, and not as important as some believe.
Hierarchy = Safe, fair, fun. Context matters.
Nope. I’ve gone a few rounds with keiths on this very subject, and the aim of a moderator should be to uphold the spirit of the laws, not the letter. This means that they will sometimes have to create new rules out of whole cloth.
This I agree with. Enforcement would be challenging, but I agreed with Patrick in the whole Burden Tennis “Support, Retract, or JMO” debate.
I’ll say.
Bitching endlessly at the moderators makes recruitment difficult.
[insert reffing analogy here]
I want to add another issue. One of Lizzie’s rules was no commenting on what happens at other websites. This rule has been massively violated, and I have been one of the violaters. I see why she put that forward, as she wanted to have a reasoned discussion of the intellectual issues, not an argument about people’s behavior at another site.
But I think that it was an unrealistic rule, and that there needs to be a place to openly discuss arguments that come forward at sites like UD and places like ENV (from now on, I guess, to be referred to as ENAST) as commenting in those places is either handled unfairly or not allowed at all. That includes saying that person X argued Y at UD, and here’s why that isn’t a good argument. So I advocate continued violation of that rule. And I practice what I preach, in that case.
(Your comment is going to get Guano’d, I suspect.)
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. I just want to see the rules enforced fairly.
I’m not sure that keiths is correct when he says that eliminating all the rules is an optimal solution. I think there’s a good chance that it would work better than the unfair enforcement we have now. Is that what you’re suggesting?
There’s a distinction between discussing general principle of moderation, and complaining about a specific instance of moderation. The latter belongs in the moderation thread.
That makes things simple.
We now need two moderators — a creationist and an evolutionist. The creationist moderator blocks all posts that creationists see as completely false. And the evolutionist moderator blocks all posts that the evolutionists see as completely false.
So nothing is ever posted. The discussion remain serene (and empty).
ALurker:
Just to be absolutely clear, I am not suggesting the elimination of all rules. Just those relating to the guanoing of comments.
Second, I am not claiming that it’s an “optimal solution.” We don’t know what the optimal solution is.
What I am claiming is that judging by the evidence to date, it looks far better than the current scheme and is worth a try. Moderation has always evolved at TSZ, and I doubt that anyone thinks that the next scheme we settle on will be the final one.
If a no-guano approach actually turned out to be worse than the current approach, we could reverse it. If it turned out to be better, but with room for further improvement, we could tweak it.
It’s an interesting idea, stcordova, but it effectively involves surrendering the TSZ ‘brand’, such as it is, to each individual who is allowed to author an OP (a whole other topic: I believe OPs should have to meet a fairly strict quality bar, and no, that isn’t censorship.)
Most of the participants here are capable, I reckon, of setting up their own discussion board, under their own rules. And, if they really don’t find value in TSZ, that’s what they should do. One of the appeals of TSZ is the supposed uniformity of moderation here. That draws eyeballs.
I would go along with your suggestion, on two conditions:
The OP author is expressly forbidden from making the first comment, or two or more consecutive comments on their own thread, and
I, DNA_Jock, get to decide where different OPs get themselves located on the landing page.
Just kidding. Your suggestion would lead to truly lame-ass cross-thread sniping, DDoS attacks, etc.
Joe Felsenstein,
Agreed, the peanut gallery rule is a mite silly, and was often breached. I think that, since its editing, it is more of an exhortation / guideline than a strict rule.
DNA_Jock:
Worse than that, it runs counter to the aim of free and open discussion. As I said yesterday:
Those two would be banning people right and left from their threads.
Yes that is why I hold it tentatively. I’ll abandon it as soon as I’m given sufficient evidence that it is not true
When I see the expression (1+1=X) I assume the solution is 2 until given good reason to abandon that assumption even though there are an infinite number of solutions that are very very similar to the one I assume to be correct.
A tentative assumption is simply assumed to be correct until it’s abandoned due to sufficient reason to doubt it’s correctness.
peace
I have interpreted that to allow discussion of topics that are raised elsewhere. I don’t see how we could prohibit that.
My take is that we should not have cross-website debates. That has been violated too, but mostly in relatively minor ways.
It takes two to tango
No I wouldn’t because now I have the ignore button which I didn’t have at UD. Further TSZ is not my money-making writing, just my editing sessions.
I take great pleasure in you wasting hours of your life reading what I say and you writing responses that I’ll never read. You suffer by reading what I write, but I don’t suffer reading what you write. That’s a good deal for me. 🙂
If we’re going to have moderators, and particularly moderators like Alan and Neil who simply cannot resist the temptation to abuse their privileges, then we need to have a better policy in place for dealing with such abuses.
One nice feature of my proposals is that each of them either a) severely limits the ability of moderators to indulge in such abuses, or b) diminishes the impact of such abuses.
I agree.
But when God is blasphemed or my faith is slandered here with impunity It’s my privilege to set the record strait.
The best way to minimize these discussions is to avoiding doing those sorts of things
peace