a2k sucks

Oh, wait, I just got it - is Christiane the woman in the Hebdo cartoon?

Bing Bing Bing!

You just don't get it. Charlie Hebdo went too far. And characterizing anyone, especially a person of color as an animal is racist. Period. If "leftist" doesn't get that, that "leftist" boulevard leftist.

Glad to hear you are going to make it suck better than it does now.

Can we get threads that have 18+ pages of members attacking each other? That would be some of the best suck.


(Thanks for all your hard work over the years, Robert.)

Really?

That's an interesting subject, outside of this thread about a2k redo.

http://www.steamthing.com/2015/05/christiane-taubiras-elogy-for-the-charlie-hebdo-cartoonist-tignous.html

Thank you.
That is a keeper.

I am not demonising Ollie on this. If you go back you'll see he mentioned Bob GB and me in order to pick a fight. It's not just Christiane-Taubiras who was being insulted, it was all black people. She is a politician writing after the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo had just been brutally murdered, she's hardly going to want to upset the victims' families.

This was all dead and buried before Ollie brought it up again. And it all stems from Ollie's insistence on making Hebdo out to be whiter than white. There's also the front page picture of Mohammed's arsehole deliberately meant to upset millions of law abiding decent Moslems for some cheap sensationalism. None of that means they deserved what happens, but they weren't squeaky clean by any means.

Take this to another thread, per favore.

I should have tried that to start with.

Meantime, re the new system, I wouldn't mind a way to get rid of the occasional unwanted pms, the ones not bad enough to report, but takers of space.

I keep waiting for a hockey game to break out.

I would love it if the changes were implemented tomorrow simply because I'm curious to see how they play out. If I understand the direction in which Robert wants to take the forum, I think there's a good chance that it will sound the death knell of A2K as a place where there is an exchange (albeit often in an grubby and tedious way) of differing opinions.

There are already numerous threads in this forum that begin as echo chambers where everyone is in agreement with one another, and how could they not? They all repeat the same opinion in slightly different words for pages of "discussion." That is until an outsider wanders in and either presents a differing opinion or deliberately posts something to provoke the tribe native to the thread. What ensues is usually a nasty exchange between the intruder and one or two of the self-appointed enforcers of the tribe. Before long, the enforcers are joined by less militant tribe members who deliver a feeble tsk tsk to their excitable clansmen but, never-the-less express their solidarity. At the same time they also express their regret for the necessity of joining the rest of their tribe in insulting the intruders (albeit less crudely).

After a time the intruder is joined by as few as one and as many as three or four fellow nonnatives who, not being members of any tribe, have not come to defend the person at the center of the storm, but to enjoy the melee. Eventually, the most intense or unhinged participants get very personal in their attacks against one another and the main topic of the thread disappears entirely. At this point the majority of the tribe's members wander off to new topics on which they can all agree on the magnitude of certain problems and who the dirty SOBs are who have caused them.

The forum needs change and perhaps what Robert has proposed will do the trick. Without it, I'm pretty sure my "breaks" will repeat and grow longer in length. This is not to suggest that changes should be made to preserve my participation, but I don't believe that I am alone in thinking the forum has lost a lot of steam.

I suspect that there is a core of A2K members, the folks I refer to as the tribe, who would be quite content having the forum serve as a meeting place to visit with friends over a copy of coffee or a glass of wine, and to reinforce each other's shared opinions. Many of these people don't really want to debate or even to consider opposing opinions that genuinely make them uncomfortable. Robert's musings on the changes suggest that this sort of coffee klatch community will be possible.

There will need to be a robust influx of new people to make alternative communities possible, but who knows, maybe some old favorites may be persuaded to return.

I hope that we get another year before the death sentence is carried out, my desire to be able to explore a few more ideas trumps my curiosity about how a site that gives up on the shared experience fairs. I already know what happens to a community that no longer shares experiences (the so-called two way blocking), they cease to exist.

By definition.

Hopefully we get to do the election next Nov, but I would not say that I expect it.

For what it's worth, I think you are being unfair to hawkeye. He may be the most downvoted in A2K history, but he is also one of the most prodigious posters, prodigiously posting during a period in which downvoting has run amok. He has a reliable fan base that enjoy calling him silly names like "whackeye" and the like and take even greater pleasure in reflexively thumbing down his posts, no matter what he writes. By now you certainly must realize that for a lot of members, downvoting posts is a spiteful game that has nothing to do with content and community or personal policing. For a lot of these folks, no matter how loudly they protest otherwise, A2K would just not be as much fun without hawkeye.

I think your use of the downvote as a measure of anyone's annoyance quotient is somewhat self-serving and hardly objective, but the assertion that hawkeye is responsible for "a significant amount of the decline of A2K," can't possibly be based on objective criteria and clearly reflects personal bias. That's fine in that you're entitled to personal opinion and bias and your own occasional embrace of personalized attacks is quite mild by A2K standards, but if you're going to embrace it at all, it comes across far less obnoxious if you're not simultaneously copping the role of the Mind of the Great Machine.

I've had my differences with hawkeye and suffice it to say I don't see him as someone of like mind, but if you are looking for members who have consistently heaped nothing but crap on this forum, and who have repeatedly driven away members there are much better candidates. That you broadly share their political views may, however, make them less obvious to you.

Since you have the stats at hand, perhaps you can easily determine how many threads he has started. While many, if not, most of them are provocative, they are generally relevant to the issues of the day and not wild diatribes. I could be wrong because I don't have the stats or care to, but my sense, as well, is that his threads get pretty good participation. If some or much of that participation is limited to clowns insulting him in new and more colorful ways, that's hardly his fault.

There has been a certain behavior prevalent on A2K from early on. It is childish, but it's practice is not limited to children. I'm writing of the practice of groups ganging up on a selected member, much the way wolves target the animal they perceive to be the weakest member of the herd, and grade school bullies target the kid they believe to be the weakest member of the class. The late, lamented and much revered, on A2K, Dyslexia was quite skilled at this and he and his pack were specifically successful in driving out of the forum the former member Foxfyre. Many disagreed with and had no use for her opinions, which is par for the course, but it would be absurd to suggest that she invited rough treatment because she dished it out. I think there was, originally, an effort to affect the same result with hawkeye as was achieved with foxfyre and a number of others, but, obviously, that was never going to work with him. Some of the more familiar characters of A2K may claim they left the forum because of hawkeye, but none were bullied by him and I really doubt any less forceful members were either.

Once again, it's your forum to do with as you like and if you decide to ban certain members for behaviors you find objectionable so be it. I certainly wouldn't blame you or necessarily find fault in such action. It would just be nice, however, to see a selection process that reflected objective criteria.

If that's the standard, I should have been fixing those downs long after I quit. I used to vote things up when I though they were unjustified, but finally decided it didn't matter, and that it didn't make much difference to hawkeye and a few others. Maybe it suddenly does matter, if somebody is going to be voted off the island.

The problem is that while I knew the numbers were bullshit new people did not. They took at as proof that A2K is a place with low quality people, it cant mean anything else if the numbers are believed. And we wonder why we get so little new blood?? It is mind boggling that Robert either did not know this or did not care enough to fix it. I have mentioned the problem in threads a bunch of times but there was never any interest from anybody. All he had to do was to eliminate down voting to negate most of the harm, it never happened.

Then there is all of the hostility. Throwing just 5 people out would have made all the difference on that, but they had to be the right 5 people. Again, it never happened.

I have said all I wanted to say on this topic, which is a tangent here. If Izzy and you want to discuss the issue seriously, create a thread for it.

But these is one element in your response which brings us back to the topic at hand: the issue of standards for proper or acceptable behavior.

You say "Charlie Hebdo went too far." I ask: "Who says so?" According to what line in the sand? Is there somewhere a god of cartoonists who handed down the tables of the law of cartooning? Is there a World Agency for Satire Standards, which draws the line between what is acceptable satire and what is not in all parts of the world? No, there is not. These standards are self-defined, and they are local. In Rome do as Romans do.

Therefore in the case of Charlie, the standards that should be applied are French, and we have much more patience and foundness for satire than you guys do. A drawing that raises eyebrows in England is barely noticed in France. A drawing that raises eyebrows in France is considered absolutly outrageous in England... Different shores, different standards. We take our food with a little garlic, and our cartoons with a little raunchiness.

The CH anti-religious culture is also typically French and barely understandable abroad. I mean, atheists here like to take shots at religion :-) but few of them would dare to actually publish any of that under their own name, week after week, even when faced with death threats...

Now back on topic. Did you see what Robert wrote about the "marketplace of ideas" not being monolithical, but rather local? He mentioned the need for establishing several sub-spaces (wording my own), each with its own ethos and rules, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to A2K moderation. That is EXACTLY what I am talking about here. Rules are never universal, they are local, as they should be. Their is no universal rule about what is acceptable behavior and what is not in a public debate.

Or as Al Fresco would say, it's all about context, context and context... Just because the world is globalized doesn't mean it's uniform.

I haven't been following this thread, but unless I am misunderstanding it, this whole idea of "blocking" really bites the big one.

It's fine to ignore. It's quite another for anyone to have power over anyone else to determine what part of public speech they are allowed to hear. This goes far beyond one person. If everyone is responding to something Ollie said, but I have no clue what it is because he has "blocked" me, then he has effectively banned me from participating in the discussion. For what reason? To what end (other than petty spite)?

Suppose the President made it a rule that his agents would turn off the TV's of anyone that he didn't like whenever he was speaking. What purpose would that serve?

Interesting analogy. The media is so controlled today, you're actually describing the reality.

OH but think of the fun. I am going to block you, and then I am going to immediately launch an " How Many Ways Does Layman Suck??!!" thread with the first post all witty, maybe I give the first three reasons......and you chump are never going to see it. Maybe someone tells you about it some day, maybe not. Maybe you will be winning an argument and since they got nothin natch they are pissy and gotta do something with that anger, gotta hurt someone because they are these sad fucks and so they will PM you "Hey asshole, we are up to 79 ways that you suck in Hawkeyes "How Many Ways Does Layman Suck??!!" thread. I bet you are blocked since you never come round, I know I'd be pissed if people were talkin that way bout me that way. Chump"

*sarcasm* ....kind sad I need to point this out but we are where we are.

Don't worry, layboy, I won't "block" anyone...

Still, your comparison is not correct. Obama or anyone else has a right to say whatever he wants to say to whom he wants to say it. If he wants to say something to his wife but not to you and me, that's his right.