Ideological Balance in WE&P

If we're going to introduce such standards as clearly-presented OPs, we're going to have to break a few eggs. I'm willing.

Likewise in Politics, I would be interested in enforcing a requirement that every OP must clearly state the pertinence of the topic to relations of authority and society.

The penalty for an ill-defined or badly placed thread would have to be closure, with the opportunity for the originator to revise and improve, and so earn the privilege of interacting with the membership in the new thread.

 

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Sorry to be such a bore- but no: I quite often do much more embarrassing things around here than failing to act, and having you notice. That's why I mostly try to go slow. I think public criticism of the actions (or lack thereof) of the moderators is very constructive. I think public criticism of the personalities and ideologies of mods and members is not. For members and mods, the more we can publicly and constructively critique each others' performance and not our persons, I expect this place to evolve and become ever more interesting.

 

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Not a bad idea - and probably more practical than trying to form some a priori content rules. Of course this requires lots of mod work to vet every OP as it comes in.

Perhaps more than sweating various fine distinctions and rules based on them, we should just try to stick to more narrow topics. Many of the problematic we&p threads are problems exactly because they cease to be about anything specific and instead balloon into open-ended clashes of entire ideologies/worldviews as such (which then drown out everything else, descend into acrimony, piss off reasonable participants, etc). And, likewise, many OPs seem little more than pretexts for igniting such confrontations. A thread should have some purpose more specific than "continue the cosmic battle against the bad guys," and deviations from that purpose should be moderated on grounds of topicality.

Not that I don't realize that some people enjoy the endless cosmic battles, but I feel that they have become unforgivably repetitive and boring, and so don't seem to accomplish anything other than to drive away mature participants and make members resent one another. If people want to spend their time writing ideological polemics and making a show of evading arguments, they should just start their own blogs. That's what those are for.

 

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lets not tax this community too much
nor should we try to kill off we&p

/smile

as quad more or less suggested a workable solution would be proactive moderation and encouraging the mods to make the call for themselves to the best of their ability. given that most mods probably have their hands full, i suggest the task of categorizing and situating misplaced threads in the appropriate venues fall on the supermods and james. they already have sitewide jurisdiction so it would be quite fitting to task them with this

and yes, i did say "supermods"
another two to complement stryder
i'll query plazma about this and see what he thinks

 

That is the way I would go. Quarantine the flame war/culture wars/bashing type stuff in 5 to 8 new subforums. But then I would fee like the ugly stuff was being given too many forums in relation to the other forums. My solution too that would be to subdivide all the other forums as well.

Also I feel like non-US politics gets buried under the US politics. Maybe split politics into US politics and the rest of the world's politics.

Some basing forums? "Islam Bashing" "Israel Bashing" "USA bashing + non-Islamic enemies of the USA bashing". I am serious about putting bashing in the name. If people have to post in a category called "bashing" it might make them stop and think about what they are doing which I think would be a good thing.

Maybe go to a third tier of forums in all categories. Even the Science categories as they are now are broad enough that they each might benefit from subdivision.

 

I'm glad to consider all these ideas. I must confess that I'm dubious that a lot of restructuring, and an expansion of subfora can rationally be expected to produce more lively activity, and better quality posts as results. With too many subfora, I think that our campus could become a bit harder to navigate, and some discussions with great potential could languish where fewer people routinely happen by.

What I would like to see improve around here is the quality of contributions, to encourage more thought and more sincere consideration of topic and the positions expressed. While I don't dismiss rearranging forums as entirely superficial, well... I think it's a mostly superficial means of cultivating better content here. World Events, Politics, Economics, Ethics, Sociology, Psychology- all the social and human sciences have a lot of cross-over, and I'm not convinced that more sectioning and categorization will automatically stimulate higher levels and qualities of participation, or cause our discussions to become more balanced, or less biased and less polarized ideologically.

I'd like to suggest it would be more constructive to examine how we so often get out of mutual balance around here in our interactions as members and moderators. Too often in my view, discussions go into the ditch when participants dismiss others as ideologues and "trolls" long before there is a careful examination of the issues under discussion. As soon as it appears that a discussion is turning competitive in ideological and personal aspects, I would like for us to learn to borrow from more disciplined environments such as academic venues, with a shared respect for learning.

Too often, it seems to me that as participants in WE&P discussions just begin to approach original and interesting exploration of a topic (and often when it seems that the intellectual challenge may be increasing) accusations of bias and insincerity are raised, and dialogue is halted or diverted. Often I wonder if the animosity is really as strong as the impulse to hide the irrational shame of learning; a counterproductive impulse to shrink away from revealing that frontier of conversations where talking-points lead no further, and where we begin learning from people with very different experience and opinions than our own.

We often tend to bristle when we encounter the frontiers of our personal and shared understanding. Rather than talk about how to rearrange our topical categories around here, I would very much like to explore ways by which we may modify our culture at SciForums, so that there is a reduced tendency to degenerate into ideological camps and personal pissing-matches when our ideas and observations are really challenged. I understand that this is also a consideration of changing the demographic here, in terms of the intellectual standards expected, which would be very hard for the staff to implement without the consent and support of a considerable core of "serious" contributors- I don't mean members too serious to laugh and joke here regularly, but the core of a more evolved Sciforums community becoming less tolerant of mostly superficial and disruptive forum participants.

We can redecorate this place and that's fine- but would it not be more interesting if we set about improving who we are as an "intelligent community"?

 

I agree Hype.

And I think everyone know who the habitual offenders are and in my view they are given way too much leash before the hit get banned. I think a perma band woud be a good solution for some of the habitual offenders.

I think mods spend too much of their time coddeling the habitual offenders. These offenders know the game, it is not like they haven't been banned scores of times before for the same offenses. I think we should have a three strick rule and you are out for good....not just 30 days.

 

There is really no need for balance.
In fact, mods should be whimsical, capricious, and even a bit hostile, if they so choose. Keeps us on our toes. Gives us something to rail against.

What would Gustav do without an evil forum despot to denounce? What would any of us do?

We are like Doozers from Fraggle Rock. We must constantly build our structures from tasty doozer sticks for the Fraggles to devour. Without that cycle of destruction and reconstruction, we will likely fall ill. Why, some of us may even get the sniffles!

Bring on the unruliest moderators that Sciforums can muster.

 

LOL, I know you are ready for that Giambattista.

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Agreed. Although a lot of the worse ones do get nailed a few posts in.

Still: what would Sciforums be without crackpots? Happeh, Dr. Lou...

 

You're too charitable by half. There's a critical mass of participants that come into this stuff with the animosity all primed and ready to go. Indeed, their primary interest in this place seems to be as a source of enemy simulacra to abuse. We should not imagine that these types are acting out in response to something they experience here - they come here to act out in the first place.

Then there's the second (larger) category: the activists who have a set agenda they want to promote (which they are not interested in critically appraising). These types will claim to value honest, open discussion because they know that there's value in portraying their chosen agendas as the product of an open mind and critical process. But it's only a pose - to the extent that honest, open discussion raises any questions about their righteousness, it becomes a liability to be minimized. These types typically start out threads/conversations acting all good-faith and serious, but quickly turn childish and hostile when their ideas are challenged. They'll often jump through hoops to maintain a (laughable) pretense of intellectual honesty while torpedoing the conversation, and then start the process all over soon enough. Most seem to seriously believe that theirs is the only possible defensible position, and so that any honest, rational debate ought to favor them, and so that any criticism of them is necessarily done in bad faith. Fundamentalism is alienating like that - that's why you rarely see progressive cults.

And then, of course, we have people who fall into both of those categories, where the agenda involves animosity towards some group, and the acting out takes the form of a perverted discourse that pretends at respectability while containing nothing but expressions of contempt. These would be the poster problem children of SciForums.

Not that this doesn't also happen, but I haven't seen a lot of actual problems arise from it. And it's dangerous to assume that all of the problems we see are the result of basically well-intentioned, honorable people having trouble coping with cognitive dissonance. Well-intentioned, honorable people don't tend to act destructively when their knowledge is challenged. The serious problems come from people who come here for dishonorable (or, at least, politicized) interactions to begin with. There is no having a productive discussion with someone like that.

To that slogan, I've long felt that too much time and attention has been spent on the "intelligent" part, and too little on the "community" part. The former is just an adjective modifying the latter, so if we aren't even able to form a genuine community, then there's little point in worrying how intelligent it is. And to that point, I'd characterize SciForums as something like a cross between a MMORPG and talk radio. It's divided, overtly hostile, and played ruthlessly for zero-sum advantage. Becoming an actual community would solve a lot of the discursive issues, because participants in discussions would feel that their presence is fundamentally valued by the rest of the community, even when they disagree. This would be incompatible with the sort of divide-and-abuse environment we currently exhibit, where participants have their worth as human beings doggedly assaulted whenever they venture a controversial opinion on certain subjects.

 

Some challenges for moderators in WEP:

1. find one thread about any country with a Muslim population which does not discuss their religion

2. find a thread about an event [any event -political, social, economic] - in a Muslim country where religion is not the major discussion

3. count the number of threads on the US economy, Obama, democrat vs republicans

4. Find a thread about Palestinians where they are not demonised as human beings

 

I'll accept those challenges on my next visit. Doubtlessly skewing the results in anticipation, I would like to say this quickly (must go now): Sf reflects the Western World that it is the largest part of our demographic, so Sf is tainted with the most virulent prejudices of these turbulent times, when the old order is desperately seeking a focus of popular fears and a mobilization of aggression, in order to preserve the old structure.

If we manage to better define and to raise our standards here, I don't expect that we'll manage to (or should try to) shut out the prejudices and fears factoring so prominently in events and collective responses to them. It would be beneficial and significant for the pathogens of prejudice to be isolated here- mercilessly exposed to antiseptic daylight, for all participants and observers here, respectful of the scientific method, to see clearly exposed, to better understand the phenomena, to share and apply some learning far beyond this website.

I think it's possible to examine here in a more scientific and (dare I say) scholarly way the fears, distortions, and manipulations in play in World Events and Politics. If we can agree as a community to seek that, then we can begin our change by establishing higher standards of discourse, that will promote more sincere observation and communication about current events; that will promote a culture here that is resilient in rationality, and more capable of forging ahead in spite of political and cultural turmoil. If we can answer the challenge to become more intelligent as a community, then I think we'll become much more capable of confronting and overcoming the great misunderstandings of our times, as Sam often challenges us to do.

 

that's a circular and fallacious argument? an impossible state of affairs? nevertheless, i do know what you are trying to get at tho.

when qualified candidates are a dime a dozen it is quite frequently the case that other variables are factored in to finesse the distinction b/w these tards. silly shit like ideology, morals and whatnot

now..hopefully a workable analogy...
let us consider the tos as the supreme law of sciforums. let us also consider the staff as the interpreters and enforcers of said laws. thru overt or covert action, thru non-action, the staff can influence the discussions in sci to varying degrees

lets now assume that you can justify the stances that led to this characterization.....lets us also assume that the test is rationally constructed and accurate

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..ie: you think that ideology represented by your choices is an attitude that lends itself towards........? is that correct? somewhat? hardly?

moving on...to this headline .....How McCain could tilt the Supreme Court

or this....Tilting to the right

please comment. i like understand and perhaps share your optimism. are you still willing to disregard ideological considerations?

one more thing....

there is no real way of knowing is there? we really just hope for the best, ja?

 

if there is going to be a more aggressive moderation as far as the placement of threads in the appropriate venues, i would like mods to seek a consensus with at least one other mod. "interference" is something that has never gone down well with the community and there will be howls of outrage if missteps are made

when in doubt, leave well enough alone
you have been warned

 

Brief digression, I know.

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That is spot on, well said.

Indeed, and there is much in the way of learning that one can ingest if so inclined. We have a macrocosm of current global political/geo-political attitudes in WE&P, that in many ways reflects the actual world we live in. We can really find common ground here.

Such a command of the English language. Ah... :m:

 

That's easy enough - the US has a considerable Muslim population, and there are countless threads about US issues that say nothing about them (or religion in general).

That's not even theoretically possible - a "Muslim country" is, by definition, one in which Islam plays a defining role in the political, social and economic affairs of the country. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a "Muslim country," it would just be "a (secular?) country with a large Muslim population" or somesuch. You can't define a polity as "Muslim" and then complain that discussions of that polity's affairs end up dealing with Islam.

Err... I think you're missing something in that phrasing there. It's not generally considered "demonization" to label somebody a "human being."

But you could just as well issue the same challenge about any number of various identity groups here (Jews, Americans, atheists, conservatives, etc.). This isn't a question of bias, but of the fact that a lot of participants come here for exactly the purpose of demonizing groups they don't like and generally flinging shit.

 

When you've finished wiping Hype's cum off of your chin, perhaps one of you two can tell the rest of us exactly how to locate and identify the agents of fear and destruction that we need to decisively defeat in order to save the human race from imminent destruction. This is some specific group of people with a specific agenda, yes? An evil, powerful cabal that enacts a vile conspiracy to destroy the world?

And not some set of emergent or structural factors that produce perverse top-level outcomes even when all of the actual individuals involved are doing their best? Because that is the sort of thing that is typically advanced by the zeal of those whose self-righteousness exceeds their insight, you realize.

 

It's people who consider hope in mankind a weakness, and something that must be vilified and repressed, because sadly they don't see and love others enough in and through themselves. People who are handicapped in empathy (all of us to varying extents) do not really need to be defeated but awakened.

 

And where can I find these people? How will I know? Can you give me a concrete example?

I don't follow your phrasing - is this empathy-handicapped group a different one than the first group, or are they the same one and you're abjuring their defeat?