Shep discussion

[The Yosemite Bear]

ok, opening it, and immediatly re-cusing myself.

Though I do think that our old Troll hunters from ASVS seem to be suffering from some sort of fatigue....

[K. A. Pital]

A fresh cold thought from a person totally un-involved in this wreckage: kill.

I could call Marina "nuts" or whatever insult I can cook up (admittedly I'm a Russian, so my english insult baggage isn't on par with most people here), but calling Marina "it" is shit-slinging at a level which any new poster - hell, even myself - would get immediately banned for.

I also think that Marina should be denied options to resolve the outcome of this. Why? She is too emotional about it. I'm not willing to let her use the insult to make Shep custom-titled or whatnot. What's the reason for this vindictiveness? That sounds just too childish to me. If the offense is valid (and in my view it is), ban him. I find little excuse in taking personal insults to a specific level targeting the person's gender.

If it's not an offense valid of a ban, drop it and close the case.

A simple ban, one that we would employ for a generic offender (like the aforementioned Golan III) would be enough. No need to make either Shep or Marina feel special during this whole process. Let's deal with this as a general situation, where Poster A makes unacceptable insults versus Poster B, and the Senate gets a say in this without either B or A's personal circumstances considered.

I would assume it would also make people shape up. Just saying.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, I have way to much invested in this. Please do not send me vote spam regarding the outcome of this, and I will not post in the Senate for the next, oh, ten days, as long as people can use the correct gender pronouns to refer to me while they are debating, at least. Because the way things have been going I seriously would not be surprised if someone else came in and blew their top into the stratosphere randomly, too.

So, yeah, good luck in trying to solve this mess, I guess?

Jesus christ I need to go to sleep.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Like I said earlier, don't send me vote spam if it comes to that either.

I started the thread, and I am too involved due to personal history.

[Coyote]

I don't know what the fuck is going on these days, but I think all contentious parties in this ongoing, forum-spanning, board-centered trainwreck need to have a few stiff drinks and go work out some frustrations. I don't know what's been causing it lately, but over the last few months shit has been building to a head. People are more vindictive than usual, debates are no longer debates per se but personal combats where the exchange of information has taken a back seat to "the smackdown" and "winning" and then doing little victory dances. In the Mess I've taken to characterise it as /b/chan with ashtrays. And bloodsport, I guess, virtually speaking.

I was thrown for a loop by Wayne's insults; Shep's vitriolic tone was a surprise as well, I admit I think Marina's reactions took basic justifications and inflated them to mountainous proportions of reaction; and then we have degree cock-waving by people who ordinarily know better and are more levelheaded... accusations of racism, perceptions that some people can get away with more because they're part of the old boys network... the whole place is melting down and in truth, I can no more point to the "leadership" for letting it happen than I can to the "citizens" for running wild with it.

I don't really get into too many debates much, and when I do I get involved because I have a perception about something that may be right or wrong, and I want to discuss, compare, contrast, and learn from others who have differing opinions. If I am defending a wrong belief, I want to find out so I can stop defending that belief and analyze why I adopted or defended it in the first place, and change my perceptions. I enter a debate to learn and quantify, not to "beat down" and do funky end-zone dances. But it is hard to do that when the person being debated is more concerned about their swagger or image or "the win" then about an honest share of information.

It's become about egos, and that's when the playground starts to develop a stink to it. Instead of tossing about titles, bans, or other shit, if I were Mike (and I'm not of course) I'd seriously consider spanking everyone and just close the damn board off for, say, a week and give everyone time to cool the fuck off and come back after the meds have kicked in.

A lot of good people have left, quietly, because the ego and rancor here has taken over and reasoning and maturity are out the window. Disagree-with-respect is gone, now if you disagree it's go-for-the-throat. I left for a couple months, awhile ago, but I came back because quite frankly other boards out there are fucking lame. They're either Miss Manners boards or no-substance flame fests/dogpiles. It is a path I fear we are headed towards here.

So in answer to the OP, no, I don't think Shep should be titled or banned, nor Marina, nor Alyrium nor Wayne (although too late there) nor Havokeff nor Fgalkin nor Coffee... blah blah. I think what we need more than titles or bans is a nice big healthy cup of GROW THE FUCK UP.

[fgalkin]

Wait, wait, wait!

What did Shep do? What did I miss?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Ghost Rider]

Wait, wait, wait!

What did Shep do? What did I miss?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I think he has a bit in testing, but it started mostly in here

[fgalkin]

Thank you.

Wow, what an epic clusterfuck. I think I'm gonna re-cuse myself from the whole thing, given my personal history with both Marina and Shep. I will abide by the will of the Senate, whatever it decides.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Darth Wong]

One of the things that I've always found frustrating is that I often feel I need to personally keep an eye on forum discussions or else they will degenerate to the level of a typical Internet forum, ie- people ignore the rules of logic, post groundless assertions based solely on personal opinion or common sense, etc. And that's on a good day, when we aren't having some soap-opera bullshit to deal with.

But I don't have the time or energy or inclination to constantly look for unjustified assertions all over the forum and demand reasoned support for them. For the last six months or so, I have not really been trying to be the board father figure, but rather, just another member. And it would appear that the situation has deteriorated. I would prefer not to have to be that figure, and ideally, other people would do more of that themselves.

[Broomstick]

Instead of tossing about titles, bans, or other shit, if I were Mike (and I'm not of course) I'd seriously consider spanking everyone and just close the damn board off for, say, a week and give everyone time to cool the fuck off and come back after the meds have kicked in.

I was considering making a similar suggestion, although I would have said 2-3 days. I think there is some merit here. I don't want to board to go away, but a "vacation" might be a good thing for everyone.

[Ghost Rider]

Instead of tossing about titles, bans, or other shit, if I were Mike (and I'm not of course) I'd seriously consider spanking everyone and just close the damn board off for, say, a week and give everyone time to cool the fuck off and come back after the meds have kicked in.

I was considering making a similar suggestion, although I would have said 2-3 days. I think there is some merit here. I don't want to board to go away, but a "vacation" might be a good thing for everyone.

Punishing the board over a few actions is asinine because those specifics get hit for a small slap on the wrist but everyone else who was innocent of this get hit because we want these people to cooldown. Either people start acting responsible for their actions or the higher ups take actions against the specific, not punish everyone because we don't want to step on some noted personalities toes.

[Broomstick]

Wasn't thinking of it as "punishment" as much as a cool down or reset. But I can see how it might be perceived as punishment.

[RedImperator]

One of the things that I've always found frustrating is that I often feel I need to personally keep an eye on forum discussions or else they will degenerate to the level of a typical Internet forum, ie- people ignore the rules of logic, post groundless assertions based solely on personal opinion or common sense, etc. And that's on a good day, when we aren't having some soap-opera bullshit to deal with.

But I don't have the time or energy or inclination to constantly look for unjustified assertions all over the forum and demand reasoned support for them. For the last six months or so, I have not really been trying to be the board father figure, but rather, just another member. And it would appear that the situation has deteriorated. I would prefer not to have to be that figure, and ideally, other people would do more of that themselves.

In N&P, during the long (incredibly long) runup to the election, my worst pet peeve was people who would, after a discussion of the latest poll numbers (usually favoring Obama), barge into the thread and pronounce, "Don't forget, the American public is stupid! They'll fuck it up." My initial reaction was, "Well, I'm a mod. I'll just threaten people," but I found that doesn't really work unless I'm willing to play bad cop in every polling thread, which is problematic because 1) it would get tiresome, and 2) often I was involved in that thread, and I couldn't be sure I wasn't punishing people for disagreeing with me. So I decided to try using "soft power", where I challenged people to back up that statement. I think it took me doing that twice to make those posts disappear (props go to CmdrWilkens, who also was doing this). Once people got it into their heads that they would be challenged to provide evidence that the poll numbers were massively wrong, they stopped doing it.

I would argue that all the moderators, myself included, should be making greater use of this "soft power". The main drawbacks are 1) it takes more thought than "Stop that or I'll punish you", and 2) it's more time consuming, because you can usually expect some argument which you can't cut short with "Stop arguing or I'll punish you", and 3) it doesn't really work if you're not familiar enough with the topic to argue it (excepting cases where there's an obvious logical fallacy or obviously no evidence for the assertion; the argument I got in the poll threads was "Well, everyone knows this; I shouldn't have to provide evidence for this any more than I should have to provide evidence the sun rises in the east"). The upside is 1) anyone can do it, not just mods, 2) it doesn't require a bunch of new rules or an expansion of the "unwritten rules", 3) the board is spared the spectacle of mods deciding what is and isn't a valid argument, 4) it's more effective, and 5) it generates less resentment.

I also think we're due to rethink exactly how the board is moderated. Right now, almost all the active mods are supermods, and the understood role of a supermod is to patrol the entire board, without having any special responsibility to any given forum, even the ones where we're listed as forum mods. I think perhaps what we should consider is 1) reshuffling the staff so all the mods are active enough to be a consistent presence in their forums, and 2) assigning all mods, including supermods, a small number of forums and saying "Your primary responsibility is handling these forums". Keep the supermods (maybe even make all mods supermods), because it's handy having a large pool of mods who can put out fires anywhere on the board, but make it clear that a mod's first responsibility is his assigned forums, and part of a mod's job is to ensure that debates are being conducted honestly. Leave the job of patrolling the entire board to the admins (and add more if we need them). Since admins don't need to approve registrations or ban every spambot and troll, and we don't have enough title changes/name changes to generate any kind of real workload, we can free them up to do what the supermods are doing now.

[Lagmonster]

My opinion on the recent spat is best served with an analogy. Say you start a bowling team. At the beginning, you select people mainly on whether or not they are good bowlers. But the longer you hang out with them, the more things you learn about them and talk about with them besides bowling. People being what they are, sooner or later you're bound to strike a topic that just makes everyone livid, people who find themselves unable to argue further lose their heads and start slinging insults, and someone stomps off the team in disgust.

SDnet is such a team. People whose primary community interest is sci-fi get together and chat sci-fi, then someone mentions a political hot topic and suddenly we aren't all nodding over how cool Star Destroyers are anymore, and people who've been respected and calm for years are suddenly ripping throats because people forget that humans contain more than one set of ideas, and one or two people forget that they're supposed to be adults and cross a few lines because they're too frustrated and angry to make a point.

I don't think we can moderate human nature or anticipate these blow-ups without creating a miss manners board or a police state, so I say just put the cork back in the kettle and remember to act like a grown up. And if your time comes that you go too far, to have the balls to own up and admit it before you have to leave the board because you're too embarassed to look people you've hurt in the eye.

[Knife]

This discussion is moving more towards a 'what's wrong with board' discussion than on Shep.

[Coyote]

This discussion is moving more towards a 'what's wrong with board' discussion than on Shep.

True, but I think that Shep's reaction to the recent series of blowups is a symptom of things going on here, not an isolated cause. I don't want to see him become the stand-in for what's wrong and have him flayed in effigy.

[Simplicius]

This discussion is moving more towards a 'what's wrong with board' discussion than on Shep.

I went ahead and started a thread for that if you want to use it; Stravo put some momentum behind it. While I think Shep's PM was an incredibly asshole thing, we should probably wait to see if we develop some kind of consensus about the tone the board has taken - particularly what, if anything, we should do about it - before we spend much time discussing whether or not he should be punished. The way in which the participants in the blow-up are addressed should reflect our approach to the larger problem.

[Knife]

Noted.

[CmdrWilkens]

So in answer to the OP, no, I don't think Shep should be titled or banned, nor Marina, nor Alyrium nor Wayne (although too late there) nor Havokeff nor Fgalkin nor Coffee... blah blah. I think what we need more than titles or bans is a nice big healthy cup of GROW THE FUCK UP.

Honestly I want to associate myself fully with these remarks with a few addendums. The problems we are experiencing right now are endemic to the board, its part of who we are and what we are. Banning people, titling them, punishing some but not other, none of that will alter the root cause. We've got the seperate discussion going on about board culture but I will say that this paticular instance is more reflective of our need to do something outside the norm than simply revert to the standbys of banning titling or "lesser offenses."

I don't condone the behavior but it is impossible not to look at the overarching theme on this baord right now and its one of perpetual conflict that has been simmering for a long time. Singling anyone ought would seem to be the height of folly in that it may be desrved based on acitons but does nothing to prevent or warn against reoccurence.