SOC.MEN MODERATION DISCUSSION
- From: "PolishKnight" <marek1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 May 2006 14:16:45 -0700
Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:
On Wed, 31 May 2006 08:37:19 -0400, PolishKnight <marek1@xxxxxxx>[edit]
But the topic of discussion is whether people who want
to discuss non "men's rights" related issues are being scared off.
That's the "holy grail" to preventing the creation of a
moderated soc.men.
I think the unspoken assumption is that "men's issues" people are
moderate in terms of men's rights or even disagree with a need for
them. So, when they see someone like Rory - who clearly believes that
men are treated unjustly - get torn apart by Andre, just for saying
that there have been a few good effects from feminism, they are going
to expect even worse to happen to them.
Let's try to put this into perspective: I think Andre's bark is worse
than his bite. You and I both know how bad things can get so
if the worst that happens to them is some yapping, then they
should consider themselves lucky. And no, I'm not just being thick
skinned here. Allow me to elaborate:
Look at the side thread on marital rape. The emotional knee-jerk
reactions have been pretty interesting, haven't they?
Imagine if someone posted in talk.rape the suggestion that there
have been a few good effects from rape. So Andre's reaction
considering
the debate tactics of many non-moderate pro-feminist posters is
somewhat
understandable and reasonable. I disagree with it, but I do understand
it.
They're in soc.men, not soc.feminism so they should expect some
opposition, yes?
The question is how to best address the creation of a forum that
fosters discussion and debate without breaking out into flame
wars considering the emotional baggage carried on all sides.
It seems silly to me to obsess over the potentially hurt
feelings of so-called moderates as if they're a bunch
of easily frightened squirrels. After all, their position
is institutionalized and they usually will fall back upon
that as a last resort when they don't have anything else
to throw into the debate.
As far as newsgroup creation goes, however, it is significant. If we
do not create a group able to attract new readers, it will wither and
die.
Overall, the issues debated here are not moderate by definition.
If there is a poster who wants to bring up a non-men's-issue topic,
the main danger is it will be ignored rather than treated with
hostility.
So that said, if someone is moderate they may not want to discuss
such issues at all. If they need a lot of handholding to discuss
controversial topics, it's questionable at how useful they'll be as
posters. I don't think it's a problem. Nearly everyone loves to
discuss these issues and doesn't need a lot of prodding.
But maybe I just know a lot of "extreme" people. :-)
Once again, look at the marital rape topic. A poster who really
didn't want to participate got drawn in just by lurking on the thread.
I think the main problem with the forum now is getting
rid of the spam. And also not feeding the trolls.
This brings us to another crossroads: We really need to
control the troll problem. Just as moderates can be scared
away by harsh debate tactics, trolls are drawn in by responding
to them at all. If we stop responding to them, they'll go away.
But certainly, flame wars and hate campaigns cross
the line and I think those should be prohibited by
either side.
That raises the whole question of how to moderate. This is pretty
complicated and probably better left until after the RFD is published.
Agreed. I don't know if it's even possible. It's my opinion that
a lot of posters are drawn by crossposts. People criticize cross
posts but a lot of readers no doubt started as someone who
saw a thread from a newsgroup and read it and thought
"Gee, I didn't know about that..."
I suspect that you are unusually thick-skinned. From my perspective
as an observer, I would say that they are "playing rough". But then
they know that you can handle it.
I don't think Andre or GA have been that tough on me. On the contrary,
they've said some very nice things at times.
Knoxy is not in a very good position to lecture about
posting morality for obvious reasons. I like her too
as a poster, but she's on double-secret probation
considering the type of forum she primarily hangs out at.
Well she clearly is working from a different value system than I am in
some areas, but we do have some common ground. I do think it is worth
paying close attention to her opinions.
I agree. I think she's come up with some very interesting posts
that I would miss if they weren't there.
I just had an interesting thought: We could have a "moderated forum"
in the middle of soc.men. Here's how:
I could create a cgi-encoder/decoder on my own website that would
take people's posts and password protect them. They could take
the URL and post it in leau of the message text. The URL would
prompt for a passwords I could issue by email. If someone shares
the password publically, I could disable it. The website could
remember passwords making it easy to view posts.
What use is this? I wonder if it might be useful to educate people as
to proper posting etiquette by cutting them off from the responses
to certain interesting threads. Let's say, for example, Sharon
wrote something pretty interesting but crossposted it to AUK.
I could post my response but she would be unable to read it
while other regulars could.
That would drive them nuts.
Same thing with Andre: If Andre is browbeating a poster, you would
have the option to give that poster a password and they could
post their responses through a URL generated by the site. I could
give the poster the option to hide their response from other, select,
posters. By the same token, if Andre is peeved at me he could
restrict me from reading his responses.
What I'm getting across is that reading our response
is a PRIVILEGE we grant them by posting. There is no reason
we have to grant that privilege to EVERYONE.
What do you think?
[...]
That is a factor in much of the dynamics on soc.men too. People use a
lot of emotionally loaded language which provokes negative reactions
from others.
Agreed. But at the same time, I have noticed that even
so-called "moderate" opposition posters will start out nice
with something like "Feminism is just about equality" and
end up with: "You're a bunch of woman haters. That's why
you're LOSERS!" and continue down that road rather than
saying something like "That's a lot of food for thought,
gentlemen. I still disagree with you and my position is
in the status quo" and continue participating in the
newsgroup from there.
Yes, this sort of thing has happened many times.
soc.men is an evolving forum. When it was started, it was mostly
a lot of regulars who were PRO-feminist posters thwarting away
anti-feminists. At the same time, a lot of bad blood has been
retained from it's USENET origins.
Consequently, Andre and GA and others may have the general
philosophy in that if they know they're going to be fired at,
why bother sending out a welcoming party? I disagree with that
philosophy because I think a lot of the fun is watching
a so-called moderate expose themselves for what they truly
are and break down into their component parts.
It definitely isn't just extreme men's rights supporters who are doing
the flaming and fighting.
Sadly, I think the opposition has succeeded in poisoning the forum
in some ways.
Andre and GA remind me (and this is an admission of middle age
when I use this kind of analogy) of a golfer story: Golfers
who take the game seriously to the point of throwing tantrums
on the field really need to ask themselves the point of the game.
Whatever that point is... it's not to have a miserable time.
WHOEVER posts to soc.men, moderated or otherwise, should
enjoy themselves and find the experience positively educating
in some way (whether they know it or not :-)
I do think that it's quite workable for a moderated newsgroup[...]
to filter out spam and obvious garbage just to limit the
number of threads if anything. This would help to create
more space for the mythical "non men's rights" poster and
moderates.
There seems to be general agreement on light moderation, but we have
not yet worked out how light or how to impliment it.
Here's how I think it would work:
An engine would reject all posts from non-approved posters.
Each post would have instructions at the bottom on how to
register and a URL with posting guidelines.
These instructions would probably be to send an email to
the shared moderator email with their first post and, if cleared,
they would be put on the list. If they're bad, get a majority of
moderators
to agree before taking them off of the list. This means no single
moderator could retaliate by kicking someone off of the group.
I personally would love to see a "spam" type filter that rejects
posts containing the following keywords: "kewl" "azzwipe"
"stoopid" but maybe that's hoping for too much. Of course,
if regards becomes a bad keyword then I'll have to deal with that. :-)
regards,
PolishKnight
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