A discussion on the rules.

Scofflaw

Scofflaw wrote: »

True - the question then is whether we're seeing the clear-cut cases, and that's going to come down, to some extent, to how they're reported.

If I get a report saying "poster X continues to repeat false claim Y as in this post, which has been shown to be false in this post and this post, or has been contradicted by an authoritative source here" - then it's fundamentally just a case of saying "you're nicked, chummy".

If, on the other hand, I get a report which says "poster X is a lying liar who lies!!! He's lying again!!!", then a good deal of detective work lies in front of me, working out what the poster is supposed to be lying about, whether anyone has refuted their claims, whether the poster has had adequate attention drawn to the refutation of their claims, and so on.

Obviously, the first type of report is maybe a little much to hope for all the time, but the latter is far too frequent. Policing everywhere is a cooperative process unless about a third of the population are police.

So the clearer reports are about what untruth is being repeated, and where it has been shown to the poster that they're repeating an untruth, the better this particular part of the system will work.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Believe it or not, this bears repeating already. I don't wish to name names, but I've just had a reported post of almost exactly the level of uselessness outlined here, coupled with a sneer at the mods, from a poster who is certainly long enough in the tooth to know a very good deal better.

If some posters want things moderated the way they claim, the least they can do is be helpful. Regrettably, I cannot infract post reports, otherwise in this instance I very much would do so.

moderately irritated,
Scofflaw

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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This future was there long before the Politics Café was created. I remember discussing it with other mods in 2007. That we'd had our Eternal September and were facing a steady increase in the number of posters who do not know what debate is but love to "argue."

The Politics Café is a symptom not a cause of anything. It's an open forum. The site had a massive demographic change. Restricted access is about the only solution and it's not a good one.

Scofflaw

nesf wrote: »

This future was there long before the Politics Café was created. I remember discussing it with other mods in 2007. That we'd had our Eternal September and were facing a steady increase in the number of posters who do not know what debate is but love to "argue."

The Politics Café is a symptom not a cause of anything. It's an open forum. The site had a massive demographic change. Restricted access is about the only solution and it's not a good one.

Yup. Essentially we're trying to have the best of both worlds, by trying to run a permissive environment in the Café and a tighter one in the main forum - but, as I said, social apes as we are, most of us will go where most of us are.

Having said that, I started a thread somewhat after the Brixit one - so about two and a bit hours ago - on whether it's acceptable for the Min.Ag. to engage in blood sports, and that's now on its third page.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Nodin

The Café was supposedly for "light hearted" discussion, I thought.

Scofflaw

Nodin wrote: »

The Café was supposedly for "light hearted" discussion, I thought.

On non-serious subjects, as in? Originally, yes, but we kept getting future all over us and had to have somewhere for it to go.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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K-9

Nodin wrote: »

The Café was supposedly for "light hearted" discussion, I thought.

Relaxed cafe like discussion would be the aim rather than late night drunken bar posts. In fairness the vast majority of the posters there are fine and seem to enjoy the freer style there, without abusing it.

Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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If it seems inexplicable, perhaps you're trying to explain the wrong thing? Perhaps the forum isn't driven solely by its internal decisions, but also in large part by external drivers, and its evolution follows that of nearly every other discussion forum because it's a discussion forum, rather than because the mod team have made a series of uniquely bad decisions.

I refer you to nesf's answer here, which basically summarises the situation.

Every forum has a golden age, when there's an almost perfectly balanced mix of old hands and interested newbies, and every forum passes through it. They come out in one of two places - popular but noisier, or dead.

In a sense, the Politics forum is a microcosm of Boards, where nearly everything over the last few years has been losing ground at the expense of AH. You make the point that the Café has revived with the transfusion of political threads from AH - why do you think the political threads were in AH, while the Politics forum became quieter and quieter? And what set of good decisions would have reversed that trend?

As for the "anything goes" - well, we'll see. We're learning and adapting as we go.

I'm afraid you're a conservative, my friend.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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That it follows almost exactly a standard evolutionary curve for discussion forums suggests that either those decisions are much less decisive than one might like to believe, or that the decisions are framed and answered similarly in every case by virtue of the external drivers.

Permabear wrote: »

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Why would anybody need to "declare defeat and give up" if there were nothing to be defeated by?

Permabear wrote: »

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Actually, AH had a policy of "no political threads", and they were transferred to the Politics forum.

Permabear wrote: »

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Of course - after all, we had Lisbon 1 and the Guarantee in 2008, Lisbon 2 and bank bailouts in 2009, IMF entry in 2010, a general election in 2011, the ongoing eurozone crisis, all good stuff. I recall logging on the night before the IMF entry to find 1500 posters in the forum, many of whom I subsequently shot. Happy days...

Obviously things have become quieter in some respects, but they haven't in others - last year we had the Euro elections and the locals, now we have Ukraine, Irish Water, Greece. We weren't getting that traffic at all, and however one looks at it, it does say "Politics" right over the door.

Permabear wrote: »

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Yes, renovation is needed there.

Permabear wrote: »

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Well, previously we lost posters to AH. So, not entirely sure where that will go.

cordially,
Scofflaw

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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The sub forums were mostly created to try and address your problem of non-serious posting. Often the opposite happened to what was wanted. C'est la vie. Mod coverage will always be uneven because you have to tow the line between too small a mod team that can't cover everything and too large a mod team where decisions become inconsistent. Even with five mods it's tough having everyone on the same page.

Permabear wrote: »

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No, they used to be banned because they would get too rowdy. Thinking of pre-2005 years here, not sure about after that.

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm already ahead of you in this respect. Have you seen me posting much in here in recent years compared to four or five years ago? No, it's because as you say you lose patience with the nonsense. It's not the lack of charter enforcement (believe me, it does almost nothing "globally" there is too much noise for mod warnings and bans to be noticed by most of the members in here) it's that it's become really rare to see a new face on here and meet someone wanting to actually debate stuff instead of shout their opinion over and over.

The boards.ie that you joined is dead and buried. Sucks, but there's not much to do except adapt and make the best of it. Which I believe the mods are trying to do, though it doesn't always work.

FreudianSlippers

Scofflaw wrote: »

As far as I can see, that's because they're all more or less in the same vein. We don't appear to have anyone willing to start, say, an in-depth discussion of Irish Water's role as an off-balance sheet vehicle in the government meeting its deficit reduction targets.

When this is attempted, the usual suspects tend to drag any serious topic well into the territory of the Cafe - so rather than moderate a "politics"-standard thread, it's simply easier to mash it into the crap-fest that is the Cafe thread.

Permabear

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Scofflaw

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

When this is attempted, the usual suspects tend to drag any serious topic well into the territory of the Cafe - so rather than moderate a "politics"-standard thread, it's simply easier to mash it into the crap-fest that is the Cafe thread.

Hmm. Let me know next time it's attempted, and I'll see what I can do.

cordially,
Scofflaw

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm not arguing they're currently helping I'm explaining why they exist. It's definitely an area that needs to be looked at and the argument over it really comes down to the part of your post below, whether you think you think getting rid of the sub forum will change things.

Permabear wrote: »

Again, that's the mentality of defeatism that I'm objecting to here. Maybe this is just a difference in our mindsets, but I'm not someone who responds to any circumstance or challenge with "well, this sucks, but there's nothing I can do except make the best of it." It's always possible to change things. It just takes some imagination and effort.

I think our political differences comes down to this difference in our mindsets actually. It is not always possible to change things. Insisting they can be changed doesn't actually do anything (though it may be a smart move politically). You have to actually show they can be changed and really, I'm arguing both from a position of experience here and a position that has empirical backing, what's happening here isn't a new thing, it's been happening online for decades to communities that got big as Scofflaw mentioned. So I'm not overly swayed by you continuing to insist this could be fixed if we just had more active mods, because, eh, we tried that and weren't the only ones to do so either and it doesn't work, what works is closing off the community or restricting membership with a paywall or whatever and this only slows the process (see Something Awful forums).

Permabear

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gandalf

Permabear wrote: »

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It's unbelievable, that is basically a green light to trolls, people with agenda's who now know they have quite a bit of leeway before the mods engage with them. To be honest I am not surprised to see this.

K-9

Well if we missed the way some wanted we'd just have a few users back slapping each other about how great and right they are and no debate whatsoever. That would really be the death knell of the forum.

Permabear

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Permabear

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FreudianSlippers

K-9 wrote: »

Well if we missed the way some wanted we'd just have a few users back slapping each other about how great and right they are and no debate whatsoever. That would really be the death knell of the forum.

It only appears that way because the 10-15 posters with common sense and standards of debate are clearly siding with each other against the trolls.

Thin out the trolls and you'll see (as was the case previously) that we don't all agree with everything the other says and slap each other on the backs, we actually have very disparate views - but actually keep a standard of debate.

I have been wrong many times on this forum, but in the face of a logical argument backed up by facts, I actually learn something and thank that person who corrected me. What we have in the Cafe is 10-15 posters with disparate views who are attempting to use logic and facts against 20+ posters who are refusing to present any facts and regurgitate buzz words in the face of being proven wrong many times.

Permabear

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Tramps Like Us

There are other irish political forums out there

Eugene Norman

Judging by his posting history in feedback forums this guy Permabear seems to be continually surprised by being contradicted, or opposed, even though his anarcho-capitalist views are held by <0.01% of the population.

I don't fully understand the use of the term troll in a general politics forum. You can troll a Liverpool forum by joking about Hillsborough, you can troll an Apple forum by posting links to "better" Android devices which would be of no interest to Apple fans, you just cannot troll a political forum. The use of the term "troll" is telling in fact, since the people who claim there are trolls seem to think the moderation and posting should be politically biased to their views.

The content of the post may be inarticulate but thats not a reason for moderation unless its incomprehensible.

Chips Lovell

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

It only appears that way because the 10-15 posters with common sense and standards of debate are clearly siding with each other against the trolls.

Thin out the trolls and you'll see (as was the case previously) that we don't all agree with everything the other says and slap each other on the backs, we actually have very disparate views - but actually keep a standard of debate.

This is an interesting point. I'm pretty sure that myself and Permabear, for example, are near the opposite ends of the political spectrum but I frequently find myself on the same side of a discussion as him, not because politically we agree, but rather that he's one of the few people who's being constructive and arguing a position supported by facts.

It's often not a debate on the merits of one policy vs. another, but a debate between people making unsubstantiated claims (e.g. "it's illegal to install water meters") and people demonstrating that these claims are untrue.

Eugene Norman

Jep Gambardella wrote: »

This is an interesting point. I'm pretty sure that myself and Permabear, for example, are near the opposite ends of the political spectrum but I frequently find myself on the same side of a discussion as him, not because politically we agree, but rather that he's one of the few people who's being constructive and arguing a position supported by facts.

It's often not a debate on the merits of one policy vs. another, but a debate between people making unsubstantiated claims (e.g. "it's illegal to install water meters") and people demonstrating that these claims are untrue.

Its not the mods duty to determine "truth" but to stop the posters getting out of hand, the "don't be a dick" rule with more specific per-forum rules. It somebody is wrong prove it to other posters to prove him wrong. Thats surely not a mod to determine or prove ( except in their capacity as posters).

Chips Lovell

If you're interested in playing whack-a-mole of debunking wild claim after wild claim, that's fair enough. But you have to acknowledge it may hold limited appeal for others.

FreudianSlippers

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Its not the mods duty to determine "truth" but to stop the posters getting out of hand, the "don't be a dick" rule with more specific per-forum rules. It somebody is wrong prove it to other posters to prove him wrong. Thats surely not a mod to determine or prove ( except in their capacity as posters).

Isn't that the point we've been making the past few posts? When does blanket refusal to acknowledge facts become trolling?

Note: I don't believe you know what trolling is based on your previous post tbh.

Eugene Norman

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Isn't that the point we've been making the past few posts? When does blanket refusal to acknowledge facts become trolling?

Note: I don't believe you know what trolling is based on your previous post tbh.

Why wouldn't that apply to PB.

He continuously seems to think the crash was caused by FF and social welfare spending, or the Greeks. Empirically it was not over-spending or over-indebtedness of Governments very few of which were over leveraged before the bust, but by the collapse of the banking sector.

When that is pointed out he blames the bank overloading solely on the Central Banks ( note the inconsistency here - the banks can't be expected to control their lending if central banks have low rates but governments should control lending if the Central banks have low rates generating temporary income).

As far as I am concerned if its trolling to keep repeating the same arguments the PB is the master of trolling.

FreudianSlippers

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Why wouldn't that apply to PB.

He continuously seems to think the crash was caused by FF and social welfare spending, or the Greeks. Empirically it was not over-spending or over-indebtedness of Governments very few of which were over leveraged before the bust, but by the collapse of the banking sector.

When that is pointed out he blames the bank overloading solely on the Central Banks ( note the inconsistency here - the banks can't be expected to control their lending if central banks have low rates but governments should control lending if the Central banks have low rates generating temporary income).

As far as I am concerned if its trolling to keep repeating the same arguments the PB is the master of trolling.

Do you have factual evidence to prove his opinion incorrect?

If not, then it's a difference of opinion.


What we're discussing is the issue surrounding facts and evidence on one side and contrary and unsupported opinion on the other.

I trust you can see the difference?