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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
Wrong Robert: This is your responsibility, not mine. If people are being regularly victimized by asinine behavior at my place...

Your asinine behavior is what I was talking about, and yes that is your responsibility.

That is precisely your problem. What you deem as my asinine behavior is a simple, imminently predictable side effect... not the problem. The problem remains the trolls and your decisions to cater to them. You don't mind offending Deist, the victim, but heaven forbid you say anything that might deter the troll. Wake up already. You need not stop ruling by precedent to set and maintain a minimum acceptable standard of behavior.

Watch: “To the extent anyone comes here for the sole purpose of trolling; we will soon enact strategies to remove them. Trolls be warned that it is time to adjust your behavior.”

That’s all anyone (not to be confused with everyone) wanted to hear. Instead you chose, “Just Ignore the trolls. Have fun trolls!”

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@dlowan,

I hadn't thought of that before but you may have hit on another unintended consequence of good intentions. When we put the troll on ignore, we don't see his racist, offensive, insulting, misogynist or whatever posts any more and don't speak up to denounce them when they are directed at some hapless member. So indeed the member on the receiving end may think that the others are tolerant of the offensive post.

Hmmm. Any way around that problem? Or should it matter?

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I'll jump in on racist taunts and the possibilty of irony given that a site has intelligent posters.

We've had a recent troll use such a taunt to Cicerone but also to others. Diest, CI was not been the only recipient of scurrilous taunts, racist or otherwise scurrilous. No, I can't quote, because I've since put trollpersona either on ignore or I was actively flagging down each post, maybe more effective though it takes more than one person doing it - not sure which troll persona I'm referring to as I don't memorize this stuff. On the other hand, a commentary from a non racist person can be ironic and misunderstood, by the person a post was directed to, or by readers. One of the key interests for me in a2k is that a fair number of posters understand the word 'irony'. Context can matter, and we don't need nor can pay for some supreme jury re the merits of any one post, especially over years.

I don't think the transfer of moderation to the community is some terrible lack - I think it is extremely interesting and invigorating.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

I'll add being glad for something being in the works that RG mentioned.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

I hadn't thought of that before but you may have hit on another unintended consequence of good intentions. When we put the troll on ignore, we don't see his racist, offensive, insulting, misogynist or whatever posts any more and don't speak up to denounce them when they are directed at some hapless member. So indeed the member on the receiving end may think that the others are tolerant of the offensive post.

Hmmm. Any way around that problem? Or should it matter?

Well:

a. I have no idea if it is true at all that this is occurring.

b. I don't know about anyone else, but I find that because I CAN ignore, I don't get at all upset if i take the occasional peek, and I might well comment if someone has said something really disgusting....ONCE. (This has unexpected benefits that give joy.....I did that on a thread a while back, and found one troll joyfully greeting another, I found it very funny. I also do it because there is one troll who actually has expertise in a particular area, and if I see it posting in a thread relative to its expertise, I have a look and see if it is posting rationally for a change.)

c. I really, truly think that ignoring them works in the long run. They can't really hurt us, so it's not like real bullying in that respect....which is, I think, a major flaw in Bill's argument....IF WE DON'T READ THEM, THEY GENERALLY CAN'T HURT US....IT'S THE INTERNET, not a school playground or a pub or a country being abused by a tyrant......

I really cannot imagine a better way of ruining a troll's day than not attending to them. REALLY!!!!

Look, I work with kids being really bullied, and, if it is via words, I can help them with really creative methods to let the bully know, REALLY know, that they are not achieving the desired effect. Some of these techniques are too powerful for most situations, because the bully gets so enraged by being deprived of their effect that that they can literally go ballistic, and attack physically. They go absolutely NUTS.

THAT is how horrible such sad folk feel when they do not hurt anyone.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Hmmm. Any way around that problem? Or should it matter?

If a fraction of the energy that is spent feeding the trolls goes into voting them down their posts would be removed from view, but yes merely using the ignore feature alone doesn't currently change anything for others so right now the voting is the only thing that does that.

More solutions are being developed but most of it is still contingent on the members providing the data (votes and ignores) instead of taking the bait.

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@dlowan,

I think I get Fox's comment - the ignore thing tents us from dealing with the crappo; we don't have to deal, but at present it doesn't count as a mark down (I think, could well be wrong).

But, as it presently works, only down flagging by many works to zoom troll to the depths of the ranks in that voting view of the posts. And, yeh, along with others of no malevolence.

But then, I don't know enough re algorithms and their works. I'm assuming a lot of this has been talked about for years at designer levels.

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I saw the license plate KAK2KAK yesterday. Ah, memories...

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I think I get Fox's comment - the ignore thing tents us from dealing with the crappo; we don't have to deal, but at present it doesn't count as a mark down (I think, could well be wrong).

But, as it presently works, only down flagging by many works to zoom troll to the depths of the ranks in that voting view of the posts. And, yeh, along with others of no malevolence.

But then, I don't know enough re algorithms and their works. I'm assuming a lot of this has been talked about for years at designer levels.

Oh, I get it.

Sounds like the peeking and voting down is important, too.

Just a bit hard to do both!

Oh...cool, I just got one of these!!!!

"Hold on there! We have to wait 8 seconds before we can post another of your posts in case you are a robot."

Hey!!! I just went to do some voting down, and saw the funniest thing.

There was a long series of "user ignoreds", in a thread, which I looked at, and the whole series was two trolls talking to each other, and admiring each other.

Funniest thing.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Diest TKO wrote:
I think all can agree on that.

I certainly don't think everyone wants the same degree of censorship that you do and would caution against thinking you speak for all.

Independent of the details of what I think should be done, you don't think that the solution whatever it may be should be proactive?

If I'm wrong about my assumption, my apologies. I can put you in the column that prefers to be reactive/retroactive with problems instead of actively addressing them beforehand.

If your distaste for this is on the issue of censorship, I think you may be framing this incorrectly. I'm talking about people who are abusing the site, and the damage it does to the community.

I've spoken my mind at this point. The damage is already done, less to my comfort here, more to my confidence in the moderators. I'm not impressed with the leadership here right now.

T
K
O

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@dlowan,

Maybe it was even the same person Cool

1 Reply

@nimh,

I did wonder.

It was actually very Pythonesque....because the language of mutual admiration was so over the top and so similar.

I'd kind of love to quote it.

If it wouldn't defeat the purpose, it would be fun to have a funniest troll exchange thread.

Of course, given the differences in how each of us defines a troll, we'd doubtless all end up in there.

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@dlowan,

Thanks dlowan,

I am aware that things have been targeted to others, things which I don't care to personally repeat.

I think what hurts is not what the trolls say, it's that I don't feel that the Mods are advocating for the members who are being targeted. There is now a separation in trust for me at least.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

c. I really, truly think that ignoring them works in the long run. They can't really hurt us, so it's not like real bullying in that respect....which is, I think, a major flaw in Bill's argument....IF WE DON'T READ THEM, THEY GENERALLY CAN'T HURT US....IT'S THE INTERNET, not a school playground or a pub or a country being abused by a tyrant......

That is an acknowledged, but not accepted as sufficient, deterrent in Bill's argument... not a flaw.

Strange to see you discount the effect of Emotional Duress. You don't really think it harmless, do you? No, you don't. You know only too well that some people are holding on by a very thin thread and can take what most consider trivial to heart. You also know plenty who are simply too logical to ever be effected by such trivialities. Ultimately, you know the rest of us live somewhere in between. Suffice to say, while it may be true for you and/or I; pretending someone can't be hurt by printed words on the internet is silly.

Now to the extent a person can't be hurt by what they don't see; this only serves to fortify the argument that removing trolls removes their ill effects... infinitely more effectively than Ignoring and Voting does. This FACT couldn’t be much simpler or more obvious.

If development of an algorithm to accomplish this is in the works, I don’t see how simply stating as much is disclosing anything useful to those who would attempt to thwart it. Obviously, they’d be figuring that much out soon enough anyway. In the mean time; this simple blanket disclosure in itself would serve both to provide concerned members with encouragement as well as putting those with trolling tendencies on notice.

I, for one, would be considerably less annoyed by the seeming lack of intention to eliminate the worst of the worst. I'd probably be less inclined to engage the trolls myself as well.

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@OCCOM BILL,

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… that’s silly. One could hardly post an unpopular or clearly false opinion without being corrected.
Example: Thread states 10 X 10 = 20
Each person who pointed out the obvious error would unintentionally endorse the idiotic, useless thread. Surely there’s a better way to give more people the sense of being a “winner” if that’s the intention.

Further, no troll= no troll post to respond to… so the number of those who respond is, or should be, largely immaterial.

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@OCCOM BILL,

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.

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

Diest TKO wrote:

I think what hurts is not what the trolls say, it's that I don't feel that the Mods are advocating for the members who are being targeted.

But nobody is advocating for the trolls. They've just given us the tools ourselves to deal with this ****, to screen it out and vote it down till nobody sees it anymore.

I see it more as a democratisation move. There's not going to be a big leader anymore to take care of it all for us (and one, but only one reason for that is simply that the site is way too big to be moderated that way anymore, we had a totally overloaded band of moderators on the old site). But instead, all of us have been given the tools we need to self-police. To ignore 'em, not give them what they want, and use the thumbs down not just to better ignore them but also to signal to others "this is ****, dont step in it".

Dialing a post to -5 (as is now possible again, I see) is far more effective a way of censoring a baddie than taking him to task. And yeah, of course, and this is re O'Bill -- if there were no baddies in the first place we wouldnt need to. And if money grew from trees we'd all be rich. On the old site the moderators would ban Synron under whatever name he posted then, and he'd be back in a week under another name, and the mods were then kept busy for months on end playing whack-the-mole. Banning his every new ID after having monitored him for long enough to verify he was crossing the line again. Lot of (unpaid!) work, that, and what did it yield? He was still here almost non-stop for what, a year, two years? He eventually tired, but I bet being ignored would make him tire a lot faster than the cat-and-mouse game with the mods ever did - hell, that was probably part of his fun.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I think I get Fox's comment - the ignore thing tents us from dealing with the crappo; we don't have to deal, but at present it doesn't count as a mark down (I think, could well be wrong).

But, as it presently works, only down flagging by many works to zoom troll to the depths of the ranks in that voting view of the posts. And, yeh, along with others of no malevolence.

But then, I don't know enough re algorithms and their works. I'm assuming a lot of this has been talked about for years at designer levels.

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?

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?

I don't have a clue how all this algorithm stuff works and am sufficiently mathematically challenged to even try to comprehend how it might work.

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@Foxfyre,

It depends on how each member has their preferences set. I've got mine set to see everything unless I personally vote down a particular thread/post.

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@OCCOM BILL,

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.

1 Reply

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