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it is time to rewrite the rules of this forum, as the current rules are out of date and not really being enforced rigidly anyway. this thread is for rule suggestions and discussion. final approval will be up to the mods and admins but we welcome any and all input on the baseline expectations for the forum. as a refresher, here are the old ones: XyloJW posted:This is the forum for Debate and Discussion! Current events, regional political discussions, general political discussions, and controversial issues are all welcome here. General forums rules apply. and here are the general rules of the forum: FactsAreUseless posted:Hello, GBS! These are the general SA forums rules. These are also the rules for GBS. Please read them. now's your chance to do constitutional playacting, nerds. enjoy
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Mar 31, 2019 04:25
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I know it's already generally understood, but I feel like there should be a codified rule about "posting about posting." It's a pretty common probation reason and there's nothing in the rules about it.
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Mar 31, 2019 04:32
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Motion to include in the constitution of our great dictatorship of the proletariat that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle and anyone who says otherwise is wrong? Perhaps slightly more seriously I can't honestly think much of any rule changes I've ever felt were particularly lacking, is there something in particular that everyone gets probated for that you think should go in the rules? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 04:40
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I'd suggest a collary to Effort Being Met with No Effort Is Bad : Effort does not equal good posting. If you make me read 500 words to say nothing but 'my vocabulary is bigger than yours' you may get a time out.
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Mar 31, 2019 05:32
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How about "assume everyone is arguing in good faith until they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they aren't"
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Mar 31, 2019 06:51
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I think 'Don't Post In Bad Faith' is better. Bending over backwards to assume someone is making a good faith post just leads to circular arguments when they aren't.
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Mar 31, 2019 07:20
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That's probably a better wording of it, yeah. As long as actual bad faith posting is punished quickly, hopefully people will naturally assume that the people who don't get probated are indeed arguing in good faith.
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Mar 31, 2019 07:40
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A further exploration of what "effort" entails exactly would, indeed, help. A rule against brigading into and out of C-SPAM would be nice, too.
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Mar 31, 2019 07:43
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Isn't good faith/bad faith more of an enforcement thing than a rules thing? It's kinda hard to differentiate between someone who'd just wrong vs someone who is deliberately wrong.
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Mar 31, 2019 07:47
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what is the purpose of the debate and discussion forum? the rules should flow on from that. i'd describe the current set as intending to facilitate good-faith debate on contentious issues, essentially by removing posters who troll or derail. the big overall tension is between 'attack the idea, not the person' and 'some people suck really bad and it's not fair to punish someone for calling them out'. i think you need to be careful to avoid tipping too far one way or the other – and recognise that rules can only ever be part of the solution. the forum's 'culture' is created by all of its posters, it can't be set at the top. one potential gap is the rules' assumption that every thread is a big serious debate about big serious issues. i see d&d threads falling across a few categories:
i'd say that the current rules have been a vast improvement over the previous set, which was a long bullet-pointed list of specific stuff you weren't allowed to do. having just a few principle-based rules means you mostly avoid freaks rules-lawyering or 'trapping' others into getting punished by being really annoying. it gives mods plenty of discretion, which has basically worked fine. in conclusion, 
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Mar 31, 2019 09:04
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How does the moderation team feel about enforcement in general? What is considered worth enforcing to you? I'd like to see this answered before I get into any new rule suggestions. At the very least, No cheerleading, No parting shots, and Effort being met with no effort is bad should continue to be rules and should be more rigidly enforced. I would also like to see more enforcement of the global low content and worthless posts rules.
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Mar 31, 2019 09:29
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What's basically being asked by "post in good faith" is "don't troll." This to me is much easier to get across than telling people not to make ad hominem attacks or other logical fallacies. Brigading is covered in Forum Fuckery for the overall site rules, but should probably be brought to greater attention because we have a minority who dislike one or the other subforum as a den of center-left scum/stalinist scum. Because of frequent problems, breaking rules in a current events thread should be a minimum 3 or 7-day sit-out, and people should expect escalations to 30-days if they can't get the message. Certain problem threads would probably be better-behaved or at least easier to read if penalty box times were longer. It is not wrong or bad form to post tweets from your feed to a maximum of 20 posts once every few days (I've seen people rage at the idea of Twitter feed posts), as long as you are prepared for people to take issue with your sources. Editorials and analysis are more useful than breaking news. There doesn't appear to be an official rule for threatening or plotting to kill public figures, even though I know it's enforced. Only admins should be closing discussion threads. Don't go into a current events thread and ask what happened today. This is white noise in already fast-moving threads and we assume you can read the news aggregator on your phone in your own time. About the only disallowed political "philosophies" are Neo-Nazism/racism. Otherwise, posting just to remind everyone that a poster is part of X group and therefore they should shut up is very bad. Name Change fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 12:38
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I'd like to add an example of bad faith posting I see in the venezeula thread frequently. Someone will make an argument, and another poster will respond with "read the OP". This is bad faith posting because the other poster clearly disagrees, but intentionally leaves his disagreement unclear, leaving the first poster to either refute an entire long source or try to guess what in that source the second poster thinks refutes his argument and then arguing against that (followed by the second poster saying "no I wasn't arguing that don't put words into my mouth") To make things short, I guess I would say that if you want to reference or source something for an argument, you need to make clear what part of that reference or source is/feeds into your argument
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Mar 31, 2019 12:47
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I put a lot of work into revising the Book Barn rules recently, some of them might have ideas that would transfer: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3875825
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Mar 31, 2019 13:48
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A "don't take this poo poo too seriously" rule would be good but I don't know how you'd codify that, really. People on this forum tend to get super wrapped up in things and kinda lose sight of how we're just posting on a funny joke forum rather than waging an ideological war in the streets or whatever.
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Mar 31, 2019 14:06
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Grapplejack posted:A "don't take this poo poo too seriously" rule would be good but I don't know how you'd codify that, really. People on this forum tend to get super wrapped up in things and kinda lose sight of how we're just posting on a funny joke forum rather than waging an ideological war in the streets or whatever. The problem with that is that this isn't the sports forum or the games forum or the hobby forum, it's the politics forum. And politics has literal life and death stakes, so when you get nuclear hot takes along the lines of "people don't deserve universal healthcare" it's kind of natural to expect people to push back hard against that kind of thing and saying we should write it off as "eh, don't take anything too seriously" seems like a troubling idea.
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Mar 31, 2019 14:09
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How about "don't be an rear end in a top hat", "don't poo poo all over a thread just because you're desperate to score a debate win", and "try contributing something new or interesting to a thread rather than essentially posting the same thing over and over again for literal weeks"? Yeah, they're all vague, but there's no point in setting out hard rules and fixed lines in an entire forum of people who make nitpicking and semantics-lawyering into their loving hobby. The QCS thread showed that it's at least possible for people to step back and dial down their arguments and derails for the sake of not ruining the thread - all we need is for people to exercise the same level of care in D&D.
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Mar 31, 2019 15:43
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Condiv posted:I'd like to add an example of bad faith posting I see in the venezeula thread frequently. Someone will make an argument, and another poster will respond with "read the OP". This is bad faith posting because the other poster clearly disagrees, but intentionally leaves his disagreement unclear, leaving the first poster to either refute an entire long source or try to guess what in that source the second poster thinks refutes his argument and then arguing against that (followed by the second poster saying "no I wasn't arguing that don't put words into my mouth") We started just saying "read the OP" because we had to deal with a revolving door of shitposters every two days or so who would ignore all cited sources, explanations, and refutations of propaganda sources. These posters tended to be ignorant of literally everything about the context of the thread, so directing them to the OP was the only way to not have to repost the same series of detailed explanations (which would be ignored) every time they appeared. This speaks pretty eloquently to the "effort being met with effort" issue, in that strategic, relentless ignorance and bad sources can be weaponized against posters with direct subject matter knowledge and effort. Getting people to at least read the OP and use it as a basis for discussion (including, of course, disagreement with the OP) might be a useful rule in that respect.
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Mar 31, 2019 18:32
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Something about not posting in bad faith would be good to have in the rules explicitly, and it should have some examples such as: immediately assuming the worst or least charitable interpretation of a post instead of asking for clarification; ignoring requests to clarify a post; ignoring counterarguments completely; ignoring requests for data/references/citations; ignoring provided data/references/citations; and shitposting really hard to try to get a thread shut down (hard to define that but the mods should know it when they see it).
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Mar 31, 2019 19:02
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captainblastum posted:Something about not posting in bad faith would be good to have in the rules explicitly, and it should have some examples such as: immediately assuming the worst or least charitable interpretation of a post instead of asking for clarification; ignoring requests to clarify a post; ignoring counterarguments completely; ignoring requests for data/references/citations; ignoring provided data/references/citations; and shitposting really hard to try to get a thread shut down (hard to define that but the mods should know it when they see it). Could this be said as, just because you believe something doesn't make the other person wrong?
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Mar 31, 2019 19:11
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What is even the point of having an explicit set of rules when one of the explicit rules is "We didn't write all of the rules down, if we think your post is bad we'll probate regardless of whether it breaks a rule?" I'm not even saying that's a bad rule, a culture of "The mods know bad posts when they see them" is fine for me, but if we're going to continue to have a catchall rule, what we need isn't a set of rules that warrant punishment, but a guideline of ideals that should ensure mods think your posts are good.
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Mar 31, 2019 19:18
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captainblastum posted:Something about not posting in bad faith would be good to have in the rules explicitly, and it should have some examples such as: immediately assuming the worst or least charitable interpretation of a post instead of asking for clarification; ignoring requests to clarify a post; ignoring counterarguments completely; ignoring requests for data/references/citations; ignoring provided data/references/citations; and shitposting really hard to try to get a thread shut down (hard to define that but the mods should know it when they see it). Ignoring requests for references is a pretty big pet peeve of mine, but I suspect that's something mods don't want to deal with because it's a thin line between showing receipts and gish galloping and they don't want to be swamped verifying the data is relevant to the conversation.
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Mar 31, 2019 20:44
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Discendo Vox posted:We started just saying "read the OP" because we had to deal with a revolving door of shitposters every two days or so who would ignore all cited sources, explanations, and refutations of propaganda sources. These posters tended to be ignorant of literally everything about the context of the thread, so directing them to the OP was the only way to not have to repost the same series of detailed explanations (which would be ignored) every time they appeared. Quoting the parts of the op you think apply is almost 0 effort. You know what’s in there, you know what parts you think are an appropriate counter argument, and the source is easily at hand. When you say “read the OP” you’re dismissing an argument as the person just doesn’t know what’s in the op or they’d agree with you (which is assuming your side is right considering how obviously biased the op is in favor of the opposition and intervention) The op is not an unimpeachable source of information and you should not assume that a poster who disagrees with you has not read the portion of the op (which you are allefgic to citing properly) just because they disagree with you
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Mar 31, 2019 20:53
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Yes, sure, Condiv, but in these cases the people in question were, in fact, literally ignorant of everything the OP covered. They had no material or argument to raise against assertions by the OP - no impeachment occurred. They just kept asserting stdh.txt, after being corrected multiple times with specific references and sources, even so little as a page back. They weren't engaging with the information available; they were there to shitpost. Their repeated unwillingness to engage with or respond to the information already available, both in the OP and from other sources, was a strong indicator of bad faith. That's the point. Setting aside the Venezuela thread as a specific case, repeated refusal to engage with common sources of information can't be rewarded in discourse, or else the person posting in bad faith controls and dominates the space. It's analogous to the paradox of tolerance, or the right to play. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 20:56
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Discendo Vox posted:Yes, sure, Condiv, but in these cases the people in question were, in fact, literally ignorant of everything the OP covered. They had no material or argument to raise against assertions by the OP - no impeachment occurred. They just kept asserting stdh.txt, after being corrected multiple times with specific references and sources, even so little as a page back. They weren't engaging with the information available; they were there to shitpost. Their repeated unwillingness to engage with or respond to the information already available, both in the OP and from other sources, was a strong indicator of bad faith. That's the point. i don't think shitposting to counter shitposting is going to make any thread better. and "read the op" is pretty much is a shitpost. it requires 0 effort, adds nothing to discussion, and provides no counter-argument (when it's clear that you disagree with the poster in question) in other words, "read the op" remedies nothing, and is the same useless whitenoise you claim to be upset about as such, it should be treated the same. if you have a counterargument that relies on the source, quote what you think addresses the other poster's argument. if the other poster is shitposting, don't shitpost back.
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Mar 31, 2019 21:16
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Condiv posted:i don't think shitposting to counter shitposting is going to make any thread better. and "read the op" is pretty much is a shitpost. it requires 0 effort, adds nothing to discussion, and provides no counter-argument (when it's clear that you disagree with the poster in question) Then maybe just have "clearly did not read the OP" probatable. Then such a post can be reported without an empty "read the OP" response.
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Mar 31, 2019 21:36
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Condiv posted:i don't think shitposting to counter shitposting is going to make any thread better. and "read the op" is pretty much is a shitpost. it requires 0 effort, adds nothing to discussion, and provides no counter-argument (when it's clear that you disagree with the poster in question) There's a beautiful parallel happening right here. Again, this is what people did, the first ten times. It kept happening, and the shitposters wouldn't bother to read or respond to the linked sources of information. The shitposters set the standards for the high road, and then took the low road- and then continued to assert the bounds of appropriate discourse, along one axis. This is difficult for moderators to catch, because it requires recognizing that users are flouting the material that is the subject of the thread- and it can take knowledge of the same thread material to recognize that pattern. I agree that something like Absurd Alhazred posted:Then maybe just have "clearly did not read the OP" probatable. Then such a post can be reported without an empty "read the OP" response. is a decent framing response...but it varies by thread, and depends on a trustworthy, knowledgeable OP like the one we have in the venethread.
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Mar 31, 2019 21:44
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Then maybe just have "clearly did not read the OP" probatable. Then such a post can be reported without an empty "read the OP" response. as i said, the op is not unimpeachable or unbiased. if you assume that the poster in question didn't read the op because they disagree with you, you very well may be wrong. so I don't know how you'd claim they "clearly did not read the OP" unless you quoted the specific part of the OP you think proves them wrong to them and they absolutely refuse to address the argument (or anyone in the thread) and fill the thread with whitenoise Discendo Vox posted:There's a beautiful parallel happening right here. Again, this is what people did, the first ten times. It kept happening, and the shitposters wouldn't bother to read or respond to the linked sources of information. The shitposters set the standards for the high road, and then took the low road- and then continued to assert the bounds of appropriate discourse, along one axis. shitposting in response to shitposting doesn't make the thread better. quote:is a decent framing response...but it varies by thread, and depends on a trustworthy, knowledgeable OP like the one we have in the venethread. see this is where we differ. I do not find the OP trustworthy. I find it has a very specific narrative and pushes that narrative hard. frequently in threads you're going to have 2 or more sides to a debate, and saying "the OP" is trustworthy and unimpeachable accepts the arguments of one side as the unquestionable truth. Condiv fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 21:45
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Condiv posted:as i said, the op is not unimpeachable or unbiased. if you assume that the poster in question didn't read the op because they disagree with you, you very well may be wrong. so I don't know how you'd claim they "clearly did not read the OP" unless you quoted the specific part of the OP you think proves them wrong to them and they absolutely refuse to address the argument (or anyone in the thread) and fill the thread with whitenoise That's...what they did. They didn't try to impeach the OP, they just ignored it and kept posting already refuted shitpost statements.
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Mar 31, 2019 21:46
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Condiv posted:as i said, the op is not unimpeachable or unbiased. if you assume that the poster in question didn't read the op because they disagree with you, you very well may be wrong. so I don't know how you'd claim they "clearly did not read the OP" unless you quoted the specific part of the OP you think proves them wrong to them and they absolutely refuse to address the argument (or anyone in the thread) and fill the thread with whitenoise It's often clear when someone has no idea what they're talking about to the point there's not even a basic framework for a conversation. If you're saying that's impossible to adjudicate, then might as well shut down D&D as impossible to moderate. 
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Mar 31, 2019 21:46
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Discendo Vox posted:That's...what they did. They didn't try to impeach the OP, they just ignored it and kept posting already refuted shitpost statements. and shitposting in response doesn't improve the thread discendo vox Absurd Alhazred posted:It's often clear when someone has no idea what they're talking about to the point there's not even a basic framework for a conversation. If you're saying that's impossible to adjudicate, then might as well shut down D&D as impossible to moderate. gonna have to disagree with you here alhazred. we can't expect the mods to be experts in every topic on the forum, and the mods should not be taking the side of the OP of the thread and handing out punishments for people who don't accept the framing of said OP. sure, people who are not contributing to the discussion, ignoring every post in the thread and just posting junk, that's easy to discover. and punishments should result from that. likewise, posting "read the OP" is posting junk and should be punished. if you believe the op addresses the argument, you can cite the appropriate section. that's a simple, easy to reach minimum bar of effort Condiv fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 21:56
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Here's an example that I think is illuminating. A few pages ago, this was posted: https://twitter.com/anyaparampil/status/1111705925533003778 And the thread spent the entire next couple of pages attacking the source instead of addressing the actual thing being brought up, which is that Abrams quote is horrifying. No matter that it was entirely consistent with Abrams' rhetoric re:Venezuela, the most important thing was discrediting the source to shift away discussion from the implications of the quote. That's bad debate and discussion. Squalid posted:whatever anyone thinks about that journalist the statements about Elliot Abrams intentions with regards to US policy vis a vis Venezeula are entirely consistent with his statements as reported elsewhere. The important issue is not who is reporting it but if those were his actual words. Even if they were just made up he's basically said the same thing other places so its not like these are controversial arguments. . . WampaLord fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 22:03
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It's often clear when someone has no idea what they're talking about to the point there's not even a basic framework for a conversation. You're right, and that's why you shouldn't weigh in on what makes good rules for dnd (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 31, 2019 22:06
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Just replying with "read the OP" isn't terribly conducive - it would be better to assume that the person is trying to discuss it in good faith, and is willing to learn more, but wouldn't know what specifically to look for in the OP. Then quote a specific part or parts of the OP. And if they aren't acting in good faith and ignore it, the moderators should deal with it. I think that that's the real root of this specific issue - the mods are just letting people shout "read the OP!" and "no it's bad!" at each other instead of moderating.
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Mar 31, 2019 22:36
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WampaLord posted:The problem with that is that this isn't the sports forum or the games forum or the hobby forum, it's the politics forum. And politics has literal life and death stakes, so when you get nuclear hot takes along the lines of "people don't deserve universal healthcare" it's kind of natural to expect people to push back hard against that kind of thing and saying we should write it off as "eh, don't take anything too seriously" seems like a troubling idea. I mean, you can do things about that. We've got goons on here that do work for Dem candidates or volunteer and other stuff. That's fine, and saying that you're interested in moving into real world applications should be encouraged! It's just that when someone gets too wrapped up in whatever the subject is the thread suffers a bit.
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Apr 1, 2019 00:19
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captainblastum posted:it would be better to assume that the person is trying to discuss it in good faith, and is willing to learn more I mean it's nice that you've never read this forum before and want to begin posting but...
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Apr 1, 2019 00:20
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How about formalizing the unwritten rule that ironically cheering for genocide is still cheering for genocide and is wrong Or a more general rule that terminal online irony posting is lovely because it works to normalize abhorrent ideas
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Apr 1, 2019 02:17
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I put a lot of work into revising the Book Barn rules recently, some of them might have ideas that would transfer: i like this one a lot: quote:(2) Make sure your post contributes to the discussion. Low content posts, empty flaming, personal attacks, or broad failure to use appropriate capitalization and punctuation will earn you a vacation. Specifically:
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Apr 1, 2019 02:22
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:How about formalizing the unwritten rule that ironically cheering for genocide is still cheering for genocide and is wrong you mentioned this in qqcs also, but never actually showed someone doing it. i'm pretty sure that cheering genocide is already against forums rules so I'd be surprised if someone did it and got away with no punishment
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Apr 1, 2019 02:26
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Condiv posted:you mentioned this in qqcs also, but never actually showed someone doing it. i'm pretty sure that cheering genocide is already against forums rules so I'd be surprised if someone did it and got away with no punishment the vene thread right now - on the page before last and on the latest page - has a poster applauding the regime arming citizens so they can shoot protesters extrajudicially. regardless of your politics or your opinion on whats going on in the country, maybe it's not a great idea to cheer people being shot in the street.
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Apr 1, 2019 02:33
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