Res Ipsa says words about trolling -- people react
Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2023 2:43 am
That’s kinda close to what I’m saying. I’ll address the parts that aren’t so close.Marcus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:05 amThank you to the mod for the lengthy post.
What I am hearing them say is that when two posters posted in two lower forums, it did not affect conversations in other forums, and it wasn’t an issue until Binger decided to retaliate by breaking additional rules.
What it seems to also be saying is that there is no way to stop his trolling, and he is not going to be held responsible for his own behavior (which I assume because not one word of the mod’s lengthy post was directed toward him or gave him any sort of warning or advice) but others are publicly warned not to “provoke” him.
I disagree that the way to deal with a known troll who is abusing a forum is to tell members of that forum to deal with it by not provoking the troll further and by tolerating his trolling. In other words, he’s allowed to troll, but all others just have to live with it. And it’s their fault.
I posted some research about trolling and moderation techniques before, I will pull those out again. It seems to be a topic worth revisiting.
As we all are aware by now, I think, DM doesn’t have a rule against trolling. That’s precisely why Canpakes can troll the hell out of Binger down in Prison. in my opinion they are the second most skilled troll we have on the board. You are the first. When you troll, you generally do it passive aggressively, which is easy to keep within the rules. You are also meticulous about staying within the rules. In fact, you’re one of the few people who can troll in the upper kingdoms without breaking the rules. And, because we don’t have an anti-trolling rule, I don’t have to police it.
And because men in particular have this macho thing about disproportionate retaliation, when you happen to troll a guy — especially one who presents as an alpha male — he just can’t seem to resist retaliating out of proportion in a way that violates the rules. And each and every time, I address the retaliation and not the trolling because one breaks the rules and the other does not.
What we do have is a very general rule that prohibits smooth operation of the board. The sheer breadth and subjectivity involved in applying that rule makes it particularly susceptible to abuse, so we’ve been very cautious in applying it. We’ve determined that it can apply to trolling when the trolling substantially interferes with the ability of other users to carry on conversations. Another area we’ve applied it is when users take actions that substantially interfere with the mod team’s ability to do its job. An example would be flooding us with obviously frivolous reports in retaliation for some action we either took or declined to take.
When trolling is confined to Prison/Telestial, there’s not a good case to be made that the smooth operation of the board is being affected in any substantial way. Binger is not the only person who trolls in the lower kingdoms, although he may be the most irritating. That’s why no one moderated your trolling of Binger over the last month. Technically, we could have moderated the resurrection of old threads. But, in my opinion, what was going on was inter-personal conflict in the forum where inter-personal conflict is supposed to occur, Moderator action wasn’t warranted. The only person who appeared to be inconvenienced by the behavior was me, and I didn’t think that was sufficient to justify action under UR 8. We don’t have an express rule that precludes starting lots of non-substantive threads or bumping old threads without adding substance to the threads, or repeatedly bumping threads to crowd other threads out of visibility, so UR 8 is the rule we would use to address those kinds of situations.
So, no one was breaking any rules before Binger began posting fabricated quotes and changing the URLs of the link arrows. Even then, that doesn’t violate any express rule. But it least warrants examination under UR 8. in my opinion, there is a qualitative difference between the conduct that had been occurring and the fabricated quotes and changed URLs: The latter posed such a risk of deceiving users who read the thread that doing so should be treated as a per se violation of UR 8. In other words the potential for disruption is so large it makes no sense to wait around for some evidence of actual harm.
So I’m saying no one was breaking any rules until Binger started doing things that we agreed violated UR 8.
I’m not addressing Binger in these posts because I have no reason to believe he will read them or pay attention to them. I’ve pointed out repeatedly that our communications in these situations are often off board. I don’t need to communicate with Binger about his conduct because that’s been done. You can assume all you want based solely on what’s been said in public, but you’ll be wrong. I have a very firm position that I think I’ve been very consistent on: No one gets to justify their own rule breaking by invoking someone else’s conduct.
There are two different issues that are easy to conflate. By discussing your and Doc’s role in the incident I am in no way excusing Binger’s rule breaking conduct or suggesting that you, and not Binger, are responsible for his conduct. He could have chosen to engage in proportionate retaliation. He could have stopped fabricating quotes when asked to. He made stupid choices that were his choices. The role that you and Doc played in the incident was completely irrelevant to how we should respond to Binger’s rule violations.
But your roles are relevant when you publicly hype the incident as some sort of crisis without revealing your own roles in creating the problem. If you’re going to try start a “Ban XXX” movement, you’d better have clean hands. Neither you nor Doc have clean hands, and you also happen to be the two people who are trying to turn this into a major crisis that requires a perma ban.
If you attempt to engage in self help by trolling or baiting Binger, that’s just ducky in Prison if you stay within the rules. And if Binger is dumb enough to retaliate by in a way that breaks rules, that’s on him. But, in my opinion, self-help is rarely effective and inevitably results in the unnecessary waste of moderator time. So, I’m not going to assist you in any way. And I’m not going to give any weight to your invocation of lofty principles, including the best interests of the board, when what you’re doing is the equivalent of pissing on me and telling me that it’s raining.
