JasonF

Story, I appreciate the transparency and explanation as well. I do recognize that the mods are all volunteers, and appreciate what you do, even when I think you get specific calls wrong. I completely agree with Red Hood that a simple "Hey, we're on it" message would help cool things down, though I know that can be easier said than done because of the whole volunteer thing and that you all have lives beyond parking in the forum and monitoring it 24/7.

I do think there's a reflexive reaction of the mods (at least in the Politics forum) to rely on posters to separate themselves with the ignore feature in lieu of penalizing posters who repeatedly post "bad" content. And again, I recognize that mods are in a tough position because you don't want to punish people for having unpopular views and you don't want to turn the forum into an echo chamber. But I do hope the mod team has some internal discussions to make sure you're calibrating correctly in terms of how much you want to moderate outlandish comments vs. telling everyone "just ignore the troll."

Anyway, I hope you're feeling better, COVID-wise!

fujishig

The guy comes in hear and likes posts but can't bother to discuss? Geez.

IBJoel

Thanks for posting this. To add on to what story said:
Different mods are definitely going to have different reactions to various content. I mean look at the reactions in this very thread. I went back to the post in question and honestly didn't even understand the Tweet. So if I'd seen it first, I wouldn't even know if it was racist or not because I just straight-up don't understand it. I can't even determine what the joke is supposed to be because I can't understand the logic of the sentence.

When there is stuff like that, mods DO typically discuss it in the private forum. And whenever you feel a post is objectionable, please do utilize the "Report Post" button.

kefrank

story Thanks for all that you shared and all that you do. I just wanted to say a few things in response:

• IMO, you should not be expected to moderate at all when you're sick with Covid. Hope you are on the mend!
  
• Armchair moderating for all of us, especially after the fact, is easy and real moderating is hard. I 100% acknowledge that (and tried to do so in my post in this thread).
  
• I wanted to clarify that for whatever it's worth, I had zero concerns about the timeline of moderation in this situation and my only concerns were with the content of the moderation that occurred publicly as explained in my earlier post here. Those concerns were not intended to be an ungrateful indictment of Kurt D, but rather a (hopefully thoughtful) explanation of what I understand the intent of that subforum to be and why the public moderator action seemed very inconsistent with that intent, for the sake of ultimately improving situations that might occur like this in the future. If it was out of bounds or poorly expressed or simply not fully informed, I apologize.
  
• In the spirit of my earlier post, I'd like to humbly suggest that we add the following rule to that subforum: "When you post something in the memes and social media posts thread, you are implicitly expressing a willingness to engage in good faith discussion about the meme. Failure to engage in such discussion when it is pursued in good faith may result in moderator action." I feel like if a rule like that was in place, the initial moderator action would have been cut and dry in this case - something along the lines of, "[INSERT MEMBER NAME HERE], in accordance with the forum rules, please respond to the questions being asked about the meme you posted. If your next post on the forums is not a response to those questions, your original post with the meme will be deleted."
  

I could go into more explanation of why this particular instance sparked concern for me and how it's tied to some of the reasons I only lurk now, but that's probably better left for another time or left unsaid completely, because this isn't about me and doesn't need to be.

ViewAskewbian

I don't participate in said thread, but I don't really like the idea of "if you post something you have to talk about it if somebody confronts you on it/wants you to etc. or risk mod action" idea. Just seems to open up a bigger kettle fish.

kefrank

To be clear, the only "mod action" I'm referring to is deleting the post after it is clear the poster willfully refuses to discuss it in good faith (as in this case, as I see it anyway) and I'm referring specifically to posts in that thread. In my opinion, that's a simpler and less fraught assessment for the moderators to have to make than trying to parse out what is too racist, misogynist, etc to be left alone.

ViewAskewbian

Mainly, I really am not down for an idea that forces posters to explain their posts or risk mod action, whatever said action may be. That said, I also don't agree with the JUST IGNORE THEM suggestion. Really, I think, this comes down to a few things. If a post is getting sufficient reporting the mods here can certainly get that it is problematic (as opposed to, say, two posters who have continued issues with one another reporting each others posts). The REPORT POST button is here for a reason.

Now, we may not agree with what the mods decisions are in the matter but that is why we have this forum to discuss it.

Making a RULE that states a poster MUST defend/comment/etc. their post seems a bit extreme, IMO. And are we talking about this rule being only for this particular thread? Other threads like it? The forum as a whole? As I said, just seems to open up a whole other kettle of fish.

It's not hard to see how a thread that is predominately created to share images/MEMES (in this instance) could break down into:

POSTER A posts MEME.
POSTER B says: "That seems kind of racist. Can you explain this?"
POSTER A doesn't reply.
POSTER B states: "Hey, man, you gotta' reply. It's the rules!"
POSTER A replies: "Fine. I don't think it's racist. Here's why..."
POSTER B and POSTER C: "It's totally racist, here's why..."
POSTER A: "I've explained myself and don't agree with you"
POSTER B, C, D: "What's wrong with you (followed by passive aggressive remarks insinuating POSTER A is racist)"

and so on and so forth.

kefrank

This is my issue with it though. I'm starting from the perspective that a thread for sharing memes shouldn't exist on a political discussion forum in the first place. In my opinion, the meme-ification of political discourse has bred dismissive, judgmental, and ungracious attitudes that are incredibly unhealthy for our political world. So if that thread has to remain, there should at least be a stated expectation that those who post memes in it will engage in good faith discussion about the content of the meme. If discussion devolves into name-calling then the mods have the same cleanup they have to do in countless other discussion threads, so I don't really know why that's a problem.

I realize most others don't share the above perspective and that's fine. I've given my two cents at this point.

ViewAskewbian

Would the "good faith discussion" rule flow into, say, the Political Cartoon thread?

IMO, the Politics Forum can certainly have their "not so serious threads" like the MEME one for the very reason, I gather, it was created: mainly for humour (as most MEMEs are). Though, as I said, I don't participate in that thread so I could very well be wrong. It does seem the possibly racist tweet posted is, and forgive the following given the tweet in question, a minority in a 1485 posts. Again, I could be wrong here as I certainly go through all 1485 pages.

jpcamb

I'm glad to see this is being taken seroiosly and there appears to be an open and honest discussion going on here. I really like this forum but don't want to see it turn into a swamp. We all make mistakes and have our own perspective, as IBJole said some of the tweets/memes can be ambiguous and I think KurtD is doing a good job overall but I did find that particular situation to be a bit off the mark. Nobody is perfect but without the mods, this place could devolve very quickly. So thanks to the Mod team for taking the time to make this a better place.

kefrank

With the way things are currently in the United States, I can no longer bring myself to chuckle at reductionist or condescending gotcha-isms and that seems to be largely what gets posted in the memes and social media posts thread. It doesn't come off as lighthearted to me and I don't think it's innocuous.

The same could possibly be said of the Political Cartoon thread, but I don't think that's exactly in the same category, since in general most of the political cartoons are done by professionals that are subject to some level of editorial accountability and not just any random person on social media.

Red Hood

I’m going to be very blunt on this: there’s one specific member who for the most part of his participation on the Political Forum has been a troll. He has played the lines of trolling very well by deliberately using words or memes that could be ambiguous or left to interpretation. In this case, he posted a very racist tweet from a very racist person(Scott Adams) and on a subsequent post, he kinda confirmed that he posted the tweet in agreement with Adams and not for the reasons of “can’t you believe someone will post something so racist for everyone to see”. When the forum member got questioned about his reasoning on posting the racist tweet, he decided to ignore it at first and then decided to troll everyone by over explaining every subsequent post he put on the Meme thread. Of course, all of this being done while dodging the question everyone wanted answered.

To me this is trolling and bad faith behavior on the forum and shouldn’t be tolerated. The racist tweet reminded me of another transphobic tweet that was posted months ago and had a similar reaction. Some people didn’t considered the tweet then transphobic but the majority of people in that thread did. Same here with the racist tweet by Scott Adams. The transphobic tweet was deleted and the poster scolded for posting it.

My point is that none of this should be tolerated and people with a history of trolling really aren’t adding anything to the forum in terms of discussion. I know people don’t want the politics forum to become an echo chamber but this doesn’t mean that it should be tolerating behavior that’s acceptable on today’s conservative side like racism, transphobia, homophobia and misogyny.

I’m going to give a perfect example of how I’ve been seeing things in this forum. Several years ago, a member on this forum called me out for saying the word “cocksucker” in a way that was demeaning. Another member privately messaged me about using the word redneck in the same way. In both cases I apologized for my behavior and posting and decided to not use those words either in my online or personal life as they can hurt people that don’t deserve this treatment. I feel that there are some members that instead of analyzing the situation and saying to themselves, “man, this hurts innocent people “ will instead double down on the insults and say them even more. I know they are following tge examples of their leaders like Trump and Ted Cruz but that doesn’t mean that behavior should be accepted in this forum. It never was before 2016 and it shouldn’t be accepted now even if social media and a large group of people shrugs and continues with this behavior

Koby

In my experience DVDTalk has been an echo chamber for a long time.

Hokeyboy

All the contentious and outspoken conservatives/religious types/etc. were rode out on a rail long ago. Especially the cocksucking rednecks.

Goddamn it I still miss wm lopez.

Norm de Plume

In the early-aughts, this forum was more of an echo chamber for conservatives, albeit not nearly as one-sided as it is now. However, if you have, on one side, the MAGAts, and on the other side everyone who supports Biden or is to his left, with no apparently rational conservatives left, it's no surprise the MAGA faction stays largely silent or has disappeared. Because they would be made to look like the racist imbeciles they are.

Dan

No one left-of-center has ever been A) driven off this forum, or B) compelled to leave (quietly our loudly) this forum, due to the way some right-wingers would post white supremacist memes and disinformation with seemingly little repercussions.

Except those that have, of course.

E Unit

This is where I draw the line. Goodbye folks.

VinVega

This thread is not very helpful at this point. Closing