Perhaps Ban From Threads And Not The Forum

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old timers know who i am, they recognized me the minute i came back

This thread sparked a good point in regard to PPR. Naturally titled, Politics, Philosophy and Religion is a thread created to discuss those topics. Discuss. Is it a thread created for any member of any ideology to ramrod, hammer and incessantly pound a specific issue or issues ad nauseum knowing full well their fixation is incendiary and is meant to be so? It's devolved into that.

Picture a face to face group with a very small number of attendees who bullhorn their agenda constantly. There are two options for that group: 1) ask/tell the person to moderate their obsessiveness. 2) Everyone else walks out of that group to get away from the noise and the person/people "win" (win what exactly? Who knows. Bully for them I guess.).

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe PPR is created in part for any members to be free to commandeer that thread? Please tell me I am wrong and that people CAN hammer others over and over and over and over with their ideology and agenda in such narrow ways and I can feel more impetus to stay out of that part of WP limiting my overall enjoyment to be here. Or maybe it's ok for some members to act that way in PPR and not others? Please tell me that too if that's the case.

I'm not saying PPR should be devoid of debate or differing opinions. The problem is that it's gotten incessantly ugly.

To me, this is part of a bigger problem that episodes such as this are symptomatic of.

Retaining moderators seems to be an issue, burn out is high. Those who were ordinary members loose their right to be who they are. It can be used against them, they are in essence censored.

Why would anyone take on that role? Its voluntary work that uses an autistic persons reserves of social skills.

There are core issues with membership self governance, things that should be self resolved, or not even occur that use up voluntary mod resources.
Why?
We expect the mods to work like NTs. WTF? Why isnt there reasonable accomodations made for them so that the role is actually sustainable? This is supposed to be an autism website, not a typical NT website!

What do people expect to see when "work arounds" for the outdated "rules" are the order of the day, every day.
Of course there will be inconsistencies, it's a loop that keeps going. Where does the work around mod culture stop? IT CANT, site wouldn't work otherwise. This is an admin issue. But if we keep throwing mods under the bus because we see them as the symptom, WE ARE contributing to the malaise. Going after individual mods is like taking paracetamol to cure a covid 19 related fever.

Great for a few hours, but not solving the problem and causing friction to the team mentality I hope the mods engage in (to the best of their individual autistic abilities).

When I joined this place was jam packed full of hatred for the self diagnosed and inaction from members it didnt affect. Now we are seeing this trolling spread out and directed at everyone, there isnt the same focus for it anymore, if you want people to care about something, it must affect them.

Self governance is key for site sustainability.

I've made many suggestions before. The site structure is outdated, but unlikely to receive the updates it needs.

What can be updated with little admin effort are the rules. That is what we should be lobbying for, not focusing on individual mods.

I suggest that in the interest of transparency people use the publically viewable moderator attention thread to report issues. This will lead to accountability for both mods and members.

For one, I respect the way the Walrus is open about his views and how he explains in great detail in his replies to threads where there are issues with mod decisions.
I think discussions in the open lends itself to an ombudsman situation. This transparency is needed, as no one is free of personal bias, especially in a voluntary "work around" culture.

I'm not supporting the throwing of more mods under the bus, cant watch it unfold AGAIN.

Point one:
Discernment of attitude is often erroneous.
E.G. Sometimes the accusation of "mockery" is incorrect.
There is a difference between "Mockery" and "Facetiousness".

Point 2:
A lot of people seem to have a problem with emojis.
There are there to clarify the attitude of the person writing.
Same applies to <qualifiers>, obviously.
They are goodly.

Point 3:
I decided against making it.
PM me if you must know.



"Politics" shouldn't have come into consideration.



He was cheating on me?
I thought *I* was his Guardian, of the Universe.

BTW, Does this mean we are related in some way, now?

Last edited by Pepe on 25 Apr 2020, 5:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I’d suggest the first point of call for any user should be to try to be the change you want to see. If you don’t like the sorts of discussions you see going on, then make new ones that are more to your liking. I tried to do this with my “comparative politics” discussions but they didn’t get very much engagement.

Like the rest of the site, PPR doesn’t really have any “quality” standards. There is no need for a thread to be “good”.

There are a couple of things we do do:

- There is a prohibition on racist, sexist, or homophobic content. Similarly, if users make a lot of submissions which dance around a racist, sexist, or homophobic point then moderators have license to act.

- Users aren’t allowed to make very large volumes of threads. We have a soft limit of two a day in PPR.

- In the past we’ve tried confining discussions about a given topic to a single thread. Alex didn’t really like this so it’s an option of last resort if a member is posting a large volume of threads about the same topic.

- Obviously if users are deliberately derailing threads to talk about their special interest then that might need railing in.

Ultimately unless an opinion is against WrongPlanet rules then we’re not in the business of trying to stop it. If a user always approaches a discussion from a certain angle then, well, fine. That’s who they are and how they participate.

There are some users who don’t really get involved in discussions. They post what they post and don’t care whether anyone replies. Again, fine.

If you think that someone’s behaviour is genuinely causing a problem then please report it. In particular, if you feel a user is being deliberately incendiary.

Or:
3) Ignore the posts/poster.
I prefer "3".
I have a problem with "unreasonable" censorship, btw.

^ good point, I can think of at least two occasions where I’ve had what seemed to me to be an unnecessarily harsh response: and have chosen to just leave it alone.
And two occasions where I’ve had a response I’m not sure what to make of, and have left it hanging rather than going with a possibly erroneous interpretation and making the other member feel unfairly misrepresented as a consequence.
I also have one current response I want to counter-respond to that I’ve been turning over in my mind for four days so far to make sure I don’t create an argument where one doesn’t need to exist: although I may just leave that when it comes to it on the grounds that too much time has passed.

You have people who just want to be bullies.

You might get a “harsh response” because the bully wants to engage in sport.

I’ve gotten many unprovoked “harsh responses.” I take them for what they’re worth—which is usually nothing.

Autism forums is a far better quality site technologically, but I think those of us who stay here actually do enjoy the drama. This site does seem to foster argumentatve, unyeilding types.

Funny how people complain of the censorship and banning here, when Wrong Planet is clearly the more toxic site.

autism forums is better staffed

If this is so--and you're actually his real guardian--tell him we all say hello.

ezra's my cousin we live in and grew up in the same house like siblings. when you've got a sibling that's very autistic you end up being his guardian and caregiver. there's been times when i was tempted to intercede for ezra here, but i decided it was better to let him have his independence any way he could manage it. i'll let him know.

I don't now anything about Autism Forums. This was the only autism forum I've used & I don't wanna leave cuz this is my home away from home. I'm not sure if I have the energy for two autism forums rite now & the energy I'd need to get established somewhere else.
Anyways... I find it kinda funny when members leave complaining about being mad at the censorship while other members leave complaining about bullying & hatred from other members. This reminds me of one of my Greyhound bus trips I went on to visit my family. Passengers kept going up front complaining to the driver about the temperature. Then the driver made an announcement & said something like "I'm too hot, I'm too cold, I cant please all of you so this is the way the temperature has got to stay". This also makes me think of an old saying that goes something like "You cant please everyone all the time".

That's a really good illustration. It is like that.

two different things. users have complained what they've said about a topic has gotten censored. nobody's complained that bullying got censored.