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What exactly does get you banned on Barbelith?

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Keith, like a scientist

23:41 / 11.01.06

I'm starting to like Hawksmoor-as-Barbelith's-arch-nemesis. Good way to post snarky comments and not ever feel bad about it.

23:54 / 11.01.06

it's always the way with easily defined common enemies.
i'd probably argue that it isnt very helpful, but then the fun stuff often isnt.

on topic, has anyone spoken with tom about this so far?

00:01 / 12.01.06

Several appear to have tried to do so.

00:14 / 12.01.06

I realize I'm coming late to the dogpile and all, but I think somebody here really needs to be given the means to ban folks.

02:41 / 12.01.06

*all of matt's family and relatives are sitting in the living room*

"Now, matt, this is an intervention. It hurts your family when you spend so much time online with this Hawksmoo character. We think you should stop talking about and even referring to this Hawksmoo. It's tearing your family apart."

"But I can't, Mum. I can't. It's too much fun."

"Are you willing to go to a rehabilitation centre for this?"

"Yes. By God. Yes. I want to heal."

*inspirational music crescendos, credits roll*

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:21 / 12.01.06

For the little it's worth, after I posted my little thing about what I thought of the slaughter party story I got a PM calling me a bitch for not recognising his story-writing genius. I politely responded telling him that he wasn't going to get far calling everyone who disagreed with him faggots and bitches to which he just responded "OK. Cool." It seems that he's unwilling to engage sensibly so I will certainly be PMing Tom sometime today if there's no evidence that other people have done so already.

On a secondary issue, could I suggest that people back down from talking about him, unless something desperately new comes up? In my bestest 'Princess Buttercup of Rainbow Valley' voice, I'd rather moderators and long-standing Barbeloids didn't get into another argument at this time about what we can and can't do, should and shouldn't do. It's not particularly germaine to this thread any more and if Hawksmoor found it he'd probably piss himself laughing. Let's wait for Tom's decision, please?

13:51 / 12.01.06

Yup, radio silence mode enabled. Banhimbanhimbanhim please Tom.

17:00 / 12.01.06

Yeah, he just PM'd me, too, after I (pretty politely, I thought) made clear what the consequences of his actions would be. And man, it wasn't pretty. He's not even particularly imaginative.

17:09 / 12.01.06

Y'know, thinking about the suit, it does resemble nowthink quite a lot, what with the insistence it is 'a young, black, heterosexual male' and things; I believe nowthink was a knodgesuit?

17:14 / 12.01.06

Again, doesn it matter? Whoever it is, they're not welcome here. If nothing else, abuse of the PM system is a banning offense.

17:21 / 12.01.06

Could we please lock and delete the threads in the creation? They aren't achieving anything, except serving as a forum for his hate speech.

Also, is there any real objection to treating him as, in essence, a banned poster? That is, until Tom gets round to it, why don't we just delete his every post? There can't be any argument left about his behaviour, can there?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:23 / 12.01.06

Lock them perhaps, but don't delete them yet.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:41 / 12.01.06

Oh, please can we lock them? Pretend he's Morph, go on.

17:44 / 12.01.06

I've proposed the lock.

18:46 / 12.01.06

Good.

Now, can we all try to dial it back a tad? Mick is wrong in many regards, but there's a germ of truth in his post here. The pitchforks-out response is ugly, and the mutual back-slappery that follows the takedown is indeed pretty nauseating.

Lock 'em up, let it go, shut up and move on.

19:53 / 12.01.06

Yep - although it's worth pointing out to Mick that, if feeling ashamed to be part of Barbelith is an issue, there's an easy solution.

Look at us. Look at ourselves. Etc.

20:16 / 12.01.06

i want to address mick's point here:
I sure know what it's like to offend barbelith (and to ignorantly disagree with others purely because I don't want to back down), as I am sure do many others here.

by pointing out that yes, i have been in almsot exactly that poistion. the difference, as i see it, was that i didnt PM every single person who advised me with abuse and vitriol.
i would also like to point out that the reaction to my actions made me examine how i interact with the community, and made me a more valueable member of both barbelith and society as a result.

i was kinda saving saying this for when i manage to have a real world pint with him, but haus' upbraiding of my conduct was, although unpleasant, exactly what i needed to see just how much of a cock i was capable of being.

haus and others have highlighted how wrong headed some of my approaches were, and i like to thnk that i have managed to imrpove my methodology as a result.

All in all, it makes me rather ashamed to be part of this community.

i guess that's where we differ.
it makes me pretty darn proud that shit that stinks is called pungent. if you manage to suck it up and fix it, you come out the other end better for it.

its prolly possible to be nicer about it, but then why the hell should it be easy? just yesterday i had a heated discussion with a friend about religion, a few days after which i was surprised to hear her thank me. no one had ever confronted her before, and she feels she grew because of it. if i had aquiesced to be nice, she would have missed that opportunity.
the more you need to grow, the harder its gonna be to be confronted with your failings.

if you look at my comments to the threads in question, you will see that it didnt go straight for the piss take, but instead earnestly tried to help the kid.
i dont feel that i have done anything wrong, and would welcome some input on why others feel so strongly that i have.

21:12 / 12.01.06

Having watched the whole thing unfold from the initial serial-posting to Creation, I'd say that what we're going through right now is less a matter of n00b-hazing-gone-malicious, its more like antibodies reacting to the presence of a foreign organism in the Barbelith host-body.

He's either a troll or really really dosn't understand or care what Barbelith is, and the difference, to me, is academic.

21:43 / 12.01.06

Eh. Not to sound *too* juvenile, but he started it. Who cares if his feelings get hurt? I'm kind of hoping they will, personally.

22:14 / 12.01.06

The 'dogpile' is always unsavoury, at least to my buds, but I hardly think toksik (or Haus) can be accused of [verb form of such], given his real, honest and earnest initial attempts to communicate with the douche.

22:19 / 12.01.06

Moving on from protecting me mates, [re: eddie thirteen's post, and Tom's low level of interaction with the board at present] I think if anyone were to be given administrative powers on the site (as Haus was once, correct me if I err?) I'd opt for grant personally, given his suit's continual sterling contribution and ability to avoid controversy.

22:47 / 12.01.06

If by "administrative powers" you mean the ability to check IP addresses, ban users, etc. I don't think anyone's ever had that power but Tom.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:08 / 12.01.06

Yeah, that's right. The admins - me, grant, Ganesh, some others - were able to propose or vote on moderation requests in any forum, but that was pretty much the extent of our powers. There was a "ban user" button, but it wasn't actually wired to anything. It was functionally identical to being a moderator, but spread wider so moderation requests could be approved more quickly.

23:14 / 12.01.06

Well, obvs. I had no idea the extent of your powers.

Anyway, I think it might be an idea to have one/some of them w/ ban bombs in future. Supermoderators or the like.

Do You?

23:23 / 12.01.06

i think it should be kept out of the hands of any one person, to be honest.

i trust you kids and all, but that's no reason to go giving powers to the few, going agaist all barbelith tradition.

i'd be up for a supermoderator if they were just the only person/people who could initiate a ban vote. i would definitely argue that it would be better if there was still a vote required to carry the motion.
i'd also suggest some very clear protocols regarding how and how much it would be discussed before such a vote was taken.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:48 / 12.01.06

Do You?

We've discussed this quite a lot, on and off the board. My position, summarised, is that I think there are situations in which it would be useful to have people able to suspend accounts, for example, unilaterally or with limited support, but that the balances put in place around that would have to be quite significant - in effect, any use of those powers would trigger an inquest of some sort. The space between what moderators can do and what Tom can do is an issue, in terms both of Tom's inability to watch the board 24-7 and the fire he comes under for taking action. Whether ubermods is an answer to that is a bit more complex.

13:52 / 13.01.06

I was thinking about this last night- what if there were a mechanism for mods to propose a ban, that needed a higher agreement than a normal mod request? Say a threshold of five or six agreeing (and no objections of course) that suspends the suit until Tom can confirm it and ban them?

That way a flurry of trollspam can be prevented by nipping it in the bud once we hit the 'obviously a bad apple' stage, without having to harass Tom as urgently. Still distributed modding, erring on the side of caution, still only Tom able to ban, but effectively a Paralysis Ray for trolls.

Thoughts?

14:25 / 13.01.06

You're talking about software changes which cannot currently be effected.

I think what's happening here is working, by the way, although it's not necessarily pleasant. Toxic threads are being subjected to quarantine, toxic comments being deleted. It's not terribly secure as far as, well, closing the door behind them, but we haven't seen, like, a bajillion new posts/topics from the same source, have we? I don't think we will (and if we do, well, it seems like the toxic ones'll get zapped pretty quickly by fed-up mods until such time as Tom leaves MacWorld '06 and uses his Death Beam).

Oh, and Duncan, since they didn't go for it, do I actually have to swallow this time?

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:39 / 13.01.06

You're talking about software changes which cannot currently be effected.

Very true. The other problem with the 5-or-6 thing, Quants, is that it's unlikely to be much quicker than Tom, although it could be a second layer - I was thinking more of something a mod could do unilaterally, or at least very quickly and easily, but which they would have to account for afterwards, at the risk of losing their mod status. Mind you, you could have both, so if a moderator came across, or was warned of, a very obvious troll flame-out going on at a time when not many moderators were around, they could take positive action immediately. It would also deal with a situation we haven't had since logins became harder to get hold of a single user burning through login after login to keep trolling, activating a new one after each one was banned - a single moderator with a sharp eye could play whack-a-mole and keep the board clean. I dunno, though - the subsequent inquiry might be divisive in itself. Maybe scratch that plan.

Mind you, needing a mass of moderators would also be problematic, especially if veto power existed - there are not enough moderators active in the creation, for example, and some moderators might be highly resistant to the exercise of this power. Could be tricky...

For reference, I think the non-functional ban button would have needed four agreements to pass.

Incidentally, the other thing the sort of thing we saw in the Creation with Hawksmoor is, as mentioned, quarantine - by tying his ego up there, he was largely contained. So, for example, he didn't spam up the Harry Potter thread or comic books...

14:30 / 16.01.06

Hmm, true, enabling single-mod whackamole would practically invite shrill protests of censorship, and anything needing new software can wait until after the 2012 apocalypse. Just a thought.

Also, crossposted by me from the Psychology of Trolling thread (where it's less relevant);

"so what's the internet term for an offensive bigot? Because we should ban them too. I think we have precedents for anti-Semitism, and now homophobic abuse, and I don't think anyone's going to say racism or misogyny is going to be welcome. My rule of thumb is hatespeech=unacceptable, the process I'd favour is polite warning, heavy challenging and then banning (with subsequent handwringing and cyclic reiteration, moving on to 'iz Barblith dyeing?' and 'where does your screen-name come from?')."

So what I'm favouring there is the current system, with a more heavy handed approach to challenging -ist content. Impossible to enforce, as are most rules of behaviour, but I'd like to turn the volume up on the people saying 'I find that offensive' and down on those 'defending free speech'.

It seems to be a matter of valuing "I don't agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" against "Your rights end an inch from the other fellows nose". Or in this case, "Your right to say what you like stops at saying things that will hurt other people".

I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but at the moment I support a *more* repressive authoritarian regime trampling the tongues of innocent salt-of-the-Earth types just trying to speak plainly without all that PC-nonsense.

Inasmuch as there is any censorship on Barbelith at all, I want more of it. Am I evil? Am I just a PC Thug as I was called the other day, a liberal facist?

14:47 / 16.01.06

You may be a PC thug. Sorry. The problem with instituting policies that may or may not trample on other posters' ability to speak freely is that the Hawksmoors won't ever read them, not even when you direct the Hawksmoors to the policies themselves. (This was shown in the Creation threads.) So, in effect, you're placing a chill effect on "good" Barbelith posters, who are nervous about tripping some arbitrary alarm and getting kicked off the site, and doing nothing whatsoever to trip up the people who caused the policy to come into being. If the point of applying jackboot to ass when it comes to the Hawksmoors is to allow for an environment where the vast majority of posters feel safe and comfortable, instituting repressive speech regulation policies is not the way to do it -- it's counterproductive and counter-intuitive. In effect, it's those policies that will have the Hawksmoor effect, not the Hawksmoors, and unfortunately the policies aren't something we can vote to ban...well, unless we can, in which case, I just did.

I think the simpler solution is just the "I know it when I see it" methodology. Maybe that judgment shouldn't be in the hands of any one person -- okay, definitely it shouldn't -- but in the case of Hawksmoor, it was pretty clear to just about everybody, immediately, that the guy needed to go. It took longer than it should have, but it was done. I don't see a problem.

15:07 / 16.01.06

i hear what you are saying mr13, but i have to admit a little bit of doubt in my mind as to barbelith's ability to consistently come up with consensus.

if there is no authority to defer to, written or otherwise, then how to we break a tie?

16:11 / 16.01.06

But how likely is a tie, really? In the time I've been on Barbelith, the only people who've come up for banning...well, really, you have to be pretty bad. Yeah, there's always someone who's willing to leap to the defense of anyone, no matter how vile, but it's usually pretty easy to dismiss such apologists as cranks. I guess I just believe in the power of sense and reason to prevail even in the absence of guidelines that may have the unintended effect of making life on Barbelith difficult for people who aren't causing any problems.

16:26 / 16.01.06

dude, i can gurantee there will be a situation that splits the board or, more importantly, those few people who have the board's attention when matters like this arise.

i think that your opinion, while fair enough in the current board climate, doesnt take into account that this is a living document created by an ever revolving cast.

what if haus leaves, for example?

can you think of a single argument over conduct that hasnt included him? do you feel that barbelith would continue to reach similar consensuses without him or people like him? and what if someone of very different opinion but similar rhetorical skill arrives?

there are others who would skew the board-mind by their absence and there are surely those who could change it by their arrival.

rules are better because they cant be changed as easily as people's minds.

constitution, anyone?

17:01 / 16.01.06

Definite NO to a constitution. Because, like you say Barbelith is a living, growing, evolving community...

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