The rules are changing, we are going to start showing the assholes the door

It seems like most of the people still in this thread are waiting for some kind of purge of all their forum enemies.

This thread is not announcing an intent to start a community purge this thread represents a policy shift toward the standards that had been in place prior to the last forum rewrite. When A2K sought to be the one monolithic community it had more inclusive (and thusly lower) standards leaving it to members to control it with voting and ignoring but the features were never finished and ultimately this vision did not succeed.

Because A2K is going to become just one community in a community of communities it can afford to set a higher standard for participation. The platform aims to get many things right that are now wrong but the big sea change is that it aims to improve community management by letting different community management teams do things differently and let users join. Instead of there being one set of rules and one group enforcing them there will be many.

Given that the new platform gives users even more freedom to say what they want (in communities that allow for them to say what they want) the A2K community can afford to be less inclusive and we are going to start getting back to the standards we started with.

This doesn't mean that each time you feel insulted you should expect A2K to do anything about nor does it mean you will be able to play armchair quarterback on A2K moderation going forward (this announcement serves a purpose but generally A2K moderation is not going to make each decision collaboratively with the community, that is not efficient and this is volunteer work) it is simply a notice that going forward A2K is going back to the rules and tone that the site started with.

All the talk about reporting and witch hunts are a by product of forum angst that talking about moderation causes and one reason it's not going to be something we navel gaze the community to death about over either. It's good for people to talk about it and expose themselves and each other to more viewpoints on the subject but the bottom line is that there are many views on how a community should be run and ultimately the community management must pick one and run with it. There will be other communities doing things differently (hopefully some doing a better job!) and it's not possible to please everyone so A2K will just have to do the best it can and most of the time that will mean doing the community management work behind the scenes because it can't debate its every member over its every decision and it's big-picture shifts like this one that the community should discuss more so than the minutiae.

So you invision a federal government and a2k is just one of the 50 states (communities)?

I just can not understand given this thread title along with your announcement of the banning of Hawkeye why anyone would be confused over your intend.

I like that description! (it sort of matches how I understand the target)

If the point of your sarcasm is that I could have worded things better I can agree with that. However no matter how well expressed there would have been a great range of interpretations insofar as the underlying intent and some still would have seen occasion for sundry dramatics.

Ultimately saying less is more when it comes to moderating forums, otherwise the forum becomes consumed with an obsession with itself and ceases to be the community it once was to become the community that discusses the community that once was.

I see it as much more decentralized than that in that we will seek to have the platform rules as few as possible with as much up to communities as possible but the analogy otherwise holds.

Robert, you ignorant slut . . .



How dare you not be all things to all members ? ! ? ! ?

there are two main problems in the world today, most people actually take things seriously and most people have no sense of humour

Same as it ever was...allegations without evidence. It really is an oily practice.

So, let's say there's a humor community. I tend to think some of us will just try to promulgate their brand of humor, and still make the community their turf. Human nature and leopard's spots don't change.

I meant this to Robert -

I'm presuming that I can look around, and sign in somewhere, but I like both soft-ish threads, and some beefy (for want of another term) ones... so I can join those communities too, I take it. Correct me if wrong, if you see this.
I think I get all that.

My odd question of the day is:

when I post someone thumbs up, sometimes I regret that, wanting to back off to neutral. But I don't thumb it down, since then I couldn't see their post. (I'm speaking of within threads, as you know). This is the way I remember it, and I may remember wrong. Point being, is there always a way to neutral, not just a yayy, without losing the post? I know I can replace a down by posting twice up, if I remember, I've done that more than once. Not sure re how it works for ups in the first place.

This would be a good first post in a humor community!

True dat, Foof. What I call funny, some people call obnoxious. Go figure, eh?

The same people who will insist "That's not funny!" will laugh their ass off if a comedian says the same thing on stage. But, that's different. That's a place where they are told they're supposed to laugh, ya know?

As an aside, Finn and I have had disagreements (I usually squawk on his calling liberals liberals* (in the american take on it), some kind of group think blast. On the other hand, he's not really not done much slamming of me - - and that doesn't mean I'm a pansy. More that there wasn't rage and all that going on.
*sort of like dirt clods

I respect Finn's posts here.

is that it

Not enough for you?

Not enough for me. I want to see some ACTION here, eh!? A turf kinda war, ya know? Gang on Gang. Crips vs Bloods. No holds barred. Uzi's bustin caps high and low.

Oh, yeah, that, and some HOT BABES dancin round too. The whole shebang. Kinda like this here, ya know?:

It's worth than that: these are attempts at entrapment. Once Iz chose Lash as a target of his holier-than-you ire, he tried to trap her, to trick her into saying something which could ever remotely be interpreted as a personal flaw in her character. Eg he posts a Nazi propaganda poster, and Lash cracks a joke about it, and immediately she's portrayed as ignorant, unsensitive, a POOR TEACHER, etc.

That's not debate, that's a viscious attempt at making someone trip and fall in front if the crowd, to decredibilize her. And he can go on and on and on and on with the same crap for weeks, if not months.

Don't talk rot. I didn't entrap Lash or pick her out as a target. I was having a chat with Ossobucco about freedom of speech, prompted by our disagreement. I asked if a Nazi propaganda poster was acceptable, it showed Stalin being controlled by a demonic Jew complete with horns and tusks. Lash jumped in and said she did approve, and things went downhill from then on.