I think some of your recent comments raised valuable points but, unfortunately, too many do not follow Forum norms. Specifically, norms around assuming good faith, staying on topic, not being unnecessarily rude or offensive, and avoiding deliberate flamebait.
Also noting that this is your 14th comment on this thread, in a very short span of time, and your comments appear to be becoming increasingly rude.
This is a warning. Iāll note that this is your third warning ā please be more mindful in the future. In order to avoid breaking norms going forward, please phrase your contributions in a more collaborative manner. Further norm violations could lead to rate-limiting or a ban.
(This was written in reply to the comment above, before your most recent comments)
It seems good to me if the forum team took more action here against this post, for example removing the section on Ben Pace that can clearly be interpreted as retaliatory. I donāt see why we would assume good faith for that part of the post.
The reaction here of the moderation seems a bit unbalanced.
I want to express ambivalence (actual ambivalence, not code for dislike) about this kind of moderation. I take it that if the same points had been expressed using different language, the mods would not have objected. But in my view, the inflammatory tone has discursive valueāit signals a level of frustration and anger that is arguably appropriate, given the circumstances, and is difficult to communicate using more staid language.
I also wonder about the value-add of moderators intervening on these kinds of comments, given they tend to get downvoted anyways. And if they donāt, should the mods really be sanctioning them? (Do mods on other websites do this? My impression was that, e.g., the NYT just censors profanity and spam, and allows voting to do the rest.)
To give a little context for this comment, I read the Forum before I was involved in EA, and when I saw comments that were not phrased in a, uh, collaborative manner, my reaction was usually āwow, Iām glad someone is expressing their true feelings about this situation.ā It made EA seem a bit more real, honest, and normal. I still basically feel this way. We all have emotional responsesāespecially to community eventsāand these emotions usually linger just below the surface of our neatly worded essays. (This is part of what feels off to me about the original postāitās couched in niceties and formal language, but reads as biting and furious. I think the kind of moderation on display here encourages this kind of tone.)
I am sympathetic to the worry that a lot of online spaces are too rude, mean, unproductive, and so on, but I donāt think the Forum is going to descend into madness if the mods just allow democracy to do its thing here (though Iām not sure!). Conversely, I do think that tone-policing is hard to do even-handedly, and can contribute to weird and disingenuous discussions that Iām not sure are always a good thing, particularly when strong emotions may well be warranted.
Sorry, I donāt think I got this quite right in my initial comment; let me try again:
I think something really messed up is going on here, in that both Ben and Katās posts include some serious allegations that are supported by very limited evidence (like āanonymous person said Xā). (Other allegations in these posts are supported by good evidence, like screenshots.) These accusations have the potential to seriously harm peopleās professional lives, relationships, and mental health. And in both cases, the general message of both posts could be relayed without relying on the anecdotes that arenāt supported by good evidence.
The forum moderators have allowed this mudslinging to occur more or less unchecked. To the extent mods have been involved, their involvement has been limited to telling bystanders not to lose our heads. I think this is very bad! The evidentiary standards these posts are being held to wouldnāt come close to passing muster on Wikipedia (let alone in a newspaper or court). And thereās a reason for that: baselessly smearing people is bad. It is especially bad when the most plausible explanation for the behavior is vengeance. For the mods to then issue a warning for a take saying as much (packaged in combative language) while allowing the libel (packaged in Forum-y language) to go unchecked strikes me as exactly backwards, especially when Forum users can readily police the former (through voting), but cannot police the latter. Given the stakes of these kinds of posts for peopleās lives, I really hope this situation prompts some kind of post-mortem about the evidentiary standards posts should be held to.
I donāt view the toe and murder comments as violating forum norms. They are a reductio of what I take to be an absurd argument. I think the comment about preposterous naivety is correct. The post itself obviously violates forum norms and the moderators are defending the post
For the record, my other warnings were for
discussing how someone credibly accused by multiple people of sexual misconduct repeatedly lied and isnāt permanently banned from the forum
-sharing true information about how Emile Torres has harassed me without sharing the supporting evidence for privacy reasons. The comment confirming the warning was heavily downvoted.
I think some of your recent comments raised valuable points but, unfortunately, too many do not follow Forum norms. Specifically, norms around assuming good faith, staying on topic, not being unnecessarily rude or offensive, and avoiding deliberate flamebait.
Some examples:
Give. Me. A. Break.
if Ben tried to murder kat, she would be permitted to cut off his arm?
The preposterous naivety on show in discussions like this
Also noting that this is your 14th comment on this thread, in a very short span of time, and your comments appear to be becoming increasingly rude.
This is a warning. Iāll note that this is your third warning ā please be more mindful in the future. In order to avoid breaking norms going forward, please phrase your contributions in a more collaborative manner. Further norm violations could lead to rate-limiting or a ban.
(This was written in reply to the comment above, before your most recent comments)
It seems good to me if the forum team took more action here against this post, for example removing the section on Ben Pace that can clearly be interpreted as retaliatory. I donāt see why we would assume good faith for that part of the post.
The reaction here of the moderation seems a bit unbalanced.
I want to express ambivalence (actual ambivalence, not code for dislike) about this kind of moderation. I take it that if the same points had been expressed using different language, the mods would not have objected. But in my view, the inflammatory tone has discursive valueāit signals a level of frustration and anger that is arguably appropriate, given the circumstances, and is difficult to communicate using more staid language.
I also wonder about the value-add of moderators intervening on these kinds of comments, given they tend to get downvoted anyways. And if they donāt, should the mods really be sanctioning them? (Do mods on other websites do this? My impression was that, e.g., the NYT just censors profanity and spam, and allows voting to do the rest.)
To give a little context for this comment, I read the Forum before I was involved in EA, and when I saw comments that were not phrased in a, uh, collaborative manner, my reaction was usually āwow, Iām glad someone is expressing their true feelings about this situation.ā It made EA seem a bit more real, honest, and normal. I still basically feel this way. We all have emotional responsesāespecially to community eventsāand these emotions usually linger just below the surface of our neatly worded essays. (This is part of what feels off to me about the original postāitās couched in niceties and formal language, but reads as biting and furious. I think the kind of moderation on display here encourages this kind of tone.)
I am sympathetic to the worry that a lot of online spaces are too rude, mean, unproductive, and so on, but I donāt think the Forum is going to descend into madness if the mods just allow democracy to do its thing here (though Iām not sure!). Conversely, I do think that tone-policing is hard to do even-handedly, and can contribute to weird and disingenuous discussions that Iām not sure are always a good thing, particularly when strong emotions may well be warranted.
Sorry, I donāt think I got this quite right in my initial comment; let me try again:
I think something really messed up is going on here, in that both Ben and Katās posts include some serious allegations that are supported by very limited evidence (like āanonymous person said Xā). (Other allegations in these posts are supported by good evidence, like screenshots.) These accusations have the potential to seriously harm peopleās professional lives, relationships, and mental health. And in both cases, the general message of both posts could be relayed without relying on the anecdotes that arenāt supported by good evidence.
The forum moderators have allowed this mudslinging to occur more or less unchecked. To the extent mods have been involved, their involvement has been limited to telling bystanders not to lose our heads. I think this is very bad! The evidentiary standards these posts are being held to wouldnāt come close to passing muster on Wikipedia (let alone in a newspaper or court). And thereās a reason for that: baselessly smearing people is bad. It is especially bad when the most plausible explanation for the behavior is vengeance. For the mods to then issue a warning for a take saying as much (packaged in combative language) while allowing the libel (packaged in Forum-y language) to go unchecked strikes me as exactly backwards, especially when Forum users can readily police the former (through voting), but cannot police the latter. Given the stakes of these kinds of posts for peopleās lives, I really hope this situation prompts some kind of post-mortem about the evidentiary standards posts should be held to.
I donāt view the toe and murder comments as violating forum norms. They are a reductio of what I take to be an absurd argument. I think the comment about preposterous naivety is correct. The post itself obviously violates forum norms and the moderators are defending the post
For the record, my other warnings were for
discussing how someone credibly accused by multiple people of sexual misconduct repeatedly lied and isnāt permanently banned from the forum
-sharing true information about how Emile Torres has harassed me without sharing the supporting evidence for privacy reasons. The comment confirming the warning was heavily downvoted.
Thanks for the feedback! I replied here since itās unrelated to this post.