Yes. There is always a flurry of mod actions at first because it takes time to introduce the new enforcement policies, answer questions from posters used to the previous approach, and then the refinement of policies based on feedback. And there are more deletions at first, because as the saying goes, "despite policy changes organizations will continue to do what they have always done until forced to do otherwise".

But once the shakeout process happens things tend to settle down, and modding issues tend to deal with more unusual issues rather than mainstream policies. From my perspective we have made a lot of progress in a short period of time. Another of my favorite sayings is "excellent organizations do routine things routinely". It shouldn't take extraordinary effort to manage routine daily activities. I would translate that to our forum situation using the example of name calling. At first I had to spend a lot of time talking about name calling and deleting posts. But now by and large that has stopped and we routinely have threads without name calling without any intervention by me. And I appreciate the members doing that. This frees me up to focus on more serious issues, like the drive by racists stuff a few days ago.

So that's a long answer, but it's a yes. And it's due to the support everyone has given me during the transition and I want to thank everyone for that.

This part seems to be true. Recently someone said I was strongly arguing for ‘X’. And even a direct quote of me saying ‘Not X’ did nothing to convince that person they might be wrong or should maybe go back and make sure they are remembering things correctly. But the issue is how do we deal with people like this.

I agree with this above as one who has faced, I would argue the most bad faith posting on this forum. It will be glad to clean it up.

I think it will be a challenge though on wide ranging issue based discussions over many pages and often months and months or years.

The most recent exchange spans that type of time frame and what, one poster in particular likes to do is seize on a word and say 'I never said that word' prove i said that word when a recap of discussions of months ago occurs, when the argument is over the entire context of the discussion and not the word.

Think about rebumping dozens of posts to try and recreate the context of the claims at issue and who is going to actually re-read them, and if anyone thinks agreement will actually be found in that.

I used to engage a lot more in such 'bumping' only to be told after spending the time 'not reading all that' and that happened just recently with one of the people here complaining. They demanded it, i did it, and they stated 'not reading any of that', as it was a long reply. Thus they got what they wanted which was to troll with a waste of time.

Trolling is a bad faith post where the person does not believe what they say, or simply is just posting something to agitate but not engage in any discussion.

Trying to define trolling as any good faith exchange, simply because you do not agree with a person or think them wrong is problematic.

I for one can name a few posters who troll here regularly. Empty posting trying to solicit the same type reply with stuff like 'we can agree to disagree' when it does not apply but just as a troll tactic. I put that person on ignore as there is no point in engaging in that. That is the best way to deal with it. Others just characterize peoples post with 'drive by slurs' and move on. That too is trolling.

No matter how vehement the disagreements it is not trolling. No matter how much you or I want to set the requirements for others in disagreements to FOLLOW WHAT WE DEMAND that is not trolling. No one is the boss of others here.

I am happy to be boss if the mods want to grant that power. Demand constant recaps of all arguments and debates to be quoted time and again, as I have certainly been subject to more specious accusations and slurs than almost any other here, and would be happy to make the person 'cite it'.

I would be happy to see any of those who frequently toss out slurs calling people 'racist', 'sexist' 'homophobes', 'transphobes' etc have to encapsulate the 'proof' in a cited post and see them struggle as they say it is the context over many posts and discussions that leads them to that belief. Not an easy thing to 'quote' as proof in wide ranging discussions.

Full context. Me saying today, Sinema is clearly going to lose the next election IN NO WAY is proof that was always my position a year prior. I am sure most would consider it kind of laughable that once things become clear, a person quotes a recent post as proof towards discussions almost 2 years old.

Maybe.... the elephant in the room shouldn't have such a long, long, long, long memory?

Seriously QP, if you are bringing up something I said a month ago... you're going to need to cite. I am not an elephant; three toed sloth most likely.

I'm not sure we are talking about the same situation. I'm not referring to someone saying Trump, or some other politician, saying something. They change their positions all the time. I'm referring to the situation where one poster claims another poster said something, and that poster denies it.

If a poster A writes "Browser, you always supported the Stop the Steal effort and I say "no, I never did that, in fact I oppose it", then yes, it is incumbent on poster A to show where I supported stop the steal. And there must be posts from me showing that, and it should be a simple matter to quote the post. If it is so obvious that I supported stop the steal, and poster A is so sure I did, then the posts must be readily available to hit quote or copy on.

This eliminates the you said...no I didnt chain. If poster A is so sure I said something then he must know where I said it. And he needs to show that if he wants to base a discussion on something I deny saying. I certainly have no requirement to make any kind of agreement or concession about anything prior to him producing his quote. If poster A is basing a discussion based on a claim I did something, and I deny it, then poster A needs to back up his claim. How the discussion proceeds from there is immaterial. To allow otherwise would allow any troll to make up any false claim about another poster without proof, and put the burden on the troll's target to prove him wrong. That's backwards.

That was never the argument. It was claimed that I had argued that Sinema must vote the way she does because of her constituency. That’s a lie. I never argued that and actually directly said the opposite, that she would be better off voting like Kelly. Since the person I was arguing with doesn’t actually care about being honest, they simply declared victory on the lie without even bothering to check. I think it’s clearly trolling because nobody is dumb enough to assume their memories are perfect on a discussion with many people from months ago.

There's a time lag while I'm writing a response to one question, and by the time I post it, other questions come up. I addressed this above. I want the posters to not argue with the troll. It does no good. But report the post to the mods. I never said the mids would ignore it too.

Ok I closed the thread for a few minutes in order to allow me to get caught up on the posts made while I was responding to other posts. It's like talking on a satellite phone with a delay.

First, we clearly have a hot issue here with differing viewpoints. That's fine; we'll work through it. BUT, I don't want to use the mod thread to rehash or continue an argument about one particular incident (i.e. the Sinemma example). So we need to bring the discussion up a level and sort out this topic of "you said...no I didnt...yes you did..prove it." from a forum guideline perspective and what does or does not constitute trolling. So that said, I'll recap what I've observed/ believe as a start point. Feel free to comment, agree or disagree as you wish.

First, keep this discussion to this specific issue. Ive seen other grievances brought up, some that I havent seen occur since the new rules were in place. So let's focus on today's issue.

As to dealing with trolls in general, imo the best course of action for posters is to not engage them. Thats what they seek. It's just like a guy who slow rolls his winning hand at a live poker table. He does it to get the negative comments from other players. When players completely ignore him when he does it, he stops. What's the point of slow rolling if no one gets upset? What's the point of trolling if no one responds angrily? I'll handle the disciplinary actions as needed

I think part of the problem here is the length of time many of you have been here going back and forth. Politics is a rapidly changing subject and positions change all the time. So I don't think bringing up what someone said years ago is going to be very productive in many cases.

On this issue of quoting someone, as I laid out in my example post, if you claim I took a position and I said I never did, then it is on you to show that I did. One post quote will suffice. But since our discussions usually pertain to current events, if you have to go back years, its prob best to let it go. It's a long run for a short slide.

This is an internet forum, not a court of law. It's meant as a venue, ultimately, of entertainment. Trying to parse every word in every post to find some sort of gotcha moment to argue over is tedious to other readers. IMO there seems to be a lot of posts whose aim seems to be attacking the other poster rather than advancing your own opinion on a subject. And it's especially tedious when people bring up stuff from years ago.

So, with that as a start point, let me hear your thoughts about the particular issue of posters stating or misstating another's position; who, if anyone should have to provide evidence; and how you think these tyoes of posts should be responded to, both by posters within the thread and by the mods.

OK, I'm reopening the doors. Please no running. There's plenty of room for everyone!

I think this is excellent advice.

The "one poster" I presume everyone can figure out who you are implying. I have never done what you allege here. The thing you put in single quotes isn't a direct or paraphrased quote of something I've said, in fact I argue precisely the opposite. Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are not trolling, can you follow browser's edict and provide the one quote to justify your claim about me? I'd suggest doing this in the low content thread to preserve this thread.

Yeah, I would not have posted that if I had read some of your later responses. I think we all agree that the “bowser supported stop the steal” example is pure trolling given no actual support for the claim is given . I guess the next question is what happens if the troll responds with something like

“I’m glad you’re against it now but I’ll go ahead and declare victory now that you’ve joined my team after strongly arguing that Trump and Rudy were correct about the stolen election.”

What’s the next step at that point? Yes that person should be ignored, but it seems like that’s not enough.

Good example. Here's what I'd suggest. First, odd as it seems, just don't reply. He hasn't posed a question warranting a response. He is just seeking to get a rise out of you with a trolling statement. So just ignore it. But report it, and I'd see that he provided no quote, so I'll delete it and discuss the issue with the person and take other action as needed.

But if you say anything like, "I'm not on your team" or "I never took that position" or really, any answer at all, it just tees up the ball for him to take another swing. If you don't reply, then he has nothing to reply back to that keeps the troll chain going. That's how you shut down the troll posts without clogging up thr thread.

I can't fault you for not forgiving me for that.

But, like Senator Ted Kennedy used to say, "That's water under the bridge."

Besides that, Mrs Kennedy, how did you like Dallas?

Damn, I'm going to have to delete myself in a minute.

At one what point in time was it first considered not bad taste to joke, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

(Or is it still a joke in bad taste?)

I guess I’ll just give my opinion and reasonable people can disagree. I don’t like stuff like that being deleted. Often other parts of the post could be useful or replies to the post which are good will either be deleted through no fault of their own or no longer make sense. If the person isn’t even willing to try to back up such a clear claim like ‘Bowser was fiercely supporting stop the steal” there needs to be a temp ban or public retraction of the false claim.

The IGNORE USER button is your friend.

Trolls usually die of starvation when they're not being fed.

Yes trolls should be ignored. But not having rules and enforcement against trolling is not a good strategy. Basically I can say a bunch of false stuff about you and you can ignore it, but now the forum will be full of crap about you that isn’t true that others might believe.

We have rules and enforcement against trolling. On a comment you made about not deleting troll posts if they contain other worthwhile stuff I can edit out the troll part when appropriate vs deleting the whole post.

I agree with all of the above.

Browser already said he would take disciplinary action against that type of trolling.

He said to report the offending post, instead of engaging it.

I was just saying the 2 strategies of dealing with trolls, put them on ignore and report them for lies, are contradictory.

There are a couple problems with a "ignore the false claims and let the mod delete it" approach. Firstly, when a false claim is made it might take the mod a while to actually wake up and delete it, leaving the false claim to resonate in the minds of everyone. And then when it is deleted, if it is deleted, then there is no correction where all the people who saw it learn that the accused denies the accusation. It is also just a pretty natural reaction when someone makes a false claim about you publicly to want to defend yourself. I think a short public denial and request for quotes while we wait for the mod helps to make sure the false claim doesn't do damage in the public mind.

I actually think this problem is going to go away and be mitigated if browser is able to do a good job of shutting down the numerous false accusations without quotes that are regularly levied on this forum. If he does that well, then the instances of the above problem will be rare.

This actually connects to an interesting political debate in social media about how to deal with "fake news" more broadly. Do you delete it? Do you allow it but make "fact check" cards along side it? For instance, deleting "fake news" means it has this wildfire spread of prominence, far more prominent (and to a different audience) then the fact check spreads. I've typically leaned towards advocating that social media platforms do a better job of real-time community fact checking to deal with fake news than just delete and forget about it approaches. So I think I'm advocating something similar here, short and to the point fact checks that don't launch a big new debate, and the mod can deal with it when they come back.

Good point.

Me saying "put them on ignore" was stupid. The point I was trying to make (in a flawed manner) was don't engage the troll.

Browser said just report it and then move on. Otherwise we end up with the thread being a series of "you said...no I didn't...etc."

One of the few good features (imo) of the Old Forum was a "Cite or Ban" policy.