PPR Rules/Etiquette

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Should be PPR's rule number one!



Pardon the ignorance from a PPR 'regular?', what does that mean exactly?

Ideas/beliefs(or their representative(s)) have to buy passes from AG. Ideas/beliefs are priced to pass based upon how credible they are to me, and how I feel at the moment. No pass is free.

I take that to mean, for example, a Christian can't complain about attacks on Christianity, or atheists can't complain about attacks on atheism. While we aren't allowed to express racial hatred, racism or particular cultural views are not off-limits for discussion. Muslims don't have protected status just because their Muslims, and their beliefs and practices can be called just as much into question as those of Christians or atheists. Speaking as a Christian, if someone else in the forum expresses false ideas or anything directly in conflict with Biblical truth, I should be free to address those issues without being labeled hateful or bigoted. What WOULD be bigoted would be a statement like "I hate those stupid [n-word]. They are all lazy, gun-crazy, drug-dealing, welfare baby factories. We need to send all those (expletive) [n-word]'s back to..." On the other hand, discussing the problems within a given culture as having their roots in inequitable government welfare practices and entitlement programs and how it has caused the specific people groups to either be unable to succeed in the workforce or has encouraged abuse of the system is quite different. The difference is very subtle, but just because you don't like a true expression doesn't make it less true, nor does it necessarily make the expresser a hateful jack@$$. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But just because something offends you doesn't give you the right to censor it. Personally, I've grown up somewhat privileged, and yet I've worked with the impoverished. Thus I can see both sides.

What I personally would like to see is less language that is deliberately provocative. What's funny about that is I've come to believe such language has, at times, been so commonplace we don't realize what effects our words have. Insinuations of attacks on intelligence have an emotional impact, and simply "winning" a debate by getting an emotional reaction rather making strong points is a cheap shot that doesn't really contribute to the dialogue, nor does it indicate any real upper hand of the opponent. I haven't seen a lot of this going on lately, and I've never felt the need to go to the mods about it when it DID frequently happen. The only thing that I've seen has come close is a semi-heated debate on Biblical bias in which the view of the Bible as NOT being biased seemed to dominate, and I really think we've tried to avoid having that discussion outright disintegrate into overreactive emotional silliness through veiled insults.

*ahem*

As a former moderator, I have a little trouble with formalizing, "don't talk to the moderators." I think you all are much better off developing relationships with the moderators that encourage the team to believe you can police your own, than following a code of silence. As a formal policy, that just kind of seems self-defeating, and encourages a sense that moderators are the enemy. They aren't. But, if you insist on seeing them that way, they will act that way.

The moderators know that the rules of engagement are a little different here, and generally want to work with the posters, instead of against them (to the extent you have moderators willing to walk in here at all ). One thing that might work is to encourage more "open" moderation by the team, when the team does moderate here, assuming you all thought it appropriate when I did that, so that on this board you all have a chance to disagree with the decision before it goes final. In other words, post instead of pm, "I am troubled by this statement and concerned it violates rule X." Elsewhere we keep that sort of thing private, on the assumption the offenders prefer it that way, but here it seems offenders actually generate support if a moderator censures them.

Maybe the rule, then, would be: "When moderation of this board is necessary, moderators are encouraged to post their assessment of potentially offending posts publicly on this forum. Such judgement, as with everything else here, being open to fair debate in the hopes of reaching as close to a concensus as possible on what is appropriate content for this board."

Kind of a raw idea; just throwing it out there.

Overall, the numbers of times the team has been given specific alerts for anything on this board is pretty limited. It might be from an old poster about a new poster going way too far (which gets acted on), or from a new poster getting too quickly offended (which does not get acted on), but more often than not it would be a generalized, "things have been messy in PPR lately. Maybe you could take a look?" Still, doesn't happen very often. I don't think you all need to worry about anyone trying too hard to change this board.

I do like my debate when I'm in the right mood for it, but I don't have that kind of time in my life very often now-a-days. A shame, but so it goes.

A Moderator's opinion or views are as faulty and biased as another. You are only human, after all. Just my opinion.

As much time as I waste in PPR, I probably should throw my name in the hat for the job of policing PPR. Even though I CAN be perfectly neutral, I'd hate moderating AND expressing my views for fear someone might accuse me of just throwing my weight around. Believe it or not, I actually do enjoy the variety of debate going on in this forum.

Hi Dox and all, as an interested lurker, I think the following list of "etiquette rules" for PPR makes a lot of sense, in addition to the WP rules:

Don't take things personally
NO subject is off limits to discuss/ no sacred cows
Attack the idea not the poster
Qualify your opinions as such
Keep it civil
Don't spam the forum, consolidate similar posts
No idea/belief gets a free pass
You don't "own" threads you start

Former? WP certainly is going through mods fast...

Who's formalizing anything? None of us are mods, we certainly don't have the authority to make any "formal" rules. I took it as a semi-tongue-in-cheeck Fight Club-ish reference.

Moderators have often acted as though they were the enemy, eg QM's sticky thread in here, and his lobbying to have PPR taken down.


The traditional policy has been that no one is allowed to talk about any moderation issue or decision. In particular, any and all bannings are under a complete muzzle. I don't really anticipate the mod team reversing that policy for PPR.

If a fool speaks foolishly only a bigger fool would fail to point it out.

peace j

The code of silence is sort of a fight club reference, however, part of the idea is that it is just perceived as sort of impolite to get an "authority" involved in an interpersonal dispute. It isn't a matter of right or wrong, either, just the idea that going above someone's head on an issue, tends to violate the social notions, particularly since people often have some level of social relationship within PPR(not necessarily friendship, just the understanding that debate-partners might have). This is particularly a problem given that like any debate forum, PPR sometimes skirts the fringes of what is acceptable, and this "skirting" leads to a lot of grey areas where nobody wants anybody to stick their nose in to make an arbitrary and socially disruptive decision. So, the attitude is to attempt to deny these people the decision in the first place.


They aren't the enemy, but they are alien, and they are things we'd rather not have for good reason.

I mean, let's look at it this way:
How many teenagers talk to their parents about their sexual relationships?
How many teenagers talk to their parents about their experiments with drugs?
How many teenagers talk to their parents about a lot of the crazy stuff they do?

I'd guess very few. The reason being that even if the parent would be ok, there is always the risk they won't be, and there is really no reason to introduce something so high-risk into the equation, and attempting will just likely cause... unwanted issues without any real benefits. (If there is nothing for the parent to get involved with, then telling causes no change, and if there is something, then telling causes negative changes for the teen. In this case though, it is unlikely that our moderators are really superior to our posters though, except in a few very rare occasions)


I don't think either method will work too much. The problem is the power of the moderator and how it gets in the middle of an ongoing relationship. Let's say that you have a friend, and then let's just say that you call the cops on your friend. Is your friend going to be incredibly happy with you about this? No. Even if nothing happens, and everybody does alright, that friend is still likely to be very unhappy. He thought there was a relationship. He thought that you respected him. However, you put him on the spotlight to get into trouble, or at least brought up how little control he might really have over his life.

That's the problem with any moderator. Anybody known enough will express views. If they express views, the moderator brings up concerns of bias. If they don't express views, then they won't really belong to PPR culture anymore.

This appears to be a good idea, but is there a problem that requires it? The unwritten rules seemed to do fine, with members pointing out when someone was off course. If it ain't broke don't fix it?

Mob mentality could be a risk factor with letting members handle everything themselves.

Edit: That would be Herd Mentality.

Go look in the WP.net discussion forum, there's a thread about female trolls in love and dating that morphed into a discussion of PPR. A lot of the impetus behind creating this thread came from issues raised in there. Eventually I'm going to take start submitting drafts and trying to get a mod on board for making a sticky out of the results of this thread, to reduce the misunderstanding caused by having the "rules" of this forum be unwritten.

I think other posters pretty much nailed what I meant, but to clarify, if I was seriously writing it as a "rule" it would read like "go to the moderators as a last resort" or "work things out amongst yourselves". I didn't mean it in a strict "no snitching" sort of way, more like a suggestion to be self reliant in the forum under most circumstances.



I know I for one would feel much more comfortable if those different rules were codified and acknowledged as binding by the mods, otherwise selective enforcement becomes a real fear.



I think this would be a good step if the mod team would agree to it, anything that increases transparency is a good thing IMHO. I've noticed that Tallyman is using a similar method since his promotion, temp locking threads to clean up the worst flames and such, then re-opening them with an admonition to behave. It's a distinct improvement on the old "ban and lock" method utilized by mods here in the past, we tend to have a long group memory here (QM's sticky doesn't help).



Again, it would be great if we could get the mod team to go for it. Tally is the only mod I've even seen here in weeks, maybe I'll run it past him.



I'm generally OK with the level of (non)moderation on the forum at the moment, more than anything I'm responding to the criticism I received in the other forum regarding the way things work in here. I'm hoping to head off future issues that may bring less than subtle mods into the forum, and maybe even get PPR's unique status on the board recognize and reflected in the site rules.

Ok, there is the belief that passes should be stolen rather than bought and sell them to everyone else to a much lower price, or revolutionizing the concept and taking over it and having them distribuited equally for all, in the name of social equality, because capitalism is evil and AG is evil.



That's pretty much what I thought regarding christians and a recent thread "any unashamed Christians"
I mean, people like iamnotaparakeet and others, have expressed their views that this place (PPR forum and WP in general) is secular biased, the issue though, for everyone who frequent the place, I thought it should be cleared.


I believe the feeling against christian issues is similar of those towards conspiracy theorists, some people here seem to be very hard on them, and probably this is why they are not here, (damn, I really wanted the truth of 911 to be spoken ) so much as the similarities of why some hostility towards christian ideas or beliefs or christian themselves.