Red Diamond Threads

[Akka]

Absolutely. One of the major reasons why I start so few threads here is that I prefer my threads to stay on-topic and not get derailed into nonsense. Even OPs that literally beg people to cooperate and not drag the thread down into the muck are often ignored.

This, and the message of Ajidica, are about one of the aspect of the point that have been several times mentioned in this thread and, for now, constantly avoided by the mod : how the moderation infract the appearance but not the content, leading to actually more disruptive behaviours.

When people ask for MORE moderation, it's usually about THIS kind of moderation - infracting people who actually disrupt the discussion, because the content of their message is bad (not respecting the OP's rules or destroying the conversation through bad faith/stupidity).
It's NOT about making the moderation even tighter, but making it focus on better targets.

And as said above, what makes me very doubtful about the future of this RD thing is that the moderation simply seems to dance around the actual issue, not answering this main point, while it should be at the center of the actual discussion. Basically re-enacting the exact same kind of behaviour that is decried, in fact.

 

[Mise]

My stance again: let's see how it goes. If there are big problems with mods' use of the RD, then let them know when the problems have actually come up. No doubt they will make mistakes, but wait until they do to have a go. I suspect they won't make many.

I don't understand why this is preferable to just making it optional outright. Would my thread benefit from tighter moderation? If yes, RD a thread. If not, don't. Where's the problem?

If you're reading a thread and you're thinking, "hmm, this thread would really benefit from tighter moderation", start your own thread, with a decent OP, and put an RD on it. I don't see why we can't have a two-speed OT with an opt-in RD. It gives everyone what they want!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I didn't bother to read past the first page as there's too many posts. But I think this is a good idea. And I hope it works. I hope quotewarriors who pick on things like words and silly things are one of the things moderated as those can be annoying.

 

[Takhisis]

I think that the Red Diamond status should be left to the choice of the OP.

 

[Kozmos]

Ze tyranny continues!

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Is it against the rules to say that this is a completely idiotic and unnecessary step in the moderation of this forum? I mean, if the board's moderators are interested in looking more like Internet Nazi's, they've done a fine job of it.

1.) If a board needs moderating, you use the report button. So this measure is redundant.
2.) The moderators pick and choose who and when they'll move against a reported violation anyway, so what makes anybody think this is going to be any different than what is going on now? As the rules so cleverly describe, rules violations are a matter of their subjective opinion. So what changes?
3.) If this is a means of making sure serious threads stay serious, then I hate to tell you this, but in your rules that you link me to every time I am penalized say we're only supposed to make serious threads ANYWAY! Because this is some kind of professional internet forum or whatever...

The basic motivation behind the Red Diamond is a sort of toned-down version of a forum split. A lot of people like the idea of splitting OT into a "serious" OT and a "less serious" OT for ease of use. A lot of other people don't like the idea of fragmenting OT and losing its cohesive "culture".

Is this really what you're looking for? Let me help you a bit moderators. Do what every other message board on the planet does: Off Topic (General Discussion), and a News and Debate board. Your Off Topic section here is basically a News and Debate board. You have little stinky sulfur smelling farts of relief that you've thrown out to the board as tokens, which allow no spam, no trolling, no form of substantive entertainment than this faux HAHAHAHAHA that you get in a couple threads every now and then (but let's get real here, nobody is ever really laughing...). And, I'm not so sure if you guys actually read the sight feedback at this place, but apparently it's driven away posters, and detracts from the quality of this board a significant amount by being so completely and totally rigid with your rules, no forum on the planet exists like this. You want to segregate while keeping things kosher, make a News and Debate forum and let some antics take place in Off Topic. Ya know, let people actually have fun if they want. If making a separate thread for News and Debate is going to kill the cohesiveness of this board, then don't you think the cohesiveness and camaraderie has already been killed? Or never existed in the first place?

Once the system is in place and people are used to it, the hope is that people posting in Red Diamond threads will know to maintain a higher level of discussion.

Um, I don't know if anybody other than me is paying attention. But, uhhhhhhh, this is the internet!

This is not some colloquium with Justice Sotomayor, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Thomas Sowell, and William Safire discussing the ramifications of globalization in a post-industrialized world at Harvard for broadcast on CSPAN 3. It's the internet. Stop trying to take it so seriously. What, are you going to just lock out people who are unable to provide substantive intellectual input in an internet debate in your efforts to maintain a high level of discussion in these threads too?

Anyhow, isn't there some secret elitist society that exists in the underground here anyway for all the elitist intellectual types anyway? Can't they commiserate there and privately talk about how stupid the rest of the board is while everyone else actually enjoys themselves in a genuine OFF TOPIC SECTION!

 

[Birdjaguar]

I have to apologize for not responding Sunday and Monday, but i decided I needed a couple of days away from all this. I will add some comments tonight. Yesterday, I did spend some time in chat with North King, Lucy, Perfection, Bill, Azale, kraznaya and others I don't remember (and one I do ) talking about the RD effort.

Ihank you for your comments; I will try to include them as I go along.

 

[Birdjaguar]

A couple of caveats:

Stepping away from all this for two days gave me a chance to get out from under the details and to revisit the larger issues. Such perspective changing is generally a good thing.

I am moving post by post through the thread without looking ahead, so that can make my replies at any moment "out of date".

Lucy (and maybe others) raised the question of this thread and how it is divorced from the staff discussion about this thread. she expressed an interest in finding a way to have the actual staff discussion made more public and perhaps participatory by members who are interested. The word "ombudsman' came up as a possible solution.

An ombudsman is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests.

This issue is a huge one all by itself and I am unwilling to try and tackle it here. It raises questions about how decisions are made, who should have input, could limit staff input that often is tied to specific posters and generally recolors the discussion. Good question, but I am not up to that task at the moment. If I am allowed a bit of humor here: Such member participation would slow down the brutal efficiency of our current process. Laugh even if you don't get it, because it is quite funny.

Anyway, here we go.

I think there's space for non-serious discussions about serious topics. I don't like the idea that every thread about a serious topic need be serious itself. I also think there's space for non-serious posts to interact with serious ones in a manner that furthers discussions. There is a need to speak truth to power (or OPs) and humor can play a helpful role in this need.

I don't really like the idea at all. I, and everyone else, already has the power to ignore posters that are too frivolous, disruptive, or what-have-you. I don't need more.

Are we trying to quell fun and humor in RD threads? Absolutely not.
Could we? We could if we do it badly.

Those who are most vocal want an opt in. OK, it is on the table.

I think this has the potential to be a really good solution to the problem of OT moderating being simultaneously way too harsh and often too lenient. As it's proposed, though, it sounds an awful lot like a gimmick to sell moderation just getting even stricter.

If the new crackdown is not accompanied by relaxation of the recent standards of moderation in not-specially-indicated threads, it's not going to help anything.

It is a gimmick, but one which is designed to allow the most appropriate moderation for each thread.

Better (tougher?) moderation where we get most of the complaints and less rigorous attention in places where is is not really needed. The clear RD designation is to be that divide. The opt in option muddies the water and because it allows for discussions that are just like those we have now that cause 80% of our problems. It is not an impossible situation, just one whose solution will be more complicated.

I agree, if we take a hard line in the RD we do need to offer back lots of fun elsewhere or we fail. that has been the intent all along.

I agree that this is a horrible plan. Especially the first quote. I suppose having two threads for all sorts of topics could be overkill, but hell it's not like we don't have that sometimes already. Forcing all threads on topic X into this new extra-moderated format just because some mod decided it was SRSBZNS is ridiculous.

Why not let the "market" decide? So what if there's a casual discussion about something that can be discussed seriously? If there's demand for serious discussion, a thread will be made and posted in. Thanks for giving us the venue. Now let us choose to use it.

You and others (see especially post 95 by mark1031) raise the very interesting question of whether OT members in general really want more than just entertainment in their OT threads. If that is true (no need for serious discussions in OT at all) then the whole nature of OT and its moderation get called into question. that is a discussion worth starting in OT. make it a RD test thread?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I think you guys have lost sight of things here. Please, hear me out:

Reading intent is difficult even when you have the person in front of you and can see their body language and hear their tone. Given that, how on earth do you expect that you can determine a person's thought process (i.e. whether or not they are trolling) based off of lines of text in an internet forum?

See, I've been an actor long enough to know that the way you read something can completely skew your perception of it. And having read it that way, it's going to be extremely difficult to change your point of view even when it's been pointed out that it might have been read in a different way, and even when the writer protests over and over again that they didn't mean it in the way you construed. Say you're talking about relationship troubles -- the difference between "You need to get some balls!" and "You need to get some balls!" is literally impossible to communicate with text. And yet it's the difference between a barbed insult and good-humored encouragement!

You see, that is why you give people on an internet forum benefit of the doubt. You don't do it because you think "Well, as long as the board only has 2 of every 100 posts being trolls, we'll be okay, so we just need to clamp down on the blatant ones." You give them the benefit of the doubt because it's impossible to truly determine someone's intent. There have been times when I'm unsure of whether I'm being trolled on this board or not, and I ask the person in question, and they quite reasonably tell me what's what, and serious conversation continues. And we move on, and the thread continues, and everyone, more or less, is happy.

i agree. Intent is very difficult to know and as a rule I think mods do not try to infract for intent, but for the words on the page. Each mod, though, is a bit different and, well, so it goes. I do know for a fact that overall, we do give posters the benefit of the doubt.

Suddenly you want to say that you people have been gifted (from who knows where) the ability to see these things exactly? And that you can determine if someone is a troll or not? That you can tell a borderline post is a troll instead of a serious comment? What if you're misreading their intent? What if you're just unaware of an alternate meaning of a word? What if you plain old don't like them and are more inclined to read malice into innocent words? You can't honestly tell me that you can really see where they come down, all the time.

We cannot all of the time, but most of the time, with core posters we can. When you spend as much time as the OT mods do, looking at reported posts and reading threads, many many patterns show up. We read threads differently as mods than as posters, because we are not looking to post a response. We are responding to a complaint. You might compare it to playing a game and play testing a game. Your perspective is different if you are doing your job as a tester.

And the thing is, you're trying to implement this in serious threads. Why do you think threads are serious in the first place? Yes, about 10% of "serious threads" are ones that deal with philosophical debates where the most impassioned someone gets is gesticulating with the cane their university gifted them upon graduation.

But roughly 90% of "serious threads" are stuff about politics, religion, faith, science, nationalism, etc., etc. These are topics that people get fired up and passionate about. Passion, as I probably don't have to tell you, is something that is very frequently indistinguishable from rancor. Any poster should be able to wear their heart on their sleeves during a political debate. Because, heck, I think the "abortion is a matter of killing babies!" is a ludicrous line of reasoning, and I will explain exactly how. I'm not going to pull punches in a debate in which I think the opponent wants to take away women's rights in a sexist repression of half of society. Do you really think that a debate in which one side thinks the other is murderers and the other side thinks their opponents are sexists isn't going to have a lot of borderline posts? A lot of borderline posts that are basically the content of the thread?

And yes, you can clamp down on those. And you'll probably still have threads with content.

But guess what. They'll be bleached of real debate. It'll be palsied, an emaciated, etiolated pile of garbage that will not in any way resemble real world debates. Because political debate, at least in a forum full of the young and idealistic, is something which we care about, and not something in which we should have to reign in everything.

Now, I'm not calling for you to abandon standards. Obviously not! If someone were to literally say, "you're a murderer for supporting X", you should probably warn them. Or if someone posts something completely out of context, like, "Well you're fat and frankly ugly," then that obviously has no place in political debate. But posts which say stuff like, "you are ignorant of the issue," or, "you need to do more reading," or, "Argue my bloody point and stop dodging the issue," are all things which you should honestly expect in a political or economic debate.

And for some reason you're suggesting that ALL threads dealing with such issues should be moderated with an even heavier hand than the recently increasingly strict moderation that already permeates this forum.

Are you guys really that astonished that a lot of people think this is a horrible idea?

So where/how do we draw the line on what is civil?

Can you write me a rule?

What is the standard to be?

 

[downtown]

I'm not sure if I'm board with this idea yet or not...I think I'll need to see some data. Either way, I really do appreciate the OT mods willing to take some risks and experiment. If it doesn't work, oh well, we didn't break the place, we can fix it.

 

[Takhisis]

Could we have a Saffron Triangle for Serial Threads?

 

[Birdjaguar]

A truly famous post.The part about how sanitizing threads about passionate topics will destroy everything rings especially true.

Sanitizing has never been part of the staff discussions.

It is clear to me that the goal of the people who are in charge of this site and people like me have diverged. Have any of the current Admins ever once made a post that is humorous or even worse - a light hearted jab. The idea that you will control the style of the posts to drive the herd into more appropriate discussion sounds like a lot of fun. I forget, are we here for fun or to move forward the cumulative wisdom of mankind. As I pointed out there is now an army of mods that sometimes surpasses the number of actual members logged in-absurd.

Do the mods/admins even know what they want? There seems to be a major concern with protecting the sensibilities of the younger crowd. Do any of you know/remember how 14 yr old males behave to each other, what a PG-13 movie contains, what is available on the internet to 14 yr olds? I agree that you certainly need moderation or people would be screaming obscenities at each other and sites like that are worthless but biting sarcasm, and humorous jabs are both a time honored art and part of normal conversation and life, especially for 14 yr olds.

Its really a shame as I have not found another site with quite the eclectic mix of individuals and sufficient critical mass to keep going. Oh well it is sort of like CivV at some point good things just go bad.

BTW I am a 51yr old Science Professor, not a class of individual known for overly raucous humor or lack of seriousness. God only knows what the target audience is for the site envisioned.

Mark once again you raise the important big picture question of what is the purpose of OT as part of CFC and has that purpose changed? Certainly the membership has grown up; some have matured; others less so.

Are the staff and members diverging towards some untenable juxtaposition?

OT has changed substantially since 2006. Most noticeably in its size and activity. Is it time for TF, the admins and mod staff to rethink OT and come to a decision about what happens here. Is the old model the right one for the site and the vision of the leadership? Or does 10 years and 2MM posts make a difference?

Like you, I am way over the average age of the OT regular posters and have a decade or so on you, but find the mix of minds here pretty interesting. I run a business for a living. I think that OT, as it stands today, is suitable for anyone who likes the idea of an interesting and varied on online community. Community life should be fun and challenging. have we moved off that mark in recent years?

So, BirdJaguar, since in our private discussion you implied this move would resolve the issue we talked about I'd like to ask a question.

If someone makes a Strawman argument or one of those lovely "So you are saying ..." posts, I can report that post in a diamond thread? Or does this mean I have to suck it up and not be able to tell the poster who posted such rubbish exactly what I think of that rubbish?

Because the kind of post I am thinking about clearly meets this criterium: "For moderators it will mean that in these threads they will be vigilant for any posting that disrupts the civility of the discussion."

I would say that straw man arguments should be moderated. If you can find a civil way to admonish such a tactic in public, that might be just fine too. In the past most of those responses are not very civil though.

The thing is, it can be used to facilitate SRSBZNS by cutting back distractions and idiot dogpiles. It can also be used to turn a contentious, passionate topic into a sober, impassionate topic. It can also be used to ward off potential trolls from certain topics (e.g. topics about ghosts or veganism or living on an eco-farm, etc), by threatening them with harsh mod actions.

In otherwords, RD has the potential to be used in many different ways, to many different ends. Mods should be indifferent to why we're using the RD icon; they should just enforce the rules more stringently in those topics, and let us decide what the purpose of using the RD icon should be. Dropping the goal of "serious discussion" and being absolutely clear that this is only about tighter moderation will allow us to decide whether RD'ing our threads will be good or bad for our thread.

"Would my thread benefit from tighter moderation?" If the answer is Yes, put an RD icon on it. That's how we should be using it.

Thank you. Good points.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You're missing an excellent opportunity to devolve some of the decision making from moderators to users. Some users want more moderation in threads: Great! Those users can now put a Red Diamond on their threads, giving them exactly what they want. Other users want less moderation in their threads: Why not have a "Green Diamond" or something, where users can opt-in to more leniently moderated threads?

Instead, you've gone the opposite direction. You've said, "all serious topics must be discussed in RD threads, with stricter, more severe moderation". It's a huge missed opportunity.

Point noted.

The OP clearly states that the end goal of this is to remove any kind of frivolity or passion from serious topics, by making them all Red Diamond threads.

Hmmm... I don't recall actually writing anything of the sort.

Since this is a trial, why not make changes to it now, instead of sticking steadfast to a plan that many users categorically reject? Afterall, it's just a trial, right? So what's the harm in dumping the "forced RD" aim now? Let us decide whether we want to use it.

And as I said in the OP, we will not force all discussion threads to be RD at the start. We began with "opt in if you want" as the default even though the intent was to migrate all discussion to RD in the end. Clearly it is out for discussion.

If you want to complain about moderators forcing your threads to be RD, then please wait until we actually do so. Thanks.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Could we have a Saffron Triangle for Serial Threads?

I like it.

On that note, I will take a break.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Moderator Action: fifty chat posts deleted.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This bit of the OP has come up:

Can I start an old style OT discussion thread that does not have all these new restrictions?
For now you can. Soon though we will require that all “serious” discussion threads (determined by the mods) fall under the Red Diamond moniker and those who start a political discussion or economics discussion etc without it, will find that the thread is closed or we have added the designation and moderated it to the higher standards. We do not know how long that transition will take.

Plotinus in his generosity has tried his best to cover my tracks. Thanks, but I did write that and post it. It was a key question in my thinking about how to recreate the forum split within a single place and have a clear line of demarcation. The reaction to it has been strong and worthy of at least rethinking about the answer provided.

Perhaps the question should be rephrased in a new context. Food for thought.

 

[Birdjaguar]

That actually catches me up. Thanks for your patience in this.

 

[Takhisis]

This bit of the OP has come up:

Can I start an old style OT discussion thread that does not have all these new restrictions?
For now you can. Soon though we will require that all “serious” discussion threads (determined by the mods) fall under the Red Diamond moniker and those who start a political discussion or economics discussion etc without it, will find that the thread is closed or we have added the designation and moderated it to the higher standards. We do not know how long that transition will take.

Plotinus in his generosity has tried his best to cover my tracks. Thanks, but I did write that and post it. It was a key question in my thinking about how to recreate the forum split within a single place and have a clear line of demarcation. The reaction to it has been strong and worthy of at least rethinking about the answer provided.

Perhaps the question should be rephrased in a new context. Food for thought.

I'd say yes, people could opt to start a thread with a serious-sounding topic and 'turn off' the heavy moderating by not putting in the red diamond.

 

[JollyRoger]

Thanks for taking the time in reading and responding to our feedback BirdJag.

 

[LucyDuke]

The opt in option muddies the water and because it allows for discussions that are just like those we have now that cause 80% of our problems. It is not an impossible situation, just one whose solution will be more complicated.

...

You and others (see especially post 95 by mark1031) raise the very interesting question of whether OT members in general really want more than just entertainment in their OT threads. If that is true (no need for serious discussions in OT at all) then the whole nature of OT and its moderation get called into question. that is a discussion worth starting in OT. make it a RD test thread?

Obviously we want some SRSBZNS discussion, or none of us would complain that we can't have SRSBZNS discussions. And yeah, we want to be allowed to wiggle in wiggly threads. And we'd like a pony.

This gives us the option, though: opt in allows for discussions that are just like those we have now. Discussions we can participate in or abandon in favor of an RD venue.

And as I said in the OP, we will not force all discussion threads to be RD at the start. We began with "opt in if you want" as the default even though the intent was to migrate all discussion to RD in the end. Clearly it is out for discussion.

If you want to complain about moderators forcing your threads to be RD, then please wait until we actually do so. Thanks.

It would probably help a lot if you confirmed that was no longer inevitable, even if still a possibility.