A discussion on the rules.

Godge · 23-02-2015 01:39PM

Scofflaw wrote: »

Continuing in the face of good contradictory factual evidence is trolling/soapboxing, I agree. However, I'm seeing a pattern where posters don't provide such evidence, or attempt to argue, but simply assume their opponent is talking rubbish on the basis that "everyone knows x is false", and attempt to have the mods shut down discussion before it even happens.

It's been common, for example to assume that anything said by pro-Russian posters is false, and should be penalised/deleted by mods, without any attempt whatsoever to show that it is. That's not going to happen - first someone demonstrates its falsity, then a poster who continues to push the false line is actionable.

cordially,
Scofflaw

It is common enough on other issues too.

For example, there was a poster only today or yesterday posting that public service pay hadn't been cut.

There are also numerous examples on the Irish Water threads of debunked anti-water charges rhetoric being continually recycled every few days.

FreudianSlippers · 23-02-2015 01:45PM

Godge wrote: »

It is common enough on other issues too.

For example, there was a poster only today or yesterday posting that public service pay hadn't been cut.

There are also numerous examples on the Irish Water threads of debunked anti-water charges rhetoric being continually recycled every few days.

Not to mention the old Nice/Lisbon treaty re-vote conspiracy chestnut.

RecordStraight · 23-02-2015 01:46PM

K-9 wrote: »

There are a good few anti-shinnerbot posters to balance it out.

If you think it's balanced, fine. But I'm not posting things that contradict the Shinners anymore. It's not worth it.

FreudianSlippers · 23-02-2015 02:02PM

Scofflaw wrote: »

Continuing in the face of good contradictory factual evidence is trolling/soapboxing, I agree. However, I'm seeing a pattern where posters don't provide such evidence, or attempt to argue, but simply assume their opponent is talking rubbish on the basis that "everyone knows x is false", and attempt to have the mods shut down discussion before it even happens.

It's been common, for example to assume that anything said by pro-Russian posters is false, and should be penalised/deleted by mods, without any attempt whatsoever to show that it is. On the other side of the argument we've had posters reporting everything from official sources as false, and looking for exactly the same thing. That's not going to happen - first someone demonstrates falsity, then a poster who continues to push the false line is actionable.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Fair enough. Disagreement retracted (mainly)

Nodin · 23-02-2015 04:21PM

gandalf wrote: »

Exactly, also it should be very obvious from the first reported interaction that a poster is a sockpuppet and tbh the mods should deal with them there and then rather than allow them build a platform to derail a thread.

Rather than "ridicule" them and risk an infraction from the mods I will keep reporting them.

When it comes to matters Russian, I really lack the patience with what can come up. Rather than face a ban I tend to absent myself.

24-02-2015 06:48PM

What's the story with talk of PIGS?

There seems to have been a decision in the major financial publications like the FT to drop the term, either because it is factually inappropriate, or because of ethnically offensive undertones aimed at Mediterranean Europeans.

Pigs has connotations of non-humans who cannot control their greed. It can seem pejorative even when unintended. Is there any intention to follow the lead of other outlets and have a rethink about this?

Scofflaw · 24-02-2015 08:27PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

What's the story with talk of PIGS?

There seems to have been a decision in the major financial publications like the FT to drop the term, either because it is factually inappropriate, or because of ethnically offensive undertones aimed at Mediterranean Europeans.

Pigs has connotations of non-humans who cannot control their greed. It can seem pejorative even when unintended. Is there any intention to follow the lead of other outlets and have a rethink about this?

I think it's dying its own death, really. Most people now seem to use the even more factually dubious "peripheral countries" or the yet worse "small countries", both of which carry their own freight of associations. PIGS/PIIGS at least had the advantage of stating exactly who one was talking about.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Sand · 25-02-2015 01:38AM

Scofflaw wrote: »

Please don't report posts simply because your opponent is making a ridiculous argument - if the argument is ridiculous, ridicule it yourself. It's a politics forum.

Given how closely some posters align their persona with their expressed views and opinions, where does the encouragement to ridicule the post stray into the undefined "Don't be a dick" or "uncivil" infraction minefield?

Scofflaw · 25-02-2015 10:23AM

Sand wrote: »

Given how closely some posters align their persona with their expressed views and opinions, where does the encouragement to ridicule the post stray into the undefined "Don't be a dick" or "uncivil" infraction minefield?

A fair question which isn't easy to answer, except by saying that the best form of ridicule for an argument is a demonstration of how ridiculous the argument is, rather than a statement that it's ridiculous.

"That's a stupid post" and "your stupidest post yet", which I've seen posters regard as "attacking the post not the poster" aren't OK, nor are variants thereof, because the implication that the poster is stupid is there in big letters.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Godge · 27-02-2015 12:58AM

Couple of questions.

1. How many times can a poster ignore evidence, accuse other posters of lying or spinning and maintain an objectively false position before getting banned as a troll?

2. How many times can a poster post stream of consciousness rubbish that adds nothing to a thread, serving only to inflame or drag a thread off-topic, before getting banned?

Scofflaw · 27-02-2015 05:15PM

It varies, in both cases, depending on the severity of the case, and in (1) on the efforts made by other posters to demonstrate the falsity of the position.

Would people prefer that I ban everyone who I catch maintaining 'objectively false positions' on matters where I've done sufficient research to know the facts, for example - fish, EU treaties, climate change, the banking crisis and the like? Or would you prefer I continue to try to refute their falsehoods?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 28-02-2015 09:00PM

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Godge · 01-03-2015 12:10PM

Permabear wrote: »

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I agree.

There are always people new to the forum or new to a topic who will post up something that is objectively false. That is not the problem.

The problem is the repeat offenders who are corrected several times and persist in maintaining arguments and positions that are objectively false.

Scofflaw · 02-03-2015 11:47PM

Permabear wrote: »

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Well, personally I'm a big fan of doing exactly that, but, again, the problem is that above isn't always clear-cut, and much of what we've been asked to apply it to recently is pretty fuzzy.

To take a current example, we have pro-Russian posters at the moment, and they post claims derived from RT etc about the Ukraine, Russian involvement, etc - and these claims are clearly taken to be false by those arguing with them. But a consensus of opposed posters believing them to be false, and the claims having been shown to be false, seem to me to be two different things. The evidence of the latter is not as solid as I'd like, and I'm reluctant to make judgements about truth based on majority opinion.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 03-03-2015 12:14AM

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Scofflaw · 03-03-2015 12:45PM

Permabear wrote: »

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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

Permabear · 03-03-2015 01:05PM

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Godge · 03-03-2015 05:05PM

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

True, but there are a few claims that are continually sprouted by the same users despite being objectively proven false on numerous occasions. Here are several:

(1) Public service pay was not cut during the crisis
(2) Irish Water is privately owned
(3) FG promised not to introduce water charges

These are complete rubbish and those posting them know full well they are false yet they continue to post them.

Chips Lovell · 03-03-2015 05:27PM

He's not saying that things haven't been repeatedly debunked, but rather the mods can't be expected to do all the work in demonstrating they have.

If something bothers you that much, it shouldn't be that onerous to put together a short boilerplate report including the relevant links to debunked claims and submit it whenever you see a repeated instance.

Permabear · 03-03-2015 05:57PM

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Chips Lovell · 03-03-2015 06:01PM

That's true. But the Water Charges thread was in the main forum for a long time (months?). At this stage I think every considered angle on the issue has been debated repeatedly, so you'd have to wonder what the point of pulling all of that trouble back into the main forum would be?

Permabear · 03-03-2015 06:08PM

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Chips Lovell · 03-03-2015 06:20PM

None of those topics have attracted anywhere near the same amount of posts and heat as water charges though. It's coming up to the point where a second thread will have to be locked after reaching the 10,000 post count limit.

Permabear · 03-03-2015 06:31PM

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Chips Lovell · 03-03-2015 06:34PM

If you have full time mods, maybe. But I reckon the job they did on it prior to its banishment to the Cafe was above and beyond the call of duty.

Permabear · 03-03-2015 06:38PM

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Chips Lovell · 03-03-2015 06:43PM

Amongst other things, i.e. that doesn't need to be sole purpose of the sub-forum. And only after the topic gets a decent airing in one of the more strictly moderated forums.

Scofflaw · 03-03-2015 07:30PM

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

No, and the suggestion is rather resented. The reason for the thread's move to the Café is because there's a lot of people who want to discuss the topic who aren't going to stick to the stricter rules of the main forum.

We therefore have two basic options - (a) to let as many people as want to discuss it do so, and to accept that the resulting debate will be of lower quality than we would like in the main forum; (b) to retain the thread in the main forum with strict standards and exclude most posters as a result.

The Café exists to facilitate option (a), something which has long been a problem for us with popular and contentious topics - Lisbon, the bailout, etc.

There is nothing to prevent posters from having a higher-quality debate on Irish Water in the main forum, entirely separate from the Café thread. But personally I'm betting most posters will go slumming...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 03-03-2015 08:15PM

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Scofflaw · 03-03-2015 08:58PM

Permabear wrote: »

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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.

I'm betting that too. Politics Café, with its nonexistent standards, is the future of the Politics forum. That's where most of the debate will take place, while the so-called "main forum" will become even more stagnant. Your own thread on the UK's future in the EU, started last night at 11 p.m., now has 6 posts, most of them one or two lines long.

I don't think you'd disagree if I said that it seems like a natural progression over the last several years. There's a lot of public interest in certain political topics, which means fast-running threads full of people new to political discussion, and little in others, which means slow threads with posters whose political positions are probably well-known, and whose response to something new is often "Ayup.".

cordially,
Scofflaw

A discussion on the rules.

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