76 new of 133 responses total.
I am asking people to discuss whether to vote on this. Please read what I write more carefully before you respond to it.
"Should we vote whether to allow the Agora fairwitness to remove postings designed primarily to be offensive?" I'm not sure what you are proposing to vote on. The fairwitness has the ability to remove posts right now. She can use it or not. So far, she's not chosen to use it. I assumed you were asking to change Grex policy and allowing fairwitnesses to remove "postings designed primarily to be offensive". Since Grex does not have a Code of Conduct, there is no definition of "offensive" that can be applied. Your proposal appears to be "Allow fairwitnesses to decide what they find offensive, and remove it from any forum they are fairwitness in." If that's what you want us to vote on, all you need to do is propose it. I, personally, don't think there is support for that. But my opinion doesn't have anything to do with what proposals other members put forth. Meanwhile, back to the original discussion. I think we might be able to test a couple of the theories. I like cyclone's "move this post" idea, and I like slynne's idea of a second set of conferences. Two test conferences I can see are Current Agora with "move this post" voting, and New Agora with post-level editing and/or moderation. For example, if I were the moderator of New Agora, and part of a post was interesting information, but part of it was a personal attack on another user, I could edit that post to remove the personal attack. If I were the poster, I could go back and edit my posts at any time. Not just hide/remove but actually edit content. I'm not sure of the code/technical implications of the second proposal, but perhaps we'll hear from one of our staff about this.
Almost every forum in which I participate requires a form of validation before posting is allowed. For most, it's a confirmation emailing, and turnaround access is pretty much instantaneous. Anyone who wanted to cause problems would just need to be able to provide lots of valid email addresses. But still, it seems to be enough to keep twits to a bare minimum. I'd very much prefer we go that route and not get into wholesale censorship. Between asking for some type of validation-lite and encouraging users to invoke the "forget" feature, we should be in reasonable shape, I'd think. If not, we look at more aggressive measures. But moderation and censorship should be considered the atom bomb of fixes. It would probably solve the problem and kill Grex at the same time.
"provide lots of valid email addresses." Mary, I'm assuming that the email addresses are from a different site. So, for example, someone wanting to validate to post to Grex conferences would give a yahoo, or google, or some other email address. This is a bit different from how the Board envisioned Grex doing it. At the moment, you will be able to create a Grex account, and use that account to request validation. Are you supporting the idea that we move conference posting into the Class Two privileges?
I am supportive of a new policy that would require Class Two privileges before a user could post in the conferences. The founder in me is saying "yuck" but I sense we've taken the totally open experience as far as we can. As to the specifics - I'd suggest we start with the lightest possible touch, evaluate how it goes, then adjust as necessary. Try validating using only a Grex email address and local (social) contact. It may be enough of a barrier but key to this would be that a user would get a prompt response to their request for access. The less automated the process the more I fear folks will end up moving on. Having to wait would be a reallly bad thing here. That is indeed the beauty of the kind of off-site email validation I run across almost everywhere else. You give the system your gmail address (for example) and you immediately get an email response that requires you click to confirm you indeed requested access. Click and tah-dah! You're in. It's almost that fast. You could abuse this system, for sure. But it would take some time. And a whole lot of email addresses. So, overall, I'd choose whatever system would make it the easiest for a potential new user to get in and posting and part of the community.
I like hearing from nonlocal people in Agora and they do not have any social contacts here to start with.
I think keesan makes a good point. It's like "destroying the village to save it."
Social contact means an person reads and responds to a user's request for access. Local means that request comes in from cyberspace.org email or a form generated on Grex. A person does not need to live in the area or meet staff face to face to be validated. But I too would like to hear from lots of other Grexers before deciding whether to go forward with such a proposal.
How would this stop our local vandals from opening new accounts and requesting to post to the conferences?
An issue that I don't think has been addressed: A mechanism that grants a privilege can also be used to withdraw the privilege. What would the criteria be for withdrawing a user's ability to post in conferences?
At the moment, the Board has not set specific guidelines for moving a person into or out of Class 2. At the last Board meeting, when the group of Porters was created, the Board agreed that we were in new territory. At that time, the consensus was to allow the porters, as a sub-group of staff, to develop criteria through the exercise of common sense. As staff they are expected to work together and come to consensus around these issues, using current staff guidelines on blocking and banning as a start. I've gathered a few TOS and Code of Conduct statements from other conferencing sites and will be introducing various definitions from them for coop discussion. If we can agree on egregious examples of abuse, then we will be able to discuss edge cases more clearly.
I'd support setting the threshold for user class demotion right where staff would now be freezing an account for abusive behavior. An example would be flooding the conferences with the same response or intentionally inserting command characters to disrupt another users session. I'd not include passing judgement on content - that's where users should be encouraged to use the forget command. I'd view this policy more as a staff-light way of disabling twits and limiting their ability to render the conferences unusable.
I agree that that's what the threshold should be, and that this should be made clear to the volunteers administering the class system. It would be very tempting to use the power to, say, disallow the kind of postings we've been seeing from "jan" in Agora lately, and I don't think it should be. But I'm not sure I support lumping conference posting privileges together with the other items in Class 2. For one thing, I don't see how it would prevent one type of posting abuse we had recently: A person creating a bunch of "stealth" accounts in advance, then using them one at a time to flood conferences. Such accounts would likely be approved for Class 2 and could then be used for abuse at any point in the future, before anyone had time to pull the plug on the account. I've got some concern that the unpredictable delay involved with the social validation process might lose us users who otherwise would make positive contributions to the conversations here. Discussion forums are not exactly a scarce resource on the internet, so Grex has to compete for people's time and attention; the Class 2 hurdle might cause folks to lose interest and choose to go where the validation process is guaranteed to be fast. And unfortunately, we'd have no way of telling whether social validation was having that effect or not. So my problem is that I see the social validation process applied to conference posting as having some potential (although hard to measure) downsides without preventing abuse. What would we gain by imposing it?
re #70: > So my problem is that I see the social validation process applied to > conference posting as having some potential (although hard to measure) > downsides without preventing abuse. What would we gain by imposing it? The only thing I believe we'd really gain is the ability to claim we'd "done something." We'd pay for that empty sense of satisfaction with all of the drawbacks you've mentioned. I strongly advise against the tiered user privilege systems that Grex seems to be moving towards.
Let's get the discussion back to more of the proposals, not just one.
slynne had six possibilities in Response 0.
1. Introduce a second set of conferences with a different set of rules
2. Create a new default conference with moderation. Abusers could be
excluded. Users could be required to be validated before they can post.
[since this was before the existence of the class 2 validation, perhaps
she meant using the class 3 validation process.]
3. Create a new default conference with moderation. Any current users
could post but new users would be required to be validate before they
post. [again, I assume she meant class 3 validation process].
4. Create a new default conference with moderation. It could be open to
just paying users. [This is a subset of the class 3 user group.]
5. Allow item authors to moderate items.
6. Make no procedural changes to conferences but use social pressure to
encourage thoughtful high quality posts.
7. other proposed (Response 4) creating a new set of conferences that
allow the item's creator to moderate the posts in that item.
8) cyclone proposed(Response 52 letting conference participants "vote"
on an item-by-item basis about keeping an item in a conference.
9) I proposed (Response 51) making conference posting class 2 access.
Is there consensus on 2 or 3 of these proposals being "better" or
"worse" than the others?
I favor: > 6. Make no procedural changes to conferences but use social > pressure to encourage thoughtful high quality posts. despite its track record of less-than-100% success.
This response has been erased.
I agree with Mike.
Since nobody knows what will work and what won't, I tend to favor an approach that will allow flexibility and experimentation. Discussion quality is a problem all over the public-access internet. Bloggers are constantly struggling with how permissive or restrictive to be with allowing comments on their blogs, dealing with comment spam, abusive users, etc. Nobody has a perfect solution. This is a hard problem. I'll point out that Jan Wolter's blogging interface to Backtalk will enable flexibility.
Re #71: Mike, I'm sure we would all agree that it would be nice if everyone had immediate access to all that grex has to offer. Unfortunately, a small number of people have made it difficult to make that a reality. When I disabled tel and write for new users, I was hoping it would be temporary, and I'm still hoping that it will be temporary. The person responsible for the abuse wants us to think it's a bug in the program, but that's like saying our city streets are poorly designed because they don't prevent someone from jumping the curb and chasing down pedestrians on the sidewalk with their car. It isn't a technical problem. It's a social problem, and we need to prevent people with social disorders from making the system unusable for others (or from filling it with so much crap that no one wants to use it). If we don't do that, grex will die because no one will stick around to wade through the cesspool that grex has become. What are your suggestions for accomplishing that?
solve a social problem iwth a techinical solution? sound slike welfatre to me.
(I hope this item doesn't get sidetracked onto a discussion of write/tel.)
Or TS's misquided views of welfare, for that matter.
That wasn't my intent. I merely mentioned that as another example of the multiple tiers mcnally was referring to. E-mail is another. This item is about doing a similar thing with conferences. To get more to the point of this item, let me ask it this way: If we choose not to take the route of disallowing conference posting for new users, what are the alternatives that will prevent those with social disorders from making a cesspool of the conferences so that no one wants to read them, let alone take part in them?
Would it help to ignore such postings instead of giving the poster lots of attention?
Go back and reread my posts about consensus user-moderation via mirror cfs, chuck.
I'm having a hard time with this proposal. It's certainly not what we started out to do and it could throw up a gate that might keep interesting participants out. But the neighborhood has changed since 1991 and maybe it's time to put a lock on the door. Or maybe it's more like a bell. Sure, the forget command is useful, and we should encourage folks to make better use of it. As is the twit filter for when forget gets tedious. But, it doesn't work when the twit sets out to flood the conference and make Grex unusable. And as infrequently as that happens, it happens, and when it does the system takes a big hit in terms of morale. Our impotence at defending ourselves is insidious. I usually trust in evidence based change. But there aren't a lot of communities like Grex so comparison gets tricky. But, in my experience, almost everywhere where public commentary is allowed, either validation and/or moderators are involved. They tend to avoid being brought to their knees by vandals. Is it safe to draw a connection? Again, it's hard to tell for sure, but it may be worth trying the bell thing. So we can stand firm and weather the storms or we can try making it a little less easy for vandals to have their way with us. At this point I'd like to try putting up a few low speed-bumps, reversible speed-bumps, by slightly closing our open door. I would not support censorship or moderators for Grex at this point. We could start with an automated email validation system as is found almost everywhere else. It asks the new poster to wait less than a minute to gain access, usually. It does require the person have an off-Grex email account. Level Two social validation would not be required here. One problem is this would require some staff coding to initiate. I'm not sure that's doable at present. But once in place it would give us a mechanism of disallowing a poster by email address instead of by IP address. Sure, a determined vandal could persevere but he or she would have to use a fresh valid email address for each hit. The speed-bump thing again. Anyhow, my thoughts on what I'd like to see us try.
Re #81: I don't know of an alternative that will prevent the "cesspool effect", but really, I don't see how disallowing conference posting for newusers will prevent it either. Are we going to require people to submit certificates of mental health before being allowed to post? Short of something like that, I don't see how we can predict someone's behavior in the conferences at the stage where they'd be asking for posting access. Re #82: Yes, ignoring would help, if everybody did it. But based on 20+ years of computer conferencing experience I've observed that there are always enough people around who refuse to take that route that it never helps in practice. I'm wondering, though, if the "ignore" concept could be made to work with a bit of software assistance. "Social" sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, etc. all have a concept of a "network of friends" - basically, your "friends" are people whose judgement you trust, or with whom you share interests or some sort of relationship (although you might not even know them personally). The software then shows you what your "friends" are up to - their latest posts, webpages that they find interesting, etc. Now, suppose that on Grex I could specify a "trust network", i.e. a set of users whose judgement I trusted, such that if one of those users marks an item as "junk" or a particular user as a "junk poster", then the software will automatically forget that item or ignore that user on my behalf, perhaps logging that action somewhere so that I could override it if I wished to. That is, instead of some conference administrator or set of users making those decisions on *everybody's* behalf, I get to specify who gets to make those decisions on *my* behalf. In other words, make "junk filtering" a social activity rather than the responsibility of each user. Would that approach provide sufficient synergy to make the conferencing experience more pleasant for folks? I don't know, but I find it more palatable philosophically than erecting barriers to participation. Adding software-supported "social networking" to Grex could have other benefits as well, e.g. helping people find discussions of interest to them. I use the "my network" facilities on YouTube and Del.icio.us to point me to interesting videos and websites, respectively. It's a dynamic facility that I can tune to my own preferences; by contrast, the current conferencing structure doesn't do much beyond providing a small number of static topic-oriented containers. Implementing these ideas would require writing some non-trivial software, of course, so it's a pretty long-term thing. Mary's approach in #84 would be much easier to implement in the short term. And as it's automated, fast, and something that's pretty common practice on other websites, I'd support trying it as a first step.
My proposal does much the same thing, but in real time. Based on some of the comments I heard from the techies on m-net, the coding would not be too difficult or time-consuming, as it would involve a specific text that acts as a flag, plus a counting mechanism to trigger the move.
Email validation would not dissuade vandals like the current one. The twit filter would work better if it did not keep showing blank responses, especially when people flood every item in agora.
Re #86: Not really the same. Your proposal would empower a set of voters to make global content decisions on behalf of everybody. Mine would allow me to tailor my environment according to my own criteria by specifying who gets to vote on my behalf.
I must be misunderstanding your idea then, because I thought your proposal also resulted in a global content decision.
Putting it another way: I'm suggesting mechanisms that would allow users to fine-tune for themselves what they see and don't see in the conferences, based partly on the opinions of other users whom they trust. Basically, a more sophisticated filtering system than just "ignore" and "forget", that takes into account that different users will have different preferences.
re#90 Do what you like but if you do then remove the blue ribbon. Not that it matters much. It's just a symbol. m-net doesn't have a blue ribbon but it generally sticks to free speech due to jerryr's insistence on it. tod and I are his strongest supporters in that particular area. In fact, the only time I have seen the principle grossly violated was when the banned April Morrison aka "hera" from the system for nothing but posting ,what was in their opinion, bad content. I disagreed with the ban based on principle as did tod and jerryr. The line of reasoning that was used, if I recall correctly, was that hera's posts would have a negative impact on the influx of newusers. We are still waiting for this "influx". We get new users all the time but most don't dare tread on the bbs . Those that do will get flamed to tears if they don't have a thick skin. Ask veek, one flame from twinkie and he ran back here like a whipped puppy. The world isn't a perfect place where everyone behaves and gets along. There are total jerks. There are good people who get pissed and act like jerks. There are good people who use a bad attitude as the first layer in their self defense mechanism. If you can't handle a few insults that amount to nothing but a few pixels on a screen then get some counseling Aren't you the same bunch that screams bloody murder when christians want profanity and porn removed from movies and TV? You say "Hey, you don't have to watch it... turn the channel and stop legislating morality" Isn't a failure to maintain the free speech campaign because you don't like the content, to a certain extent,hypocrisy? free speech makes grex. If you have to tolerate those who abuse this freedom in order to keep it...so be it.
Give april time...soon this place will be run like a convent
I think you've got free speech issues confused with intentional acts of vandalism, lar. Entering the same exact string of words in every item and then coming back an hour later and doing the same thing again. And again. And again. In terms of content Grex has a pretty thick skin. But that said I'm not sure the totally open model works all that well anywhere anymore. It's a magnet for people with social issues.
Lar's version of mnet events is only half the story. Some of us simply felt that Hera did not keep up her end of a bargain she made with mnet many years ago.
So if she'd come back and entered great items that were popular she wouldn't have been blocked?
Actually, I think the agreement (which I was not around for) was basically to not act like the ass she had been when she originally left mnet. You'd have to ask someone who was around then for the details.
I was around. As best I can remember, she agreed not to come back, in exchange for a partial refund of her membership donation. After a couple of years, she came back anyway. The M-Net board noted that she was in violation of the agreement but took no action. This was, like, five years ago. In view of the fact that her renewed presence on M-Net was then tolerated for several years, citing the long-ago violation as justification for the recent banning strikes me as more of a pretext than anything else.
I don't, as I don't recall any time limit being involved. My understanding was the deal was she had to behave a certain way. The fact is she violated that agreement. Waiting to pull the plug on her was fully within the rights of m-net. I'm mean, she can't very well tell a cop "hey, I've been speeding for five years now, you can't give me a ticket!"
What I'm saying is that I don't think that her violation of the previous agreement had much to do with the fact that she was banned.
re#93 yeah, I guess spamming a board with multiple instances of the same post isn't exactly free speech. However, I didn't get banned for it ( I got a 24 hour time from casper once) twinkie didn't get banned for it. chamberl didn't get banned for it. The thing that got the ball rolling looking back on it... If I recall correctly was hera threatening to call tanis's employers about his totally alledged drug abuse. We all warned her about it and she didn't do anything. However, it did serve to escalate the long standing feud between her and tanis. An item voting on the ban was started by tanis and it quickly became the hottest topic I have ever seen on m-net. We had like 300 responses or something in 8 hours. The roots took note of the popularity of the item and the overwhelming response against hera and booted her. cyklone is right, someone did bring up the old refund issue but that was only an addendum to the item so remmers is correct. The final decision was made by a root and not by the B.O.D. My argument was that a root should intervene in a fully paid member's activities only if technical abuse is being done by the member. Let's face it cyklone..we banned hera for content.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that. While I don't know the terms of the old agreement, I'm fairly certain she agreed to restrictions on what and how she posted.
Folks, this conversation does not belong in Grex's governance conference. Please move it elsewhere.
I was starting to wonder why Grex was discussing M-Net's policies in Grex's coop. I'm doubtful that most of Arbornet's Board participates in this conference, so I don't think much is going to get decided here.
Whatever, The issue came up as a basis to compare grex's moderated conf. proposal with current m-net practices as relating to free speech and NOT as a discussion that would effect m-net policy. Didn't mean to slay your sacred "don't discuss m-net in coop" cow
I agree with Larry. The conversation is very relevant.
Starting with post 92, this topic has had nothing to do with Moderated Conferences on Grex. Please stay on topic.
In any case a grex already has somewhat of a moderated forum, does it not? Take coop for example. The FW has cracked the whip. For the record I want to know why #92 is considered off topic? It's off the cuff humor but it makes a relevant prediction. In a nutshell, tod is predicting that a discussion of moderated conferences will soon be a non-issue as agora will probably be strictly moderated out of necessity.
There is a difference between a conference being moderated with technology and one where a FW simply redirects the conversation. The big problem is that around here, the latter takes a LOT of work and isnt always effective anyways.
"the latter takes a LOT of work and isnt always effective anyways." Especially when the opinion about a particular post (such as #92) being off topic is doubtful to say the least. tod does often post off topic but that doesn't mean every time he posts it should be considered so.
I detect some misunderstanding of my suggestion in resp:90 as it wouldn't limit what people can say or where they can say it, nor would it involve moving or removing anything that's been posted, but then I haven't thought it 100% of the way through myself and in any case it would be a major project to implement so I doubt it'll happen anytime soon, so don't worry about it. :) (But I'll try to expand on it if there's interest.) In the meantime - Drift tends to happen when there's a lull and nobody's injecting new ideas or viewpoints into a discussion. If the Board is actually thinking of anything by way of conference moderation, I'm sure they'll bring it up in Coop for discussion first, and that will put discussion back on track.
this dead horse has been beat for years by you guys. nothing ever happens :forget
AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! I only scanned over this, but it's hilarious that all of your cowards are talking behind my back! hahahaha!!! Especially cyklown!!! I knew he was reading every word I write on here. This is rich. NOT TO MENTION that way back in May, up there in response #2, someone was complaining that agora was going downhill and it didn't have anything to do with ME. You're all such a bunch of whiny cowards. Except lar. I have respect for lar. I also respect those who don't join in the lynching party and hera bashfest. hahahah! Cyklown, what a jerk you are. Oh, and there's keesan talking about ME too! Oooh, I thought she was FILTERING! What a fucking lying cunt. SEE? I am TOO a great judge of character. I can spot a fucking lying cunt a mile away. ;)
re #96: AHAHA! WRONG! Cyklown is totally fucking wrong. He doesn't know anything about any "agreement" which, in fact, there was none. Stupid asshole. Listen to the stupid asshole, if you want "facts" that aren't true. WHERE ARE YOUR CITES FOR THAT REMARK, cyklown? Yeah, I thought so.
#64.93 Mary Remmers (mary) Thu, Nov 22, 2007 (09:14): I think you've got free speech issues confused with intentional acts ... [[...xnip...]] But that said I'm not sure the totally open model works all that well anywhere anymore. It's a magnet for people with social issues. #64.100 larry (lar) Sun, Nov 25, 2007 (16:07): re#93 yeah, I guess spamming ...... [[...xnip...]] Let's face it cyklone..we banned hera for content.
maybe a moderated newuser woeuld work .... see latere item.
Retard.
re #114: You're the one with a "social issue" you skanky cunt whore bitch. I don't see you contributing much of anything in the General conference.
lar;s 100 wnas slighterly off ... nort 'content' raterh, ;mal-content; mdoerated newsuer nad/or psoting resotrictions seemm the learst-worst chioce.
What the fuck did you say???? You retard.
Not that I read every post in this topic but as I read remmers#85 the following occured to me. What if... individual posts where rated - say, on a five star scale. Further if all posts were to default to five stars and as grexers read and rate the post would be rated to reflect the average. With some filter arrangement grexers could choose the low-end threshhold they would be willing to subjec themselves to. Of course those who "live" here would be subjected to everything whereas the more casual among us would be treated to a dialed down version, if so desired. Of course there would need to be a mechanism to limit rating to once per customer. I think a system whereby the users have a direct say in what we want to represent would help build community spirit. Further the public access portal (read anonymously) could be tuned to reveal 'threes or above' (or whatever.) That might intice folks to register and log-in to see 1.what passes for low grade and 2.perhaps enter their 'vote' on the topics they did view. What could possibly be more democratic than that? 2cents << madmike
...kinda' like cyklone was talking about in #55(?) I suppose...
Something like that is certainly possible....
Re resp:120 - Hmmm... I'm glad somebody is reviving this thread. In resp:85 and resp:88 I detailed my objections to such a rating system and proposed a more individualized alternative that would allow users to fine-tune their filtering to their own tastes. Just to remind y'all.
Thanks for the redirect remmers. I get what you're saying. Perhaps there could be several filtering "cliques". For example one could tune in using the administrators clique or the moderator clique, the newbie clique or the self admitted twit clique. Imagine the hoops that could be constructed to determine who may be admitted to a particular group. You could collect group labels as sort of merit badges. You might even allow for revoking of group membership based on fellow cliquee votes. 'Cyber-Survivor' as it where. For the record I think the MySpace model is okay for them but too restrictive for grex. I really dig that I can post to Coop. And I did not even have to pass a psyc test. ;-)
this is grex's most interesting conference.
i noticed that the groups stuff is (seems to be) un-updated. ???
Which groups?
well, i thought i'd be int eh verified group, for one example. don;t wanna get a buncha ppl too upset.
eh?
Dave! Missed you 'round here. And at the Lighthouse.
There seems to be something in FrontTalk where a character sequence which I expect to result in a cancelled posting instead causes a blank posting to happen. Not sure what that sequence is. But it probably involves a CTRL-C.
Hmm; that's weird...
You have several choices: