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What exactly does get you banned on Barbelith?

  
  

Page: 12(3)45678... 42

 
 
Ganesh
21:41 / 01.12.04
we ban anti-Semites and delete/lock their threads, but common-or-garden racist or homophobic comments we have to dialogue...

I'm wondering whether there's a difference in the 'banworthiness' of the comments themselves (which seems unlikely - I don't see that apparently derogatory material based specifically on Jewish people is inherently worse than apparently derogatory material based on other groups) or whether there's a difference in how we perceive/infer intent.

For example, we're referring to the Zionist conspiracy majycke stuff straightoff as anti-Semitic, the work of "anti-Semites" - so we're automatically making a judgment as to what motivated the poster (who could, one assumes, have said, "I was interested in exploring what underpins and motivates the idea of a Zionist conspiracy" ie. characterised their intent as intellectually curious rather than anti-Semitic). If we were willing to discount the claimed intent back then (and if I remember rightly, someone did say something similar at the time) and act accordingly, how come we've allowed for claimed intent in other cases since then? Is there a difference in the degree to which we allow for claimed 'good intent' to mitigate certain instances of apparent 'ism'?

What factors are relevant in how we perceive intent? Posters' previous behaviour, certainly, but does the type of 'ism' have a bearing on things? The location on Barbelith of the 'ism'? The nature of the poster's defence (is "I was joking" a more effective defence than "I'm exploring the subject" or "I'm roleplaying a fascist")?
 
 
Ganesh
21:46 / 01.12.04
Don't use administrative power to censor people unless they have demonstrated that they are willfully attempting to wreck the community. The difference between a troll and an excitable halfwit is immediately obvious to all of us.

But it's not - that's my whole point regarding intent. Demonstrating that someone is being wilfully destructive is much more subjective than you suggest. If it were "immediately obvious to all", we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
21:58 / 01.12.04
Ganesh, I haven't entirely digested all you've said, so please forgive me if I'm being a blockhead, but I am attempting to lead people to examine their own agenda in condemning certain posters, or certain types of speech as unheimlich. I do think the difference is immediately apparent. I think people here on Barbelith choose to construe, though perhaps not consciously, tasteless speech, which is offensive, as destructive, harmful speech, which is also offensive, in order to justify getting rid of things they find icky.
 
 
Ganesh
22:17 / 01.12.04
I do think the difference is immediately apparent.

And I think you're wrong. I certainly have difficulty divining someone's motives from what they post - particularly when they've posted infrequently and I don't know much about them. The fact that you (believe you) can do so hardly means it's "immediately obvious to all of us". If judging who were trolling were so universally straightforward, we wouldn't be having these regular, interminable conversations about what Poster X intended by Post Y.

I think people here on Barbelith choose to construe, though perhaps not consciously, tasteless speech, which is offensive, as destructive, harmful speech, which is also offensive, in order to justify getting rid of things they find icky.

So, essentially, you're saying that everyone, deep down, would draw the same troll/halfwit conclusions as yourself - but some of us pretend to think otherwise? Is that a fair precis?

Again, it's a valid opinion but it's your opinion. I don't agree. I think if we were all to point to trolls, past and present, there'd be a considerable amount of disagreement - because we differ individually in terms of how we perceive the motives of others. The fact that you believe some of us would be somehow dishonest in our stated perceptions is, to me, neither here nor there. In a way, I feel it's similar to those who invoke the semi-mythical 'man on the street' in order to establish that their opinion is allied with 'common sense' 'obviousness', and anyone who disagrees must therefore represent an affected out-of-touch elite, be seeking attention or being disingenuous (anyone remember Leap?)
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:48 / 01.12.04
Spatula, maybe I'm paranoid, but I think that you are telling me to shut up.

See, if I was telling you to shut up, I'd say "Qalyn, shut up." Paranoia? As you believe that some of us are having this discussion for reasons other than those stated - because political correctness is always about the ulterior motives, isn't it - yeah, probably.

I'm aware of those discussions. I have, in fact, participated in some of them and, with exactly one exception, I haven't been comfortable with the solutions arrived at. What should I do?

You'll have to forgive me, but I'm having real trouble understanding how, if you're aware of those discussions, you're translating my attack on the - as sleaze says, misguided - attempts to use the free speech argument as a Get Out of Jail Free card, as "shut up." 'Freedom of speech' has not been an acceptable excuse for allowing racists - or those prone to making racist jokes, as you can apparently see a distinction there - to have free reign over the board before. Why would this have changed? What gives that argument any more strength than it had in those older threads? And, if there is no fundamental difference this time, what meat are you prepared to put on its bones that'll make it sound more substantial than it did previously? *This* is what I'm asking you to provide.

What should you do? Construct a better case.

There are, as many people have already said - including me - a lot of places people can go to have laffs a-plenty at smelly gypsies. Almost the entirety of the Internet, as it happens. There aren't all that many boards that you can visit where you know that stuff won't be given tacit approval through going unchallenged or unmoderated. Barbelith has traditionally been one of those and should continue to be so. Or, rather, go back to being so.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:17 / 01.12.04
Thinking about it, and before the debate over the lack of consistency here goes any further, it's likely important to point out that the Greenland Posse weren't booted because of their Jewish Conspiracy ravings. At least, not all of them (if any) - Bendt/chrome/whatever was kicked when modzero went into meltdown and did the "Hey, Knobbage, I'll give you access to my username" thing. The Laila and RRM suits, I'm not so sure about.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
01:47 / 02.12.04
you're translating my attack on the - as sleaze says, misguided - attempts to use the free speech argument as a Get Out of Jail Free card, as "shut up."

Two separate events, Spatula:

A) You suggest that freedom of speech is not a binding social contract here, because it has not been binding in the past.

B) You suggest that, before I come to the big table, I should read up on it.

Well, I have read up on it. I don't think we've done the right thing in the past, in all the ways I have already described, here and elsewhere.

There aren't all that many boards that you can visit where you know that stuff won't be given tacit approval through going unchallenged or unmoderated.

Unchallenged, no, unmoderated, yes. Maybe this next bit got lost because I was spewing a little bit (apologies for that):

I think there's something very smug, pathetic in fact, about pretending to be egalitarian and shoring up the pretense by barring people we don't like.

I mean, am I the only one who finds this hypocritical?

Ganesh, yes, I am expressing my opinion, which is based on careful observation of myself and many of the people in this "room".
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
02:09 / 02.12.04
Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

I would argue that the substantive difference between this exchange and this one is that Flyboy likes me and doesn't like CroMagnet. CroMagnet actually had something closer to a valid point than I did, but was more obnoxious in framing it. I think I can hear how Jack Fear might've handled it--by asserting Hollywood's right to do any damn thing it pleases (and by the way you're a racist halfwit), which should probably be the standard response to something like that. I don't think Flyboy's doing anything wrong in either case, but I think it would be a serious mistake to codify this impulse into a body of rules used by the administrators of the board to exclude people. If you're going to ban CroMagnet, shouldn't you ban me for saying "not even gaylords like tandem bicycles"?
 
 
tituba
08:17 / 02.12.04
OK! I GET IT!!! I was wrong, but creating a special little thread and babbling on endlessly about a topic that grew stale the moment it was uttered IS boring. Everyone (I mean Haus) wants to make an example out of me and that's fine (identify the enemy and bomb their churches, ay?). It's also interesting to note this whole hive-mentality emerging, but then again people like forming mobs. Some people won't even know why a specific mob is forming but they will join the pack and chant louder than the ones who started it, just because it’s easy. The fact that people would so quickly turn when they realized the tide was shifting shows the true nature of this beast. Are you attacking me for what I said or do you feel contempt towards society for allowing these notions to be propagated or more spesificially, all the poster who didn't react accordingly to my comment? Vilifying me will achieve nothing.

As a point of reference, I ripped the cabbage thing off of an episode of the Simpsons. It sounded funnier coming from a yellow cartoon character and with it being removed from the context it originally appeared in and being distorted to the point it has been, I concede that it doesn't sound funny anymore. I give up and place my head on the block, ready for you to make your example and to do as you please...how very American of you. I hope you all feel better now that you've dealt with the racist scourge, which threatened your way of life. Even though I suspect this whole debacle has been brought about for all the wrong reasons, I will apologize. I said a race group smelled like a vegetable and I’m sorry.

Perhaps one day when you experience true, hate-filled bigotry first hand, you’ll start another thread and you’ll have something worthwhile to prattle on about, instead of trying so hard to convince people that you’re non-discriminatory.
 
 
Ganesh
08:47 / 02.12.04
Ganesh, yes, I am expressing my opinion, which is based on careful observation of myself and many of the people in this "room".

And your opinion, as you've said, is that every single individual within that "room" can immediately determine whether a given poster is motivated by the urge to be wilfully destructive or otherwise. The fact that individuals within the room don't agree means that some of them (the ones that disagree with your conclusions, presumably) have ulterior motives.

Fine - but, again, I utterly disagree. Even with repeat trolls, those individuals who return again and again with the same dubious output, Barbelith can't seem to agree on motive - hence the similarly repetitive debates on whether Poster X is bad, mad, sad or whatever. There's a subset of posters who were, initially, considered by many to be trolls but who turned out to fall on the halfwit side of your line - and there are those whose motives in posting remain unclear.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:50 / 02.12.04
PsionicNurse: Still convinced it's just me, then? In the face of all these people? They're just a *mob* under mind control? God, you really are a needy victim, aren't you? I said in the Comic Books thread that you were not worth trying to engage with. Nothing you have just said in your incredibly graceless non-apology (anyone detecting a trend? How *predictable* these individualists are...) has altered this.


Qalyn: It's a fair point - your contributions to the Mieville thread were pretty trollsome (I know, I know, you believe that they were contained as much critical information as the other posts, experiment in form, etc). Since you are generally not trollsome, you acquire capital that that is balanced against. If you carried on demanding attention and attempting to create conflict to the detriment of the board, the perception of you would change. Didn't we cover this in your thread on what was wrong with Barbelith?

Cromagnet hasn't accumulated that capital; the only contributions of note he seems to have made to the board are some pictures of dead babies and these right-to-be-racist pop-ups of late.

Specifically, he made a very bad inpression by posting images of dead babies in-thread. He has done little to alter the impression that gave of him. I don't think his situation and yours (where I would personally have asked you to tone it down if I had been moderating the thread, but YMMV) compare directly.

So, moderators and others make decisions about people based on their previous experiences. I don't see this as remarkable.

As for:

I think there's something very smug, pathetic in fact, about pretending to be egalitarian and shoring up the pretense by barring people we don't like.

When, exactly, did we claim to be egalitarian? This is a slightly posher version of "How can you let posts be moderated on a board devoted to living like Grant Morrison?" - it's accusing Barbelith of hypocrisy for failing to live up to a standard it has never applied.

If by "egalitarian" you mean that everyone who joins starts out with a clean slate, then I would agree. However, that makes your statement incoherent. You seem to mean "everyone has to be considered equal and deserving of equal treatment in perpetuity". Barbelith is not and has never been organised along those principles. We want intelligent, useful people to stay around and trolls and actively damaging people to leave. "Damaging" here means also, if given the freedom, "expressing unchallenged views which will make interesting, useful people not want to be here". From the wiki:

Our aim is to create an online space where the standard of conversation, discussion and debate is higher than anywhere else online and in which everyone has a say in the running and management of the board

That aim is not necessarily compatible with the kind of egalitarianism you seem to be imagining, where everyone is free to say whatever they like and the onus is then on everyone else to shout them down.

So, when you say:

Don't we believe that the good of the majority is served by protecting the rights of the minority (in this case, racists and social libertarians).


No, we don't, because racists and social libertarians are not the minority. Boards with a high standard of discussion, which Barbelith still just about is, are the minority. I don't have any need to protect the right of individuals to make Barbelith a place where idiots are permitted to ruin the standard of the board.

We have already established, I think, that PsionicNurse and Vladimir J Baptiste, for example, are not bright enough to examine their own behaviour rather than assuming that everyone else is humourless/PCGM or whatever. As long as they keep the noise down, that's fine, and I am happy to keep mocking them in-thread. However, this strikes me as a rather better way of attracting people who love conflict than by having a standard response to hate speech.

Tom: couple of things:

Except of course if you fall off that edge, at which point, you know, it's not funny any more.

There is also the possibility that it simply isn't funny.

We have said in the past too that language that is intentionally racist or homophobic or sexist or anti-semitic and the like could make ethnic minorities, gay people, women, Jewish people etc. feel very uncomfortable or unwelcome on the board - even on occasions scared. As such it seems to me eminently fair that we should consider sustained racist / homophobic / sexist and anti-semitic post and language to constitute a form of harrassment of those members of Barbelith who belong to those groups. People who harrass members of Barbelith get booted out.

All agreed and all good.

They're within their rights as far as I am concerned to say, "Hm. I was just trying to be funny, but I guess for some of the people here I overstepped the mark. Rest assured I've taken it on board and if I'm angling for a laugh I won't use language like that again."

Quite so. Please note that this is not what has, to my knowledge, happened. PsionicNurse's "final words", previous to her latest self-exculpating whine, were:

Sigh...there's always one in the crowd, isn't there?

(Incidentally, Hattie's Kitchen - see that sigh? What's it doing there? Does it help the discussion along?)

Vladimir's was:

Dipshits.

They sincerely do not believe that they have failed to amuse. They believe they are funny, and it's the fault of other people if they are not amused. PN is apparently maintaining that, although her original crack was not as funny as it was in the Simpsons, it is only this thread and criticism in the other thread that has made it now not appear funny at all - we have ruined it, essentially. These kids are dumb and self-regarding in a way that I'm actually not sure a lot of us can even understand, and I think we need to be sensitive to that.

We can certainly try for a gentler, kinder approach to racist language, but I don't think you'll get much joy. We can have a go, though.

Can we, therefore, now conclude that if those identified continue with the hate, that they are moving into harrassment? And if they do not, they have at least taken on board that it is not an appropriate way to behave on Barbelith even if they have not changed their attitudes? I'm good with that...

In which case, I propose we have a thread in the Policy in which moderators and others can flag up what they feel is harrassing language or commentary. This mitigates the problem of people just not seeing comments made in specialised threads. It also allows for more informed judgements to be made. "First offencers" are gently chided in-thread, and it is made clear that their behaviour, if repeated, might be seen as harassing, and that they might want to think about why they are being criticised rather than immediately assuming that they are right and everyone else is wrong/PCGM/humourless. If they persist, they are banned, regardless of "intent". Borderline cases are given the benefit of the doubt - Aus, for example, despite his spirited defence of the right of Australians and Americans to call people "Pakis" and his current leap onto the gypsy bandwagon, is not being censured heavily. Duncan Falconer's claim that the aforementioned term was not offensive but purely descriptive was treated as a discussion point inspired by naivete rather than racism. Raelianautopsy's Ladybird Mein Kampf, likewise. Also, see comment to Ganesh below. In general, I actually think Barbelith is _confrontation-avoidant_. Apart from the nutters, we don't get flamewars encompassing race, gender or sexuality much - what we do get is people with limited life experience trying out that cool stuff they heard on TV or read in a Warren Ellis comic and not understanding how it functions...

Ganesh:

If we were willing to discount the claimed intent back then (and if I remember rightly, someone did say something similar at the time)

They did, and they weren't banned. Quick recap - the only person who was banned, I believe, was The Fetch, who was citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and was seen to be peddling an anti-Semitic, and homophobic gospel. His banning was prevention. Raelianautopsy, who then IIRC started a "Do the Jews actually run the world" thread, h3r, who started a thread about The Fetch being censored here, those who participated - none of them were banned. On the other hand, it did certainly provide a useful window into some people's thinking.

Anyway. Bottom line for me: If one person thinks "Damn! Barbelith is restricting my freedom to joke about cabaggey stupid gypsies! I'm off!", and the price to make that person happy would be another person thinking "I don't see any point in starting a discussion on racism/class/sexuality in the Head Shop. It will just devolve into a shitload of terrible gags about Gyppos/Chavs/Poofters. I'm going to head off", then I will happily not pay that price, especially since, as has been mentioned, there are plenty of other places on the Internet for the first person to enjoy and comparatively few for the second.
 
 
Lord Morgue
08:53 / 02.12.04
-threadrot-
I think I've figured out Haus's fighting style. It's Transformers. He's like Soundwave- see, he drones on and on hypnotically, and occasionally Flyboy will pop out of his chest, transform into Laserbeak, attack and disappear.
 
 
Ganesh
09:00 / 02.12.04
PsionicNurse, your 'apology' was full of at least mildly jaw-dropping assumptions but, for me, this one takes the biscuit:

Perhaps one day when you experience true, hate-filled bigotry first hand, you’ll start another thread and you’ll have something worthwhile to prattle on about, instead of trying so hard to convince people that you’re non-discriminatory.

The fact that others are not openly playing the 'first hand victim of bigotry' card does not mean they are completely uninformed by experience in this area - so don't fucking assume, please.

(Oops. How very American of me.)

Note also that, although this thread began with your 'gypsy' comment, by way of illustration, it's since become a wider discussion of how the community (read "hive-mind") does and should operate in certain instances. Not everyone contributing to this thread is keen to 'vilify' you; some of us don't give two shits about you either way, but are interested in the more general issue. Incredibly, it's not always about you.
 
 
Ganesh
09:26 / 02.12.04
Haus: okay, that sheds a little light upon the 'Zionist conspiracy' stuff; I think I only caught sight of the 'Do The Jews Really Run The World' thread then, all of a sudden, there seemed to be thread-locking/deletion, banning and lots of noise in the Policy. I was baffled because, while what I'd seen was certainly familiar from the hate-fodder of certain racist/anti-Semitic organisations, it seemed to me the central question was asked in apparent innocence - a desire to dissect and examine a conspiracy theory rather than a specific wish to target or harrass Jewish people. Perhaps I read the situation incorrectly - and I'm not familiar with the Fetch, RaelianAutopsy, etc., so I don't know how much/little 'capital' they had accumulated - but the topic itself seemed, to me, to be dealt with rather abruptly. IMHO, it felt a little 'baby and bathwater' - particularly as we don't appear, as a community, to have generalised that approach to other comparable instances.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:29 / 02.12.04
Lord Morque, of course, raises the question of what to do about people who endanger the aim:

to create an online space where the standard of conversation, discussion and debate is higher than anywhere else online

Simply by lowering the average relevance, quality and focus of pretty much every thread he posts in. Maybe we could just have a banner over the top of Barbelith saying "Lord Morque still exists!", thus obviating the need for him to post at all. However, there is already a thread on this here.

(Besides which, Soundwave was also perfectly tasty in a fight. Plus, women dig him, because he has a cool voice and is a single parent)
 
 
Tom Coates
10:06 / 02.12.04
Right. Graceless though it may have been, as far as I'm concerned PsionicNurse has apologised now and we should leave him/her alone for a bit and let him/her settle into the board for a bit. I think he/she raised an interesting point w/r/t The Simpsons where ethnic and other forms of stereotyping are far from uncommon but not normally considered offensive. So let's just back away from that one, be gracious about the whole thing and accept that they've learned their lesson.

With regards to being able to gauge intent from people's comments - well absolutely we're not going to be able to do that individually with any degree of accuracy - which is why we have a distributed moderation scheme so that a group of moderators have to agree that the intent is probably malicious. As far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty good metric. Not perfect, but pretty good.

With regards to the freedom of speech thing - this is an old and well fought-over battleground on Barbelith. Basically when we started the site, anything and everything was up for grabs, people could say whatever they liked, we never had moderators or anything. And then under a sustained troll attack based around homophobic, racist and sexist comments and spam (feeding lesbians to alsatians / killing black people with crowbars) the entire place fell apart. Large numbers of people left the site, all hope for saying anything of any value collapsed, discussion became impossible.

In the real world there are innumerable ways in which a community can form and self-organise. People are considered to have more or less freedom of speech depending on where you are in the world. If you walked into a church and started shouting during the sermon, you'd be asked to leave. If you stood in front of a shop and shouted anti-semitic comments, you'd be taken away by the police or beaten up or campaigned vigorously against. If you were an unpleasant person at a party, people would use the normal human skills to ostracise them or avoid communicating with them. Many of these mechanisms just don't work online.

There are innumerable advantages to having a community online that are based upon the lack of clear identities, the ability to be slightly anonymous, the lack of problems of distance in having a conversation, the asynchrony of the discussions and the searchability of their results. These are all to be enormously celebrated. But that the same platform generates opportunities for spam or gaming the system or systematic abuse or whatever is something we need to be aware of and look for ways to alleviate.

In a nutshell - ALL ACTUAL COMMUNITIES NEED SOME SENSE OF SHARED GOAL AND WAYS OF PROTECTING THEIR ABILITY TO MANIFEST THAT GOAL - otherwise they're going to fail. We have no obligation to let people in here indiscriminately and no obligation from on high to operate in any paricularly way. The platform must remain neutral (ie. the internet) but the things one builds upon it must be able to support inclusive, exclusive, small, large, political, anarchistic, commercial or libertarian structures. This particular structure - Barbelith - has pretty well articulated its goals and while they are up for debate, they state as a goal the ability to have interesting, stimulating, multi-disciplinary and intelligent conversations about things that we care about.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
10:13 / 02.12.04
Incidentally, Hattie's Kitchen - see that sigh? What's it doing there? Does it help the discussion along?

Does this pointless snarkery help either? I merely pointed out what I thought was a misreprensentation of another poster's motives, to which you responded explaining your position. Fine. Huggles all around.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
10:47 / 02.12.04
Qalyn> There seems to be a complete and completely weird breakdown in understanding between us as far as the intended meaning behind certain comments is concerned, and as it's probably not doing this thread any use I'll take that part of our argument to PM. Handily, Haus has managed to say what I would have in response to the second bit of your post (egalitarianism, etc.) - Barbelith has never claimed to be a place where all forms of speech are offered equal protection. If you're seeing hypocrisy in the current discussion, it's because you've misunderstood that.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:51 / 02.12.04
Hattie: Well, no. You didn't merely point it out. YOu *sighed*, then pointed it out. I was simply taking an opportunity to exemplify why the one-word sentence "sigh" rarely adds anything of value to a proposition. No snark was intended.

Tom: Two things.

1) That was not an apology. It was an apologia, and a very rude and self-serving one. However, we can play it your way if you want; I'm certainly not expecting anytihng _better_ from PsionicNurse.

2) PN has been registered since March, and has posted 67 times. This is not a newbie not understanding our ways and needing to "settle in". It's somebody not getting it over time. If the lesson learned is to think more carefully before posting racist comments, if only because of all those mob-mentality PC nutcases out there, then well and good, but let's not kid ourselves here that she has in any way taken these criticisms on board.

Otherwise, I'm good with that. So, moving on, how do we feel about the proposal:

n which case, I propose we have a thread in the Policy in which moderators and others can flag up what they feel is harrassing language or commentary. This mitigates the problem of people just not seeing comments made in specialised threads. It also allows for more informed judgements to be made. "First offencers" are gently chided in-thread, and it is made clear that their behaviour, if repeated, might be seen as harassing, and that they might want to think about why they are being criticised rather than immediately assuming that they are right and everyone else is wrong/PCGM/humourless. If they persist, they are banned, regardless of "intent". Borderline cases are given the benefit of the doubt.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
10:52 / 02.12.04
Oh bollocks. Forget it, I was trying to give SG the benefit of the doubt, but looks like it was a waste of time...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:06 / 02.12.04
Have I missed something on that one? That is, has SG done something else, or did you mean "I'm sorry I bothered, now, given all the subsequent hassle"?

(Really not trying to undermine or snark at you, HK - I respond badly to people sighing, because it feels patronising and raises the emotional temperature without much purpose. Huggles, certainly.)

More broadly ... I think that all these examples sugest that possibly we should look at how we correct people. I feel now that, since I never wanted actually to ban PN, at least not *yet*, my comment was unhelpfully rhetorical, fuelled as it was by disgust at such naked racist crap being passed off as humour. I actually don't think that was the case with SG - Ganesh and I both, I think, made quite polite attempts to get him to look at the assumptions behind his language, and got snarky after he responded defensively, *but* we could maybe have continued softlying for a while in the hope that he would have got the hang of it eventually. I think the explanation/confrontation curve needs to be looked at - and knowing, say through a thread in the Policy, whether this an unexpected unexamined attitude from somebody basically lovely or whether it is one of a growing series of unpleasantnesses that need to be looked at in moderating/administration contexts could be useful in that.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
11:10 / 02.12.04
No worries Haus, wasn't aimed at you - I'm hoping SG will edit/delete hir post in the Help America Recount thread before I regret defending him/her. Arse.
 
 
Jack Fear
12:07 / 02.12.04
Please to excuse, but this from Qalyn...

I think I can hear how Jack Fear might've handled it--by asserting Hollywood's right to do any damn thing it pleases (and by the way you're a racist halfwit), which should probably be the standard response to something like that

...made me laugh like a drain (WWJFD?) and, you know, is actually pretty spot-on.

A trick that I've found useful in crafting my online persona, esp. as regards dealing with morons, knuckleheads, and mental defectives, is the boilerplate post. I kinda stole the idea from Warren Ellis, who used it to devastating effect back in the days of the WEF: not quite an in-joke, not quite a catchphrase, but an all-purpose dismissal, something that can be trotted out at appropriate times.

For example, "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha cunt."

Or "... You're high right now, aren't you?"

Or the ever-popular "*blinks slowly* ...you think?"

You've all seen me use these, and when I do, you all know pretty much what I mean and how I feel. These are therefore more than just a quirk: they're a useful tool, an instantly-deployable and immediately-recognizable set of responses to recurent phenomena.

I might prove useful to the bord as a whole to develop one or more collective boilerplate responses to "shocking" "provocative" "edgy" attempts at "humor," and for any and all board members to feel free to deploy said responses as appropriate—instantly, consistently, and without waffling or over-explanation. A quoting of the offending passage, followed by, I dunno, something along the lines of "Very funny. Only, y'know, not."—makes the point (and will make you feel better) without belaboring the righteous indigation or making the offender feel a cool rebellious martyr to political correctness gone maaaaad.

The response should be consistent—imagine every attempt at racist humor being met by an identical response, each time from a different poster! Strength in unity! Evidence of the shared values of the community!—and it should be instantaneous.

And it should be damning, and it should be pithy. And, most importantly, it should require no follow-up: I think what gives these knuckleheads a sense of legitimacy is the endless discussion that surrounds their transgressions. Better, I think, to just slap 'em (in effect, showing them where the uncrossable line is) and move on.

If you are Right and they are Wrong, you don't need to defend or justify or "educate"—just smack 'em down and get on with your life. They'll soon either wise up or move along.

But it's got to be common property, and y'all can't be shy about using it—otherwise, the natural response will be, "Oh, that's Jack Fear, that's just his way," or "Ah, the patented Flyboy put-down post," or whatever. But if we all do it, it's no longer a personal quirk—it's a demonstration of the values of the community.

Thoughts?
 
 
Jack Fear
12:18 / 02.12.04
It occurs to me how grotesquely self-important the above may seem—like I'm saying "You know what the problem is? You all ought to be more like ME!"

But, y'know, maybe you ought.
 
 
Ganesh
12:22 / 02.12.04
I think that's not a bad tactic, Jack. The problem, as ever, is achieving any sort of consistency or unity in terms of board response - which is, IMHO, a function of our varying perceptions of poster intent. Didn't we try something similar with one of the Knodge's manifestations? Sock-puppets confuse the issue too.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:29 / 02.12.04
Although I do it, after a fashion, with "quoted without comment", I really don't think it's a very good idea as a universal. First, because it allows the person to feel that they *are* a rebellious free-thinker faced with totally homogeneous opposition. Second, because it limits people's abilities to engage with the other party's position, or to talk about their own experiences - for example, a gay, black or Jewish member might have a particular perspective they would like to employ.

If, as PsionicNurse has shown, many different and varied condemnations will be written off as first an idiosyncratic response by a loner and then by the idea that a mob is pulling in people who would otherwise not think such things, a boilerplate response would only exacerbate the situation.

It may be worth having a form of words on these issues, as I suggested on NSFW images - see thread. However, that should be a proper form of words - not an "I am Warren Ellis and I am better than you" put-down - and should allow for the addition of individual perspectives.
 
 
Spaniel
12:31 / 02.12.04
I think what gives these knuckleheads a sense of legitimacy is the endless discussion that surrounds their transgressions.

I suppose I'm unsure as to whether the "endless discussion" is of no value. I think it can be argued that such discussion can be informative, interesting and worthwhile.

It can also be so much saggy fat, of course.
 
 
Aertho
19:46 / 02.12.04
I think there are a whole bunch of Red States over here filled with knuckleheads that are having fun with the free world while we talk about how wrong they are/were/will be.

I was there at the beginning. I thought Haus was being quick to behead the poor kid. I thought the PsionicNurse(shouldn't the post's intent be obvious from the poster's name?) was being a bit Chappelle Show for everyone's benefit. I admit, I chuckled. I honestly had no idea that smelling of cabbage was a gypsy thing. However, the jokes, whether in general or in particular, fell flat. But then the sky split open, the seas turned red, and we found ourselves in Policy.

Which makes sense. I read through all this becasue I was there at the beginning, and I had that Chappelle Show response thing nagging me. I learned a lot. I learned CroMagnet probly voted with them Red States.

Tom Coates was right about gauging the intent of the poster. For me, the poster's intent was immediately understood. Marvel Mythology Surgery is rather absurd, and so is a name like PsionicNurse. So I could understand the rationale of developing a sequence of absurd questions about Wanda Maximoff.

But Jack Fear was right that there IS a line that was crossed, and it deserves a slap, or a spanking. I like the idea of developing a succinct copy/pasted "strike one" as that slap. I think it merits experimentation. Whether PsionicNurse was being authentically racist can be guaged by his/her response to that slap.

In MY ideal world, I would've have responded to PsionicNurse's inital comment myself and said that while I got the whole sarcasm of it, such comments were a bit transgressionary and shouldn't be part of Barbelith -because it's a great place, and we all ought to be cool people. To which, he/she would've said, "oh, okay, cool man." and cleaned up the question.

That ideal world is pretty much based on what Jack Fear said in "where do we go from here?" over on Switchboard, about the proliferation of Red State ethnocentricity, and why the cultural condition cannot be about amputation, but about actual and assertive disinfection. Certain behavior is just wrong. But it can be helped, and overcome.
 
 
HCE
20:43 / 02.12.04
off-topic (sort of) "nightclub dwight (seems to suggest that books about white people are inherently bad)"

I specified the race of the characters in the book in response to something I hear often -- where white painters, writers, or characters in books are simply painters, writers, or characters, in contrast to latino painters, women writers, or gay characters. Sorry, I should've explained that.
 
 
Aertho
20:50 / 02.12.04
You're suggesting that the everything deserves specifiers? That's kind of absurd too. If your line of questioning concerns the "race" of said subject, then yes, include specifiers. If not, who cares? Often, we include racial specifiers when in regards to cultural minorites. But we all know all this already... Where is your original post? Books?
 
 
HCE
21:36 / 02.12.04
Chad: care to continue via PM, or in another thread? I really shouldn't have posted here.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
02:05 / 03.12.04
Haus, I think your proposed compromise is fine.

I'm interested in this idea of "troll capital", though. It's cocked. Maybe a separate thread.
 
 
Lord Morgue
05:51 / 03.12.04
What, you want me on-topic? You wouldn't like me if I was on-topic.
Alright, you axed for it.
Haus, you manufactured this entire situation. You could have mentioned in-thread that PsionicWhatever's joke could be construed as offensive, and not just crap, and zhe would in all likelyhood have apologised right there, but you chose to wade in, chainsaw revving, like you were, well, ME, in both threads, when you know full well that you're going to provoke an angry defence, with both your choice of language and accusations of racism. And here we are at the butt end of a polarising flame-out that's left a trail of battered egos and hurt feelings that is probably making the average Barbetroll GREEN WITH ENVY. Which I can only assume is what you wanted. Perhaps we could arrange a banner that says "HAUS HAS THE BIGGEST DICK IN BARBELITH", maybe that'd be mores satisfactories to ya? It should at least be of concern to you that this is ME lecturing YOU on etiquette, if nothing else.
 
 
tituba
07:05 / 03.12.04
Tan Hauser Schuster-Slatt
I feel now that, since I never wanted actually to ban PN, at least not *yet*

And I'm the illiterate one?

Ganesh:
PsionicNurse, your 'apology' was full of at least mildly jaw-dropping assumptions but, for me, this one takes the biscuit:

Perhaps one day when you experience true, hate-filled bigotry first hand, you’ll start another thread and you’ll have something worthwhile to prattle on about, instead of trying so hard to convince people that you’re non-discriminatory.

The fact that others are not openly playing the 'first hand victim of bigotry' card does not mean they are completely uninformed by experience in this area - so don't fucking assume, please.

Ganesh, that comment was more specifically aimed at Tan Hauser, so sorry if you were in the line of fire, dear. Religious intolerance...snicker. If we're going to act like children about wiping out prejudice, then why not start with the names that some people are using. I find the use of the name Ganesh offensive.

I am a practicing member of the third largest religion in the world (900 million) and for someone to use such an important aspect of a religion I regard as sacred, as a screen name on a message board in such a frivolous and inconsiderate way is utterly deplorable.

This has been bothering me for the longest time and I had always assumed that this kind of impertinence in regards to religion was acceptable. Now, that the sensitivity surrounding race/gender issues has been pointed out to me, I feel I have to make my opinions heard. In an act of civility, I would like to request the person using the name Ganesh, which should actually have been spelled Ganesha, to change to a better-suited name that doesn't make light of something that so many people regard as sacrosanct.

Perhaps I can suggest the name of a nice Hindu Sage you can be tongue-in-cheek about...

Chad: Battle Mode:
Marvel Mythology Surgery is rather absurd, and so is a name like PsionicNurse.

Next time I'll put more thinking into selecting a name or perhaps you can give me a few tips in picking the ideal handle, Chad: Battle Mode.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:39 / 03.12.04
PsionicNurse: I said in the Comic Books thread that you were not worth trying to engage with. Nothing you have just said in your trollsome attempt to insult me has altered this.

Morque:

If I had not already freely admitted that my response was extreme some pages earlier, and much of the thread had been devoted to working out how to deal with this situation in future, that would have been a very trenchant point. As it is -

Other people's posts don't just help you to contribute meaningfully to the thread - they also contain useful and fascinating information.

"Accusations of racism" I have no problem with when the person being accused is being racist. That, it seems to me, is the one situation in which the polite compulsion not to accuse people of racism is abrogated. Very few people have argued that PsionicNurse's humour was not racist. Some, like Cromagnet, have argued that it so common to call gypsies tramps and thieves (sorry) that it should not be remarked upon. Chad appears to think that racist jokes are OK, as long as they are jokes and the person making them has a funny name. I am not entirely sure that I have understood his position.

However. Chad said:

In MY ideal world, I would've have responded to PsionicNurse's inital comment myself and said that while I got the whole sarcasm of it, such comments were a bit transgressionary and shouldn't be part of Barbelith -because it's a great place, and we all ought to be cool people. To which, he/she would've said, "oh, okay, cool man." and cleaned up the question.

(Incidentally, Chad, I don't think sarcasm means what you think it means)

And now you have said:

You could have mentioned in-thread that PsionicWhatever's joke could be construed as offensive, and not just crap, and zhe would in all likelyhood have apologised right there

First, you are both fantasising about the reaction. I can say with at least as much confidence that she would not have realised the error of her ways and apologised, but instead have complained about PC gone mad, as per. It's taken - what - a couple of dozen people registering disgust to squeeze out an apology of crpytocarassian gracelessness? However, that is by the by.

The point is, you didn't. You, Morque, have been hanging around the Marvel Trivia like a jackal around a rotted corpse. You felt no need in the 24 hours between PsionicNurses' original post and my response to do this. Were you, improbably, not online? Did you not notice? Or did you just not really bother to think about it? How about everyone else who read the thread? Dudley? Finderwolf, who has pushed so hard for respectful language around Native Americans - those "alcoholic casino employees"? Solitaire Rose, who quoted the racist "joke" in his reply without comment?

Who knows - maybe if anyone else had decided to step in - maybe you, Morque - with their own gentle explanation that O is for Offensive, maybe the fantasy of acknowledgement and reconciliation detailed above would have followed. Maybe then Natalie Portman would have abseiled into your bedrooms and made long, slow love on a tigerskin rug. Who knows? But nobody did. Not one visitor to the thread before me thought it was worth mentioning. Natalie spent another lonely night. This is why we are now talking about a thread in the Policy to note offensive language - because some people on Barbelith do not seem to think it is very important that we don't spend our lives fighting through armies of drivel about smelly gypsies, dirty povvos, baby-killing Bengalis and conspiratorial Jewish noncelizards. That's pretty disappointing, but it's where we are, so the others are going to have to deal with it.

If you have a magic wand response, please do wave it in future, and we'll see how many sincere, non-defensive apologies and promises to try harder in future we get. Hopefully, lots. In the meantime, I have already stated that, since I never expected PsionicNurse to be banned, my immediate, angry response was unecessarily rhetorical. I admit that, with rather better grace than the non-apology which has been accepted by the board from PsionicNurse. We have been discussing how to deal with this in the future.
 
  

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