I think you have some excellent points here.

Having said that, the endless (and mostly pointless) round-and-round the mulberry bush "conversations" with certain regs around here has to be off-putting to new potential participants in the forum.

In my opinion, this is browser2920's baby now to manage as he sees fit.

I'm perfectly fine if he chooses to rule with an iron-fist to try to salvage the sinking ship.

(Sorry about the mixed-metaphor.)

Just my three-cents worth.*

*adjusted for inflation

I agree with all of the above.

Overall, the fact that you are an "outsider" should be considered a huge plus.

Some of us folks who have been here a long time are happy with our "comfort zone", which includes tolerating and even initiating nasty back-and-forth bantering that serves no purpose other than to ridicule other posters.

And I plead "guilty" to doing a lot of that myself. It is wrong, and I agree with you that it needs to stop.

I think my above post made it clear how I feel about that type of post. But since you can't see the posts after I delete them, here is a part of one of the deleted posts. This is just one of several paragraphs that went on in this manner. I have removed the names.

And note: DO NOT list your guesses as to who is being described.



This was posted in the moderation discussion thread. It has nothing to do with moderation issues. What really gets me is the way this poster is being talked about, in the third person, despite the fact that he is here at the table so to speak, and will see this post and others like it. That is plain rude and unacceptable.

I hope this helps people understand what it is I am eliminating. This has nothing to do with camaraderie, or community, or anything else. So please, if you feel the need to talk **** about another poster, do it by pm to another member you know likes to gossip. But don't post these types of things in our public threads.

I think you misunderstand me. Your quoted passage is clearly in violation of the normal Rule 1 of the forums. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't have deleted that poster at minimum. But it needs no more than Rule 1 to delete it, and you don't need to hint at new standards to delete.

I don't actually think your quoted passage is a "habit" of the forum, it seems clearly egregious. What I'm worried about with your "habit" comment is for far less egregious comments. The part that is a "habit" on the forum - something I don't think is necessarily bad - is because a lot of posters have long posting histories to each we might contrast a current position with a prior position. Resolving these kinds of tensions are something this forum can do that so many more ephemerous social media types often don't do. It can be done well, it can be done poorly, but it isn't a priori bad.

One thing to be on the lookout in your thinking about moderation is that instead of trying to justify positions by the worst possible examples, try justifying it with far less egregious cases. All the hardest decisions happen on margins. Take this, for instance: This kind of my-way-or-the-highway rhetoric might sound great in your mind when you are thinking about extreme examples of "gratuitous, derogatory comments" where you are unlikely to find any pushback here. But I think it will be worth trying to contemplate how that same rhetoric sounds when considering cases on the margin, where lots of people might disagree on whether something is or is not sufficiently gratuitous. My suggestion that you slow down, that you try posting some actual politics, that you build some rapport among the posters here before swiftly acting is targeted towards those types of cases.

Well we do have a large containment thread for moving acrimonious exchanges to to preserve the main threads.

That post he deleted was not unusual at all for this forum though, and the previous moderator did nothing about posts like that.

I don't know what you're worried about really, I certainly haven't seen many posts you (uke_master) have made that seem likely to be deleted in the future. I would think you would be happy to no longer be accused of participating in a circle jerk.

The shorter version of all this is that bigotry is not permitted on the forum and the American left's definition of bigotry tends to win out on how mods here decide what isn't allowed. Corporate America goes along with this because it's a really a center-left definition and a lot of people are on board. Elon Musk is finding this out when it turns out that the people he's trying to "protect" Twitter from are not the "woke mob" but normal people with common decency. The people who have been fighting this front of the culture war have been fighting a rearguard action, although the Trump years have emboldened them to go on the offensive more.

Oh I'm not particularly worried for myself - as you note for the overwhelming majority of posters I mostly just make my points with minimal invective - this is more of a principle-of-the-matter. There are a lot of problems with political discourse, lots of reasons to critique it and ways to improve it, but I think a lack of sort of superficial civility isn't the right diagnosis for the problems.

The post you quoted above is way out of line. And completely unproductive and unnecessary.

I agree that kind of posting (which I myself have been guilty of) needs to stop at once.

I agree. Only slightly milder types of posts like what browser2920 quoted is "normal" for some folks around here.

I'm kewl with even giving "superficial civility" a chance at this point. This forum has a ton of toxicity which might be one reason there are virtually no newcomers joining our conversations. We're like a bunch of old men standing around the pickle barrel at the General Store griping about the world and each other.

I expect to see Oliver Douglas, Fred Ziffel and Arnold the Pig any minute now.

A discussion developed ITT about some definitions of various political terms. It was a good discussion, but not moderation related so I moved that group of posts to the low content thread. Feel free to continue the discussion there.

You can discourage disinformation by requiring posters to back up any factual claims with links from reputable sources, if requested by a moderator. Of course, this will require mods to make judgements as to what counts as a reputable source.

The problem is you can debate the reputable sources. Any link to Fox here is not reputable even if its a link showing a democrat speaking in congress while Im not one to trust Rachel Maddow 100%

Than you have with Covid trust the science and than with Transgender ignore the science.

I still think stop 3 known trollers from trolling and do not let Cuepee and Uke respond to each other and were light years ahead .

Maybe 1 week suspensions for not disinformation???

Well said.

For example, I wouldn't consider any government agency a consistently reputable source.


Any teacher will tell you that about 90% of disciplinary problems in a typical classroom arise from no more than about 10% of the students.

I suspect any 2+2 moderator would say the same thing about their charges.

You can debate it, but mods don't have to allow it any more than they have to allow debate on what should be a banned conspiracy theory. There's a difference between FoxNews and OAN.

Point of Information:

The "Low-Content" thread has evolved into a "High-Content" thread.

Agreed but lets look at an example. Uke in the trans thread brings up the left win medias darling phrase "Dont say gay bill" that phrase in itself is total disinformation but Uke falls for this talking point

The bill does not say that at all as pointed out by a left leaning media source

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-...says-rcna19929

While if you say The Biden Border Crisis you are spreading right wing talking points according to Cuepee


I will stand by the fact if you just control the 3 trolls it will be a better Politics section. I am good with Cuepees constant falling for left wing media narratives. I fell for much of it years ago as well in the Cuomo /Maddow days of Trump

You likely missed two things. Firstly, that you've already made this point - such as it is - that I've already responded to this point, and so weird that you are repeating it as if that didn't just happen. Secondly, while this kind of tangential commentary might be appropriate in previous versions of this forum, our new moderator is saying not to have these kinds of discussions in the moderator thread. So if you actually want to address this point as opposed to just repeating it, try saying it in the trans thread and I'm happy to explain the issue to you there.

Bolded is poor framing. Very few people go to 8chan for medical advice either, but 8chan almost certainly has impacted human behavior as it relates to health care.

That was more for Cuepee . No point in going to the Trans thread my opinion on the matter is pretty much formed. I may question your stats on suicides but I think any suicide is a matter of mental health and tragic no matter whom it is

I strive to not make any non facts in 2023 as well

Unless you're arguing that there are deep fakes then this is silly.

2p2 isn't 8chan as it (presumably) doesn't have the same reach nor the same audience.

Of course.

So your point was that very few people read the 2+2 Politics forum for any purpose, medical or otherwise, and it doesn't matter what is posted on a forum that no one reads? That's self-evident, I guess.

My point is that we don't we don't need to be treated like kindergartners when it comes to covid.