#1 ·
(Disclaimer: I find this situation just as confusing and, frankly, as disheartening as everyone else. These warnings aren't just being read by the few people here who actually give a damn about this forum; they're being devoured by those whose sole purpose is to hunt for fresh material to mock—people looking to trade high-fives over comments like "hey, remember how you told him, hey, you totally screwed him over, hey, you're a legend...". It's confusing because I simply cannot wrap my head around this self-destructive urge to obsessively scrutinize and ignore someone who is clearly just being tedious and exhausting. And it's disheartening because these random outbursts in threads like "hey, you know what some forum circles call you, hey..." end up ruining topics where people might have actually wanted—granted, it might be dull and taxing—to write a thoughtful comment.
If there is one single word upon which any semblance of justice rests (and I assume I shouldn't have to explain why fairness is a fundamental component of forum moderation and administration), then that word is—of course, despite how tedious and draining it may be—"consistency." Even when accounting for the specific nuances of a particular PDF, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that similar circumstances should lead to similar consequences. The problem is that the only alternative to consistency is appealing to the argument of force; every time someone in the hierarchy writes—whether they admit it or not—that they did something "just because they could", they are essentially signing a surrender of their own authority and admitting they lack the ability to justify their actions.
The debate regarding the profanity that briefly flared up in a completely inappropriate thread (and which, for heaven's sake, once again overshadowed the substance of what prompted steelskipper5's outburst) serves as a perfect illustration of the kind of damage this inconsistency causes. Just as a desperate attempt to salvage the topic: this is not a discussion about profanity. Let me repeat that: this is not a discussion about profanity.
Let's take this step by step. To start, it’s never a bad idea to check Merriam-Webster:
- Dicking around: vulg. acting important; showing off
- Bullshit: vulg. 1. nonsense, absurdity [talking bullshit]; 2. foolishness, nonsense [making a mess of things]
- Troll: vulg. to outsmart (someone)
I don't think I need to go into exhaustive detail to explain that the F-word, the C-word, and the S-word—as a poet might say—“are twin sisters, born at midnight, one slightly before the other, one slightly after” (WTF, if Bryan Adams can claim "pride" is a "sister," I can certainly claim three distinct vulgarities are twin sisters 🙂), or rather, that they all belong (not necessarily all at once 😁) to the same context of sexual profanity. Another connection between these three terms is the fact that all three are treated equally and identically, without any gradation in their "intensity," as mere vulgarisms. I also assume it isn't necessary to clarify the difference between vulgarities that aren't directed at anyone specifically ("he's dicking around") and direct, offensive slurs ("go screw me").
Regarding the use of the first two terms, the admin commented with a rather vague sentence (due to the parenthetical addition, which makes it unclear whether the statement applies to the rest of the forum as well): "Dicking around and bullshit is not the vocabulary we want to foster in this place (anyway)". So far, so good—but in the ensuing discussion, it turned out that "trolling" was considered a completely benign and non-problematic term. And that is exactly where the trouble begins.
Another great example of what I am trying to get at is a series of posts on the US site, where an unsanctioned—it could have been for real reasons, but let's not go there 😬—and as blunt as possible, "suck my dick" was posted, justified by citing the "unique personal style of forum members", only to be sanctioned after an extensive amount of trol... excuse me, after extensive moderator😬Outsmarting those who were calling for sanctions. On that same US board, I was slapped with 10 disciplinary points for "Dick swinging"—which, as I already told the moderator, I have absolutely no regrets about.
Situations like this—where I haven't repeated enough times that this isn't a debate about being rude—lead to an unnecessary expansion of what I call "discretionary moderator intuition." In the specific discussion on the US board, this reached grotesque levels of outsmarting people with the attitude of: "you go ahead and write, and then we'll feel free to decide whether it warrants a ban or not." I’d be an idiot—and the moderator lecturing me clearly thinks I am—if I believed that moderation was some algorithmic process a trained chimpanzee could perform; however, it is actually healthy for a forum and its moderation that this "space for subjective judgment" is narrowed down to where it is truly unavoidable. Honestly, if you take that approach to its logical extreme, you could abolish all rules entirely and reduce everything to "...because I said so."
This approach generates two problems for users and one for administration: first off, nobody likes unnecessary and senseless repression—and any move based on the "...because I can" argument is repression, usually unnecessary and mostly mindless. It’s not about always bureaucratically quoting the rule the moderator is leaning on; it’s about writing a human sentence like, "I closed the thread about growing pansies on the first day of summer because..." and then explaining the personal reason behind it. A more human sentence would be, "I didn't mean to do anything wrong by closing the pansy-growing thread, I'm sorry if it came across that way." Throughout my tenure on this forum, I’ve seen apologies from the owner, apologies from the administrator, and even apologies from a handful of moderators—either they remain so thoroughly flawless, or it is simply easier to die than to tell people 'sorry.'"
The second user problem resulting from such practice is self-censorship. No matter how much—without any irony or outsmarting—I believe in the sincerity of the administrator's statement, "It is not my intention, nor anyone else's, to turn this forum into a space where discussions are only permitted using literary and carefully selected words." (just a side note: "Dick" is literary enough 😬), such inconsistencies ultimately achieve exactly what they shouldn't: the shrinking of the forum (or parts of it). When a person is faced with "you write and we'll judge", "why don't you just open another thread on the General Interest board" and similar ways of dispensing justice (even if the judge isn't prone to their own trolling or messing with their own PDF), when "suck a Dick" isn't punishable because it's supposedly personal expression, when threads are moved around the forum without any meaningful explanation (while at the same time, several massive chat threads remain neatly locked and un-moved—so there's no real server load issue here), it is perfectly natural that a person, unable to predict the reaction, begins to censor their own sentences. Before anyone triumphantly claims that this is the whole point of moderation, they ought to consider the fact that the main driver of all forum activity is enjoyment, and that "enjoyment" and "censorship" do not live at the same address. The title of this thread should have been "Trolling and Dicking around: Two peas in a pod"—that title would be better, punchier, more effective—but it's unclear what kind of reaction it would trigger. No, that wouldn't be an "improvement"—it would be shrinking the forum, the long-term consequence of which is a graveyard.
There is also a problem produced by this inconsistency "on the other side": consistency makes it easier to defend decisions. This could be elaborated upon extensively, but I suppose it's clear enough as it is.
One more thing: nobody is advocating for compiling some sort of "list of forbidden words" or a list of anything prohibited on the forum—but it is simply insufficient to say "Dicking around is not good, trolling is good, because I say so, now split into smaller groups"; it isn't rocket science to provide at least a vague criterion that would categorize these terms. Not to mention the simple fact that an approach of...In dubio pro reo—it really made this forum a much more pleasant place to hang out.
If there is one single word upon which any semblance of justice rests (and I assume I shouldn't have to explain why fairness is a fundamental component of forum moderation and administration), then that word is—of course, despite how tedious and draining it may be—"consistency." Even when accounting for the specific nuances of a particular PDF, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that similar circumstances should lead to similar consequences. The problem is that the only alternative to consistency is appealing to the argument of force; every time someone in the hierarchy writes—whether they admit it or not—that they did something "just because they could", they are essentially signing a surrender of their own authority and admitting they lack the ability to justify their actions.
The debate regarding the profanity that briefly flared up in a completely inappropriate thread (and which, for heaven's sake, once again overshadowed the substance of what prompted steelskipper5's outburst) serves as a perfect illustration of the kind of damage this inconsistency causes. Just as a desperate attempt to salvage the topic: this is not a discussion about profanity. Let me repeat that: this is not a discussion about profanity.
Let's take this step by step. To start, it’s never a bad idea to check Merriam-Webster:
- Dicking around: vulg. acting important; showing off
- Bullshit: vulg. 1. nonsense, absurdity [talking bullshit]; 2. foolishness, nonsense [making a mess of things]
- Troll: vulg. to outsmart (someone)
I don't think I need to go into exhaustive detail to explain that the F-word, the C-word, and the S-word—as a poet might say—“are twin sisters, born at midnight, one slightly before the other, one slightly after” (WTF, if Bryan Adams can claim "pride" is a "sister," I can certainly claim three distinct vulgarities are twin sisters 🙂), or rather, that they all belong (not necessarily all at once 😁) to the same context of sexual profanity. Another connection between these three terms is the fact that all three are treated equally and identically, without any gradation in their "intensity," as mere vulgarisms. I also assume it isn't necessary to clarify the difference between vulgarities that aren't directed at anyone specifically ("he's dicking around") and direct, offensive slurs ("go screw me").
Regarding the use of the first two terms, the admin commented with a rather vague sentence (due to the parenthetical addition, which makes it unclear whether the statement applies to the rest of the forum as well): "Dicking around and bullshit is not the vocabulary we want to foster in this place (anyway)". So far, so good—but in the ensuing discussion, it turned out that "trolling" was considered a completely benign and non-problematic term. And that is exactly where the trouble begins.
Another great example of what I am trying to get at is a series of posts on the US site, where an unsanctioned—it could have been for real reasons, but let's not go there 😬—and as blunt as possible, "suck my dick" was posted, justified by citing the "unique personal style of forum members", only to be sanctioned after an extensive amount of trol... excuse me, after extensive moderator😬Outsmarting those who were calling for sanctions. On that same US board, I was slapped with 10 disciplinary points for "Dick swinging"—which, as I already told the moderator, I have absolutely no regrets about.
Situations like this—where I haven't repeated enough times that this isn't a debate about being rude—lead to an unnecessary expansion of what I call "discretionary moderator intuition." In the specific discussion on the US board, this reached grotesque levels of outsmarting people with the attitude of: "you go ahead and write, and then we'll feel free to decide whether it warrants a ban or not." I’d be an idiot—and the moderator lecturing me clearly thinks I am—if I believed that moderation was some algorithmic process a trained chimpanzee could perform; however, it is actually healthy for a forum and its moderation that this "space for subjective judgment" is narrowed down to where it is truly unavoidable. Honestly, if you take that approach to its logical extreme, you could abolish all rules entirely and reduce everything to "...because I said so."
This approach generates two problems for users and one for administration: first off, nobody likes unnecessary and senseless repression—and any move based on the "...because I can" argument is repression, usually unnecessary and mostly mindless. It’s not about always bureaucratically quoting the rule the moderator is leaning on; it’s about writing a human sentence like, "I closed the thread about growing pansies on the first day of summer because..." and then explaining the personal reason behind it. A more human sentence would be, "I didn't mean to do anything wrong by closing the pansy-growing thread, I'm sorry if it came across that way." Throughout my tenure on this forum, I’ve seen apologies from the owner, apologies from the administrator, and even apologies from a handful of moderators—either they remain so thoroughly flawless, or it is simply easier to die than to tell people 'sorry.'"
The second user problem resulting from such practice is self-censorship. No matter how much—without any irony or outsmarting—I believe in the sincerity of the administrator's statement, "It is not my intention, nor anyone else's, to turn this forum into a space where discussions are only permitted using literary and carefully selected words." (just a side note: "Dick" is literary enough 😬), such inconsistencies ultimately achieve exactly what they shouldn't: the shrinking of the forum (or parts of it). When a person is faced with "you write and we'll judge", "why don't you just open another thread on the General Interest board" and similar ways of dispensing justice (even if the judge isn't prone to their own trolling or messing with their own PDF), when "suck a Dick" isn't punishable because it's supposedly personal expression, when threads are moved around the forum without any meaningful explanation (while at the same time, several massive chat threads remain neatly locked and un-moved—so there's no real server load issue here), it is perfectly natural that a person, unable to predict the reaction, begins to censor their own sentences. Before anyone triumphantly claims that this is the whole point of moderation, they ought to consider the fact that the main driver of all forum activity is enjoyment, and that "enjoyment" and "censorship" do not live at the same address. The title of this thread should have been "Trolling and Dicking around: Two peas in a pod"—that title would be better, punchier, more effective—but it's unclear what kind of reaction it would trigger. No, that wouldn't be an "improvement"—it would be shrinking the forum, the long-term consequence of which is a graveyard.
There is also a problem produced by this inconsistency "on the other side": consistency makes it easier to defend decisions. This could be elaborated upon extensively, but I suppose it's clear enough as it is.
One more thing: nobody is advocating for compiling some sort of "list of forbidden words" or a list of anything prohibited on the forum—but it is simply insufficient to say "Dicking around is not good, trolling is good, because I say so, now split into smaller groups"; it isn't rocket science to provide at least a vague criterion that would categorize these terms. Not to mention the simple fact that an approach of...In dubio pro reo—it really made this forum a much more pleasant place to hang out.
