dagblog - Comments for "Request for Action"

Lulu, see the above exchange

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:45:00 +0000

Lulu, see the above exchange between Des and Brew and Rmrd? It's been going on the for months now. Over and over. The same fight.

You should see some of the stuff that I've moderated--accusations and insinuations of racism, comments about someone's "pimply hemorrhoidal asshole," and so on. The thread that started it all is one that we unfortunately chose not to moderate until it was too late. And now it will never die.

I'm going to shut down this thread now. It's impossible to have a discussion about moderation without this crap starting up. Articleman and I will be discussing the moderation policy this week. Perhaps we'll follow your suggestion about banning people more readily.

Have a nice break. I hope to see you back.

I've stated where I stand.

rmrd0000 — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:27:52 +0000

In reply to I asked if you would have

I've stated where I stand. You can rebut. I suspect further discussion beyond that will get comments deleted.

I asked if you would have

rmrd0000 — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:25:53 +0000

In reply to Didn't mention by name? You

I asked if you would have fought for the South. You said "Maybe, Likely". I said that if that were the case, you would be supporting slavery. I said donning the Confederate uniform was an acceptance of slavery. I stand by that statement. In the Civil war, you could not separate the two.

Didn't mention by name? You

Desider — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:10:07 +0000

In reply to Thanks for the comment in

Didn't mention by name?

You said it direct to me, that I'd put MLK on a plantation to whip if I could.

Ramrod twice said to me that anyone who supports secession as a basic right to free associate (for example East Libya or Chechnya or Taiwan or Bangladesh) by default takes on all the South's sins including approval and embracement of slavery. The 2nd one's still up on one of these blogs as a response to this: http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/yes-there-really-were-fewer-two-parent-black-families-during-slavery-today-11071#comment-128215

Yes, as Lulu said, it would be better to leave these haters' comments intact so everyone can judge for themselves.

You make me proud, boss-man.

Ramona — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:56:21 +0000

In reply to Lulu, I appreciate your

You make me proud, boss-man.

Lulu, I appreciate your

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:43:45 +0000

In reply to Ghengis, I want to add a

Lulu, I appreciate your thoughts. We're very averse to banning anyone and have done it very rarely. Even the biggest combatants here are great participants most of the time, and we've been trying to get people to respect our ground rules through less extreme methods.

As I mentioned, the main issue that we've been struggling with has been to suppress personal conflicts and factional wars. These dynamics are common enough in web communities, but we absolutely do not want them at dag. It was partly to avoid them that we founded dag in the first place.

The trouble is that it's very difficult to enforce. There are occasional over-the-top comments that are easy calls, but most often there's a gradual escalation.

Brew's comment was not all that egregious on the scale of things, but it certainly would have pissed off a few people, and I'm willing to bet that they would have retaliated harshly. Then most likely, Brew would have responded even more harshly, and maybe someone else would have chimed in, and then we'd have yet another flame war and have to shut down the thread to contain it. (Sorry to mention you by name, Brew, but you acknowledged the comment in the reply.)

The pattern is familiar enough that it's easy to recognize from the get-go. Sometimes we let it ride to see if a flame war develops and moderate it later. In this case, I'm so sick of the conflicts that I decided to nip it in the bud before anyone responded.

Of course I cannot stop anyone from forming opinions about people, nor would I want to, but asking participants to withhold their opinions is another matter. In the real world, we censor ourselves for the sake of etiquette all the time. At family gatherings, you don't tell your brother-in-law that he's a pompous ass, even if he is. At the office, you don't tell your co-worker that she's a manipulative bitch, even if she is.

We ask for a similar level of self-censorship at dag. You can rage against Obama or Glenn Greenwald as much you like, but we don't want participants personally insulting each other because it produces what many of us regard as a poisonous atmosphere for blogging.

I recognize that some people like the freedom to express personal hostility on the web. That's fine. They don't have to blog here. I will certainly miss their voices, but I'm not willing to sacrifice one of the core values of dagblog in order to have them.

"Time On The Cross", the book

rmrd0000 — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:35:22 +0000

In reply to Ghengis, I want to add a

"Time On The Cross", the book used to justify the two parent family arrived from Amazon today. After I finish that book, I will move on to books with an opposite point of view on marriage in slavery. There is knowledge to be gained, even with the heated debate.

OK we're banning you for

Donal — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:19:03 +0000

In reply to Ghengis, I want to add a

OK we're banning you for misspelling Genghis. See you in a week. :-)

I think moderation is a bit like, and this is an odd reference, something I saw on the old sitcom, Hazel. The family maid told the husband and wife to stop arguing before they said something they couldn't take back. One would think that having to hit 'reply', then type something out, then 'save' would give people ample time to think about the consequences of what they write, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

Thanks for the comment in

brewmn — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:09:00 +0000

In reply to Ghengis, I want to add a

Thanks for the comment in (qualified, I think) support. I do want to note that I did not mention anyone by name, and really did want to emphasize patterns of behavior in discussion threads rather than specific personalities. I'm sure, apart from aspects of their internet personae, the individuals being referred to are all fine people that I could have a civil conversation, possibly even enjoy hanging out with, in real life.

Seriously.

Ghengis, I want to add a

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:58:16 +0000

In reply to I deleted a complaint about

Ghengis, I want to add a nickel's worth of opinion. I wish you had left brew's comment in. Stardust's too. Brew did express his apparently honest opinion and in the process also demonstrated something about himself. We cannot, and why should we, avoid forming opinions about the people we interact with here just like we cannot anywhere else, and there must be, IMO, some extent to which we can express the opinions we form about them. If not as a general case then maybe at least in this particular case since I expressly asked for a yes or a no on asking some people to return. Brew is happy for the exodus and said so. If the comment was an example of what you don't want to see at Dagblog then I think you should have said so as a reply to that comment for everyone to see and which would become part of a permanent record which any and all could judge.
I, of coarse, am not a moderator and never will be here, or anywhere else now that my kids are grown, but If I were I think I would accept that it came with the territory that I would not do it perfectly and so would make some folks mad sometimes, but that I would try to be fair and consistent, and I would let that be my stated position to the contributors. I believe that is approximately what you have said is your position. BUT, if I reached a point where I was fed up enough to remove a comment [and I get pretty fuckin' fed up] I would instead ban the person, announce it right under their offending comment, and tell them to email me in a week if they wanted to return. Longer for repeats. I would not feel obligated to allow them back but almost certainly would, at least if the violation of the site's standards were of the nature and magnitude we have seen around here. I would not ban a person without leaving the reason in place for everyone to see, although there could be exceptions to that rule in the instance of gross violations and in such a case I would describe the offense at the place it happened.
Just my two-cents worth, adjusted for inflation. Now I am out of money, out of opinions, and out of here. At least for a while.