In the A2K playground: Play the Synbot game today!

@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

I can see no way in which you could reasonably read me to be to be discounting emotional harm.

What I am saying is that one can turn off the source of the emotional harm here, and not expose oneself to it.

Quite simply, not everyone will turn off the source of the harm... and since some won't; some will quote and comment on it and spread it... regardless of how any one member or percentage of members react... so blaming that member for responding is the faulty position.

The vast majority of these incidences of said being harm being done, on the other hand, would be eliminated along with their source. How is that a flawed argument?

I well understand there are as many preferred thresholds as there are members; but in certain cases it is beyond obvious that the preponderance of the community is in agreement. You or I would happily abide by virtually any minimum standard so it isn't terribly important to either of us where it is set. I do think we agree there should be a minimum. I only include this paragraph to pre-empt any suggestion that I just want it my way. Beyond not wanting a troll haven, this simply isn’t true.

2 Replies

@Foxfyre,

I set my settings so that every post that had a score of -5 or worse would automatically be invisible (well, collapsed) for me.

But everyone can adjust their own settings - its like choosing safety levels on Google Image Search or Flickr. Click on your username and then on Edit Preferences.

EDIT: Oh, I see that they've removed the specific numbers: it was -5, -10, -15 or none, I think. Now it just says "No minimum", "low", "medium" or "high". Probly cause they didnt want to keep changing the numbers over time as the level of voting picked up or dropped off.

Mind you, I think the phrasing of this option ("Topic Preferences",
"Minimum Post Votes") are well abstract and vague. Must be possible to make clearer what this does / what it's for. (Cant come up with something from the top of my head myself..)

1 Reply

@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Btw, Robert, your contention that those who respond to trolls thwart your system is a nonsensical argument.

It's also not the argument I made Bill, and I don't really see much utility in continuing to talk past each other. The point I was making is that you yourself are considered a troll to others, and while you may think it's only in the role of the white knight responding to trolls not everyone is going to feel that way. So you assume that there's a universal black and white, and that you are good and they are bad when in reality there's a lot of different opinions here and you don't speak for everyone.

I've said most of what I have to say on this, so if you want to repeat the mantra that this is "catering" and all have at it but I don't really have the time to rinse wash and repeat ad nauseum. I can't please everyone and will just continue to do the best I can. I understand that people want to vent, tell me how decisions are stupid, that they are going to leave (again), that they have lost confidence, that the leadership sucks and all. So have at it, but I don't have the time to play punching bag for every person here who is unhappy with something about the site, so I'll have to move on unless you have something specifically new to say.

If you just want to repeat the mantra that this is catering to trolls we'll have to agree to disagree and I wonder if you could consider that even if you are right and I am wrong that my intentions aren't to cater to trolls and that reasonable people can disagree on what the best way to address them is.

If you can't, and can just cast aspersions on me or my intentions then there's little profit in going through the motions all over again.

Quote:

If this is true, you system needs a tweak: Namely, the system’s assumption that a response is necessarily a vote up… that’s silly.

That was changed a while ago. Now the topics are auto voted up but the individual posts aren't. The individual posts are also showing the negatives again.

Lots of other tweaks will happen, but the fundamental values are going to remain the same. You can't expect to try to bludgeon the site into accepting your specific views on censorship. You have a vote like everyone else does and you can use it to remove content for yourself and for others (if enough of the others agree with you), but we aren't going to return to top-down moderation. We may intervene manually in the system to address specific disruptive patterns but the overall big picture is that you have a vote about what should be done and you should use it.

Complaining that we won't do it for you and that everyone agrees is silly, you only need a handful of like-minded individuals to remove the offensive content for everyone who wants that kind of content removed.

You have control over your own experience, and you have influence on the experience of others who want you to have that influence. The only thing you lack is the ability to impose this on those who don't want you to. And you shouldn't.

So while a lot of the tools for the users to moderate the site will change and while they need a heck of a lot more improvement (if you read the blog you'll see that private messaging has been put off to address some of it) the basic site principles remain the same:

Let users have as much control as possible over their own experience.
Let the collective community provide their collective standard.
Let users who don't want to let the community interfere in their experience opt out.

On a fundamental level, we aren't going to return to one authority (site staff) determining the experience for all. We'll make it easier for users to remove the content that they, and others like them want to remove and there's a lot more we need to do to make this work better, on a fundamental level we are doing some things wrong that we are addressing as we can. But we aren't going to satisfy those who want to dictate it for all because that isn't the principles we are building on.

Now once we get those things out of the way, there's actually going to be something you might like. We are going to make more areas of the site with more individual and group controls. So you'll be able to have your own forums here and run them with your own moderators and manage it however the heck you want.

I'm looking forward to that. I plan on making a group with no blowhards. I won't be allowed into it by definition, but it'd be fun to read. You can read it along with me ;-) when it happens or go make the "slaying ground of trolls" forum and do whatever you want with it.

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@nimh,

nimh wrote:

I set my settings so that every post that had a score of -5 or worse would automatically be invisible (well, collapsed) for me.

But everyone can adjust their own settings - its like choosing safety levels on Google Image Search or Flickr. Click on your username and then on Edit Preferences.

EDIT: Oh, I see that they've removed the specific numbers: it was -5, -10, -15 or none, I think. Now it just says "No minimum", "low", "medium" or "high". Probly cause they didnt want to keep changing the numbers over time as the level of voting picked up or dropped off.

Mind you, I think the phrasing of this option ("Topic Preferences",
"Minimum Post Votes") are well abstract and vague. Must be possible to make clearer what this does / what it's for. (Cant come up with something from the top of my head myself..)

Vague enough that after all this time I didn't fully understand them. And vague enough that it will be a rare newbie who would even know they existed, much less what they were for.

So I suppose voting down somebody, no matter how many members do that, doesn't protect an intended victim, especially a newbie, from poison posts any more than my putting the person on ignore. The only person I can protect, after a time, is me.

Oh well. As I said, I certainly don't have the skill to solve the problem.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Question: How many members have to vote down a single post to remove that post from everybody's view if it in fact does that at all?

There are different options, and this is exactly the kind of thing we need to tweak (we are going to try a percentage based model in conjunction with it for example) but currently the default for posts (as opposed to topics) is: -5

If a post gets to -5 it's collapsed for everyone by default (unless they choose higher thresholds).

Quote:

And if it does remove it from everybody's view, is it just that one post? Does a point arise when the member himself/herself is no longer within sight of anybody?

There is currently not a user based equivalent, but it is being explored. Either way users will need to make the collective decisions instead of moderators.

For example, we may make the ability to set settings that remove all "racism". But the users will need to get involved and help moderate it.

nimh touched on an important point, there are less than 5 or so moderators actively moderating the site (as defined as doing any moderator action within a week) and the users will need to participate in any solution.

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@nimh,

nimh wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Btw, Robert, your contention that those who respond to trolls thwart your system is a nonsensical argument. If this is true, you system needs a tweak: Namely, the system’s assumption that a response is necessarily a vote up…

I may have gotten this wrong, or not be referring to the same thing, but the way I understood the complaints was that replying to trolls doesnt break the system because it yields another thumbing point to the troll -- well, that too, but that's the minor thing. The real way it breaks the system for the rest of us is that, OK, we got this sucker on ignore - and then some good guy starts responding to him or worse, quoting him - undoing the whole effect of the system.

And yeah, of course there will always be people who'll end up doing that in any case, newbies for example, but it's still not smart and at least as relevantly: not helpful to the rest of us who were successfully rejecting the troll by refusing to acknowledge his very existence (and nothing puts them off as much as that). I mean, sure, OK, without trolls no trolling -- but by quoting the bastard, even in disagreement, you're actually amplifying his ****, duplicating it and broadcasting it even to those who explicitly decided not to have any part of it.

I don't disagree with much of that, Nimh. I think the ignore, voting, reputation systems are excellent... just insufficient to really get the job done.

The same automated system could be used to enforce a minimum standard as well that automatically results in timeouts and eventual permanent banishments. You will find it impossible to convince me it's a better idea to have 5 people vote down what could be countless thousands of posts (obviously viewed by at least 5 times as many people) than to do that AND use that information to pre-empt the majority of those thousands of posts, eliminating the need for thousands of people to view and vote them down. How can that possibly not sound like a better, more comprehensive solution to you?

Will there be some value missed by the idiot-bots hundredth reference to outhouses in your country, Blatham's health, race, etc ad nauseum? No, there won't. Hence; an algorithm that picks out only the worst of the worst is in everyone's best interest. And frankly, most especially, it is in Robert’s best interest. Robert has indicated that these things have been thought of, but that there is no plan to implement them at this time. I would prefer him to recognize his error sooner rather than later.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Vague enough that after all this time I didn't fully understand them. And vague enough that it will be a rare newbie who would even know they existed, much less what they were for.

It won't stay that way forever, it's vague because it's in flux and because I haven't yet thought of a better way of phrasing it (you're welcome to give it a try, it's one of the harder messages to nail).

Quote:

So I suppose voting down somebody, no matter how many members do that, doesn't protect an intended victim, especially a newbie, from poison posts any more than my putting the person on ignore. The only person I can protect, after a time, is me.

By default the newbie is on the most strict settings, so they don't need to figure anything out to achieve what you are saying they are unlikely to. Sure, the messaging there can be a lot better (in addition to a lot of things about it) but that will only affect those who misunderstand it and change it and by default they don't need to do anything.

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@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Quite simply, not everyone will turn off the source of the harm... and since some won't; some will quote and comment on it and spread it... regardless of how any one member or percentage of members react... so blaming that member for responding is the faulty position.

OK, but what about stepping back from the perspective of judgement (who is to blame and should be punished) and into the perspective of effectiveness (whats the most effective response in terms of protecting the victim)?

I mean, back to those real world parallels for a mo', and Deb can of course correct me if I misphrase her work - I'm just going on what she's written in posts here. She deals with victims of abuse. Now ideally, the abusers in question are sent to prison -- but for a variety of institutional and practical reasons this is extremely difficult to achieve. Moreover, even if you can put the guy who raped her, say, behind bars, you can do nothing, in legal or punitive terms, against the random assholes she'll come across who say or do something rude or offensive, and might trigger her (experiences) in the process. So what does she spend a lot of her time doing instead? Working with these victims so they can acquire the skills, strategies and tools to a) go around these people and b) not let those people hurt them.

Now that may, on a conceptual level, offend one's sense of justice - why should they do the work, why should they be training themselves in stuff, when it's the fault of those assholes, and more fundamentally, the abuser who started it all? Those should be the ones made to suffer -- round them up and get them, thats the proper answer!

But yeah, well. There's plenty of assholes, and more of them will come on her path time and again. So while that answer may satisfy one's moral passions, it doesnt actually do a whole lot for the victim. Whereas giving the victim the tools and skills to deal with these inevitable asses, avoid them in the first place or not reward them with the interaction they seek, actually works.

Now the fortunate difference between real world and here is that, while such tools for real world interaction might be hard to train yourself in and difficult to achieve, here they're as simple as can be. You use the ignore button, and the thumbs down in lieu of reacting. And yeah, again it may offend one's sense of justice - you shouldnt be the one making an effort, you're the victim! But it actually works, where the whack-a-mole game of banning is the long-term equivalent carrying water to the sea.

Pragmatism has its merits. If only victims had such effective and concrete tools for self-protection in real life.

1 Reply

@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Hence; an algorithm that picks out only the worst of the worst is in everyone's best interest. And frankly, most especially, it is in Robert’s best interest. Robert has indicated that these things have been thought of, but that there is no plan to implement them at this time. I would prefer him to recognize his error sooner rather than later.

This is just not true Bill. That's the holy grail of collective wisdom for this kind of system and I'd love to reach it.

I said that what we aren't going back to is where a handful of volunteers decides for all, and that we don't yet have the data or code to do any of those things yet. I certainly did not say it wasn't in the plans. Hell I dream of algorithms these days because I think about them so much.

I have no problem with collective user input being used that way, I just think it's far more complex than you can imagine and don't think we have the scale or the data to solve it just yet.

And like I said to you earlier, even your own suggestions still require you to vote and ignore and feeding the troll doesn't help.

Want to get us there more quickly? Help out. Use your vote and help clean up the site. Fundamentally this won't change, and we need the users' help even if we come up with the algo.

If you had spent the same energy you've spent misrepresenting my intentions on helping out, you'd have made about 70% of the troll in question's last week's posts collapse for newbies (because almost all of them are hovering on the verge of being collapsed).

2 Replies

@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

The same automated system could be used to enforce a minimum standard as well that automatically results in timeouts and eventual permanent banishments. [..] How can that possibly not sound like a better, more comprehensive solution to you? [..]

Yeah that idea sounds good to me. Not having any "leader" or administration or moderators having to go round to check if people are posting ban-worthy stuff, but having an algorhythm decide. Posters who really pile up the massive amounts of negative votes (and not talking the kind of negative feedback you get just for having the wrong views, not the kind of thumbs down that Foxfyre may receive, but the wholly different scale that a Synron must be receiving), automatically get assigned timeouts or bans.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Robert has indicated that these things have been thought of, but that there is no plan to implement them at this time. I would prefer him to recognize his error sooner rather than later.

In the post right above yours, he says this link (between negative votes for posts and some kind of negative consequence for the user overall) "is being explored." And IIRC it's not the first time I've seen him say so.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

I figure some folks have gone right to ignoring and not neg voting/collapsing...

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@nimh,

nimh wrote:

Yeah that idea sounds good to me. Not having any "leader" or administration or moderators having to go round to check if people are posting ban-worthy stuff, but having an algorhythm decide. Posters who really pile up the massive amounts of negative votes (and not talking the kind of negative feedback you get just for having the wrong views, not the kind of thumbs down that Foxfyre may receive, but the wholly different scale that a Synron must be receiving), automatically get assigned timeouts or bans.

Let me articulate my current idea that best addresses this:

1) Finish the reputation system. Right now it's getting closer but we need to make it accurate enough to make that kind of distinction (get the troll, and not Foxfyre for example). Getting this part right is the key to everything and what we don't have the data for yet. We are working on it though and are very close to reaching it.

2) Allow members to automatically ignore users below a certain reputation threshold. The default would be to ignore only the most disruptive members and users would be able to change their preferences to tweak this threshold.

Right now, the biggest problem is that the troll can output more volume than the site's good members can counter easily. So it's hard to clean up after them (not too hard, replace this discussion with voting and it's working even at this scale) and there's value to allowing the community to address the source in addition to the content.

But I don't think banning is the way to do it for two main reasons:

1) The banning doesn't allow for flexible preferences. Some people may not want any part in this.

2) Banning will motivate them to work around it more often than they would if they were just being ignored.

Anyway, that's just one idea that forms a rough basis for the kinds of tools we'd like to build. There's certainly a lacking balance in that it's far easier to troll than to clean up after the troll but that will get better, and the voting is what is going to drive it. No matter how it works the users need to be at the center of it all.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert, this is an about face.

Robert Gentel wrote:

As to your suggestions, we don't have the data or the groundwork for them but none of them are things we haven't considered or are considering.

Not having it figured out yet, although you’d like to, is a hell of a long way from something you have considered but are no longer considering? Is there an error in the sentence I quoted above? Did you mean to say “none of them are things we haven’t considered or aren’t considering?”

If that is the case; then much of my complaints are indeed over the top… based on this misunderstanding.

Frankly, I still don’t see why the occasional manual removal of the obvious troll would be too big of strain, while you work on building an algorithm that can accomplish that very thing. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, that. You’ve certainly expended more energy than the simpler solution would have entailed.

BTW, I don’t wish to treat you as a punching bag, do appreciate immensely what you do, and have responded as your friend (in my mind, whether you see it that way or not.) Squeaky wheels tend to get more oil and I truly believe every suggestion I’ve made is in your best interest. If it takes convincing others to convince you you’re doing it wrong to allow the worst of the worst to continue shitting all over your site, I reasoned that said convincing was more valuable to you than an ass kissing from me.

Per your last post: I predict a troll subculture if you go through with no plan of ever blocking them altogether. They will figure out how to vote each other out of the basement and/or create new usernames to accomplish their deeds anyway. I don't see the profit in providing them a place to breed.

1 Reply

@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

dlowan wrote:

I can see no way in which you could reasonably read me to be to be discounting emotional harm.

What I am saying is that one can turn off the source of the emotional harm here, and not expose oneself to it.
Quite simply, not everyone will turn off the source of the harm... and since some won't; some will quote and comment on it and spread it... regardless of how any one member or percentage of members react... so blaming that member for responding is the faulty position.

The vast majority of these incidences of said being harm being done, on the other hand, would be eliminated along with their source. How is that a flawed argument?

I well understand there are as many preferred thresholds as there are members; but in certain cases it is beyond obvious that the preponderance of the community is in agreement. You or I would happily abide by virtually any minimum standard so it isn't terribly important to either of us where it is set. I do think we agree there should be a minimum. I only include this paragraph to pre-empt any suggestion that I just want it my way. Beyond not wanting a troll haven, this simply isn’t true.

No, not everyone will turn off the source of the harm....but here, as opposed to the frequent realities of the real world, one CAN turn off the source of the harm, so choosing not to do so is, at least, a choice. That makes a big difference to me.

True, one cannot, without sacrificing a lot of content one might wish to see, as easily turn off the responses to the potentially harmful posts, and the spreading of the muck......but again one has the choice to read these spreaders, and/or join in, or stop as soon as one realises what they are.

There would be less spreading if there were less troll-fighters, but not duelling with trolls is not a response one can push onto anyone. C'est la vie. Nor do I especially want to...except sometimes when threads just become battlefields....but I'm not so blind as not to know that I have participated enthusiastically in creating just such nasty battlegrounds myself, and will likely do so again. I did it right here in this thread, earlier.

I'm not sure why you're making our discussion seem like a real disagreement....we all think trolls are a pain (problem being one person's troll is another person's best mate)....I'd like to see the real nasties excluded (and I'm not really sure if that possibility is actually being completely taken out of the mix or not), but I am finding the currently available tools pretty helpful, and, insofar as I understand what Robert is saying, it seems like those tools are going to become more refined and that community rejection of really nasty and harmful people is going to become more powerful.

I am not saying that your argument that evicting some trolls would reduce the level of hurt around here is flawed...we just differ a bit on how much of a problem we see the nasties to be, given the tools we now have, and I think I am more ready to accept that I may disagree with some of the site standards without seeing that my disagreement means that there is some.....I'm not sure how to put this, and I'll likely get it wrong....badness or failure in, well, not to put too fine a point upon it, Robert.

(Mind you, this doesn't mean that I don't think he behaves badly sometimes, as I may have subtly indicated earlier in the thread.....but so do we all, and I think getting pissed off at someone's personal style sometimes is different from thinking their intentions malign or just wrong.)

Now you'll doubtless quite rightly say that you don't think there are any malign intentions, just malign effects, going on here, and perhaps it is just in the way that you are arguing that I feel there is some degree of you criticising the person for some failure, not just disagreeing with policy.

Anyhoo.....as I said, I'm not especially saying your arguments are flawed per se, I just think it's maybe not so much something that needs such intensity, especially now, and I maybe just accept a bit more calmly, on this occasion at least, that life is a compromise and that there's a heap of validity and value in Robert's point of view.

I'm kind of excited to see how the grand plan all works out.

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@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Robert, this is an about face.

No, it's a typo.

Quote:

Robert Gentel wrote:
As to your suggestions, we don't have the data or the groundwork for them but none of them are things we haven't considered or are considering.
Not having it figured out yet, although you’d like to, is a hell of a long way from something you have considered but are no longer considering? Is there an error in the sentence I quoted above? Did you mean to say “none of them are things we haven’t considered or aren’t considering?”

Yeah, that should be "aren't". None of those things are things we haven't considered or are not considering.

What I'm arguing against is using administrative bans as a way to resolve this issue.

Quote:

Frankly, I still don’t see why the occasional manual removal of the obvious troll would be too big of strain, while you work on building an algorithm that can accomplish that very thing. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, that. You’ve certainly expended more energy than the simpler solution would have entailed.

This is what I've been discussing. And the reservations I have have nothing at all to do with how hard it is to ban someone and has more to do with what I see as the fundamental principles of running a fair and open community.

The level of censorship it would take to "take out the trash" as you put it would require a lot more than just what you consider trash and ultimately we'd have to fall back on personal judgment.

With so few moderators, this is ultimately going to be an important decision placed in too few hands and will not represent the community well.

So for this reason, the process must be flexible and democratized. The community isn't going to do a perfect job, but neither is a small group of moderators. The most fair solution to this kind of subjective issue is democratization of the process and while we are nowhere near there yet that's what the existing tools are going to evolve into.

Quote:

BTW, I don’t wish to treat you as a punching bag, do appreciate immensely what you do, and have responded as your friend (in my mind, whether you see it that way or not.) Squeaky wheels tend to get more oil and I truly believe every suggestion I’ve made is in your best interest. If it takes convincing others to convince you you’re doing it wrong to allow the worst of the worst to continue shitting all over your site, I reasoned that said convincing was more valuable to you than an ass kissing from me.

Honestly, I'd rather be working on the solutions than either the dumping or ass kissing as you put it. This kind of thing is a big drain on time that I'd much rather be spending on more useful (and enjoyable pursuits).

We said the site is going to be rough, and that reflects the resources we have to put into it at this time. This kind of thing just increases the demands on the resources.

Quote:

Per your last post: I predict a troll subculture if you go through with no plan of ever blocking them altogether. They will figure out how to vote each other out of the basement and/or create new usernames to accomplish their deeds anyway. I don't see the profit in providing them a place to breed.

Well Bill, I already have a late work night ahead of me so I'll just have to agree to disagree. Our intentions are not to make a breeding ground for trolls but I just don't have the time to argue that with you.

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I'm skipping page ten, which I can tell has import, but I want to address Diest.

Diest, I'm a big fan of yours, but you have not followed all the stuff going on here for a while and you land with a plomp on racial vilification in one troll's post of many and how you want that rectified asap, or the ownership is vile...or maybe it was CI's vilification, I'm not clear on that but the moderators better fix it now.

Read up, none of us here that I know of are against you at all. (On the other hand, I don't read all poli threads, heh.) In the main, a lot of us have connected to your posts.

Plus the site has been being reworked for quite a while and is still in development. Stop yelling when you just stop in for a minute, and do some reading up re the site development, and then contribute.

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@ossobuco,

But wait, I see a lot more talk going on, mostly over my head.

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@nimh,

Robert, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Knowing that you haven’t thought of and dismissed the list of changes I suggested is certainly a game changer, since I saw little hope of significant improvement without implementing at least some of them. The main thrust of my argument was never to revert back to top down timeouts and banning, but rather some mechanism for doing so. I understand and agree an algorithmic system would be best… and fully accept that using a full range of members to map the numbers in the mean time is a logical step. When the ability to Ignore becomes a finer tuned instrument; that may be sufficient to render the super trolls impotent. I doubt it; but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.

Deb, if it sounded like I was holding Robert in disdain, rather than what I thought were his intentions, I wasn’t. At the risk of sounding like an ass kisser, which I’m not, I appreciate and admire him every bit as much as you do. The intensity of my argument style is something I’ve been criticized for all of my life. I tend to overstate, rather than risk understating my points, which is frequently interpreted as added intensity rather than an instinctual attempt at hyper-clarity… if that makes sense. I know only too well that this misinterpretation tends to put people on their heels. Consider it a personality tick that I haven’t yet licked. I’ll keep working on it, but try not to be offended by it in the mean time. Those I actually mean to offend are few and far between.

Nimh, as of your last post, I don’t think there’s much ground between our opinions here. One thing:

nimh wrote:

Pragmatism has its merits. If only victims had such effective and concrete tools for self-protection in real life.

I think you’ve inadvertently pinpointed something that makes victims victims. There usually does exist effective tools for self-protection and the pragmatic individual is certainly less likely to ever be victimized in either venue. That doesn’t make either of us fail to empathize with them though, does it?

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I'm skipping page ten, which I can tell has import, but I want to address Diest.

Diest, I'm a big fan of yours, but you have not followed all the stuff going on here for a while and you land with a plomp on racial vilification in one troll's post of many and how you want that rectified asap, or the ownership is vile...or maybe it was CI's vilification, I'm not clear on that but the moderators better fix it now.

Read up, none of us here that I know of are against you at all. (On the other hand, I don't read all poli threads, heh.) In the main, a lot of us have connected to your posts.

Plus the site has been being reworked for quite a while and is still in development. Stop yelling when you just stop in for a minute, and do some reading up re the site development, and then contribute.

1) This is not the first complain I've had to report. The first one was to a regular member who made similar attacks. They had an attachment to their identity too. Nothing was done then either. I think my lack of confidence is justified. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect action from the mods.

I asked if they had the ability to IP ban, and I received an answer which I believe said that no they can't but they are working on it. The answer did give me much confidence that they had the will to use it though.

2) Voting down a troll's post until it's a negative 5 or whatever only means that a troll needs only to take a few seconds and vote themselves back up into viewing levels.

3) As for using reputation to be viewable, you only provide trolls with a new weapon to use on the community. Now they don't even have to post, they can just run around the forum ad ruin other's reputations, and we don't even get to see who does it.

As I said before, the racial slurs of a troll hurt less than feeling unsupported by the moderators with this issue. I grew a trust in this community and have became attached to many of the people, I feel very let down.

I'm past anger, I'm just disappointed.

T
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@Diest TKO,

Diest TKO wrote:

Voting down a troll's post until it's a negative 5 or whatever only means that a troll needs only to take a few seconds and vote themselves back up into viewing levels.

Votes are limited by IP, so the challenges of them doing so are no different than the challenges they'd face with the IP ban you suggest.

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