Should personal attacks be allowed on Apolyton Off Topic?

[Proteus_MST]

"Discuss the posting and not the poster" would be a good thing to enforce ... if it is done intelligently.

For example:
You are gay can be an insult
and it can be no insult ...
for example if person adressed is de facto homosexual
the person who wrote the line is still living pre 1960s (where gay meant "happy" or "cvarefree"
or if the person adressed has the surname "Gay"

[giblets]

I don't think any rules are needed, just ban Ben and Kid and the environment will improve. If they're allowed to stay, not allowing personal insults would reduce the temptation to interact with them.

[Jon Miller]

Face it: We are fine with personal attacks, as long as they don't dominant the forum and they aren't continually directed at posters most people like.

JM

[rah]

Well mods need rules to moderate by. I would say given the rules I've asked them to enforce, the moderators we have have done a close to a perfect job.

Yeah there is that.

But consider, Democracy is flawed as soon as the people figure they can vote to give themselves stuff they don't have to give.
Asking how people want to be moderated is a little bit the same. Especially when you're seeking input from some of the worst offenders.

Experienced mods will start at one point and depending on what happens will modify it.
Granted every mod will have slightly different standards. (who could forget MTG's ban them all and let god sort them out) But decent modding is decent modding.

If the mods are even a little respected by a good percentage of the community then it will work out.

They are just there when things are getting out of hand.

If I remember correctly, the only time I was restricted was when I was a mod.

But it's your site so the final decision rests on you.

[N35t0r]

don't think a ban on personal insults will do anything to improve the forum.

[Aeson]

Yah, we could change the rules to something along the lines of "moderator discretion" with "admin review"... and let the admins just take whatever flak there is. But it is helpful to have some sort of vague target to start shooting for. These discussions are very helpful in formulating that.

[Elok]

I don't think a restriction on personal insults is really going to fix the problem, but I think we are also working with different ideas of what "the problem" is. For me, it's that almost all threads tend to be hijacked into playing stubby-arms tetherball with BK and Kid. Just wasting those two would solve the problem pretty neatly, but I understand that Aeson doesn't want to establish a bill-of-attainder precedent. So I think I'd prefer a "castle law" for threads; give people the right to kick thread****ters out, or rather ask for thread****ters to be booted. This contains much of the damage. It would also help if we put more effort into starting interesting threads instead of having the same few arguments.

Part of the BK and Kid issue is being resolved gradually as more and more people, in this hands-off environment, simply resolve to stop reading or responding. This, I think, is as it should be. It doesn't move as quickly as I'd like, but we're not idiots, and we're gradually learning that there's a way we want our community to work, and this isn't it.

By contrast, moderation to enforce people's expectations of a polite environment is problematic; it inevitably leaves at least some people feeling hosed, is open to manipulation by shysters or shifting/unclear standards, can put a lid on otherwise open discourse, and tends to make us all just a wee bit infantile by making us dependent on authority to enforce social norms.

We could also stand to be a bit calmer about this; Aeson has been treating all this as an ongoing experiment in customer service, with nothing fixed. He's already axed one fix less than 24 hours after its implementation when a bunch of us said, "yeah, this sounds like a dumb idea." We have no cause to freak out and Godwin.

[MrFun]

None of this would be a problem if we had mods that actually moderated.

[MrFun]

I don't think a restriction on personal insults is really going to fix the problem, but I think we are also working with different ideas of what "the problem" is. For me, it's that almost all threads tend to be hijacked into playing stubby-arms tetherball with BK and Kid. Just wasting those two would solve the problem pretty neatly, but I understand that Aeson doesn't want to establish a bill-of-attainder precedent. So I think I'd prefer a "castle law" for threads; give people the right to kick thread****ters out, or rather ask for thread****ters to be booted. This contains much of the damage. It would also help if we put more effort into starting interesting threads instead of having the same few arguments.

Part of the BK and Kid issue is being resolved gradually as more and more people, in this hands-off environment, simply resolve to stop reading or responding. This, I think, is as it should be. It doesn't move as quickly as I'd like, but we're not idiots, and we're gradually learning that there's a way we want our community to work, and this isn't it.

By contrast, moderation to enforce people's expectations of a polite environment is problematic; it inevitably leaves at least some people feeling hosed, is open to manipulation by shysters or shifting/unclear standards, can put a lid on otherwise open discourse, and tends to make us all just a wee bit infantile by making us dependent on authority to enforce social norms.

We could also stand to be a bit calmer about this; Aeson has been treating all this as an ongoing experiment in customer service, with nothing fixed. He's already axed one fix less than 24 hours after its implementation when a bunch of us said, "yeah, this sounds like a dumb idea." We have no cause to freak out and Godwin.

That's an interesting idea. Give thread starters some minimum level of control over their own threads.

But then, people are likely to abuse that, by simply kicking people out of their thread for respectfully expressing a well-reasoned disagreement or counter argument.

[ZEE]

I simply think Gribbler and Loin are trolling. And it's working, they got the whole forum in an uproar.

ME... I don't see any problem with the way things are and the [Civil] tag will make it all the moar better.

[loinburger]

The thing that concerns me about the current "let it be" policy towards personal insults is that it effectively quashes any "real" threads being posted. As an example, last month my best friend died of brain cancer. There was no way in hell that I was going to start a "please share similar stories about loss and so on while I deal with this awfulness" thread on the subject because it would have been trolled to hell and back by Kidicious et al. Even with the [Civil] tag I wouldn't start a thread on the subject, because then I'd post in some stupid thread like "italian sausage vs. bratwurst" and all of a sudden Kidicious et al would chime in with something like "your friend deserved to die of cancer because you're an atheist" or whatever, because personal insults are a-ok in non-civil threads and I've just given some terrible people a lot of trolling ammunition. But, maybe most posters don't want a forum where people can post threads about their friends dying of brain cancer, in which case our current policy is the way to go.

[Kidlicious]

I don't think a restriction on personal insults is really going to fix the problem, but I think we are also working with different ideas of what "the problem" is. For me, it's that almost all threads tend to be hijacked into playing stubby-arms tetherball with BK and Kid. Just wasting those two would solve the problem pretty neatly, but I understand that Aeson doesn't want to establish a bill-of-attainder precedent. So I think I'd prefer a "castle law" for threads; give people the right to kick thread****ters out, or rather ask for thread****ters to be booted. This contains much of the damage. It would also help if we put more effort into starting interesting threads instead of having the same few arguments.

Part of the BK and Kid issue is being resolved gradually as more and more people, in this hands-off environment, simply resolve to stop reading or responding. This, I think, is as it should be. It doesn't move as quickly as I'd like, but we're not idiots, and we're gradually learning that there's a way we want our community to work, and this isn't it.

By contrast, moderation to enforce people's expectations of a polite environment is problematic; it inevitably leaves at least some people feeling hosed, is open to manipulation by shysters or shifting/unclear standards, can put a lid on otherwise open discourse, and tends to make us all just a wee bit infantile by making us dependent on authority to enforce social norms.

We could also stand to be a bit calmer about this; Aeson has been treating all this as an ongoing experiment in customer service, with nothing fixed. He's already axed one fix less than 24 hours after its implementation when a bunch of us said, "yeah, this sounds like a dumb idea." We have no cause to freak out and Godwin.

No wonder you're fine with personal attacks. You like making them. Stop blaming people. If you want to start a thread and have a conversation do it. I've lost all respect for you because you keep up this bull****.

On another note, I'm glad the vote is in favor of banning personal attacks. I prefer the "attack the post, not the poster" rule though as debate will be improved by it. Anyone who does attack the poster is a loser in my book, but unfortunately it's normal behavior here. That just shows how ****ty this place has become. We need a stated goal, such as improving the debate environment, not some stupid bull**** about perma-banning people we don't like. The biggest problem is some people need to GROW THE **** UP!

[Elok]

That's an interesting idea. Give thread starters some minimum level of control over their own threads.

But then, people are likely to abuse that, by simply kicking people out of their thread for respectfully expressing a well-reasoned disagreement or counter argument.

The idea isn't to give them despotic powers, but to let them appeal to the mods. It's usually pretty easy to distinguish between outright threadjacking and merely making a point the starter doesn't like. And even if it didn't work that way, the thread starter's powers end outside his own threads.

[Hauldren Collider]

I don't know if that's true, Loin, I have posted threads about such things before and they were not **** upon, but I understand your reticence. By the way, I am sorry for your loss

[MrFun]

The idea isn't to give them despotic powers, but to let them appeal to the mods. It's usually pretty easy to distinguish between outright threadjacking and merely making a point the starter doesn't like. And even if it didn't work that way, the thread starter's powers end outside his own threads.