Proposal: How about an open government?

Why not trial an open government for one month?
Just for kicks.
It wouldn't require any work, there's already a mock subforum set aside for it.
The only change I'm proposing is that poll results are taken seriously.
That polls can actually decide.
Theoretically, even outlandish things like spurious monkey has to post a photo of his penis or he is banned.
Poll results rule over everything, as though we have some kind of "open government" (term I just came up with).

What harm could be done? If people get banned they could be reinstated once the trial period was over, they wouldn't die. Porn subforums could be deleted and etc.
Thats assuming it would even be a disaster, it would be interesting if it turned out to be completely sane and ordered.

 

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sounds like fun!

 

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I'm listening.

. . . Okay.

And why would you need to see spuriousmonkey's penis?

You didn't come up with it. There is a subforum with the name.

Well, it's an interesting idea (no matter how much I thought I'd never agree to something that came out of yer fingers). I suppose we could do it . . . just for the fuck of it.

Joy . . .

 

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More people vote!
Not that it's necessarry.
You see, when the time runs out, my rules will officially be in effect.
Only if "yes" was selected more times than "no" ofcourse.
But yeah, under my rules, there is no required quota of votes for it to work. So on that stroke of time when this poll closes, my rules will come into effect, negating the "needs so many votes to be valid" rule that was in the old set of rules which won't exist when "yes" wins this poll.
I know it's complicated, you'll just have to trust me.

 

I voted yes. And the first proposal i will make is to set athelwolfs post counter back to zero.

 

What makes anyone think another "trial" will go over any better than the first?

 

You're just being inflammatory. You know we haven't trialled it yet.

 

No, this is inflammatory:

It's your own problem, Lou, if you're too stupid to understand the issue. Stop taking your ignorance out on the rest of us.​

I take it back. It's not inflammatory. It's appropriate.

Let's get this straight:

Trial is a noun.​

I mention it because I happened to notice your harping on minutiae over in the IQ Test topic:

How's that foot taste, Lou?

Now then, to get to the relevant point:

We have had a trial, Lou. SFOG has already been established, executed, and adjusted. Perhaps you remember that adjustment, although I understand if you don't, despite it being a recent discussion. After all, you never did respond to my address of your issues. Let's see, I provided a rhetorical comparison, chided you for a cheap analogy, proposed that you test your theory (you didn't, as far as I can see), and provided examples of topics taken seriously and acted on. Yet here you are, raising what is essentially a debunked complaint, without even pausing to address those points suggesting the paucity of your argument.​

Your proposal is faulty. No surprise there. It is falsely-founded, although we've come to expect that of you. It's pathetic, seeking to augment both animosity and stupidity. But hey, what more do you ever show? Discourteous, apathetic, arrogant--all of these are hallmarks of your attitude. There's nothing new here.

The solution is as simple now as it was in December, Lou:

• When put to some useful end, SFOG is an effective tool. Its low average reflects the intended ends of the majority of the courtiers.​

Tell me, because while inquiring minds have more important things to think about, it's four in the morning here, so I'm curious: Is this still about getting your topic closed back in March?

 

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG

 

You've got some nerve voting no, avatar.
Yeah I can see what you vote, I made it that way on purpose.
Yeah, some nerve.

Tiassa, I think your hybrid mind is sending mixed signals which are cancelling each other out. This is exactly what it seems like, I believe it would be interesting and I am thus presenting a proposal to the board.
Which is apparently well within the bounds of my scitizenship.

As an aside;
At 4 in the morning shouldn't you be in bed preparing for the big day of competent parenting and not-pot-smoking that you should have planned for tomorrow?

 

And what a big secret that was!! Written just below the poll.

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p.s. Either way nobody in power will take this thread seriously.

 

Rolling your eyes huh? Well well.
I'll remember that next time I feel like sending an emoticon in your direction.

 

Don't forget to take your medicine as well.

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Dr. Lou Natic

And thus I reiterate:

When put to some useful end, SFOG is an effective tool. Its low average reflects the intended ends of the majority of the courtiers.​

The key word is "useful", Lou. What you're proposing is self-defeat for SFOG, due process, and your own say in what happens around here.

Nope. Although it may come as a surprise to you, Lou, some of us have responsibilities that often occur before five in the morning.

You really should consider sticking to the relevant issues.

Such as the question of whether or not this is just an extension of your distemper related to the closure of a silly topic in March.

You remind me, after a fashion, of American Communists in the 1980s who lamented that the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour was too low, and should be raised to $10/hr. There have also been proposals from the communitarian/socialist left to jack the minimum to $15 and hour. Now, regardless of what legitimate beefs communists and socialists have about how dishonestly American society deals with them, the complaint isn't relevant on such occasions because they simply could not demonstrate that taking their proposal seriously was feasible.

Perhaps you, like the communists, feel you have a legitimate complaint. And perhaps you, like the communists, actually do. However, you're not going to make any progress toward resolving that troubling issue unless you take it seriously at the very least, and, well, you don't. You're not going to make any headway whatsoever raising illegitimate, dysfunctional, and outright stupid ideas. Like the communists and their hyperinflated minimum wage, you've got a long way to go before you show that the proposition is useful, desirable, or even merely functional.

Take your question, "What harm could be done?"

Answer: You don't have to clean up the mess.

And for that, you can thank yourself and your neighbors who go out of their way seeking to agitate moderators in order to stir up further distractions here at Sciforums.

The reality is, however, that much harm could be done.

 

Let's have the damn trial. This forum has been a bit boring lately.

 

Maybe we are having one of those quiet periods.

 

Tiassa's point sounds like a valid one.
He sounds like a fucking dad.
"Let's not have fun blah blah blah repsonsibility blah blah blah I'm lame blah blah blah."
And this from a man who likes men?
What a father....

 

Well, I think it's a good idea personally. But now that the Almighty Tiassa has said no, I'd say the chances of it happening are pretty slim.

 

I would ask you to consider it this way:

You're being taken for a ride. The topic proposal itself is a con.

Poll results are taken seriously, provided that the poll is reasonably actionable. Lou's phrasing reflects a bone he picked with SFOG back in December:

I disagreed with Lou at the time, "in part because the quality of the Sciforums experience depends heavily on the posters themselves, even moreso than it does on moderation or administration."

I even explained what that meant: "... it is the open government's participants that have largely failed. Given a tool to make their experience better, people chose to whack each other over the head with it."

Which puts the notion of Lou's December complaint in an odd light. There was once a ban topic in which someone got upset at a poster and proposed their banning. The target poster immediately counterproposed, so that two warring ban proposals were available. Now, the thing is that in either of these cases, to vote for a ban would have presented serious challenges to a large number of posters. After all, how can we ban someone one week for something and refuse to ban someone else on the same grounds when the complaint is raised? The ban wars would become perverse popularity contests. The December adjustment to the rules of SFOG, which Lou so gravely lamented, came about in part because these ban wars were dominating SFOG. Hence I asked Lou the question, "Must 'democracy' allow its participants to destroy it in order to be effective? Should any system respect and encourage what damages it?"

And I advised, "The changes to SFOG protect the Open Government concept from the petty and corrupting abuses of narrow politics and willful myopia that make it so ineffective and seemingly useless in the first place."

Lou called my perspective bullshit, and stated that "every thread is closed bar about 4".

• • •​

At this point, the story takes on a more direct relevance. Lou's complaint about the number of closed SFOG threads reflected the demand that brought about the changes instituted by administration. Old issues were repeatedly raised as if it made any difference, and bad blood flowed into and out of SFOG.

I proposed to Lou an analogy:

So if I decide to file a class action suit against you on the grounds that you're a complete f@cking moron and detriment to society akin to a social disease, and the court--as it most certainly would--refuses to hear my case, would you describe disdain toward and measures taken against frivolous lawsuits, "not allowing the courts to be effective"?​

Lou never responded to that analogy.

I advised Lou to test his theory, pointed out that he was not--and still is not--prevented from proposing the closure of SFOG.

Lou has not responded to that idea. He has not undertaken that test.

I pointed to four topics that defied his characterization: three quorum poll closures with continued discussion, and a topic locked in light of the proposal's adoption. These clearly defied his characterization.

Lou has not chosen to comment on those topics, nor even indicate that he's aware of it.

• • •​

In a footnote, I wrote to Lou:

The "unique perspective" I referred to was a closed topic, an SFOG proposal to use another poster as a banning standard. Given the clear absurdity of the standard and the processes it would invite, and considering that the poll question was so loaded with cynicism that it refused to be taken seriously, it's not hard to understand why the topic was closed.

This topic is important to understanding the underlying theme: Lou is asking for what has been called in history, "the tyranny of democracy". While Americans are used to experiencing this idea cyclically in social-conservative political agendas, it really is annoying. In the world at large, such notions ought to be held at arm's length, else you get people shouting that they're not equal unless they're superior. In our microcosmic corner of the Universe, it empowers provocateurs to appeal to the lowest instincts and advance the kind of ignorant chaos that keeps so many of our discussions mired in talking points and venom.

For instance, every once in a while, when I think someone's being particularly libelous about some ridiculous minutiae, I whip out the "child molester" argument. It essentially goes, "If we're just going to lie about people, why not say you're a child molester?" It usually manifests itself more roughly, but you can always tell that you've hit close to the mark with it because of the reaction. People get indignant, respond in such a manner as to define their ignorance--okay, their stupidity--because they know what comes if they meet the issue head-on. So imagine one day someone is just tired of getting pounded by this point and tells the guy calling him a child molester to fuck off.

Oh, hey. A hostile use of the word "fuck". Moderator action, intervention, arguments about who, what, and why, and eventually these things spill into the arena of banning offenses.

So what then? Do the moderators intrude on the posters, taking away certain arguments that contain no profanity whatsoever? (What if I made the decree that the "pedophile" argument was off-limits in homosexual-related discussions in EM&J? I certainly have the basis: it's not reasonably demonstrated as fact in any manner that warrants its repetition as a point in support of anything else, and as a generalization, well, it seems to bug people.)

Do moderators then face the wrath of a disgruntled constituency that wants them removed? On what grounds do you tell Porfiry you want a moderator removed? By and large, those issues aren't substantial. When those issues are substantial, however, they do get attention. But just like many political folks who are unhappy with a given Supreme Court decision, it's not about substance for many of the people complaining. Lou, for instance.

Lou would have us focus on the closure of topics or disregard for their polls. What Lou would have us ignore is the content of such topics and polls. What he's looking for is a hayseed lynch mob, not any assortment of thinking minds.

How seriously should we take the "JORO" poll? Was I somehow elitist in not waiting for the outcome of a vote in order to reopen a topic per a member's request? How about the IQ Test proposal? It was failing, and the discussion pretty much came apart. But, imagine that it was a more successful idea: Guess who writes the standards? Guess who grades the tests? And since we would probably be less than grateful for the workload, how much do you think we would enjoy flunking people's analogies? Seriously, just think about the natural outcome there. Look up at the current Sciforums logo. Think back, if you remember, to the prior. Now think about who we are? No conspiracy is necessary. We happen to read analogies largely in the same manner, so the outcome would be lopsided. Uh-oh. Looks like the moderators are biased--let's have them replaced. Well, what's the proposal? Will it look substantial to Porfiry? What happens if he reads the analogies like we do? What happens if he says, "I don't see the problem"? I mean, it's one possibility. While we're not identical on philosophies or issues, there is a line of ideas connecting us. No one of us is entirely removed. I mean, think about, say, a right-wing poster smirking that his left-wing nemesis didn't pass; and then he looks around and realizes he's the only one of his favored right-wing cadre that made it through. Now, considering that we don't like to do certain bans, because we're pretty sure that no single poster has ever held eighty-five separate user ID's, I'm curious what would stop the rest of that failing cadre from retesting until they got it. And what point would there be to such a test if the passing members simply ignore that standard and post the same old fallacies, sling the same old mud?

I suppose it's worth mentioning that yes, we do think about these things when we read these proposals.

And we haven't even really gotten to labor issues, except for a passing mention of the workload.

There's no poll to respect in the A&C moderator discussion in SFOG; it appears the primary question received response.

There's the "Forum on IS", with no poll, and a counterpoint that the proposal is/would be redundant.

How about "Post Content Copyrights"? No poll. Issue could probably be moved to Site Feedback.

There's the topic to require moderators to post reason for topic closure, that is passing, awaiting quorum, largely forgotten by members, and most likely going to be observed and respected by moderators, anyway.

There is a ban topic that, because it targets someone who is a moderator, is closed according to Porfiry's December update to SFOG rules.

What about "The elite ..."? An open-ended, failing poll to create a restricted subforum?

Another ban topic was closed according to the December update.

Let's see ... there's the failed proposal for a shout-box. And a discussion of formal debates without a poll or any useful resolution.

A topic moved to Site Feedback; a quorum failure for a "SciArchives" proposal, and no, we cannot seriously expect Porfiry to undertake the fulfillment of an 8-2 vote to "create another completely different site, in another completely different server just for archiving messages that are more than one year old".

That takes us back to the December update.

I do not see in any of that what Lou means by, "The only change I'm proposing is that poll results are taken seriously."

What? What did I miss?

• • •​

Before the December update:

• "Impeach Xev" (Locked)
• "Proposal to Ban MacM" (Locked)
• "Ban hotsexyangelprincess" (Locked)
• "Technology: New forum" (Quorum failure, discussion open)
• "Ban Pixel" (Locked)
• "Ban RawThinkTank" (Locked)
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators (continued)" (Locked, no poll)
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators (continued)" (Locked)
• "Member Selective Banning From Posting In Threads" (Locked; proposal failing)
• "Linguistics/Human Communication Forum" (Quorum failure; locked)
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators (continued)" (Locked)
• "Ban Truthseeker" (Locked)
• "Xev as Moderator" (Locked; ban topic)
• "Ban Athelwulf"
• "Alternatives for moderation instead of moderators" (Locked; proposal failing)
• "Ban extrasense" (Locked)
• "A New Forum Just for Relativity" (Locked)
• "Sevenblu's proposal in poll format" (Quorum failure; new forum proposal; discussion locked)
• "Adding an 'abstain' vote to polls" (Locked; merged)
• "Why not an irc channel or something" (Locked)
• "Where is it against the rules" (Locked)
• "Ban Undecided" (Locked)
• "Ban rahul sharma" (Locked)​

That's a lot of locked topics. It goes on that way. Ban Killer douche. Ban KillrCarrot. More of Neoclassical's outburst. Ban Skullz, Ban Rods, &c.

What ban topics weren't yet locked for their content or failure or acknowledgment--did administration ignore or otherwise not take seriously ban proposals that were closed for lack of necessity, when a ban was to be applied without the demand of a vote--closed with the December update. Generally speaking, ban topics fell into only a few categories: petty and problematic standards for banning, unnecessary ban requests of spammers, legitimate requests for action regarding trolling and harassment, and people who thought it was funny to try to ban themselves. Overwhelmingly, the ban topics are petty and demand problematic standards for banning. Here I'll defer to our fearless leader: anyone who wishes to argue otherwise can propose an SFOG measure and, perhaps, appeal to him directly.

There are some topics locked for other reasons: their polls are not actionable, or the discussion has fallen away from the topic, or, in a couple of cases because of specific problematic posters later banned.

New forum proposals often fail on quorum demands; we cannot reasonably demand that Porfiry add a new forum or build a whole new website just because a small handful of people would like it.

Thus: the ban topics are generally petty or unnecessary, and there are better methods for handling such issues; forum proposals are having their day; there are topics that propose no action.

What I don't see is the condition described at the outset of this topic:

Taking poll results seriously is not a real issue. The proposal effectively invokes a return to the days when Porfiry, Goofyfish, and JamesR could spend the whole day in SFOG and still not get to all the improprieties of the forum, or else start closing topics and suppressing the problem entirely.

And where does that lead us? Right back to complaining about moderators and administration.

• • •​

One of the less-than-amusing things we see when someone gets upset, for instance, is multiple user ID's. Perhaps most amusing, though, is when instead of just mucking up the fora, these people start messaging the moderators to tell us how much we suck.

Frankly, when the proposed month is over and the banned folks are reinstated, how many of them will just get banned again for retribution? Ask around; there are a few members who have taken short vacations for the severity of their responses to superfluous provocation. Entertainment for the folks in the gallery, in some cases. More headaches and nasty messages for the moderators to put up with, and more labor for Porfiry accommodating any porn or other fora invoked by the vote.

In the end, Lou's issue is false. He's standing on a premise that is legitimately questioned, and he has not responded to those questions. What we're left with is an unsubstantiated complaint propping up the notion that Porfiry somehow owes it to this posting community to jump through hoops like a trained poodle. Lou has even proposed that we legalize sexual harassment.

In the meantime, my say-so is no reason for the scoreboard to change, per se. Facts, however, may be a different case.

Let us presume that the possibility comes about that everything is "sane and ordered" through this period.

What would be the difference?