It’s also been met by people repeatedly flooding threads like this one with personal attacks, in flagrant violation of the code of conduct, apparently because they believe the rules should only apply to other people. How about we try enforcing the code as written?
Well, other spaces already exist, like Choice of Games and Euphoria. Have they been met with the same demands? Have they caved and opened themselves up to “literal Nazism”? I don’t think they have.
This forum has been around since 2007. It didn’t have a code of conduct until 2014. I suspect most of the problems you’re seeing can be traced back to imposing new norms on a community that hadn’t grown up around them, and from what I can tell, other communities that have stated their rules from the beginning haven’t had the same issues: people choose a community that fits them.
Hmm, if only there were some way to handle those annoying Frequently Asked Questions by directing people to a page or post where past answers were summarized and collected in one place.
(NOT speaking in any official context here, just as a person speculating about possible solutions.)
Solutions to this which I’ve seen used in other places include:
More prompt moderator action (I know I haven’t always been the quickest to respond to such things)
Indicating whether a post has been reported
This creates the problem of people using reports to send an anonymous message to the person who posted, rather than to the moderators, which can end up perpetuating conflict rather than resolving it: one solution to this would be only showing an indication after multiple people have reported the same post
Indicating when posts have been edited or deleted
This could somewhat defeat the purpose of deletion. I believe intfic.com shows deleted posts as “(post deleted)” for 12 hours, after which they disappear entirely; other forums purge the content but leave the post itself, which still tends to clutter and derail threads
[rant=Tangent]
To be fair, I have seen productive discussion of trigger warnings (as opposed to e.g. holocaust denial). As a specific example, I used to be strongly opposed to trigger warnings, but after hearing an explanation by someone who actually needed them, and seeing some actual examples (as opposed to the nonsense like “trigger warning: trigger warnings” which tend to be shown in the media), I was quite thoroughly convinced. And even the opponents in that thread are objecting to the terminology, not the concept itself:
(EDIT: Examples put in a spoiler box because something I did wrecked the formatting, and I’m not sure why…)
[spoiler]“I hate trigger warnings […] What’s wrong with just giving somebody a heads up? […] I’m fine with “content warning”.”
“If anyone suggests ‘content warnings are no different’, the language is half the difference.”
“i don’t think trigger warnings are gonna do much. at least, nothing any normal warning labels won’t do.”
“I prefer “content warning” or even “content advisory” […] I personally don’t like using “triggered” when what I really mean is “squicked” or “made uncomfortable.” (no more than I like people saying “I’m OCD about this” when what they mean is “I’m fussy and particular.”)”[/spoiler]
Though admittedly I do not have PTSD, and am not triggered in the medical sense, so I’m looking at all of this from the outside.[/rant]
I wanted community input on this question, but it’s hit the point where we may shut it down entirely, because the toxicity of this thread has been through the roof.
I have again taken a pass to clean personal attacks (and out-of-context replies to personal attacks) out of this thread. We’re up to 47 posts removed. It’s possible that I missed things or was overenthusiastic, and it’s certain that the thread of this conversation has been damaged.
From this point forward, we will be issuing temporary bans for people who make personal attacks in this thread. (Not to people who reply to personal attacks, but please stop doing that. It encourages the attackers to reply and it just creates more work for us.)
Take a breath and figure out if you can say your piece without making it personal. If you can’t, give it an hour or a day and try again. And if you still can’t, but you need the mods to hear your thoughts, then PM it to a mod instead.
How about if I abstract the question a bit: should this forum require its members to take responsibility for something over which they have no control whatsoever?
If I write something that you don’t like in response to one of your posts, and my emotions are your responsibility, then why did you post something that would put me in an emotional state such that I’d write that?
My response, under this theory of responsibility, is your fault. That’s completely unreasonable.
stop writing libertarian thought experiments, stop creating ridiculous, abstract theories, stop slippery sloping, start listening to the real people saying the state of the forum isn’t okay and is nearing a dramatic schism that won’t be good for anyone.
people learned in kindergarten that the words they said have an effect on others, and that we have some moral responsibility for the things we say and how they make others feel. it is not asking too much of you to ask that you understand that.
I’m not sure I understand this point. Are you saying that the “don’t defend” rule causes bad behavior elsewhere, that escalating bad behavior on other forums is the “result” of the “don’t defend” rule?
Some folks here have expressed skepticism that we can have any influence at all on other forums; in that view, bad behavior elsewhere is “inevitable” but not an “inevitable result” of decisions we make here.
For my part, I think some of our decisions here might have some influence, (e.g. penalizing posters here for their behavior discovered elsewhere might encourage people to behave better elsewhere,) but I don’t understand why someone would believe that the “don’t defend” rule is one of those decisions that influences other forums.
In your murder example, do you agree with me that we should at least delete the offending accusation? (I think you could be arguing that we shouldn’t even delete the accusation; we should keep them here where we can control the message. But I don’t think that’s what you’re arguing.)
I thought you were arguing that when someone violates the CoC, we should delete their post as soon as possible, but in the intervening period, rebuttals in defense should be allowed, so as people who read the accusations won’t believe them.
Are you saying that allowing defenses will positively affect behavior on other forums? If so, I don’t see how; I don’t think your murder example showed why you think that.
But, setting aside the question of other forums, I want to address your murder example directly.
In this example, are you supposing that everybody (or at least a significant portion of the general forum-reading public) would believe that Person A is a murderer, until someone (e.g. Person A, or some third party C) said something on A’s behalf? And that, once reading the rebuttal, “everybody” would then believe that Person A was exonerated?
At the very least, this example doesn’t work at all when it’s a murder charge. I don’t think anybody would believe a random murder charge posted on intfiction. But let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that the charge were something more plausible but still very serious. (Plagiarism, maybe?)
On a public forum, conclusive rebuttals are exceedingly rare. What can you say that would prove you’re not a murderer or a plagiarist or whatever? Worse, rebuttals often backfire. (“Well, I didn’t believe the accusation at first, but A’s defense was so bad that I started to lend the original accusation more credence.”) Showing a rebuttal, and then allowing a rebuttal to the rebuttal, just makes it look like there’s an active controversy.
The most conclusive thing you can read is when the author themselves revokes their accusation and gives a full public apology. If that can’t/won’t happen, the next most conclusive thing is to remove the post entirely.
Your point is well taken that it can take a while for moderators to catch up. One thing that might help: On Discourse it’s possible for a post to receive enough user flags to be automatically suppressed until moderators have a chance to review it. On phpBB, a post can only be flagged once.
I agree that flame wars are not arguments (or “debates” where both sides need a hearing), but the whole point of the “don’t defend” rule is to minimize these flame wars, to keep them as small brush fires instead of raging forest fires.
It’s all abstract until it’s not, and some slopes are indeed slippery. You might discover more appreciation for these libertarian ideals over the next four years.
The forum would be fine if a certain subset of participants didn’t repeatedly demand that others think exactly like them or be punished and then try to characterize resistance to such policies as attacks. Come here, say what you have to say, and let others do the same. The problem is that you’re unwilling to let others do the same.
We may have moral responsibility if we speak with the express intent of hurting others, but people’s emotional reactions to even our well-intentioned speech are unpredictable and I disagree that we should be held responsible for them.
On the one hand, yes. I want to do my best to avoid inflammatory statements.
But on the other hand, it would be sad to say, well, Mr. Patient’s post about his “Bonehead” update re: the world series might hurt Cleveland fans a bit, or cause them to punch a lamp or whatever, especially ones who came to the forum to avoid sports and move on with their life.
Obviously if the result were a bit different and someone came on and posted “THE SCRUBS BLEW IT AGAIN” then that is open to modding. Double if they’re a White Sox fan (I kid, I kid).
Now, this is a ridiculous fringe case, but we shouldn’t have to think if a post like that is responsible for other people’s emotions. I don’t want to have to overthink a joke, or over-over-think. I already do so, even if it seems clean, and I hope most people do.
We have a responsibility to avoid inflammatory comments. Most of them are pretty obvious. I’ve seen stuff like 4chan baiting psychological support communities, and that stuff obviously needs to be cut down right away. And I want to make allowances for people who need to avoid certain subjects and not be all “buck up, sport.”
But at a certain point the mental math becomes too much. That’s not as big a problem as those people suffering, but…I’m uneasy about other cases. This statement seems to say, I should be responsible for someone else’s emotions if they have a grudge against me and misread things and get mad. And I can’t be. Just as it’s my fault if something someone says winds me up, and it’s not due to a pre-existing psychological condition, but I just read it wrong because I’m also a Purdue fan and the football team is not very good this year and they got thrashed again, and that bothers me more than it really should.
I sense we’re on the same page here but the above comment seems too sweeping and can chase off the sort of people who do worry about going over the line. So we need to say what statements are confirmably out. 4chan style provocatuerism, yes. General nastiness, okay.
Yes, if I hurt your feelings, that’s my responsibility, and I’m frankly confused by your attempt to make this common-sense idea sound alien or unreasonable.
If I hurt your feelings purposefully, it’s obviously my responsibility for doing so. It’s also my responsibility if I hurt your feelings negligently, behaving in a way that could hurt your feelings without caring about the effect, or behaving in a way that I reasonably should have known would hurt you.
If I hurt your feelings accidentally, it’s an understandable mistake, nobody’s fault, but once I’m informed of this, I should apologize for the mistake and take reasonable efforts to avoid doing it again.
Sometimes we decide to hurt feelings to try to protect someone else’s feelings, but in that case, we’re still responsible for hurting other people’s feelings.
As someone who checks in here only occasionally, I agree with the various suggestions that moderator actions be marked (“The author of this post was issued a warning in PM, and we have edited the content”) but I would prefer bad behavior to not be totally disappeared. My reasoning is that if there are particular folks with patterns of behavior that suggest that I would regret attempting to engage with them on particular topics (even if the initial conversation seems innocent), then I’d rather know that before wasting my time. Secondarily, I find it confusing when threads are clearly missing some posts, if anyone at all refers to the missing posts. I’m not sure how to reconcile those preferences with keeping threads as un-derailed as possible. It might be the case that overwriting the individual post with “[post deleted by mod]” would be sufficient.
There are limits to what most people will expect you to apologize for or avoid doing, though. It depends on what exactly caused the situation and who was affected.
Like, you might hurt someone’s feelings by buying the last pack of M&Ms out of a vending machine, if it turns out they really wanted it. It’s polite to make some kind of apologetic statement, but you didn’t make a mistake, and although you might choose to hand it over as a friendly gesture, you don’t have the responsibility to do so. People are expected to cope with some things that make them feel bad, and “a stranger bought the last of the things I wanted and wouldn’t give it to me” is one of them.
In society, the line between cases where someone else’s hurt feelings are your responsibility and cases where they’re the other person’s responsibility is drawn collectively by all of us, through daily interactions, media, tradition, etc.
On a moderated forum with a detailed code of conduct, that line is drawn by the authors of the code and the moderators who enforce it, and it determines what kind of forum you end up with.
If you want a place where people are never upset, you can draw it at one extreme, and you’ll get harmony at a cost. You won’t get authentic feedback on artistic works, because everyone knows criticism risks hurting someone’s feelings no matter how nicely it’s phrased. You won’t get discussion of complex moral or political topics, for the same reason. On the other hand, if you want those things, you can draw the line somewhere else, but you’ll have to accept that some people will have their feelings hurt and ask them to cope with it on their own.
SJW
Man I really regret not letting fascists run roughshod over online spaces I moderate - this experience has really taught me the value of free speech.
I agree with this. I think there is less chance of someone walking in on a topic in a heightened emotional state and (wrongly) saying, well, if the mods haven’t done anything, maybe I need to.
I also have found it a minor inconvenience to click “report” and write a report and then see “This has already been reported.” It discourages reporting future problems. Yes, the bad ones probably get reported but all the same I think this is a useful buffer with little downside if the software allows it.
The problem with the “should people be responsible for others’ reactions?” question (encompassing emotional reactions as well as general ones) is that it is selectively applied. Again, just from my experience – it is difficult not to bring it up when it is the direct catalyst for this thread, and no amount of deleting context will change that fact – the expectation on me to carefully measure every word and every swear I say has been far, far greater than the expectations on pretty much anyone else involved.
I think we’re in agreement that we should take reasonable efforts to protect each other’s feelings. We’re also in agreement that nobody can do a perfect job of it.
I think we might disagree about whether we should be trying to build a place where you can sometimes stop doing mental math and just hang out, or whether this is a place where we always strive to avoid offending each other, even when that’s annoying/difficult to do.
Our society is full of conflicting double standards, demanding that certain people perform that kind of mental math almost all of the time. Society demands that women express their ideas confidently but not bossily, empathetically but not naively, intuitively but not hysterically. People of color have to assimilate into a white culture while preserving their own difference. Queer people have to be friendly without provoking “gay panic.” And so on and so on.
The people who constantly “do the mental math” are usually the ones most at risk from people denigrating them accidentally or negligently by people who are just hanging out, unthinkingly offending others.
We’re forced to decide whether to build a place where people who are used to hanging out can just hang out, or where people who are used to being careful can co-exist with other careful people.
And it turns out that many of the people who are accustomed to unthinkingly hanging out are privileged in society: white, straight, able-bodied men, dominant in culture, unaccustomed to getting any guff for just being themselves. Underprivileged people flee social spaces where these folks gather to hang out; it’s just too difficult to be careful when you’re the only one who has to be careful.
Our society forces us to decide whether to build a place where people can hang out and say whatever, or where underprivileged people can co-exist with other careful people.
I think that’s right, but I think we’re going to lose somebody when we make this decision, regardless. I don’t want to minimize that; it’s very important and it sucks a lot.
But it’s clear to me that, here at intfiction, we all have to be careful all of the time, even if that sucks. It’s painfully clear.
This point doesn’t transfer over from government to the private realm (at least not at a scale as small as what we’re dealing with here). If we give the government the power to police speech in order to suppress neo-Nazis, and one regime change meant they used that power to make it illegal support Black Lives Matter, that would be really bad. So we shouldn’t give them that power.
If we give the mods on this board the power to police speech based on content so they can keep neo-Nazis off the board, and a regime change on the board led them to start banning relevant content that supported Black Lives Matter instead… I would just leave the board. It wouldn’t be that big a deal. I would probably want to leave the board anyway, if it got taken over by people with that attitude, even if they didn’t have the power of the banhammer.
On the other hand, some of those social spaces were built and populated by people fleeing from somewhere else. They’re accustomed to unthinkingly hanging out in those spaces, because they created those spaces as a refuge from the guff they got for being themselves elsewhere.
Please stop. This is not a social space someone is fleeing to, people (including you) are fleeing from it. I want to discuss Inform games, CoG games, queer games, weird games, self-coded games, web games, politically charged games, how to make games and talk rubbish about weather in Skopje. I’m not sure if it’s suitable even for discussing Inform because every thread is at threat of derailing into something else (which is worse than weather in Skopje), the moderators are extremely not here and even when they are, they are not taking a stand.
The intfic forum is not better than this, by the way. (oh, let’s talk about AIF, people) On the unrelated note, it’s +11°C and sunny if you were curious.
I, as it happens, take major offense in the constant, aggressively stated insinuation I may believe women are not people (ans many other remarks in this thread). It makes this space “unsafe” for me. Will the moderators protect me from this? (not a joke question, sad I feel the need to even state this)