This is an excerpt from our last BOD meeting. I am posting it set apart
because I would like any discussion about this to be seperate from the
meeting notes because I think this is a topic that is important enough
for it's own item.
Conferencing:
It was the opinion of some board members that the quality of
conferencing has gone down. For example there was an item recently that
started out with good content but then ended up with comments from users
about them having sex with the item author s daughter. Grex s
conferences might not be attractive to new people. How can Grex have
conferences that appeal to serious adult conversation? Here are some
rough ideas:
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.
Or we could allow any current users to post but validate any newusers.
Or it could be open to just paying users.
3. Allow item authors to moderate items.
4. Make no procedural changes to conferences but use social
pressure to
encourage thoughtful high quality posts.
Can Grex be different things to different people? Can we keep the old
conferences with no restrictions and have either another set of
conferences or just one conference with different rules. Would it work?
What do you guys think? Is there anything we can do to appeal to a wider
group of people and encourage new users. Would there be support for a
second set of conferences or for a single moderated conference?
133 responses total.
Ditch the Blue Ribbon!
I agree that the quality of the conferences (agora in particular, but then it's the only one with substantial activity..) has gone WAY downhill. The tone of the (for lack of a better word) "discussions", the personal attacks, and the constant pointless coarseness and vulgarity sadden me (and make me really sorry, as well, that I encouraged a teenage relative to create an account. AFAIK that person hasn't been active in any of the conferences yet but I'm embarrassed by what they'll find if they eventually join agora.) At this point commitment to free speech is about the only thing keeping me from advocating stricter controls. But I see it as an interesting question -- when garbage speech drives out other forms of expression is it really pro-free-speech to enable the clamoring idiots who shut down other conversations for their own amusement?
This response has been erased.
In order to balance the preservation of a free speech environment with the
desire to maintain a civil discussion environment, here is how I would set up a
new conference that allows persons posting topics to moderate the topics
they've posted:
* 1) Do this as a test, running it alongside the existing system.
* 2) Set it up so that people joining bbs for the first time are
automatically joined into Agora and the test conference, instead of only
Agora. This should boost awareness of and participation in the test.
* 3) Allow each item's creator/moderator three powers not available in the
current system:
o a) HIDE responses (not remove) so that they are replaced with a link
that any web viewer can click to read the hidden response, and make
the replacement text indicate that the item was hidden by the user
who posted the item and not by other means. For telnet users,
whatever commands currently display hidden responses could be used to
display responses hidden by this method.
o b) Disallow display of full names in response headings (loginid only)
o c) Ban specific users/loginids from FURTHER posting in the item, but
have the ban/unban command automatically enter a non-hideable
response in the item indicating the action and the affected
loginid/s.
These powers, in combination, allow moderators to limit and hide off-topic,
disruptive or abusive content expressed in postings, fullnames and in loginids
while preserving the ability of readers to see all actions taken by moderators
and review any content exclusions made by them. This allows the community to
self-police and self-regulate abuse of the moderator's powers. In addition,
users should be able to remove their own posts and items they've entered,
though removed posts should be replaced with a notice indicating that the posts
were removed by the user, not the moderator.
and just who is going to do this?
One issue with allowing authors to moderate items is that often an author will create an item and then somewhere down the line, an interesting discussion develops. If the author were someone petty, they would have more control over that conversation than I would like. On the other hand, this seems to be the model that many blogs operate under. The owner of the blog moderates the comments to different degrees and if a blog post is authored by someone who excessively or unfairly moderates comments, people tend not to comment there anymore. I have seen how some of the bigger blogs manage to moderate comments in such a way that it can really foster discussion because people feel safe posting there. So I guess I am on the fence about that sort of solution. The solution I prefer, although I dont know how to impliment it, would be to keep things as they are but somehow find a way to get good posters to post more often. I think that the overall character of a place is what is important. If there are some abusive trolls mixed in, they are easy to ignore. All I know is that I have recommended Grex to people I talk to in the blog world but none of them have been interested in being here. Either they didnt like the conferencing structure or they came here and didnt find the discussions interesting enough to stay. Or they felt that Grex was too much of an "in crowd" I would like to see people be more welcoming and I know I can certainly improve in that area myself. Personally, I find most of the discussions here to be interesting but I worry that if we keep slowly losing conference participants, we'll end up with fewer and fewer people talking to each other. Also we will end up with fewer people willing to do the nuts and bolts things to keep the place online.
It was the opinion of some board members that the quality of conferencing has gone down. Opinions are acceptable. Censorship is not.
Is it censorship if Grex experiments with a system that allows item creators more editorial control over conversations if the system still allows participants the ability to post (virtually) anything they want to post? Imagine a hypothetical second conferencing system which allowed you to block or hide responses to items you created. Where's the censorship if the people whose items are blocked are entitled to create their own items and post any ideas they want?
i'm curious. how negatively do people see me? am i one of the 'abusive trolls' slynne talks about? am i part of mcnally's 'pointless courseness and vulgarity'? i think one of the things about my personality is that i SEEM more antagonistic than i really am. for example, i've posted all sorts of silly nonsense about how eric bassey (i.e., other) is a jew who has set out to conspire against me, but mostly that's in jest and parody and trying to understand people who actually think those sorts of things, and one of the things i like about some people is their ability to realize when i'm just fucking around. not that i don't also have the problem of saying things jokingly that are all too serious and important to me.
It's sad, though, when you are the only one laughing at you... usually a sign you may not be that funny ;)
re #9: One side-effect of a moderation system is that you'd have a pretty good idea (without even having to ask) whether people were offended or distracted by your posts enough to feel that the discussion would be better off without them. The user I primarily had in mind with the "pointless coarseness and vulgarity" comment is jvmv, who virtually never posts anything except attempts to disrupt the discussion or harrass participants. However I have to admit that there are other comments that I would prefer to see edited out of some discussions.
resp:7 - I think the idea is to keep the current conferences just as they are but to consider providing an alternative space with different rules than we currently have.
Like the Dave Parks Nice Conference?
haha. I think so.
I would like to see the graffiti painted over.
re #8 Imagine a hypothetical second conferencing system which allowed you to block or hide responses to items you created. Yea, we tend to call that the Parenting Conference circa Valerie regime. It was censorship. You can create an item and a responder can invest just as much time and intellect into responding. I do not think it fair for the initiator of a thread to inherit absolute rights over all intellectual discourse throughout the entire item.
re #16: if everyone has the same opportunity I don't see how you can object to it on the grounds of fairness. I think what you mean is that you don't like the idea, not that it's not fair. In the case of Valerie's abuse of the conferencing system, of course, it *was* unfair, because Valerie used system privileges that are not available to other users. I predict that a system such as the one that's been proposed would have a kind of a spotty start where the moderation got abused at first but would eventually reach a kind of an equilibrium point where people would either avoid certain items if they expected the initiator to abuse moderation privileges or would create their own forums to express their rebuttals and counter-arguments.
You may be right, but the moderation would need to be frequent and vigorous to have its intended effect, and it's important to never underestimate the tenacity of people who lack both a sense of decorum and a life. Most non-agora conferences fail. I have my doubts as to whether there is really a wellspring of potential high-quality discussion which is being prevented from happening in agora by a lack of moderation and control. People reward things by responding to them, and more responses are generated by an idiotic mis-spelled opinion than a thoughtful tome.
re #17 create their own forums I see that as a problem caused by an ineffective solution to differing opinions driving censorship. Why allow censorship? You either have the savory debates or you don't. I don't think a FW should be an interior decorator nor putting pearls on a pig to hide the fact that respondents may not all be John Steinbeck.
No one would be taking away the conferences you now enjoy. We'd just be adding some new ones with different rules for folks who might like a different style of conferencing. You won't be forced to join in. But this may appeal to others and I'd like to see Grex mix it up a bit as long as participation is voluntary and it's an alternate to what already exists. My biggest concern is that we waited too long to try this.
i hope people don't ban me from their items. :(
i enjoy posting graffiti once in a while
re #20 No matter how you slice it, you're condoning censorship.
#23: To call this proposal censorship is as meaningless as calling what the Bush Administration is doing "government." It is stretching the definition of the word to the point at which it loses any connotation that the original concept carries. There is no applicable meaning of censorship to a system in which everyone has the same rights to say whatever they want. It is applicable to say that the speech is MINIMALLY regulated, but since every user has the same regulatory rights over every other user, and the whole system is voluntary to begin with, even that is stretching the meaning. Why are you so afraid of the idea that users can begin a conversation and actually limit (as explicitly opposed to "eliminate or completely control," by the system I proposed) the ability of others to sidetrack or destroy the social value of that conversation? Especially when the users who participate will inevitably decline to participate in discussions moderated by those who abuse the limited powers they're given?
it's odd you're using that most people would understand to be mere rhetoric, since the bush administration (doesn't GOVERNMENT just jump out at you as a word to use there?) is obviously a government, regardless of what they've done, because of the position they occupy. i'm also not sure how you can call it 'minimal' regulation when it includes allowing any users to excise the words of other peephole. my position on this subject is obviously going to be marginal. i'm not particularly popular, my odd ideas are probably expressed in an inadequate manner, and i'm probably one of the biggest causes of distress this item seeks to address. however, i can't imagine that, given the argumentative and rivalous nature of many of grex's users, that this won't cause more problems than it solves. There really aren't all that many offensive posts.
I'd love to see a way to elevate the level of discussion on Grex. It can really be a drag to wade through the viciousness and drivel in some items in agora. It's definitely understandable to me why so many people have left the conferences. I don't see any harm in trying a different approach in some separate space. Anyone who doesn't like it can always skip using it, after all. Under the Picospan model on a Unix machine, a separate filesystem could be used for each moderated conference. That would prevent linking between the conferences. The moderator could pretty much have free reign within the conference, without having any ability to take liberties outside of that conference. The filesystems wouldn't have to be large. All of the conferences combined on M-Net during it's busiest period fit into about 30 MB of disk space. I'd expect 1 MB for each conference would be plenty. I'm not sure if there's a limit to how many filesystems there can be, or how difficult it would be to create, administer and maintain them. I'm also not sure if there's a better way, technically, to implement a moderated conference system.
re #25 Why are you so afraid of the idea that users can begin a conversation and actually limit (as explicitly opposed to "eliminate or completely control," by the system I proposed) the ability of others to sidetrack or destroy the social value of that conversation? To quote a great statesman: "Why don't you take your social regulations and shove em up your ass!"
Maybe if there was less talk of shoving things up people's asses some of us wouldn't feel some sort of moderation system might be desirable.
My twit filter eliminates the drivel but not responses to it.
I have desires to moderate discussions sometimes but I would never act on it with Grex. Censorship is evil.
Keeping with the greek theme, lets call this the xenos.cf
Popcorn Cf
So this new thing would be like the twinkie conference on mnet?
basically yeah. just with an "old" twist
The proposal creates a SELF-regulating system to foster the development of a more constructive mode of discussion. It defies logic to insist that this is the same thing as censorship by authority. To cling to that position can only marginalize you and your opinion, especially in the absence of an alternative constructive suggestion.
To cling to that position can only marginalize you and your opinion, especially in the absence of an alternative constructive suggestion. Alberto Gonzales? Is that you? *Seig Heil*
I see no subtlety escapes your derision.
I see you are full of syllables with nothing to say except "Censorship, my precious", Golum.
re. 35: no-one complained about it being censorship BY AUTHORITY. moreover, it COULD be censorship by authority if authority knows certain things are likely to be censored.
Its still censorship. Someone doesn't like your tone, grammar, vocabular, slang, drift, punctuation, style, etc and suddenly you've got Joe Stalin himself re-writing the entire item. No f'in thanks, Goebels lovers.
Arbornet III.
1984
Baying at the moon, tod. I suspect (no proof) that grex is not the first conferencing system for most of the people who come to grex. Therefore conferencers have undoubtedly seen the lurid side of internet communication, and are not likely to be shocked at what they see on grex. The question is, is there enough valuable and interesting discussion, period on grex, even with the detraction of the graffiti of trap etc.?
Parenting Cf - The Sequel What part of the board actions and discussions did you all forget about after popcorn went apeshit? Censorship is nothing to take lightly.
REMOVE THE RIBBON PLZ K?
TAKE IT OFF STRIP IT
"Take it off! Take it off!" -Searching for Mr.Goodbar
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
I use some moderated mailinglists and all the moderator does is ensure that all submissions are relevant to the topic of the mailinglist and presented civily. I have no problem with such moderation. Of course, a moderator could abuse his/her authority. I have seen cases where that has led to new mailinglists splitting off from the original.
I run one and it gets about 900 messages a day..half or more are spam. Its a PITA.
I have linked this item from the previous Coop Conference because it seems relevant to issues that were discussed at Happy Hour. (Thanks, gelinas, for pointing it out to me). I am considering making this a BoD agenda item. My suggestion to the Board would be that we make conference posting a Class 2 privilege. I believe that the problem as posed by slynne in the original post still remains. Personally, I have been directing most friends to a different (moderated) conferencing system with an Agora Conference that has every thing I enjoy about Grex's Agora, without the verbal abuse, attacks, and graffiti. (Really, it was already named Agora when I joined!) I also have found myself avoiding Agora. I don't need to see all the abusive item titles, nor do I need to page through all the ignored responses. There are pleasanter communities, with just as broad a range of opinions. However, before I propose moving conference posting to class 2, I'd like to see more of a consensus. One thing that concerns me is that such a consensus may not be possible, and that Grex may lose a large number of its supporters if we try to create experimental moderated conferences. However, Grex is already losing supporters and active participants, so in some sense, we lose either way.
I had a similar proposal for mnet that I wish they'd tried. Basically, there would be an uncensored cf that mirrored gen/agora. I proposed calling the uncensored cf "garbage" but you can come up with whatever name you want. The key was that readers could respond to a post by typing "move (post/item #) to garbage." There would be a program that automatically counted the "move to" posts, and once a threshold was reached, that post or item would be marked "moved." It would still be fully readable in the uncensored mirror cf but not in the first cf. The only issues I could see would where to set the threshold (five votes? ten? somewhere in between?) and whether those whose items were moved would try to game the system by creating new accounts to punish those who voted to move their items. Given the new proposals to validate users, I think the second problem may be more imaginary than real. The advantage of this system is that no power is concentrated in the hands of a moderator, it is based on consensus (to a degree) and there is no censorship, in the sense that no one's words are permanently "disappeared." Something to think about.
How about allowing the fairwitness of agora to delete (is that possible) items posted specifically to annoy (such as the recent spate by our resident vandal)? Even if I filter the vandals, it is annoying to have to read the responses to them.
I would oppose that method as concentrating too much power in the hands of one person. My method would allow grex as a group to do the same thing. Under your proposal, who's to say that I wouldn't be censored if I used "indelicate" language to start a "bruce is an ignorant moron who refuses to use his brain" item? Also, your proposal would remove the item entirely, while mine would allow it to live on in another cf.
Sindi, the Agora fairwitness already has that power.
Should we vote whether to allow the Agora fairwitness to remove postings designed primarily to be offensive? Or will this encourage the vandal to flood other conferences?
You're assuming that the proposal would pass. I don't think you've got the votes to do that, but go ahead and start the process if you like.
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: