I can't speak for the others on the team, but I'm happy to share my thinking throughout the progress of the entire incident. As always, context is important. I view the rules as a necessary evil, most of which would be unnecessary if all users followed the "Golden Rule" at all times or the modern expression Don't Be A Dick (For your convenience, Boss, the corresponding acronym is DBAD.Marcus wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 4:42 amYes. Is a change in the rate of violations what you guys are going for? And no, that wasn't my point.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 2:30 amIn another thread, Marcus asked:
[So…how’s the round table going?]
Just as an FYI, I’ve subscribed to this thread, so if you ask a question here, I’ll get a notice.
Swimmingly, I think.
Perhaps more to your point, have you observed a change in the rate of violations?
My point is that it is clear that Binger only continues to post here with the intent to troll, and he continues to find loopholes which he then exploits repeatedly, further indicating his intent to post only for the purpose of trolling and disruption.
He showed his hand today repeatedly and explicitly. After 10 of his posts were reported for violations, mods cleaned up all 10, and then he started up again, with the same violations!!
How many times does a poster get to violate rules before there is a consequence?
By the latest count,we are now into the 20s for Bingers latest rule-breaking foray.
Is a decrease in the rate of Binger’s violations really the point? Why isn’t a CESSATION of Binger’s violations the goal?
Come on guys. This is truly becoming ridiculous. Shades believes in free speech, so does everyone else here. Except for the trolls. Why do the trolls get to break the rules with impunity?
And don't tell me they don't. When you allow rule violation after rule violation after rule violation, fixing them after the damage is done is exactly that- you allow the damage to be done.
You allow the damage to be done.
So we have a pretty minimalist set of rules, most of which restate common sense. See, for example, Universal Rule 12. But having a set of rules presents a separate questions: how and when to enforce them. In my opinion, the overarching purpose of the rules is to create an environment that permits users as much lattitude as possible to express themselves, with the major source of limits being the prevention using this freedom to restrict other users' freedom of expression. Whatever standards we employ for enforcing the rules should be consistent with that purpose.
One of those standards that Shades has long urged the moderators to follow is to generally moderate in response to reports. After all, if something isn't bothering anybody enough to click the report button, why should the mod team waste it's time addressing posts that technically violate the rules but that aren't interfering with other's ability to express themselves.
Of course, there are rules to which this general approach should not apply: if we see someone doxx another user, we won't wait for a report. There are some rule violations that are, in my opinion intrinsically harmful. So, for example, I'm unlikely to split a thread for a derail absent a report. If what's occurring isn't bothering the people participating in the thread, then there is no reason to interfere with the flow of the thread. On the other hand, missing the quote feature or quotation marks to misrepresent what another user said, is inherently misleading for anyone who reads the thread, and I would moderate that without a report. In fact, I did in the Prison version of this thread: one by Marcus and one by Dean Robbers.
With that general context in mind, I'm now going to turn to the more specific context of the violations that occurred. I try to keep an eye on general patterns of posting. When I see something that strikes me as unusual, I generally take a peek to see what's going on. Last month, I noticed an unusual number of new threads being started in Prison by Doc and Marcus. Doc's initially were a bunch of threads that had no content whatsoever. They were moved to Outer Darkness for that reason (not by me). He then switched to starting threads like "Babies" or "Basketball" with a bare minimum of substantive content Marcus's included "necroing" a number of old threads without adding substantive comment, which Shades, just as in the case of altering quotes of other users, had asked people not to do on more than one occasion. Those threads are all still right there in Prison (maybe one or two in Telestial) and interested folks can peruse them at their leisure and make up there own minds as to whether they were created with the intent of carrying on substantive discussions.
Historically, Telestial and Prison have been very rarely used to conduct substantive conversations. The description of Telestial still says "no moderation," even though that's not strictly true. Attack the reputation Reverend Kishumen's beloved sister and we'll moderate the hell out of that. Prison was created to allow a specific poster to rant and rave and howl at the moon to his heart's content while the rest of folks went on with holding conversations in the other three forums (this was pre-SSP). Both Prison and Telestial are intended to be rough and tumble places with minimal moderation.
So, this flood of new Prison theads created by two posters was pretty anomalous. It also interfered with the way I keep an eye on the board in my role as moderator. I use the "unread posts" function to quickly and easily see which threads have been active since my last peek. Now new posts in the other Kingdoms were getting swamped by non substantive posts in Prison.
Soon after these new posts began popping up, we began receiving a flood of reports. Many of them were reports of "derails." This was also anomalous. While it's possible that someone at sometime split a Prison thread based on a derail, I can't recall an example. And I don't ever recall receiving a flood of reports asking the derail rule to be enforced in Prison.
I also noticed that the four higher forums didn't appear to be affected at all. Conversations were still occurring without interruption and very few of our active users appeared to even notice that something was going on in Prison.
Based on the totality of the evidence and on my experience as a moderator, I concluded that what I was seeing was an example of "self help." From time to time when moderators do something other than what a user wants to happen, the user will try to bring about the result they want through their own conduct. Self-help inevitably leads to escalating behavior that eventually requires intervention by mods. It creates totally avoidable situations that make moderators spend a bunch of time cleaning up the resulting mess.
My suggestion to the mod team was that this flood of reports represented a personal conflict among a few individuals that did not require moderator time or attention. If Marcus and Doc wanted to engage in what was, essentially, a trolling war down in Prison, that was fine. However, they should not expect the mod team to waste its time intervening in a situation of their own creation, especially given that nothing was occurring that hadn't been occurring in Prison for years.
Still, the inevitable happened. And Binger escalated to a strategy that Shades has told people not to use: falsifying quotes of other users. Of the factors that are important to the smooth operation of the board is clarity in communication. If a user intentionally does something that has likely potential to deceive other users, that raises a potential issue under UR 8. In this specific case, if you use the quote feature to post
and I never said the sky is blue, you are flat out misrepresenting other user's words, creating the strong potential that I said "The sky is blue" even though I didn't say it. So, unless you clearly indicate that you have altered the quote (often used for parody purposes) we will delete the altered quote and post a request or reminder not to do that. And, because of the potential for deception, we will do it regardless of any actual harm or anyone being misled. I would have very tough time making a case that falsely attributing the "the sky is blue" to me caused an actual harm or damage.Res Ipsa wrote:The sky is blue
So, when we received a report that Binger was falsifying quotes, I looked at the situation, saw several examples by Binger and one by Marcus, posted a request not to alter quotes without a clear indication that the quote had been altered. Marcus complied 100% (which is very typical -- it's rare that we even have to remind Marcus of a rule). Binger responded by limits testing, which is not unusual behavior around here for people not named Binger. What he did was put the "disclaimer" inside the quote, which did not "clearly" indicate whether the "disclaimer" was actually part of the quote. So, it looked something like this
That would still be a completely fabricated quote.Res Ipsa wrote:The sky is blue, clearly edited
In the process of all of this, someone noticed that Binger had also been changing the address of the little arrows that the system puts in a quote. Clicking on the arrow takes you to post being quoted. It's a handy little feature. Binger seems to be obsessed with holding Doc accountable for a post he made during the period when there was essentially no board moderation taking place. He also seems to be obsessed with holding the mod team and Shades accountable for Docs post, despite being repeatedly being told that the current mod team is not going to retrospectively moderate posts made before the team was appointed. So, Binger began modifying the URL's that the clicking on the arrows would take a user to so that the user would see, not the source of the quote, but the old post of Doc's. Clicking on his signature takes one to the same post. I'm not going to link it here because I find it pretty disgusting, but anyone who is curious can click on Binger's signature.
It's perfectly fine to disagree with a request we make, but if you keep doing what you were requested not to do, or you start a game of "please don't eat the daisies" with us, that gets us into territory where we will at least consider altering privileges. From there on, the process takes place out of sight of y'all. There are occasions in which the conduct presents a serious risk of harm to other users, which will justify one of us exercising a pre-emptive suspension of posting privileges. If someone posts Philo's personal address and then reposts it after we delete it, a pre-emptive suspension would be appropriate. In this case, what Binger continued to do with fabricated quote was so innocuous and so obvious that there was little potential for harm, the conduct was all occurring in Prison, and any "disruption" was confined to people who had actively sought out conflict with Binger. So I didn't see any need to be quick on the trigger. Apparently no one else did either.
So we used our regular process. The result was that Marcus and Doc were subjected to horrific experience of reading a number of posts that were, in terms of harm or damage, the equivalent of the "blue sky" example I used earlier in the post. And they had to endure that horror on and on and on for, what, hours? But it was all self-inflicted. Both continued to escalate the conflict in response to Binger's escalation. Marcus doubled my workload by quoting Binger's fake posts. Both breathlessly publicly posted about the escalating number of violations that reminded me of CNN and its perpetual "Breaking News"
I've read and considered all your lofty and high-minded reasons for permanent-banning Binger. But in context, they all ring hollow to me. If you are genuinely interested in the well being of the board, I'd suggest you simply ignore Binger and refrain from engaging with him. Don't attempt to bait or provoke him. If you see what you think is a rule violation, click the report button. Don't generate a bunch of sturm and drang over a problem that can be addressed without the generation of board drama. And pay more attention to UR 13. You're not going to agree with what we do in some cases -- maybe in lots of cases. That's fine. Criticizing is perfectly fine as well. But relying on the type of self help you and Doc in this case actively works against our efforts to create an environment where people feel free to express themselves and where we can moderate with minimal intrusion.
