Introducing the Current Affairs/IMHO forum

Baggly wrote: »

Just reread your post and I think I've picked you up wrong. You weren't offering those posts as examples. Apologies... My bad.

My point still stands I think.... As far as I know there hasn't been any change.... If you see posts you have an issue with please report them.

I don't cover each and every report that gets made, but I try my best. If there are any examples you can find I'm happy to take a look.

My point was

1 The mod warning here says https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=112062597&postcount=1 "...labelling trans people as having mental issues / are paedophiles etc, or any other attempts at being blatantly offensive will earn a threadban."

2 It has been noted by 2 posters this has always been the policy to sanction this transphobic abuse
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=113783000&postcount=2423
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=113783284&postcount=2426


So why are there posts that were not sanctioned

Baggly wrote: »

If there are posts I missed on that thread or if I forgot the mod note I must admit it's an oversight on my part. I'll do better to keep an eye out for that in future.

It's not necessarily a personal comment here on you personally though. It was a general comment that transphobic abuse like this has always been sanctioned.

Baggly wrote: »

I appreciate that. All the same I'll keep an extra eye out for the mod note being breached going forward. The answer to your question is, I think, they weren't sanctioned because of an oversight rather than a 'policy change'

Fair enough - thanks for the response

Better Than Christ wrote: »

They won't even address the issue.

I'd love if an admin could give an honest answer to the following:

Are you happy that CA has become a racist cesspit? I mean, is it something that you're happy to stand over, or are you at least slightly ashamed?

This is it wrote: »

What do you expect when you ask a loaded question?

Better Than Christ wrote: »

It's not a loaded question. It has become a racist cesspit. And the admins have allowed that to happen. I'd genuinely like to know whether they're happy or ashamed of what their inaction has led to.

Better Than Christ, have you stopped beating your wife?

It is 100% a loaded question, which is genuinely unfortunate as it's a disingenuous way of using feedback as a means to get a dig in, rather than looking at the issue critically and trying to elicit a solution, or better still, trying to be a part of the solution. And much like "have you stopped beating your wife?", it's unrealistic to expect an answer when your question is couched in those terms. On a more pertinent note though, it's actually quite representative of what often happens in CA these days - there's been an uptick lately in threads with “innocent” questions that are often loaded questions, many of the bigoted ilk.

end of the road wrote: »

the site is what the users make it though, the admins can't do everything, the users will have to do their bit and play their part.
if people want sensible discussion then have it and ignore whether it be racists or whoever else by not responding to them, some will want to challenge them and that's fine as well.
the admins can bann the racists and eventually they do but they come back anyway, so the userbase will have to debunk the nonsense as that does have some success in getting rid of racists and similar as they eventually go off in a strop that way.

This is a valid point. Many of the posts in feedback - when they're not insults couched as loaded questions - point toward the mods/admin as being the root cause of every issue across the site. Mods are biased. Admin 'let' it happen. Path of least resistance and all that. But the site is what the users make it; an argument that seemingly suits in feedback when someone wants to take the line that posters are 'customers' and boards needs to do better / work harder, but never comes to the fore when there's an option for posters to effect *actual* change through how they engage with the site. More succinctly, cause vs. effect.

What you are asking for, BtC and others, is a greater show of effect, but nobody wants to address the cause, or the fact that they might have a role to play in improving the overall atmosphere themselves. There are the obvious posters of course, bent on creating a toxic environment, a poster who refuses to argue in good faith, and we deal with those pretty ruthlessly. You also have the bigots who are so obvious in their support of ideals that society has rightly decided that this is beyond the pale that I think we can discern pretty readily that these ideals are indeed irrefutably bad, and people who insist on advancing them are indeed bad people for doing so. They are free to exercise their free speech in places that are not privately controlled, such as message boards like this one, and I'm happy to assist them on their journey.

I believe there is something to the assertion of CA having turned into an echo chamber. But I think that is largely poster-driven, and not because of moderation (apart from the bans of complete nutcases, which is of course mod-driven). By far the most prevalent posters in CA these days are those with the tendency to demonize their debate opponents and see them in the worst possible light, and where arguments - not debates - quickly devolve into displays of tribalism or quickly become personalised. The behavior described, sounds a lot like sea lioning, (something I hadn't heard of before yesterday,) as far as I understand the term. Persistence, asking for cites on everything, even opinions, dismissing answers as insufficient or non-responsive, following the poster around and re-engaging over and over, “innocently” asking repeated questions, responding to good-faith answers only with another question. As I see it, this is as destructive to good debate as anything you’ve named above, and many of the very people giving feedback here engage in it on a daily basis.

But to address the original loaded question - "Are you happy that CA has become a racist cesspit?" There are bigots in CA, most definitely so. Personally, I'm unhappy that so many of our posters find it so easy to express bigoted points of view towards other human beings. It is an interesting line to define as a moderator because there's never a bright line, in many cases it's going be a question of the probative value of allowing a bigot to advocate his or her bad ideas and countering them with good ideas, vs the fact that merely hosting such a debate within this community contributes to making this forum a hostile environment to the targets of that bigotry. It does mean a bit of work on our end. Anytime there are value judgments like that being made I find that it’s best to give people some leash to define a pattern of behavior before anything final is done. It's not always a bad thing to give people the opportunity to learn and mend their ways. Our habits and expectations here on boards are so different from so many other, harsher places on the Internet that sometimes it can take people a while to adjust. They should have that opportunity.

As for those who advocate for instant bannings for speech with which they disagree? I’d say most of such should be happy we don’t. Based on reports we get every day most posters in CA/IMHO would be banned within a week under such a regime.

However to expand on the above, I'm also unhappy that many of our posters are unable or unwilling to address the content of somoene's post in some substantive way that doesn’t just amount to an indirect insult or accusation of lying. And before someone jumps in to say I am equating trolls and bigots to posters who don't always engage in good faith - I'm not. What I am saying is that both are equally time consuming to moderate, and the more time we spend on the latter, the less time we have to focus on the former.

Basic rules, that apply to all, repeated ad nauseum:

Someone disagreeing with you, or even holding forth an opinion you find repugnant, does not make them a bad person. And it is neither possible nor desirable to write specific rules for every single instance of debating in poor faith.

1. Your opinion of another poster is not a fact.
2. Someone disagreeing with you does not make them a troll.
3. You disliking another’s post does not give you license to abuse them.
4. It's a message board - you don’t need to insult or objectify other posters to somehow ‘win’ an argument.

Calling someone a racist/troll/homophobe/liar devolves into “no I’m not” “yes you are.” Dropping the poster’s own words on them and making them answer for it or slink away from it makes your point in a much more effective manner. If you really want to help the forum, regardless of the OP's original intent, stop fanning the flames.

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

Have you been doing that a lot? I’ve heard that the mods get annoyed at what can be perceived as “abusing the report function”.

You *can* get sanctioned for abusing the report button, but that's only ever done in cases of extreme bad faith post reporting. A good example would be a poster who was actioned for a particular infraction of the rules, and then proceeds to trawl through the last ten years of Boards history, reporting any and every perceived slight to prove a point. Or a recent poster who stated unequivocally that they would report hundreds of posts and then proceeded to do so.

Nobody is going to get sanctioned for reporting a post in good faith. Whether we action it or not comes down to a number of factors, and no, we are not going to explain our rationale each time and it's an unrealistic expectation that any mod do so. But broadly speaking, quite a few are what I regard as rather stretched interpretations of otherwise innocent phrases, others are had to explain away other than someone going out of their way to see an issue where there is none. That isn't going to earn anybody a mod action though, unless it enters serious taking-the-piss territory, and repeated requests from admin have been ignored.

What *is* irritiating though, to me personally at least, is that we have a number of posters who insist of using the reported post function in lieu of countering the argument in the thread. Frankly, we have a handful of posters who, if they made the same argument in the thread that they do when reporting the post, the forum might be a much better place. If you disagree with a post, argue your point. It's not my, or a mod's place to argue your point for you.

KyussB wrote: »

Jaysus, that one was less than informative after Googling...

Well that was a bit of an eye opener (or eye closer?) :eek:

My familiarity with the term (up until about 30 seconds ago) was broadly in this context.

Just on the idea that it's up to the users to shape the content/standard/atmosphere of the forum.

I've never really agreed with this, or seen much logic to the argument. To use the 'pub' analogy which has often been used in the past, if I go to my regular pub and over a few months, realise that the place is becoming increasingly argumentative, or that there are more and more people droning on endlessly about a particular topic, or whatever the problem might be, I'll probably end up just not going there. No pub owner would tell their customers that it's up to them to improve the quality of the place.

Maybe others feel differently, but I'm not particularly invested in CA, don't feel like I'm part of a community there, don't feel any sense of ownership. It's a place to visit and you might learn something, see something funny, discuss something interesting, get a different perspective. If the visits become less enjoyable/interesting/enlightening, I'll visit less.

I'm just one poster who doesn't even post that frequently. CA doesn't owe me anything, and has no obligation to develop a tone/atmosphere that is to my liking. But equally, I don't owe CA anything and don't understand why posters think there is an onus on them to make those efforts either.

If CA were a pub it would be closed & never get it's license back. But it is a good window on Ireland & exposes a lot of truth about some Irish opinion. Luckily it's not representative especially as most of the young, intelligent & tolerant don't go near Boards.

It's like a new Ranting & Raving. Lot's of people shouting at clouds & placing blame on everyone but themselves. Now I wonder if there is somewhere where intelligent, empathetic people can discuss World affairs - I doubt it ?

TheValeyard wrote: »

If both lefties and righties are complaining, then surely it must be working?

Well, one side, the “lefties”, are complaining about the forum, while the other side, the “righties”, are complaining that the “lefties” are complaining about the forum.

Not sure that counts as “working”. But, again, the forum does “work” for me, in that it keeps all the creeps, bigots, weirdos, oddballs and malcontents occupied, for the most part anyway.

as has been said to many posters in the past, if you don't like it here, maybe reddit would suit you better...

Beasty wrote: »

....and that's just the mods

SUPER MOD - Beasty, don't post in this thread again.

Deleted User wrote: »

The thread on Roderic O'Gorman is completely trying to conflate paedophilia and homosexuality. Also, why are Bitchute links even allowed on the site?

No, it's not. One poster attempted to, and was unreservedly actioned, threadbanned, and their post removed.

As I said in the thread itself, criticism of a gay man for his poor choice of personal associates isn't in itself homophobia, any more than questioning a straight man for the same associations would be. There is plenty of scope for that discussion to take place as long as it doesn't go down the path of equating one with the other.

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Fair enough. I withdraw the post. It was an unecessary overeaction and I apologise. Can you delete it please.

Thank you. Done.