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How do you tell when something's unacceptable on Barbelith? Changing to become a discussion on the future of Barbelith.

  
  

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ONLY NICE THINGS
16:44 / 05.11.06
We've just had a lengthy discussion which started with the idea that someone, doing something, had been "fairly well told it was unacceptable". Looking at the actual discussion of that particular thing, we found that two or three people had expressed dissatisfaction with the thing in question. This caused some problems, as it suggested to some that this was being taken as the standard for something to be identified as "unacceptable" - that is, as a matter of board policy the activity was not permitted - and suggested to others that no such policy existed, and that rather it was one of a number of behaviours which different people had different feelings about and were free to express them.

Now, it seems to me that there are some things that are unacceptable on Barbelith - that is things which are absolutely not permitted, and which, if there is general agreement you are doing them, will lead to official or quasi-official censure and ultimately banning. These include but are not limited to holocaust denial, the persecution of other members of Barbelith on the grounds of race, gender or sexuality, the persistent persecution ("stalking") of an individual on Barbelith, be that Barbelith-based or spilling over onto other online or physical areas, and unapologetically racist, sexist or homophobic views. Note "unapologetically", which has a double meaning here - one can get around it either by apologising or, as we have seem, by embarking on a lengthy apologia, in which one denies all possible interpretations of your actions as such.

Which I think is worth noting - there's a distinction between unacceptable things where the thing is unacceptable, and the discussion is about whether the thing has been done - like Holocaust denial - and unacceptable behaviour, where the discussion is about whether the behaviour is unacceptable - for example, the recent banning of Paranoidwriter, where the issue was unacceptable behaviour generally rather than a single unacceptable thing.

Which, I think, is an important distinction, and on which needs to inform what we mean by "unacceptable". As far as I am concerned, "unacceptable" must be taken to mean something like "leading to immediate and strong criticism, and with repetition opening discussions about banning". Beneath that, there is a stratum of stuff that one or more people dislike - and, actually, something can be very widely disliked without being unacceptable. For example, Dragon's uncritical repetitions of right-wing ideology on immigration was widely disliked, but was only shading towards unacceptable where it was actively racist.

So, I guess the question here is whether there is a tipping point where something that some people react negatively to becomes something that we can say from then on is unacceptable behaviour, or an unacceptable attitude, on Barbelith? Is it just about what is likely to get you banned if kept up, or is there something more to it than that?
 
 
Quantum
14:00 / 07.11.06
I think it varies a lot, and what is unacceptable to only a few leads to them leaving the board, and unacceptable to many leading to teh banhammer. I took a brief sabbatical to avoid Dragon, for example, because I thought what he was saying was unacceptable *to me*. Likewise DEDI and others, who were never banned but certainly skating on thin virtual ice. There are posters who still avoid Barbelith because of things they see as unacceptable that were tolerated (I'm thinking Shadowsax especially but you know what I mean).
 
 
All Acting Regiment
14:34 / 07.11.06
The danger is that in having a rule to chuck someone out for doing one bad thing, we might conceivably be preventing them from doing other, good things, or at any rate advancing to the stage where they can do good things. Yet, sometimes we need to get rid of people because the things they do are so bad. So, the best way of resolving the situation would seem to be to have constant discussion about exactly how our rules are going to work.
 
 
iconoplast
00:43 / 19.11.06
I've watched a lot (Well, It seems that way, though only ShadowSax really sticks out in memory) of big explosive threads that culminated in bans.

And it's seemed, every time, that there was a point of no return reached almost immediately, long before the decision to ban was made, where the banee-to-be makes it clear that ze will not apologize. Generally, this is because, for whatever reason, no apology should be needed. Ze sometimes apologizes for other things, including our shortcomings in reading hir posts.

And I think that's always been what gets you banned: refusing to adapt/cooperate/apologize.

And if I were going to make a Rule 1 for How to Decide: Ban / No Ban, I'd go with: "Unwillingness to adapt."

Because, while we may not realize it, Barbelith is a foreign culture to most people.

Thinking about it like a foreign country, in terms of immigration, we essentially are expecting an acclimatizing period when their foreign accents are kind of cute, and then an expectation that they quit messing around and get down to immanetizing whatever it was they came here to immanetize.
 
 
Quantum
11:08 / 13.02.07
This jewish blonde woman walks into a bar, *bump!* it was a bar full of misogynists.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:20 / 13.02.07
And, on the same note, Kay bobbing up with reasons to be sneerful in Barbannoy has reminded me again of Barbelith's traditional problems with dealing with people who vigorously and energetically deny things that may be really quite evident to others.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:04 / 14.02.07
The danger is that in having a rule to chuck someone out for doing one bad thing, we might conceivably be preventing them from doing other, good things, or at any rate advancing to the stage where they can do good things

It's not really a danger is it? This is just a place where people write shit to each other.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
13:21 / 14.02.07
Take that back! Take it back!
 
 
Evil Scientist
07:43 / 15.02.07
The danger is that in having a rule to chuck someone out for doing one bad thing, we might conceivably be preventing them from doing other, good things, or at any rate advancing to the stage where they can do good things.

Although that doesn't really apply to Enamon or Lionheart does it? Both suits were apparently resurrected for the express purpose of getting into an argument.

I think that utter refusal to apologise, or even discuss rationally, one bad thing that someone has posted is justifiable grounds for a ban. In order to consider potential future worth of a member surely we have to factor in their willingness to actually act in a mature manner when things get heated?
 
 
Quantum
09:28 / 15.02.07
Also ratio of entertainment/asshattery. I've noticed that the most common response to unacceptable things is mockery and challenge, often leading to the perpetrator wandering off then reappearing months (sometimes days) later to continue in the same vein. Actual banning is rare as hen's teeth and an unrealistic option IMHO until Tom has ban-sidekicks, so maybe we should be wondering what to do about those folk. The live-and-let-live second chance since it's been a while approach seems to be default, unless someone* challenges them on it again and we go through the 'you're holding a grudge vs. you're still a pillock' debate and the original issue is never resolved.

So. Sweeping under the carpet forgive-and-forget, or should posters be answerable for their misdemeanours until they change their behaviour? (John, I hope you don't mind if I use you as an example of successful change to counterpoint those who hope a bit of time passing will make everyone forget they are an asshat).

*Haus, almost always.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
10:18 / 15.02.07
Tom has made it clear that he isn't willing to institute banning sidekicks so let's not bother to go over that again.
 
 
Quantum
10:56 / 15.02.07
OK. I'm all for forgetting about banning completely as most board-policing comes down to a ticking off or mass uproar, social pressure is our equivalent of actual real-life moderator powers. Like dogs with rubber teeth, let's practice our scary barking.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:24 / 15.02.07
Well, if Tom is not going to be involved in the Board, and is not going to deputise, it's a bit of a non-issue. The problem there being that people who are either not susceptible to social pressure because they cannot countenance the possibility of their opinions not being the right opinions (Shadowsax), or who are not susceptible to social pressure because they are not interested in being a functioning part of a functioning board (Enamon and Lionheart), or who are not susceptible to social pressure because of mental or emotional problems that make it unrealistic to expect them to be able to respond in a productive fashion to stimuli (Paranoidwriter, 33), it just becomes a question of clinging grimly on until Tom can be induced to turn up and ban. If he turns up and decides not to ban, we're in a situation where somebody would remain on the board despite a number of people having believed in the desirability of and called for a ban. This is problematic not least because Tom is often not following the ongoing discussions, and also because Tom's words have a perhaps unavoidable weight (since he is the person with his hand on the lever) - see the response to his comments on the Head Shop in "moderating the Head Shop", and for that matter the recent Jokes thread. That's clearly an issue - only people who are prepared to play can be subjected to social pressure, and there are enough people on Barbelith that somebody can usually find a couple of defenders no matter how asshatty they have been.

On:

The live-and-let-live second chance since it's been a while approach seems to be default, unless someone* challenges them on it again and we go through the 'you're holding a grudge vs. you're still a pillock' debate and the original issue is never resolved.

There we have precedent. Vladimir J Baptiste made a racist comment about Indians, it was made clear to him that this had caused offence, he refused to accept the validity of that offence, and thus reserved the right to make racially offensive comments at any time in the future, since they were not racist, and if you thought they were you were just being humourless and oversensitive. Eventually, a ruling was obtained that if you did not undertake not to insult other races at will in future, you had to be banned. Unless that has changed, that's where we are. There's a question mark over ignorance that provides a degree of leeway - Dragon was certainly making racist statements, but was innoculated, it seemed, by it being clear that his life experience was very limited, and something similar is probably going on currently.

Also, as has been mentioned, it's very hard for Barbelith to deal with people who exhibit unacceptable behaviour while insisting that they are not exhibiting unacceptable behaviour, and who are not induced to moderate their behaviour by social pressure, because the power to ban is in the hands of one person, who has usually not seen the issue develop over time and in context. These week-long banning threads are the final resort in dealing with this, unless someone something so egregious that not even Barbelith can find a way to excuse it. So, the social model seems flawed in its assumption that everyone places the same value on and has the same ideals for Barbelith...
 
 
Spatula Clarke
17:36 / 15.02.07
Well, if Tom is not going to be involved in the Board, and is not going to deputise, it's a bit of a non-issue.

Although if both of those things are going to be true - that Tom is going to continue to be absent from the baord and yet isn't prepared to hand some power over to others - we're effectively doomed to keep on going through these same motions forever, until everybody becomes bored of the game and gives up on Barbelith completely.

I don't believe that the board can ever hope to function properly unless at least one of those two situations is changed. On a really basic level, I don't really understand why Tom still gets to make decisions that affect the board's structure and future in this way if he isn't otherwise playing an active role here.
 
 
jentacular dreams
13:28 / 16.02.07
I don't believe that the board can ever hope to function properly unless at least one of those two situations is changed

But how dysfunctional is it currently? How many members who deserve banning are currently active and trolling? I think the current system works, albeit in a somewhat tortuous manner, otherwise the board would have collapsed under the combination of trolling and 'troll-induced' snarkiness.

Also, isn't it concievable that Tom's distance from the board is an advantage in some senses, in that as he often comes to an issue after the worst has been said (as opposed to following it in real time), he may approach these decisions with something of a cooler outlook?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:14 / 16.02.07
Well, the first thing is that we aren't just talking about trolling here. The second is probably back to the "topics of concern" threads. We don't get much trolling, but we also don't get that many members, and that is because it is often quite difficult to get in. The current system is oriented towards minimising risk, in part because of the difficulty of dealing with risks once they are inside the walls. So, day-to-day we don't have huge problems, usually. This is, however, the function of a specific structure.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:27 / 16.02.07
On a really basic level, I don't really understand why Tom still gets to make decisions that affect the board's structure and future in this way if he isn't otherwise playing an active role here.

Well, on a basic level, because he owns it. I don't think there's a convincing argument against that. There are quite possibly arguments of the balance of centralised authority against level of interaction, though, certainly. However, if Tom decided tomorrow to paint the site blue, or shut it down, or stream sheisse movies in an embedded window, that's really his choice. On t'other hand, if he wants to improve the experience of Barbelith as a board, whhich I think he does, how to go about that does warrant discussion.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
21:19 / 16.02.07
Yes, Tom owns the board - the space it sits on, the code - but that's clearly not the same thing as being an active part of it.

I'm just... look, we do this constantly. We talk about what's wrong with the place, what's right with it and what we'd like to see changed. But every single time we end up with precisely the same caveat being made - that there's no point in even considering things that Tom has either said he's incapable of putting into practice or has simply said he doesn't want. Now, the first of those I can empathise with completely - he's a busy man, he's not getting paid anything to fix software issues or develop the software behind the community in any significant way. I can totally get that.

But the second, I can't. Not only does it run contrary to the basic principles of the kind of community that Barbelith has always, in the background, supposed to have been - self-moderated, self-regulating - but it's also at odds with Tom's own stated desires for the board. Tom's said he wouldn't be happy with devloving any more power than he already has? Okay, but personally I don't think that one person's say-so enough of a reason to nip all discussion on the matter (on any matter) in the bud, regardless of who that person is.

So take the above post as a venting of continued frustration. I apologise for posting it here and derailing the thread, but Nina's post was the "Christ, not again" moment. Not her fault, because she's simply telling it like it is. I just don't like the way it is and I can't see an enormous amount of point in even trying to work out our options on topics like banning, naming, moderation policy, basic board structure, whatever, when we can't do anything practical about any of those issues if they require more than just good intentions and nice ideas.
 
 
illmatic
07:26 / 17.02.07
Apologies for going off-topic also, but to follow Randy, in my view what's wrong with the board is there's no sense of clear direction for the future and where it's going, how it's going to change, ifchange is possible or if it's going to happen at all. Without this , any conclusions reached in any of the Policy threads are a bit meaningless really.

Personally, I would like to get some clear sense from Tom of where exactly we stand. If he is time-pushed (and my understanding is that he is, very, and I sympathise) and the problems with the boards coding render it impossible to alter moderation structure etc etc, I'd like to see that clearly stated and a timeline for potential changes or absence of same outlined. I'd like a clear statement of what is and is not possible, and what is likely to happen in the future - even if it's "the board is going to close in six months"* - would be better than flapping around in limbo, which is what is occuring currently.

*Obviously not the most desirable - what I'd expect is more along the lines of "I'm too busy
- expect not substantial changes for the next year". At least then, you have a point in the future to fix things to, and a date on which to come back and readdress the situation.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
09:28 / 17.02.07
Hear hear, to what Eggs and Randy said. I wouldn't mind the fact that people who disagree with the norms of people on the board start fires for attention if the policy for getting rid of them didn't at some point involve having to PM Tom to find out whether he's been looking at the relevent threads. I think it's daft that change can't happen because Tom doesn't know how to program it or doesn't have the time and won't work with those who do. This is crazy.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:59 / 17.02.07
Personally, I would like to get some clear sense from Tom of where exactly we stand.

We've had this discussion lots of times and my understanding is that no major changes will happen to the code or the running of the board. So we accept the board essentially as it is, or move on. I think thats frustrating for people invested in Barbelith, rather undermines any sense that Barbelith is shaped by a community, and probably means that Barbelith will cease to function at some point in the future, but I think Tom has been very clear about the possibilities for change.
 
 
illmatic
11:08 / 17.02.07
If that's true (not saying it isn't, but I wasn't a 100% clear on future possibilities or lack of same), that's a really sad and frustrating situation, especially as a quick surf of the net will show one all kinds of innovations being made in the area of social software. Oh well.
 
 
illmatic
09:42 / 18.02.07
I talked with another board member about this last night, and, like me, they couldn't remember if:

A) As per Nina's post, Tom has stated that he isn't willing to devolve power, or if he just doesn't have the technical capability to do so.

and

B) As per Lurid's post, if he has said there will be no major changes ever, or if it's just not possible now.

The point of my post above was to push for this sort of clarity. I'd be happier if I knew exactly where we stood, and so would several other people I suspect. If one is working within limits, it's nice to know what they are.
 
 
Lurid Archive
14:35 / 18.02.07
Well, have a look at this post. We can't get Cal to implement changes,

People in the industry with less expertise and responsibility (and more time) than Cal are regularly paid £700-£1000 a day to do this kind of work....I don't think hiring him is going to be a practical option.


and we can't get volunteers on the board to help either,

Going to people volunteering from outside doesn't really help much either, since it would require me meeting them, working out the functionality with them, them implementing it on a parallel version and then me incorporating it back into Barbelith, with my oversight and on my server, without losing any of the information or posts that you guys have created over the last several years.

And if you read the next couple of posts, you see that paying for changes isn't a viable option either.

As Tom says, he himself is the bottleneck. And the reason he is the bottleneck is that he is unable or unwilling to devolve any power. I'm never clear which it is and Tom himself always seems a touch vague on this point, since his replies always tend to be framed as if such a devolution of power is automatically off the table (for instance, above, the only way that volunteers can work is if they and all their work is personally vetted by Tom). I don't really understand why this is, but it seems to be fairly constant. From my perspective, Tom is oddly evasive on this topic. His reply here to Olulabelle is a good example of this:

Tom: ...I'm just fundamentally uncomfortable with people I don't know enormously well IRL working on the site....
Lula: ...If we were a company we would have to hire total strangers and we wouldn't be thinking that they were going to wipe all the conversations.
Tom: ....Frankly, if I was running this as a job, I'd probably have time to learn how to program!

The upshot is that all changes are dependent on Tom, and Tom's free time. So, conceivably, there are changes possible but practically I think we have to assume they are going to be limited to fairly minor ones.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
14:43 / 18.02.07
The other thing that Tom has said before now, though, is that the board may well have run its course and could conceivably be shut down in the not-too-distant future. I can't see a good reason why closing it entirely - or letting it die slowly or stagnate due to inaction - should be preferable to devolving some power.

The argument about potentially losing current posts and threads doesn't seem to hold an enormous amount of water either, because it's surely easily avoided by backing the database up before any changes are implemented?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
10:59 / 19.02.07
Randy, I just want to make it clear that I completely agree with and would like to throw my weight behind everything you've said in this thread.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:22 / 20.02.07
Thanks Nina.

I really wish I'd started this in a new thread now, because it's important stuff and I just know it's going to drift away and get lost.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
09:03 / 21.02.07
Well I don't think you should be retiscent about copying what you've written into a new thread and inviting discussion. It's a topic that we steer around a lot.
 
 
illmatic
12:33 / 21.02.07
One of us should copy it over. I thought about doing this and PMing Tom to get him to respond. The fact I haven't done so yet says something about my current level of commitment to the place.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:28 / 22.02.07
You're doing better than me.
 
 
Tom Coates
08:09 / 26.02.07
Hey everyone. Okay, let's start off with the normal description of my current state of mind. Basically at the moment, although I'm not massively overworked as such, I'm in the middle of a three month long semi-breakdown about Yahoo and moving to the US which sees me going to therapy twice a week, taking beta-blockers by the handfull and having semi-regular panic attacks, resulting occasionally in me bursting into tears in the office. It is fair to say I'm under a certain amount of stress right now and am frankly unable to keep all the things I want to keep going going. I am trying to make this as non-obvious as possible from the outside, so please be discreet, but frankly I'm a bit of a wreck.

This means, I suspect, that we should just face the fact that one way or another, there's not going to be anything done on Barbelith by me for the foreseeable future. I just don't have the brainspace to take on something else. To be honest, this has been on the horizon for around eighteen months as I've gradually got more and more stressed out, tense and miserable, and explains a lot of the inertia we've had. Very sorry guys I wish I could handle it better, but I don't appear to be able to.

With regards to the devolution of power and functionality on the board, it's a bit more complicated than you guys have made it sound. I'm the custodian of all of your e-mail addresses, passwords and usernames and I'm also here to make sure that nothing bad happens to all the work you've put in. None of us want the board to disappear. The result of this is that I don't feel comfortable with the idea of letting people I don't know or trust work on the code directly. I don't want the board to disappear, I don't want the database to be erased or fucked up, I don't want your personal information or private messages to be accessible to strangers.

I'm getting to a place where there are a few other people other than Cal who have expressed an interest in doing some work around the place and I know them enough to think that it might be a functional possibility at some point in the future, but really that's all I can say. Functional possibility. If I had sufficient time to do the work I'd like to do, then I can promise you I'd do it, but the idea of devolution at the codebase end is ... well ... tricky.

One option would be to put the code out as open source, and let people fuck around with it as they wanted. Unfortunately, Cal wrote the code and I don't think he'd be comfortable with that (after previous conversations I've had with him).

In terms of building functionality that would allow people to manage power around the board more effectively, that absolutely has always been my goal, and it's a very distinct one from being able to change the code of the board itself. To repeat - while I cannot easily open up access to the code, I remain committed to devolving power in the board itself to you guys, however I cannot in good conscience commit to that happening at any point in the near future.

A time may come that with your permission I may have to hand over the board to someone else to maintain and look after long-term. But they'll need to be people that we all trust significantly, and I don't think we're at that point yet.
 
 
Tom Coates
08:14 / 26.02.07
To clarify again to Lurid, the reason that giving other people access to the code is something I'm not keen to do on the whole is because (1) that would give them access to personal and private information on board users (2) because it would give them the ability to remove or destroy great parts of the board and (3) because I'm not qualified to be the person that checks the code that comes in to make sure it's reasonable and won't cause damage. I'm not saying anyone would be evil, just clumsy, and I think it's pretty obvious that as the custodian of your data (at the moment anyway) I have a responsibility to make sure that I don't fuck it up on your behalf.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:28 / 26.02.07
Do we have anyone on Barbelith who thinks they have the time and ability to make changes to the code without fucking it up and has been a member for more than four years?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
12:02 / 26.02.07
Thanks for the clarification, Tom, and I hope things get better for you.
 
 
Spaniel
13:04 / 26.02.07
Ditto on Nina's question.

Tom, thanks for taking the time to check in, and thanks for being so honest. Chin up, mate
 
  

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