a2k sucks

It is one thing to moderate the way in which members communicate, but it is something entirely different to moderate what opinions they are communicating.

Take misogyny for example. What does "No misogyny mean?"

Why should anyone care what the motivation may be for a member who heaps crude invective on another? If male Member A is calling female Member B all sorts of foul names, is deliberately misquoting her, and encouraging other members to harass her, is it somehow worse behavior if it is a result of Member A's hatred for women in general, instead of simply specific hatred for Member B?

Or are you suggesting that no comments should be made or opinions expressed that can be considered (by a lone Grand Poobah or a star chamber consisting of other members) to be misogynistic? If so, presumably this would mean that someone would be banned from starting a thread entitled "Women are not as smart as men," or to express that belief in an existing thread. To what purpose? So that fragile psyches don't accidently stumble across an expression of misogyny?

The primary problem with these kinds of "controls" is subjectivity and establishing a "jury" from a group of largely like-minded thinkers will not necessarily lead to fairness and objectivity...more likely the opposite.

I suppose that if the intent is to develop "communities" that operate like echo chambers and exclude anything that might upset the equilibrium of the members, these sorts of controls are actually necessary and it shouldn't be too difficult to get the sheep to agree on an acceptable level of Group Think. It's precisely what is happening on campuses across the country and I think the Thought Police driving it have probably developed all the necessary rules and mechanisms to accomplish it.

But again we return to "What Robert wants." If he is most concerned about usage (and one of his comments to me suggests that this may be the case), then whether or not anyone is attracted to and remains members of any of these stultifying communities is far more important that whether or not the discussion going on within them is of any intellectual value what-so-ever.

I admit that there is a certain attractiveness to the argument:

If you find echo chamber communities boring, obnoxious or even a blight on the intellectual landscape of America, then don't join them. The members don't want to be provoked by opposing opinions. They have all made up their minds that they know exactly what is right and what is wrong and while they will tell you that they understand the counter-arguments, but they reject them, it doesn't matter. They are happy believing what they believe and they are happy "spending time" with people who believe what they believe. The have no interest or intention of diverting one inch from their current positions and any attempt to get them to do so only makes them upset and angry. They don't want to be upset and angry and if they are made to feel that way they will leave the new improved A2K and whatever scheme (and I don't use this to suggest a plan that is underhanded) Robert has to obtain financial gain from the site through usage focused advertisers will crumble.

Now, if the site was my "baby" I might feel like I had betrayed its originating principles by following this route, but that would probably be a lot of lofty hog wash easily countered by that portion of my mind in charge of rationalizing my actions. First of all, I would remind myself that I am not independently wealthy and as much as I enjoy creating and managing forums like this, I have bills to pay, mouths to feed and kids to send to college (at least I did). I probably would convince myself that making money doing something I really like is better than making money doing something I don't like and the nature of the "real world" is such that regardless of how I make my money, some degree of compromising my principles will be required. Better I engage in such unfortunate, but unavoidable compromise in a profession that I like than one than offers no reward other than financial.

Secondly this approach doesn't preclude the creation of communities that operate much more in alignment with my original, more lofty aspirations. Besides, I would remind myself, I've tried my original idea and obviously it hasn't worked. The sort of people whom I hoped my site would attract have not come (maybe they only exist in pretentious novels and films) and to the extent they have come, the number of assholes that joined them and took advantage of the freedom inherent in my original concept, has been much greater and they have largely been driven away. I'm not going to be forced to teach Math in an inner-city school because the "great debaters" were unable to successfully police the assholes. Perhaps I made it too tough for them to do so the first time around, so in addition to facilitating the creation of sterile, gated communities, I am going to provide new tools to the intellectuals so they can better control the assholes.

I imagine it's an inner conversation similar to one a successful commercial artist who set out to create masterpieces might have, and it's a perfectly reasonable and realistic conversation. I've had it myself. Ultimately you can still do good things, produce good work and enjoy your life while making money. Struggling artists are not the only authentic people in the world. So while it's nothing of which to be ashamed, I would expect it to inform one's view of the world and to be less judgmental of those who don't live up to one's expectations and their own.

But I diverged big time...

Returning to your planned community Bobsal. Which of the following, if any, might you consider expressions or examples of misogyny and worthy of some sort of warning or punishment by the Poobah or jury?

• One poster addresses another as “honey” or “sweet-cakes.”
• A poster comments that he believes women with children should stay at home and care for their children rather than pursuing a career
• A poster comments that he believes a significant number of the rape allegations being made on US campuses are either greatly distorted or outright fabrications being used as weapons to either settle scores or garner attention
• A poster comments that he believes there is a significant difference in the way the two genders think and that as a result one gender may be better suited for a specific career or profession than the other
• A poster comments that most of the women who are being sexually harassed at work have through certain of their own actions and behaviors invited the unwanted attention and perhaps at some level the attention is not unwanted.

Ever been on DU? It works and the traffic there in one day equals a year here.

Just for the record, most of the a2k misogyny denunciations refer to comments and threads of this sort.

Also the threads that suggest that maybe men should have rights too get labeled as misogynist.

So the people who are saying "no more misogyny", this is what they are asking to curtail.

Too new to know. What is DU?

Hawkeye when lashing out could sink to much lower lows that that. He has been suspended, for example, for referring to another member here as a "fag". Slurs like that directed at other members was never allowed and under any of the rules the site has had that was grounds for suspension.

He'll be able to return when the suspension expires and when the new site launches he'll be able to find or make communities that allow him to use whatever slurs and whatnot that he wants.

Seriously, there's nothing you don't think should be limited? Child porn? Bomb making instructions? Revenge porn? Out and out libel? Your children's e-mail addresses? Your parents home address? Your daughter's photo? Your tax returns? Your library book selections? Your health status? Nothing at all? Community standards mean nothing? Civility means nothing? And when you find yourself surrounded by only the braying of jackasses, then what?

None of your examples strike me as offensive. But as long as we're throwing out ifs: referring to a woman as the 'c' word certainly would be to me, I'd alert on it and a jury would decide to hide the comment or not. If I lost the jury by 0 to full count, I'd lose my alerting privilege for a period. See, a simple way to help keep up community standards and allowing for outsider thought.

Democratic Underground? If that's what you mean, I've been there. Yeah, a lot of traffic, but I could hardly ever find a discussion about anything that I was interested in.

Dunno what the context for that is but how about not being able to call other members here things like "fag"? Hawkeye was suspended today when my attention was brought to a post where he referred to one of the gay members of this community as a "fag" etc. That kind of thing has always been against this community's rules and is the kind of outburst here that differentiates him from many others here who merely subscribe to unpopular politics or beliefs.

Robert, I've reported Hawkeye for making worse gay slurs about that other member several times, and got suspended a week for "spamming" the moderators while Hawk kept it up. Hawkeye seems to enjoy going after this member.

When he returns will he be OK if he refrains from using such terms from now on? Or will he be at risk of repeated suspensions for posts that were all made a long time ago, even if he stops using such terms when he comes back?

When the new site launches this kind of suspension will be for just the community in question, users would not be suspended from the entire platform for this kind of thing. Unfortunately able2know does not have the tools to more elegantly handle this but the next platform will and I can't imagine he will be able to do anything to get kicked of the next platform, there only spam (real spam, not all self-promotion) and illegal content, or attempts to damage the technical infrastructure of the platform (e.g. DOS attacks) will get you banned from the whole platform.

Edit: but to answer your question I'm not sure what his suspension will be at the moment, for example since posting I have been directed to yet another instance of him using this slur, this time directly to the individual. I think he'll just have to be suspended till the new platform is ready which is right in time for his favorite pastime of all: bitching about any possible change to the site.

Actually it means a lot. But a community gets the members it deserves.

I'm not being pessimistic about A2K though. I can tolerate a hundred jackasses or boring milk toasts for the chance to have one good conversation. Real life is mostly that way, I wouldn't expect it to be different here.

There should be better odds than that.

One can hope.

I ain't leavin' and I trust Robert.

The actual fee, proposed elsewhere on A2K by Robert ( Craven) was $3/month.

Isn't that steep for a first infraction? Usually a first infraction is a suspension of a week or a month, and then longer suspensions follow only if the behavior continues after the member returns from suspension. And usually the objectionable behavior stops when the member returns from suspension.

Of course, I've no idea when the new platform will be ready, so maybe that sounds worse than it is.

I'm a bit unclear how the fee thing would work. If the site is accessible for free to begin with, what exactly would the fee buy?

You gotta do what you gotta do, Robert...but I think a suspension of a couple of weeks should be more than enough for that transgression. There certainly have been LOTS worse.

Hawk is off-the-wall...but this IS an Internet forum...and if you eliminated all the off-the-wall people, there would be no forums.

Hope you give the question of the length of the suspension a lot more thought.

Robert is working that out. I guess, the fee would buy you extra benefits on the site. The details are being worked on.