Forums with varying levels of insults allowed...

By chaos I mean that virtually everyone on this site will be consumed by the issue at hand. That means that intelligent discussion is out of the window.
I know, I've seen it

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That presupposes that there is intelligent discussion going on at all to begin with.

A pretty grandiose assumption really.

But we all have our own subjective views on what constitutes intelligent discussion to begin with

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In my view, the majority of this site could be drawn in and there would be no decrease in the amount of intelligent discussion going on. heh.

 

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As long as they don't run contrary to the views of the majority and they're not mods, gotcha.

I'd argue that what's needed far more is for people to be more civilized with each other.

I'd argue that they are just that, although the rules are less stringent then high school, atleast when it comes to the insults.

I do agree with you in part in S.A.M.'s case. I don't think she's always fair (we've locked heads atleast once), but I have -never- seen her use toxic insults. Which is much more then I can say for many of the members here. As I've mentioned before, I think she simply have views that are unpopular and I certainly believe that being unpopular can be cause for demodding. Seriously though, I think it'd be hard to run a forum with unpopular mods. At best, you'd get the forums they run to have very few posts going through them.

I think there are some insults that should be off limits when speaking to people you don't get along with; I've mentioned a list of such insults in this post. If we could simply agree to a list of insults that are off limits to use against other members for -everyone-, I think we'd be going places.

 

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Perhaps you should define what you believe constitutes intelligent discussion? That way, we could argue whether we can agree on what constitutes intelligent discussion. If we can actually get to that point, I think we'd have a much better chance of agreeing on how much intelligent discussion goes on here and what can be done to increase it.

 

Oh yes. Hire some completely objective guards, and lets up the patrols men!

That way, people would be able to understand each other because we'd all be the same.

Fuck freedom, conform or die. Right?

(I'll die fighting, I tell you.)

This place has had some awful mods, and they don't last long. Electric Fetus was my favorite story... whew. Way in over his head was a understatement, they had that boy tar, and feathered and handing in his mod hat whilst wimpering. He didn't come back for a long long time. Wish I had been here for Gendy, though it may have been too difficult for me to watch considering I genuinely care for the stinking cunt.

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Sciforums is a bigger beast than people want to let on. It's an institution, and the reason most people keep coming back is because of all it has to offer. That includes the insults, the chaos, the comedy of errors and the drama. It's entertaining and to moderate it more heavily would be detrimental to that. You are free to come and go as you please, and no one is forcing you to stay. People think that just because they leave, this place will fall apart at the seams... then they leave and realize they weren't so prolific as they thought they were and even the big posters and shit-disturbers aren't missed all that much after a few months. Mentioned only in passing, and eventually they return as a sock-puppet or a shadow of their former selves.

I think that in eight, almost nine years in existance total, it's still a great place to hang out BECAUSE of the chaos, not without it.

 

Fair enough, but allowing insults won't improve things in that regard.

By the way, we have pretty opposed views on this.. yet we aren't cursing at each other. See ?

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Being civil to one another improves discussion in my opinion, otherwise we'd now be stuck making up clever insults to call each other..

 

Transformation

Tragic, eh? I mean, it actually used to be fun to fight with people.

It's been a slow bleeding. To be as politically neutral as possible, certain differences in people's enthusiasm, focus, and, above all, creativity caused a result that some people felt was indicative of a political bias among the staff. This came about because certain people who were either less creative in general or invested their creativity in different forms felt they were being unfairly punished for being insulting.

You might remember, for instance, how we used to say, "Attack the idea, not the poster", or other such simplistic advice. I've always thought that within our rules it's fairly easy to be a contemptuous bastard if you really want to, but some saw no difference between the art of contentious discourse and simple insult.

Over time, we've made a number of concessions to this sort of simplicity. And the result has been periodic outbreaks of complaints flying back and forth.

Apparently it's unfair to call lies or irrationality by their name. It's too insulting. Some people really can't tell the difference. Among my fellow moderators, too, it's a contentious question. Some see no difference between calling out a lie and attacking another member's family. We've made certain decisions in response to the situation, and this slow accommodation has brought us to our present state, whatever one might think of it.

The thing is that the idea of intelligent argument marked by decency, affirmative insight, and genuine character is apparently regarded as existing somewhere in the realm of fascism.

It's like the old question: Why climb the mountain?

Because it's there. So why be juvenile, brutal, and simplistic? Because we can. That, at least, is what it looks like. Some of the complaints we receive are rather quite humorous compared to what the complaining members regularly post, but they're still breaches of the rules, so we're obliged to do something on those occasions. But, quite clearly, we have many in our community who show no good faith. Their primary purpose in being here is to insult, attack, and find other dubious outlets for their internal conflicts.

It is by accommodating these elements that we have arrived at this point.

 

phlog, I have responded in a new thread that I created over in the Ethics, Morality, & Justice forum called Research concerning adult/minor sexual interactions, as I believe it's clearly off topic here.

 

Liebling, you sound like you're playing WoW, lol

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. I haven't seen you there in a while and have missed you :-/. Anyway, are you responding to my post or to someone else's? Anyway, the guards in place here aren't so bad. I certainly think they're more impartial as a general rule then the membership at large. I simply think we could do with a few proscribed insults. I personally believe that most people can still insult others if they want to with other insults; but as I've mentioned to Tiassa, I don't mind people finding creative ways to be insulting, per se. What gets to me is that we use the same dull stuff time and time again, stuff that has become almost universally recognized as just trying to put the other guy down instead of adding anything constructive.

I personally could do without a lot of the insults. Atleast the same tired old ones. A little chaos isn't so bad, comedies and dramas can have their moments ;-).

Why can't we just try out -one- forum where moderation is a little more stringent and see how that forum does? Perhaps Formal Debates is like that to some extent, although I'm not sure. A problem I see with formal debates is that to get any thread going there, you must first engage in a formal debate; this generally takes some time and frequently never gets off the ground. I personally would like a special forum set up where people could talk about anything they like, but that that particular forum would have a forbidden list of insults that are not to be used against fellow members. Failing this, a forum already in existence could do it.

Again, not sure if you're referring to me, but you're certainly right on that count. Ultimately, what people think of as acceptable here is something of a consensual operation; while the admins and mods have the ultimate say, I think that it's fair to say that it takes 2 to tango; that is, I doubt the admins and mods would be happy without a good supply of the rest of the ordinary members. Because they do want to retain a good portion of us, they have tried various methods of keeping said portion appeased. Some of those members want less restrictions, some what more, others want special forums set up. The mods take it all in and strike a balance between what they feel comfortable in doing and what they judge the membership collective as a whole would like ;-).

As I mentioned, I don't have so much trouble with a bit of chaos, but I'm still fairly adamant in my belief that some insults should be forbidden for use in the forums.

 

Hah. But doesn't that sound like fun? I can be really creative.

Sorry you have to babysit, T. I think part of you enjoys it or you wouldn't still be doing it after all these years. It's been awhile since you let loose though, I am surprised your blog isn't more caustic. You've become tempered with time I think. Some days, I ache for a good intelligent joust.

 

I can't play Alliance, it just kills me. Saps the life right out of me. I cancelled to kill people (players) in Warhammer online. I lives for the PvP's! The open RvR quenches my thirst for blood... mostly high elf and dwarf blood, and the occasional human. War with other players is so much more fun and unpredicable than conquering bosses. And it also feeds my Go Go Go mentality I have while gaming.

Gendanken was creative in her insults though, and I suppose that's what I miss. I miss the energy it brought to the forum, and it feels like this place has been dormant for too long. Spookzie too, but even he's been tamed. A well placed creative insult is exactly what some of these people need, but I don't do it partially because I know what the mods would have to go through if I did, and I respect their job. But you never know, I always have matches in my pocket and it's not hard to find some TNT.

 

Lets just agree to disagree.

 

I can go for creativity much more then I can go for what generally happens; the same old insults time and time again. This is why I proposed creating a -list- of insults to be proscribed. This would, in a way, encourage people to be creative in their insults. I've insulted people; I simply don't use the same tired insults that most people do; I particularly a term I used, 'flock mentality' ;-). It can be insulting, but I think it's not so bad in terms of a description of a type of mentality.

I don't mind jousts per se; I would contend that I've engaged in several; I simply don't use certain insults and don't like it when those insults are used on me.

I feel for you Enmos, but I think that trying to eliminate insults completely isn't realistic. Just ensuring the -certain- insults aren't used, however, is much more realistic. But since I seem to be the only proponent of a limited proscribing of some insults, instead of an all or nothing approach, it may not come to happen. In which case, I suppose we'll continue with the system we have now, which I believe goes like this:
1- If you support unpopular opinions, just take your lumps. Depending on the unpopularity of your views, you may simply be demodded (S.A.M.), or get a perma ban without the ban cycle (ancientregime).

2- If you support popular views, you definitely have more free reign to do as you will. However, if things get too toxic and there are complaints, the mods will eventually step in. When the mods step in is entirely at their discretion; there's no lists of what constitutes a warnable insult, so your guess is as good as mine as to what makes them give a warning here or not there. But since people can't agree on a list of forbidden insults, I believe it may well be the best we can do.

 

I never got into PvP, just as I can't really go for too much insults. I'll engage in insults of the subtle variety, but I experience a certain amount of revulsion to going any further then that. I view anger and the wish to harm others via words or anything else as a weakness and I refuse to give it too much sway.

 

Phlogistician: It's odd, but on that topic, this place turned from being 'Sciforums' into 'Automaton Forums', ie, it was deemed fine to talk about such a revolting subject if it was done dispassionately, but show some human emotion and the warnings started flying. One of this places low points, I think.

Phlogistician understood perfectly what Scott did not.

 

I am never angry when I insult. In fact, I am rarely ever angry at all. I have a huge long fuse that hasn't been lit in a long time. I am very patient and my intentions are usually well meaning, even if sometimes the translation is bad. I am never angry or emotional when I post, if I get upset I walk away until I am much more calm.

 

Still some remnants of that. And the aftershock is that now we have people left who post barely anything notable at all. A few scraps here and there, but not the meaty carcass they used to feed on in the old days whether it was rotting or not. It's sad.

 

If the moderators wanted all out chaos, by all means, they should have allowed the insults to fly on such a loaded subject. If, on the other hand, they wanted to have a modicom of control over the situation, they had 2 options. They ended up using both.

1. Start issuing warnings in order to keep things under control. They did this at first.

2. Ban the person who is most associated with the unpopular argument and close most of the threads on the subject. ancientregime was perma banned and most of the threads on the subject were indeed closed.

 

I have never even -seen-you insult anyone. Atleast not the type of boorish insults that I've gotten so tired of here.

That's exactly the way I tend to do things myself. I have a strong feeling, however, that many people here don't do this; instead, they proceed to use the same tired toxic insults that have frequently depressed me enough to leave this forum at times and just play wow.

 

You should trying killing people in games. It's very therapudic

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You can just imagine they are posters and mow them down (repeatedly and without remorse)