An open letter to ILX & mods re: an alternative to the current system

many xposts but i'm w/kate here

main difference is that ~flagging~ anonymously happens silently, and is only visible to the mods. they can then investigate the offending post, and decide from there if it merits further action. if ppl lol flag a post from an ilxor they personally dislike, it'll be pretty obvious to whatever moderators check it out. SBs can accumulate for reasons that have nothing do w/actually offensive behavior (by ilx community standards), and once they fire, they fire. but if a poster keeps getting innocuous posts flagged, they won't necessarily get the boot.

what's funny is that the anonymity of SBing is why it can be misused, but is also precisely why flagging is a good idea. if someone thinks a post is offensive for maybe personal reasons, they should be able to raise the alarm w/o starting a mod request thread saying "i think, personally, that this post is gross/racist/whatever" and inviting recrimination. or having to email a mod directly, etc.

I have tempbanned J0rdan

calling people by their real SBs when shit gets heated

Suggest Ban Permalink

if you annoy 51 different ppl in any 'community', seems fair that those 51 ppl can have a break from you for a month or so

― Ward Fowler, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:31 PM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark

what if there are 500 people who don't want you banished? where is their vote?

xp - i was unclear on whether the flagging would be public or private

i think the mods should come up with a system that changes for each individual so that nobody ever gets banned, except for the things i want them to get banned for.

^^^ nail on the head

An ideal outcome right now would be several people flagging Jordan for "ad hominem" and a helpful mod comes along, yellow cards him saying "enough snark" and then threadbans him if he doesn't knock it off.

Wouldn't that produce a better immediate outcome than him just getting SB'd two weeks down the road when everyone's forgotten what this thread was even about?

amen

would like to register protest at jordan getting tempbanned for lowerin himself to the tone of the debate

those 500 people are all socks tho
xps

In the heat of passionate clusterfucks, won't people get even more defensive and then irate if they're all of a sudden notified that they're offending people? Maybe not, I'm just spitballing here.

would like to hear from my pope on this matter tbrr

x-post thank you WmC

dmac did you actually read what j0rdan was saying? come on man

j0rdan was being a dick in this thread

like, I <3 the guy usually but he's the only person who's ever driven me to SB out of rage - his handling of sensitive meta-debate is inflammatory at best

i read all the posts lj.

J0rdan: unless another mod unbans you, you're gone for 15 days. A polite request was made, you ignored it. then you made a rape joke to someone who's made it clear that she's a rape survivor. why shouldn't this be a permaban?

because a permaban would be way too harsh

An ideal outcome right now would be several people flagging Jordan for "ad hominem" and a helpful mod comes along, yellow cards him saying "enough snark" and then threadbans him if he doesn't knock it off.

I find your constant statements that the general posting public sbs you for being a woman far far more insulting and offensive than anything j0rdan said on this thread.

Hey, I've just given my first SB in this thread. I wish I had been able to just flag up "I find this post unacceptable" instead, but I don't have that option.

this time next week k8 is giving sb's for lols & loving it, gateway drugs are a whole thing man

xps wow

for real, from a purely "what is modding for" perspective, SBs don't make as much sense as flags. if the intent of modding is to keep things relatively civil (according to community standards, obv...derails are a part of ilx, but obv wouldn't be tolerated on loads of other boards), then letting the community police itself by anonymous tipline makes more sense than automatic jailtime given w/o evaluation. i know kate has maybe played up the "omg everyone hates me!" thing, but i guarantee she's holding SBs for no reason other than ppl think she's irritating, which is whack.

that being said: the hugest obstacle to all of this is, as it always is, actually implementing it. i can't program for shit, so unless stet or whoever thinks flags are a dece idea and feel like pursuing it, i think we're stuck with what we've got

An ideal outcome right now would be several people flagging Jordan for "ad hominem" and a helpful mod comes along, yellow cards him saying "enough snark" and then threadbans him if he doesn't knock it off.

Wouldn't that produce a better immediate outcome than him just getting SB'd two weeks down the road when everyone's forgotten what this thread was even about?

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:35 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

guys this is srsly the most reasonable thing itt, kate is otm

jordan's post was out of order, a threadban would definitely have been merited were it possible, but before it's painted as a rape joke lol fuck that guy, it was actually a direct response to two or three items KDT's list of all the reasons she might have been sb'd in the past, all of which were pretty damned facetious and in line with the tone of forced confusion that permeates this thread.

xp what jjj said.

from st4ckoverflow.com:

What if I see bad things happening?

Please use our flagging system to let us know about it. Each comment has a small flag icon, and every post has a flag menu at the bottom. Take advantage of it! We actively moderate our community, but we need your help to do so. Anything that is getting consistently flagged by our community members will be investigated and followed up on. And of course you can always email us directly if you feel the matter is extremely urgent.

hold on, 30 sbs issued sounds like a lot to me - is that a lot? is there an average?

a threadban was possible; I gave a sitewide tempban instead

stet or whoever thinks flags are a dece idea and feel like pursuing it, i think we're stuck with what we've got

^^^ real talk

I mean as I said earlier, I'm guessing anybody on here could learn to code but they "don't have enough time" or w/e (as if the mods here don't have day jobs & lives & sometimes kids & plenty of other shit they could be doing...oh no am I kissing mods' asses by not being a knee-jerk infantile cockface to them? sry Lamp wld h8 to disappoint u) -- if you won't take the time to use yr god-given brain to design a new system & offer it up, then you don't have any complaint coming, is my opinion -- and I know everybody was v. keen to learn what my opinion was so now u have it

automatic jailtime given w/o evaluation

Again, this isn't how it works. Mods review every post when someone gets 51ed.

main difference is that ~flagging~ anonymously happens silently, and is only visible to the mods. they can then investigate the offending post, and decide from there if it merits further action. if ppl lol flag a post from an ilxor they personally dislike, it'll be pretty obvious to whatever moderators check it out. SBs can accumulate for reasons that have nothing do w/actually offensive behavior (by ilx community standards), and once they fire, they fire. but if a poster keeps getting innocuous posts flagged, they won't necessarily get the boot.

what's funny is that the anonymity of SBing is why it can be misused, but is also precisely why flagging is a good idea. if someone thinks a post is offensive for maybe personal reasons, they should be able to raise the alarm w/o starting a mod request thread saying "i think, personally, that this post is gross/racist/whatever" and inviting recrimination. or having to email a mod directly, etc.

Yes, exactly. The flagging is done silently, so the flagger doesn't have to survive the trial by rubbernecking on threads like this, but mods can see who it is doing it, to make sure it isn't being abused.

In the heat of a *passionate* clusterfuck, I think perhaps a temporary threadban until the clusterfuck dies down and the poster becomes calm again is a lot better than just hitting them with a random banhammer, maybe weeks later. Yes, that requires a judgement call on *who*, precisely is clusterfucking (or if someone is reacting to provocation, or whatever) but I'd much rather that, than the paranoia-inducing random banhammer. And you can also see what posts *don't* get you flags.

Like, believe it or not, some people on ILX find it quite hard to make political or personal statements. I have had people email me and say "thank you for saying that, I don't feel comfortable getting involved, but I'm glad you said something" - if *these* people are free of the fear of getting SB'd, you might hear their voices instead of just the usual people shouting the most frequently.

xp - why j0rdan shouldn't be permabanned -

It was a dickish way of putting it, but I think what K was accusing people of was potentially offensive, and to me, ridiculous -- because if people were banning for those reasons, the banned would be demographically different. J0rdan was pointing out the ridiculousness of these assertions, not making rape jokes.

but i mean, if a thread was started now calling WmC all sorts of names and demanding satisfaction for the fallen, would it follow that we need a new style of modding than what was used in this specific circumstance?

it seems that this entire thread is based on "people" not understanding why they are suggest banned.

it's a position that's either disingenuous or shockingly clueless.

either way.

I an also opposed to j0rdan being site wided but I am am posting from iPhone so I can't actually reverse it at the moment.

i'd say jordan feels at least as sore as anyone who's been sb'd, i wonder will he come back reformed.

yeah it's actually not hard to avoid the appearance of impropriety w/that word & I <3 J0rdan, like a lot, that is my dude, but having said that, ppl who deploy the word "rape" as if it weren't heavily loaded need to check themselves a little -- it's really not hard to say to oneself "let me treat that whole concept as if use of the term could really hurt someone's feelings, and let me try to avoid being that hurtful person"

^

people everywhere? or just y'know, jordan.

back to the number of sb's given: I'm a pretty regular poster and I think I've only sb-ed 3 people in the past year.

ok i'm being a dick now. self threadban, need to go bail out my country anyhoos. i'm with jjj all the way here

xp everybody

treat "rape" like you'd treat a racial epithet imo - if you haven't been raped, you can't actually fathom what the word feels like, so stfu with your "I didn't mean that"

imo

(04:42:27 PM) Jordan Sargent: this is my message
(04:46:56 PM) Jordan Sargent: i'm having hoos post this because wmc is addressing me directly, even tho he banned me sitewide for two weeks thus disallowing me from responding. i was being a dick, obviously, but kate's insistence that she's the victim of rampant ilx misogyny is insulting to me personally, as someone that has sb'd her for other reasons and doesn't hate women. i was being purposefully antagonistic cuz that's how i deal with things on the board that i think are utterly ridiculous, and i figured i would get banned from the thread, because i assume that's why thread bans exists. to ban people from one thread where they are being, for example, arguably needlessly antagonistic. but what do i know? as for knowing about kate's past history and personal life, i don't know her like that, so i saw no reason to act with excessive caution. my bad, on that front.

J0rdan was pointing out the ridiculousness of these assertions, not making rape jokes.

― sarahel, Sunday, November 21, 2010 3:45 PM (5 minutes ago)

It seemed to me that he was pointing out whatever he was pointing out BY making rape jokes.

xp -- ok, I'm converting your sitewide 15-day to a threadban

Yeah but I think also js might have been bristling a bit at the ops continual characterization of ilxors as the sort of people who would sb people for being women or opposing rape culture, which infuriates me.

Xposts obv. Thx wmc

i once made an unfortunate and regrettable post that incensed a particular ilxor, who joke-threatened me with an uzi (no harm no foul imo, we cool). he had every right to be pissed, and while i don't know if it earned me a SB, i'd hazard that if one was given it was less of a "this guys shouldn't post here ever again" and more a "this is the only option i have to officially register my feelings that that was 'not cool' and should be considered unacceptable behavior".

and w/r/t to implementation: presumably clicking suggest ban just rolls over a counter that's associated with a given user. i'm not a DB dude at all, but wouldn't a "flag" button just roll over a counter associated with a given post? honest q: how hard would it be to add another field? also, like SBs, you could set a threshold: post wouldn't come to the attention of the mods unless it got flagged by X number of ppl. that way, if kate stumbled into oh i don't know an autogoon thread and flagged the shit out of it, there wouldn't be repercussions for everyone involved because, most of the time, the only ppl IN THOSE THREADS are goons who don't care much if ppl make outlandish or off color jokes.

xp waaaay behind here

js might have been bristling a bit at the ops continual characterization of ilxors as the sort of people who would sb people for being women or opposing rape culture, which infuriates me

Yeah, it reads like a multiple ad hom to me, I do understand a lot of KDT's frustration but tarring dozens of people with a pretty unpleasant brush is not a good look either.

basically i agree with aeroflot in that modding is a thankless job and that the system mostly works as it is currently implemented. but since i ~don't~ know whether or not flagging has been considered by stet/keith/et al, and since i'm pretty sure it would ~work better~, i think it's worthwhile to discus

this doesn't have to be a referendum on SBs, instead maybe think of non-technical reasons why flagging would be inferior to SBing (since from the sounds of things they're about equally time-consuming from a modding and implementation perspective)

that is: kate began this thread as a discussion of an alternative system, we don't have to keep hobbyhorsing (i learned a word today!) the usual beefs w/SBs.