Ranked Vote: How To Restore Meaningful Civil Discourse

Especially when fighting ideological entrenchment. When facts no longer matter, its actions that make the real difference.

Good thing the goosesteppers,racists and fringe scum are rather overwhelmingly outnumbered in both guns and people. The fight would at least have a silver lining amongst the idiotic mayhem that would ensue.

 

Did you miss the other members comment about commoner? That is the key you are looking for Commoner=Blue Collar.THAT is your divide that has no bridge. The forum is failing to connect with blue collar. Not everyone here carries a degree in whatever, some carry tool boxes.Notice he said Trump was elected because of it? Trump maybe a billionaire but he speaks blue collar/commoner.

Impling a widespread out break of violence? I HOPE not, but many feel its comming. But until more people learn to speak blue collar its possible.If you want to bridge the gap the gap is NOT between white collar and upper white collar. You have to be able to talk blue.
Does that help?

 

Better ways for who?

Some people are at a serious disadvantage when they are forced to handle disagreements in your preferred way.
That's why they have their own methods.

Being an A student at school gives me a high level of literacy.
Being a debating champion, allows me to debate in this format.

But my mate who is good at cricket, he sucks at these things. Can't express himself in these ways.
My mate who rocks with a welder and a tractor, he can't either.

And you will ride roughshod over him.

This happens all the time. Bureaucrats and intelligentsia take over and the commoner gets ignored until he bloody well rebels.
He has to fight you physically because you have rigged the game against him. Not treated him equally..


So in school I could out argue anyone and did.
I had to be taught what verbal bullying is.

Two really large guys, each taught me to respect them physically.
A very important lesson in life.

I won the civil discourse, but I lost the argument.
Because I was wrong and they were right and because I could talk the arse off a donkey the only means I had left them with to explain my wrongdoing to me, was violence.

 

Hey Bud, I'm not in Congress tell them..

 

Just in cordless DeWalt tool bag behind my truck seat has over five hundred dollars worth of tools and that's one bag out of many..

 

Degrees are great, for wallpaper. Never needed one to earn a great living.

 

Build it and find out.

 

You Will be grading and herding members into pens. I'm not trying to convince you NOT to do it BUT your own members in this thread have spoke to THEIR needs and what you are offering does not fit their needs.I'm not argueing with you nor is there ANY hate. Go ahead and build it.I have a decade of forums and forum building behind me. Soon their will be yet ANOTHER group who will want a forum "Structured" to THEIR needs.

 

G. Create a highly moderated subforum.
I. Not sure how this would work, but some clear rules of "admissible" evidence would be interesting.
S. Master's forum. If I have to choose between G and S, I strongly prefer S. And make it the most prominent and visible forum, the place people should aspire to be admitted.

And I also vote in a specific way for J: Stricter rules for the site as a whole.

As a former moderator, I recognize and appreciate the site's commitment to free speech, and it's long-time distaste for making subjective content judgements.

So when I was a mod, it led to an extensive set of temporary bans and rules.

But in my experience, all that did was enable trolls. Because the mods are all volunteers, and there aren't enough of them to track all the posts, much less keep a meaningful paper trail. The trolls learned to work the system. Permabanning became very difficult.

I think the site needs to develop a simple, concrete strategy for combating trolls and eliminating low-quality posters, and that means being willing to make some judgements about post quality, and being fairly low-tolerance about it.

I would base it on the following principles:

1. We want substantive, logic- and fact-based discussion;
2. We don't want to moderate opinions;
3. Temporary bans are not a big deal.

So I would propose something like the following:

-- Delete and warn ALL single-line posts that aren't advancing the discussion in some concrete way.
-- Automatically give a 1-day temp ban on any poster who garners three warnings in a day.
-- Automatically give a one-week ban to any poster who gets two 1-day bans.
-- Automatically permanban any poster who gets a second one-week ban

Anyone who can't stay within the above rules is a detriment to the site, not an asset. We should ban people who harm the site.

We could expand that concept to other types of problem posters as definitions and moderating resources allow. For instance:

-- Conspiracy theorists
-- People who ignore rebuttals to their posts and simply repost the same argument as if it wasn't addressed

Again, these people pollute and harm the forum, and we should have very low tolerance for it.

Perhaps more controversially, I would also propose that the site develop a way to deal with posters who cannot follow basic rules of debate, logic and evidence, or who cannot write coherent posts.

The most efficient way I can think of to do that is to screen new posters. All new posters get a prominent "newbie" flag. After, say, 50 posts, their account is flagged for review by moderators. The moderators look at their first 50 posts, and decide what action to take. Some possibilities:

1. Remove newbie flag, promote to full membership;
2. Warn them, extend newbie status for another 50 posts, and restrict them to a highly-moderated "newbie" forum where they can be taught the basics of debate, logic and evidence;
4. Ban them if they seem to be posting in bad faith or otherwise seem incapable of meeting forum standards.

If a poster fails to improve after the second 50 posts, ban them for a week and extend newbie status for another 50 posts.

If a poster fails to improve after the third 50 posts, permaban them.

The above should be adjusted based on a realistic assessment of moderating resources. If the system is too cumbersome to be handled by the available moderators, slim it down by reducing the number of chances a poster gets. For example, if a newbie forum would take too much work, then simply warn and ban.

We need to put the onus on posters to meet site standards, not moderators to catch all the bad behavior.

 

Opines would be bannable?

 

That logic would destroy this forum in under 6 months. I say that as a former site owner/admin and mod.

 

Um, no. I specifically called out "we don't want to moderate opinions" in the principles of moderation.

 

Please elaborate. How would it destroy the forum?

The forum is a mess now, overrun by trolls and low-quality crap. I spend my time rebutting stupidity, not discussing issues in a meaningful fashion. It's why I take long breaks from the forum these days.

If you're saying that the forum would collapse if all the trolls left, I think you've pinpointed the problem, and it's not my moderation suggestions.

 

I will be signing out now. Good luck to all. You ARE going to need it. Good day.

 

WTF? I ask you to explain your one-liner and you walk away instead?

Okay.

 

If I can say in one line what I think why not? Allow me to break your comment down. Those who post thoughts/feelings and opines will be mocked or punished When they arrive they will be graded. SOME will be sent to work camps( 50 posts) and others to the showers (permabanned/death)Who is going to screen them and who to judge? Which select "elite" group does that? @TNHarley @Moonglow you guys better watch this.

I have posted on forums all over the world including mainland China/Cuba/Finland/Canada/Sweden/America/Russia/ Africa and many others. The greatest threat to any mans freedom comes from other men who sort and judge them. We fought a civil war over that and a world war. And SOON if you are granted the powers you wish a board war.

Honky

 

Thank you.

Mocked? Where do you get that? And only punished the way bad posters are already punished now. I just think that we don't issue enough short temp bans, allowing trolls to thrive. Being more free with the temp bans won't inhibit solid posters, and will keep the trolls from overrunning the place.

Yep. New posters will be evaluated more closely than veteran posters. This is no different than how many forums work, where you have to earn various posting privileges.

Such drama.

The moderators. The same "judges" and "elites" that do this now.

Yay for you.

This is a discussion board, FFS, not an apartheid state. You seem to be arguing against ANY sort of standards. Indeed, your stated principle would oppose the CURRENT level and style of moderation.

The question isn't whether there should be moderation, including "judging" posters and banning them if necessary. The question is how that should operate. Internet trolls abuse the commitment to free speech. A modern moderation strategy has to find an effective way to kill the trolls while impacting good-faith posters as little as possible. I think having fewer second chances and being quicker to impose short temp bans can achieve this.

 

Those both sound like good names.

I don't think the world, or the world of forum-posters, is divided into the civil and the uncivil. We're all tempted to be a bit uncivil at times. A forum of the nature you propose should hold out to everyone the possibility of joining it -- it should be a living example of high-quality debate. It should draw people from the often-uncivil group into the civil group ... at least while posting on the forum.

Of course, it's just a drop in the water ... we won't see America becoming less crazy in its political wars because of this. But it's something. Maybe other forums would copy it after a while, who knows?