Should able2know ban people for having untoward opinions?

Why do you think he uses different names? Look, I think our policy of not publicly disclosing bans is a good one. The reasoning is that doing so is often not the business of others, but mainly because doing so is one of the strongest ways we can motivate someone to try to circumvent the ban (i.e. to come and defend themselves) and it's not really fair to talk about people in a medium we subsequently don't let them have a say in.

But at the same time I want to dispel the notion that we do not ban any of these people and certain members who disrupt the site in huge volume are banned under rules (obviously imperfect but a bit more nuance than the ones that have been proposed) that govern gratuitous trolling and volume.

BillRM certainly comes close to the volume thresholds on a single thread, obsessively monopolizing them, but there have been about 3 individuals who have repeatedly done that to the whole site. And we actually do ban those people despite the commonly cited criticism that we fail to. Banning is a cat and mouse game and sometimes the cats are away (again, I reiterate the call for more help with this community, I think we operate with less than 20% of the moderators we need to do as well as I'd like under our current rules) but if you see people using a thousand names it is usually a decent indication that a lot of cat and mouse has been going on behind the scenes.

For the reasons above I don't think we should change our policy of not publicizing this kind of thing, but I do want to put this one to rest. We ARE willing to ban people for being disruptive enough to the site. It usually takes significant volume (think 3 or so individuals in the last year or so) to cross that line for us and it usually requires them to do so gratuitously (think nonsensical one-liners and intellectually bankrupt posts).

That was me and it is partly my fault as I did not connect the lady with the story she was telling as happening to her.

She had already at that point had told two stories of being assaulted and rapes once as a very small child by two 16 years olds and then as a teenager by a father or step father and I did not somehow connected her third story of being assaults by her husband as a third event that was supposed to had also happen directly to her. I guess I should had done so but I missed that in someway or other.

Her story with the husband was of being harm/beaten by him because she could not reach orgasms with him.

My brutal verbal assault was to state that the story did not made sense to me as why would not a woman just fake it to keep from being beaten.

Even I would had not said that if I had been aware that this was suppose to been an event that had occur to her and not a story she was telling concerning someone else.

Sorry given that I and Hawkeye are the only one challenging the majority opinions on the thread in question and most of my postings is in direct respond to other posts on that thread I think you are wrong in calling the numbers of my postings as being monopolizing in any way.

But then it is your system and I am willing to leave at your request at any time.

I figured it had something to do with me. But then I think everything has something to do with me.


Thanks for doing that for me.

I just finished reading those posts and while I don't think intent to offend is as clear as OB intimated it certainly wasn't very sensitive of you to doubt her story that way (which others sometimes do with newbies, and which I often cringe at too).



Then you should probably apologize to her. As you clearly agree the comments have a very different context depending on who you are talking to. I personally think that in the context of the person you were talking to your comments were incredibly insensitive and that it wouldn't hurt you to apologize for.

It also might be worth trying to argue certain topics in general more sensitively. I'm not saying I have a lock on what is right or wrong but personally I like to afford certain topics a bit more sensitivity than others. I am as pedantic as they come Bill, and so are you, but some things matter more than being "right" and some feelings matter more than some arguments. I think it might be worth considering a more thoughtful approach in certain subjects, if for nothing else to avoid making mistakes such as the misunderstanding that led to your less-than-ideal sensitivity with BBB.

I'm not really willing to run the site that way, the only times I really ask something similar is when someone just won't stop complaining about how things are at a2k, in those case I really do wonder why they don't. If I hated everything about what a forum is trying to do for years I'd probably be in the market for a new forum, and those guys I don't get (but I'm still not gonna request that they leave, at most I'll ask them why they don't if they seem so unhappy).

I think there is a spectrum ranging from people who are unwilling to engage in confrontation to those who are unwilling to let it go. In that spectrum I think I personally fall on the side of the folks who sometimes lack the greatest sense of when to quit, and in that regard I think you have a bit of the same problem.

I try to fight it myself, when I notice that I have been pushing my point of view too "loudly". I am a pedant and I enjoy argument (it is illuminating) but I often have to moderate myself a bit because I can come on a bit strong.

I think you do similar things, and might also benefit from trying to not come on too strong. On a forum it usually means making fewer posts and repeating yourself less. To use myself as an example I think I've gone on about 75% more than necessary with OB on the rape thread it originated on and could probably have made my points more elegantly, succinctly and less disruptively.

I'm no authoritarian and am not going to ask anyone here to leave, but it is my personal opinion that your posting style could use a bit of self-moderation to foster more edifying exchanges with your interlocutors. It's something I think I can do better with as well (letting others have more of a say and paying more attention to what they say).

As I said I was not aware that this story had any direct connection to her and would not had made that comment if I had been aware of that fact.

I am sorry if it cause her any pain as a result.

BillRM,
Do you see any difference between what you did in the above post and an actual apology directly to the person you have hurt?

That was my first reaction but at this point I'm unsure if trying to do it directly is any better of an idea and I, for one, appreciate that he is at least willing to admit his error here.

Of course not.

Pro-choice constitutes support for murder.
Pro-life constitutes support for slavery.
There'd be no-one left here.

I do not support banning for unpopular opinion.

I see I'm five pages and four hours late to the party.

"Wannabe white knight" was indeed both apropos and funny. I didn’t care for the gratuitous insults accompanying it, but I did laugh out loud at the cleverness of that and more than a few other of your zings.

Your insistence that exhibiting my own disgust for the demented duo's advocacy of rape is somehow a claim to represent victims is just a bogus strawman though, Robert. It's a cheap shot with no foundation in truth, and I’d like to think you know that… even if that is wishful thinking. In truth, I was thanked repeatedly for my "loud-mouth" on the offending thread, by multiple participants (as was Intrepid), but I responded to none of them because that was not my purpose at all. My purpose was to offer the offending trolls a taste of their own mean-spirited medicine, just as I’m pretty sure is your intent with me over your last several posts in this exchange.

I haven't the time or desire to respond to your lengthy Hobitbob-like attack in kind, in which you repeat the exact same nasty claims and challenges, over and over, using repetition to drive your specious points home. It's effective, but mostly because your choir enjoys it, which apparently gives you some gratification. If I wrote a brief like that, it would never be read, and my employer would probably be sanctioned.

I don't know if you really know nothing of Excel, or if it really doesn't translate to forum coding at all, but there's nothing too mysterious about if/then arguments.
Here's a simplified example: =IF(B3="Abuse",1.5,1)
On a spreadsheet, such an argument would deliver 1.5 as a factor if the cell contained "Abuse" or 1 if it did not, which in turn could be used to weight other criteria differently.

A longer argument could be used to search for an array of keywords, and even deliver different results for different words, multiples, which in turn could theoretically be used to categorize/differentiate threads automatically. Similarly, if/then tests could be used to weight different average ratings, and/or longevity of posting history and/or quantity, to alter the importance of individual vote potency accordingly. I simply don't know how this translates to what you can do with the forum statistics... but the arguments themselves are not difficult to conjure.

I brought this up because in my opinion, down-votes on abuse/help threads should carry more weight than they do in political threads, for instance, and also because if it is the community who is to set the standards, then those whose posts more frequently meet with the communities approval should be given more weight as well. I believe this would only serve to increase the effectiveness of the system you've already devised.

Rule: Members should be sanctioned for launching personal attacks on other members for sharing personal hardship experiences. These attacks are repugnant to decency, and only the anonymous nature of the board shields offenders from the natural consequences, that would otherwise curb this offensive behavior. This is the cowardly trolling I so despise. You correctly point out that Shorteyes tends to mask his hurtful intent in a veneer of civility, so his posts tend to violate the spirit rather than the letter of the law, so to speak. That doesn't make his demented misogyny any less repugnant to decency.

However, the community at large can indeed tell the difference, and express their displeasure through voting the posts up or down, not just based on the letter, but also on the spirit of the offense, per their own gut instincts. This is scalable.

If a member chooses to talk about his/her troubled childhood, marriage, illness, depression, etc.; I think we can all agree these are subjects that ideally shouldn’t be trolled by assholes. Rape and child molestation are certainly the most sensitive of subject areas, but certainly not the only ones that decency demands a little respect for… and would get in virtually every other venue. To that end, I can’t fathom why anyone (but trolls) would object to deliberate trolling being disappeared from view as rapidly as possible; which in turn is why I advocate for using the voting system to do what it was designed to do.

All members would retain the ability to see as much of the offensive content as they wish, and all newbies would retain the ability to turn the default filters off as soon as they figure out how, so I don’t really see this as a censorship issue at this stage of the game. I’d like to think that the majority of the membership here would prefer it if the first thing a newbie with an issue saw wasn’t the demented duo displaying their mindless misogyny.

Among the lessons learned by the great sock war, and moreover by the demented duo’s protests in general, is that they really do care whether or not their posts can be seen by newcomers. So would I, and so do you or we’d all just be writing in our own diaries rather than sharing our opinions with virtual strangers, (at least initially). That being the case, it only stands to reason that by increasing the effectiveness of the voting metric, and including predictable temporary sanctions for rabid violations of decency, even the more offensive members would curb their behavior to conform to a minimum standard of decency. Escalating penalties including temporary bans have certainly worked before, and there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t work again. All of which could be accomplished fairly, transparently, and with fair warning, to enable every poster know just how long (s)he should/can continue their current tact if it isn’t being well received.

Again, I do not understand just how tweak-able the use of statistical data on a forum is; but for the sake of discussion I’m assuming it could be tweaked to factor in a member’s overall behavioral record, and that it could be taught to differentiate between politics, (where a wide range of variously popular/unpopular opinions is desirable, and an abuse/help thread where a wide range of variously popular/unpopular opinions really aren’t desirable. A well thought out scheme would easily distinguish between say, Francis’s exceedingly rare departure from absolute civility and Massagatto’s endless supply of trolling idiocy.

(S)he who gets his or her ox gored in a politics forum is not as vulnerable as (s)he who gets his or her feelings hurt in an abuse/help thread. For that matter, how about a depression-contemplating suicide thread? Surely the membership can appreciate that certain deviations from decency can be more harmful in some areas than others, and all I’m suggesting is that this be factored in to the system… and that some consequences eventually come to fruition to curb the behavior of the worst of the worst.

It is the function of the POLICE to deal with rapists,
murderers, robbers, kidnappers n any other felons.

It is not the function of a discussion forum to discipline
the members of the population who fall afoul of its criminal statutes, by discriminating against them.

I respect the freedom of speech of felons, of commies, of nazis,
of supporters of gun control and the supporters of FREEDOM to bear arms, as the Founders did in the 1700s;
(it was considered indecent to go around unarmed).
I have even enjoyed watching the televised consultations
with violent felons inside prisons, to get their opinions of issues (e.g., gun control: thay LOVE its protection on-the-job!!!)

It is my opinion that FREEDOM OF SPEECH shoud prevail
(except that it shoud not be permitted to degenerate to the foul levels of obscenity that it did on Abuzz,
as to references to excrement nor to gratuitous, irrelevant attributions of sexual perversity,
motivated by philosophical disagreement).





David

Healthy thread count? Is that how you measure a thread? Most of the count is by you and your compatriate.

Energetic discussion? Is that what you call it?

If you consider Joe as snooty, then you must be considered a boorish scumbag.

You seem to be describing BillRM

Did he threaten violence, Richard ?





David

The comment should not have been made in any case!

YEAH! In the future,
everyone shoud always check with Richard to find out what comments shoud be made !





David

You are definitely on to something there. I'd love to see the post count of the top 10 contributors on that thread published to really put this in perspective. (I doubt many will peruse the 100s of pages out of morbid curiosity.) I believe it would reflect that the quantity was every bit as abusive as the content of the trolling... which was mind-numbingly redundant.

Bill, on that count, as Robert has been trying to tell you, you are at least as much a troll as Bill or Hawk.

In fact, for me your behaviour is more annoying because I am more reluctant to place you on ignore...and you are certainly more abusive in language and manner than Hawk is.