A discussion on what name calling and personal attacks mean at Ars

[Aurich]

The best advice I can offer for this conversation at this point is this:

If it's not a personal attack, don't take it so personally.

I really would urge people to be less sensitive. The amount of reports I have to field every single day that are just utterly inane hurt feelings over nothing is kind of depressing.

It's like trying to hit inbox zero when you have 100 emails waiting for you, and you have to look at every single one, knowing that 80% are a waste of your time.

I want this to be a comfortable and chill place to hang out. I want people to be able to not feel attacked. The goal is not to tell you to toughen up and take abuse or something. If someone tells you to fuck off, or calls you names I will take care of it.

But there is a level of "just let it go" that is healthy and necessary. People here talk so much shit about conservatives every single day. Just dumping on them nonstop. They're stupid, they're evil, they're morons, blah blah blah. Over and over and over. But one person says something mild about liberals in general annoying them and it's OH MY GOD DO SOMETHING.

We can be a place that clamps down on everyone, or we can allow some latitude as long as people don't overdo it and make it personal. We prefer the latter. What we're not going to do is pick sides.

If Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, and Harlan Crow, and Charles Koch are fair game for people to hate on then so is George Soros, and Jay Pritzker and Bill Gates. We don't care who's liberal or conservative, who's Catholic or Jewish or atheist.

Which means yes, please stop sending me reports that someone was mean about George Soros and therefore it's antisemitism. That's not how it works. Seriously, I had to close this one report three times last week.

 

[SunRaven01]

FWIW, I got thrown out of a thread for calling a senior Republican "a bit of a dick" so maybe a more gender neutral term.

(No, I didn't complain about it. I'm very "your house, your rules" and someone else on the same page used "pussy" pretty aggressively and repeatedly and got a ban. Otherwise I think it would have passed. There are 894 better things to gripe about and I got the whole context thing.)

Almost everyone has an asshole

 

[nimro]

I really would urge people to be less sensitive.

How dare you

 

[MichaelC]

We're all human, and everyone is striving to find what works the best.

View: https://youtu.be/nirzhJj-L7c

 

[Felix Aurelius]

This has got to be the only forum I've ever been on that has such open and honest communication with the mods, and actually discusses moderator action. I'm tremendously impressed with how well the staff has been handling contentious Current Events, and I'm proud to be a subscriber of a site that works so hard to keep the place enjoyable for everyone. You've built a rare and valuable space, here.

Not trying to simp too hard, but I really think it's worth highlighting that the moderators are actually engaging with the community and collaborating with people as opposed to the usual Internet dynamic of immature authoritarianism. I recently got banned from a dive-bar-tier community for disagreeing with the owner in a way even SunRaven would approve of, and it really highlights the difference in mod styles.

(Also, the fact that we acknowledge that Friday moderation fatigue exists is really refreshing. If I had to be the treatment plant for this place all week, I would absolutely lose it.)

 

[Snark218]

Almost everyone has an asshole

My sponge would beg to differ and feels extremely attacked

 

[ShuggyCoUk]

My sponge would beg to differ and feels extremely attacked

Absorbing, tell me more...

 

[SunRaven01]

My sponge would beg to differ and feels extremely attacked

Please ask your sponge if it understands what "almost" means.

 

[KGFish]

The best advice I can offer for this conversation at this point is this:

If it's not a personal attack, don't take it so personally.

I really would urge people to be less sensitive. The amount of reports I have to field every single day that are just utterly inane hurt feelings over nothing is kind of depressing.

It's like trying to hit inbox zero when you have 100 emails waiting for you, and you have to look at every single one, knowing that 80% are a waste of your time.

I want this to be a comfortable and chill place to hang out. I want people to be able to not feel attacked. The goal is not to tell you to toughen up and take abuse or something. If someone tells you to fuck off, or calls you names I will take care of it.

But there is a level of "just let it go" that is healthy and necessary. People here talk so much shit about conservatives every single day. Just dumping on them nonstop. They're stupid, they're evil, they're morons, blah blah blah. Over and over and over. But one person says something mild about liberals in general annoying them and it's OH MY GOD DO SOMETHING.

We can be a place that clamps down on everyone, or we can allow some latitude as long as people don't overdo it and make it personal. We prefer the latter. What we're not going to do is pick sides.

Mostly agree here. Not worth of a fine-grained discussion.

If Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, and Harlan Crow, and Charles Koch are fair game for people to hate on then so is George Soros, and Jay Pritzker and Bill Gates. We don't care who's liberal or conservative, who's Catholic or Jewish or atheist.

Let's be very clear here. Elon Musk isn't Jeff Bezos, isn't Harlan Crow, and isn't Charles Koch. They in turn are far, far, FAR away from George Soros, Jay Pritzker, and Bill Gates.

Dumping on Elon Musk is tied to his rejection of everything you try to hold up here: getting along, civilized discussion - and that's before we get into his autocratic fantasies. There's a continuum of people until you get to George Soros and Bill Gates, who get dumped on because they try to support everything you support here. Furthermore - and I bring this up because you mentioned patterns being at the root of a lot of the actions the moderators take here - dumping on Soros and Gates is a pattern tied into conspiracy theories which are directly led to both murder and attempted murder.

To be very clear, I'm not interested in debating here who is worse and who deserves what kind of dumping. But what I am interested in is whether there's any meaningful distinction between dumping on someone doing and saying awful things, and dumping on someone because they're engaging in or subjected to dis-, mis-, and mal-information. I understand that that means becoming arbiter of truth and facts, but the alternative is that moderators are simply arbiters of tone.

To me, that will work against the stated goals of the forums: to be a place of discussion and exchange of information.

George Soros is a prime example of this: the only people who ever bring him up are the ones who also complain about Globalists and financial and media control by (((international elites))). It's about as telling that someone is disseminating anti-semitic conspiracy theories as bringing up The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

To sum up the question: is moderation strictly about tone, or also about dis-information? Like someone said above, I'm very much a "your house your rules" kind of person, so this is to identify the rules, not about making them (though I think it's pretty obvious what my preferences are).

 

[papadage]

@Aurich , I kinda understand what @KGFish is getting at.

Using a Soros reference is a dog whistle for antisemitism in the way that talking about Gates is not. Some things rise to trolling, even without much of a pattern. But even if a pattern needs to be shown, the rope given should be slightly shortened.

I mean, Soriak has been trolling the SB for the better part of a year, but it took posting misinformation about fluoride to get an instant boot from a thread.

 

[Aurich]

Let's be very clear here. Elon Musk isn't Jeff Bezos, isn't Harlan Crow, and isn't Charles Koch. They in turn are far, far, FAR away from George Soros, Jay Pritzker, and Bill Gates.

The point is none of them are special, off limits, or magically shielded from criticism.

I happen to like Jay Pritzker, he's saying things more people should be. Doesn't mean I'm gonna get mad if someone says "there are no good billionaires", or calls them greedy, or that their money was made through human suffering, or whatever.

That goes for Soros just as much as the rest. There is no "that post is secretly anti-semitic" clause because someone brings him up as the liberal boogieman. He's a rich political activist. People can hate on him. If they start ranting about "the Jews" then sure, that's a problem.

We aren't playing the "dogwhistle" game. People hear what they want to, that doesn't mean it's there. When/if it's over the line into breaking rules we'll deal with it. That's just how the lines work, hinting at something will often not cross it when saying it out loud will. And frankly much of what people report isn't even hinting, they just feel like there's some hidden meaning. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.

To sum up the question: is moderation strictly about tone, or also about dis-information? Like someone said above, I'm very much a "your house your rules" kind of person, so this is to identify the rules, not about making them (though I think it's pretty obvious what my preferences are).

The short answer is it depends.

We have certain topics we're just gonna boot people over. Vaccine misinformation, climate change denial, those are the two heavies.

We have lower tolerance for brand new accounts. If your first post is a dumb troll you might just get tossed into the spam wood chipper.

We also look at patterns. You might say "this post is trolling" and we say "eh, it's not over the line". But if they keep doing it over and over? That adds up, and we'll start taking actions. We have patience, but you can test that patience.

In general though "misinformation" is too broad a topic. Unless it's egregious, part of a pattern of behavior that's problematic, or actually breaking our rules because it's say outright bigotry or transphobia etc, then we are in general going to lean towards letting it rock.

In an ideal world there would be actual discussions where people don't agree or share viewpoints happening. I'm not gonna pretend a lot of conservatives now are capable of that. I'm not bothsides-ing. But, we also don't want to pick sides. It's not our problem if your side is breaking our rules, but we're also not necessarily trying to find an excuse if you don't force our hand.

Hope that helps.

 

[Aurich]

@Aurich , I kinda understand what @KGFish is getting at.

Using a Soros reference is a dog whistle for antisemitism in the way that talking about Gates is not. Some things rise to trolling, even without much of a pattern. But even if a pattern needs to be shown, the rope given should be slightly shortened.

I mean, Soriak has been trolling the SB for the better part of a year, but it took posting misinformation about fluoride to get an instant boot from a thread.

Again, we just aren't doing dogwhistles. I find that term incredibly tiresome in general to be totally honest. Too many people have superhuman hearing and vivid imaginations and hair triggers.

FFS I was getting freakout over "globalism" in the manufacturing editorial comments. It's a word. We're talking about global supply chains. It's not actually a (((secret code word))) every time you see it.




People need to dial it down.

As for Soriak, you know why that happened? Because believe me the mods were gleeful over it. Stepped on a rake. Read the posting guidelines.

1. No spreading misinformation. If you want to argue the merits of homeopathy or the dangers of fluoride in drinking water, do it somewhere else.

 

[papadage]

Again, we just aren't doing dogwhistles. I find that term incredibly tiresome in general to be totally honest. Too many people have superhuman hearing and vivid imaginations and hair triggers.

FFS I was getting freakout over "globalism" in the manufacturing editorial comments. It's a word. We're talking about global supply chains. It's not actually a (((secret code word))) every time you see it.

View attachment 109683


People need to dial it down.

As for Soriak, you know why that happened? Because believe me the mods were gleeful over it. Stepped on a rake. Read the posting guidelines.

1. No spreading misinformation. If you want to argue the merits of homeopathy or the dangers of fluoride in drinking water, do it somewhere else.

Why do they need to wait for something like this? If he is trolling so hard that they were all excited to get him, why let it go that far? Trolling is trolling, isn't it? Just because he hit the bullseye on that rule does not mean he has not been pushing every possible boundary for months.

 

[Uragan]

As for Soriak, you know why that happened? Because believe me the mods were gleeful over it. Stepped on a rake. Read the posting guidelines.

1. No spreading misinformation. If you want to argue the merits of homeopathy or the dangers of fluoride in drinking water, do it somewhere else.

So why was Soriak just given an OW and bounced out of the thread for 15 days instead of given the boot?

 

[Aurich]

Why do they need to wait for something like this? If he is trolling so hard that they were all excited to get him, why let it go that far? Trolling is trolling, isn't it? Just because he hit the bullseye on that rule does not mean he has not been pushing every possible boundary for months.

I actively avoid reading the Soapbox as much as humanly possible. I get more than enough dealing with that shit every single say with the front page. It has active mods that I talk to almost daily, they are aware of what's going on, and raise issues with me as needed.

But as far as like history of various posters etc? I don't know. They hadn't felt there was a bannable violation previously. And that's fine.

The Soapbox exists for people to argue. If there isn't some level of toeing the line and button pushing it's kinda not doing its job tbh.

 

[zeotherm]

So why was Soriak just given an OW and bounced out of the thread for 15 days instead of given the boot?

Because those are the rules.... I doubt you'd like us to simply ban whoever is annoying us the most.

 

[Uragan]

Because those are the rules.... I doubt you'd like us to simply ban whoever is annoying us the most.

Not at all. But the rule says “…do it somewhere else” with respect to spreading misinformation. The rule certainly makes it sound like people peddling conspiracy theories and junk science aren’t welcome here at Ars.

 

[Aurich]

So why was Soriak just given an OW and bounced out of the thread for 15 days instead of given the boot?

Because it wasn't worth more than that is the answer.

There were no personal attacks, so it's getting off topic for this thread to get overly specific. But I think just in general people need to recognize that we, as a site, are less interested in permanently banning people than you might be. As it is we do it a lot more than we used to.

We are not actually trying to get rid of people.

The Soapbox has a function, and it isn't "hey, let's all tell each other how much we agree with each other's viewpoints and how awesome each other's thoughts on things are".

I forget when I became a mod in the Battlefront. 2003 maybe. It's been a while lol. I wanted to ban people who I thought were trolling and irritating. I had to learn how we did things, and how to be more patient. Ken instilled that in me, and now I pass it on to our mods. They know they have to come with an argument when they ask.

 

[zeotherm]

They know they have to come with an argument when they ask.

This was filmed in the mods sector of the Orbiting HQ.

 

[Aurich]

This was filmed in the mods sector of the Orbiting HQ.

"That post is trolling"

"No it isn't"

 

[MichaelC]

Please ask your sponge if it understands what "almost" means.

Not all men! Not all men!

 

[Resolute]

Again, we just aren't doing dogwhistles. I find that term incredibly tiresome in general to be totally honest. Too many people have superhuman hearing and vivid imaginations and hair triggers.

Alternatively, we are well aware of the broad consensus that exists on what these dogwhistles actually are and what they actually mean. The only thing superhuman here is the effort it takes to pretend those sorts of posts aren't exactly what they are, and instead are something else.

Or, presented as a parable, this Bluesky thread:


View: https://bsky.app/profile/iamragesparkle.bsky.social/post/3lbidcyttps2b

 

[Aurich]

"Ars is allowing nazis actually" is silly and I will not engage with it. Good for that bar, it's not relevant to us.

Our rules are clear, and I bend over backwards to try and help people understand them when they have questions. Any made up consensus about what the rules should be instead won't change them though.

 

[MichaelC]

I'm a simple person. and I have no idea who this Tager guy is. So I read that story and it just doesn't seem that deep to me. Maybe it has nothing to do with the OP. the bartender may recognize the person who sat down as a troublemaker, or someone who cannot (or will not) pay for their drinks, or maybe they are an ex. There are a million reasons why the bartender could have told that person to get out that have nothing to do with the OP. And the fact the OP starts off by saying he goes to one of those bars where the bartenders hate you says more about the OP than the bar or the bartender.

People like to read more into things than there is. The number of times I have seen people invent entire epic dramas out of nothing is mind boggling.

 

[Aurich]

The number of times I have seen people invent entire epic dramas out of nothing is mind boggling.

Like, I suspect, that entire story on Bluesky.

 

[Resolute]

I'm a simple person. and I have no idea who this Tager guy is. So I read that story and it just doesn't seem that deep to me. Maybe it has nothing to do with the OP. the bartender may recognize the person who sat down as a troublemaker, or someone who cannot (or will not) pay for their drinks, or maybe they are an ex. There are a million reasons why the bartender could have told that person to get out that have nothing to do with the OP. And the fact the OP starts off by saying he goes to one of those bars where the bartenders hate you says more about the OP than the bar or the bartender.

People like to read more into things than there is. The number of times I have seen people invent entire epic dramas out of nothing is mind boggling.

There's several follow-up posts attached to that particular post that give the full story: OP only saw a guy wearing punk clothes. The bartender recognized the symbols on the clothes and shut a Nazi down before he could take root. The guy who was thrown out didn't outright say he was a Nazi. He used symbols - dogwhistles, if you will - that would resonate with those who shared his ideology but were also understood by someone who rejected the same and took action to separate his establishment from it.

In the context of what I disagreed with Aurich on, I'm not actually saying Ars allows Nazis. But I am saying that when you understand the message - like the anti-semitic "but Soros" dogwhistle - you have a choice: shut it down, or allow it and start to show that your 'bar' is okay with it.

Or maybe (((they))) just got to everyone who understood what that post meant and reported it and we're all puppets of the secret globalist cabal.

 

[MichaelC]

ok, I only read the post you linked. I did not even occur to me to read an entire thread looking for whatever point was trying be made. That's why it went over my head. Like I said, I'm a simple person. You link a post, I'm reading that post and nothing else, I ain't got time for all that. d'oh!

I thought there was something about the OP I was supposed to know which would have played into the discussion of bogus dog whistles

in other words, I am dumb

 

[herko]

Y'know, I have a more nuanced position. IMHO there absolutely ARE things like dog-whistles. People talking about 'globalists' without any reference to actual global stuff. Unsubtle ones, like (((This person is Jewish))). 1488. References to blood libel. Soros, yes, can be one, but you know what else he is? A billionaire that funds a lot of liberal causes.

The problem with being too-attuned to dogwhistles is that innocent references are everywhere. The number 14 by itself is... one more than 13 and one less than 15. If someone mentions it, and refers to 1988 a week later as '88, the dogwhistle-attuned brain can jump at that and shout "AHA!" when, really... most likely it's just a person talking about random stuff.

Being too attuned to this is a little like being 13 and having your mind in the gutter. EVERYTHING is a sex reference. It's no way to live.

In a text-only medium like this one, yes, we will crack down on the trolls, and the obvious stuff. But the benefit of the doubt is well-given. Ars has been doing this for a long time, and it isn't a Nazi bar yet.

Also, that story has been circulated a lot. A whole big lot. Maybe it's time to find a different, concrete example?

 

[Aurich]

If I called Stephen Miller a white supremacist piece of shit would you accuse me of anti-semitism? He is Jewish.

I don't hate him because he's Jewish, I hate him because he's a racist. Fuck that guy.

The thing about George Soros is he's not just Jewish. He's also an activist who supports a lot of left-leaning organizations.

He is in many ways the Ying to Charles Koch's Yang. If I say fuck Charles Koch it's because I hate what he funds. I have no idea what if any religious faith he belongs to. Don't care.

Conservatives who are not breaking our rules get to feel the same way about the Ying that I do about the Yang.

Nobody gets to assume I hate Stephen Miller because he's Jewish. Or Charles Koch because he's whatever, I didn't even look at the Wikipedia page I opened for that link. Nobody gets to assume some random dork who's not posting about "THE JEWS" hates George Soros because he's Jewish.

And you have to understand, religion is not only not a shield, it's also not free from criticism. If someone says "the new Pope, same as the old Pope, head of an organization that has systematically raped children for decades and covered it up" that's not something I'm going to moderate. It's a fair take. Sorry Catholics.

If anyone was attacked in our forum for being Catholic I'd be moderatin' though.

I'm not an idiot. If I see someone constantly saying weird shit about George Soros it's gonna set off my alarms. The problem I have is when one solitary post that people keep reporting as anti-semitic for no actual reason it wastes my time. I need people to dial it down and trust the system.

 

[Soothsayer786]

When people start ranting about Soros my response is to ask them if they check under their bed for him every night. Because for most of them he's just some liberal boogeyman Fox News villain of the week and a convenient target. I've certainly seen some people refer to him in a way that implies antisemitism (mainly on Fox where moderation barely exists) but I don't think that's necessarily the norm. Most of them just know that Fox says he is the root of all evil.

And things are weird right now in both parties where antisemitism is concerned. It's a term that is being thrown around a bit too casually in my view. I was hit with it a few times for my views on the Israeli response in Gaza, something many people were very unfairly charged with for expressing concern with the situation.

I'm more than happy to listen to a coherent argument about the evils of George Soros but I've yet to hear one beyond billionaires shouldn't be meddling in politics, which I wholeheartedly agree with. That's why I usually just respond with ridicule when they roll out their latest Soros conspiracy.