[Discussion] Board Culture

[Simplicius]

Made in response to RI's post in Testing, so we can have a discussion on this if we want to. Since I'm neither controversial, reviled, nor revered, it might provoke less of a shitstorm. Hopefully the presence of the discussion in the Senate will keep things cool as well, especially since I'm going to encourage submission of comments from non-Senators and it's not as easy to have a flamewar by proxy. Even if it does go tits-up, the upshot will hopefully be limited to "Junior Senator has dumb idea" instead of "Senate stirs up trouble."

As stated, if non-Senators have their own comments, I will post them here. However, I will be attributing all comments - and I'd ask other Senators with words from constituents to do the same - so don't say anything you don't want your name on.

Now, my two cents' worth:

From where I sit, if there is a problem with 'board culture' it is from an excess of personality leading people to behave as if they were at a coffee klatsch rather than in a discussion forum, not because the board culture as established by the rules is inherently destructive. I see absolutely no problem with "We are not a Miss Manners forum" and the policies that follow therefrom.

I do see people being too quick to flame just because they can, and I see people taking the SDN style of discussion and debate and using it in personal arguments. Both of these things strike me as incredibly destructive, as they corrode away the unique atmosphere of community-despite-disagreement which made this place appealing to me as a lurker. This isn't some fucking Old West saloon where everyone has to be quickest on the draw in a fight; this is a discussion forum. The purpose is to discuss and debate, and every flame, vent, and whinge is secondary to that purpose.

Sadly, (and all this still remains my own opinion), the only solution is heavy self-policing on the part of posters. Since we don't have to be Quick Draw McGraw, think before you post. Ask yourself, "Has the debate gone round and round enough and is my opponent so dishonest that I really have to flame him in every reply to every line of his post? Is it possible to rest my case with a victory obvious to everyone except my opponent, or do I have to pursue this matter to the absolute ends of the earth and TOTALLY CRUSH him BECAUSE I AM RIGHT AND HE IS WRONG?"

If you have a personal beef with another poster because you don't like their style or their opinions or whatever, take it upon yourself not to air it or let it bubble out in the forum proper because this is totally non-contributive to debate and discussion which is why we are all here, right? Right? If you can't just sit on it, take it up with them, personally, in PM and for fuck's sake DON'T approach it like a debate. Flaming is totally counterproductive in personal disputes and only makes the problem worse, which degrades the forum as a whole. There have been a couple of threads - can't remember which - in which this occurred, and heated disputes were resolved by PM after which cooler heads prevailed. Take these instances as an example.

If you are angry about something off the board, even if it is a major thing like Prop. 8 or confronting its supporters, it would probably be best put in the Venting threads, since it puts all the inflammable material in one place and makes life easier for the moderators that way. Also, since "[X occurrence] really pisses me the fuck off" isn't debate or discussion even when it is about an occurrence that can be debated or discussed, it's only more likely to stir up trouble when it's posted in a debate forum.

As for "If you don't like it, then leave," I don't think anyone should have to feel forced out by having an unpopular opinion or whatever, though it might be good for their own mental health to leave if they really have no other means of redress. But if anyone isn't mature enough to realize that a very loose set of conduct rules isn't a blank check to be as big an asshole as they can be, maybe they should consider finding the exit.



The short version: The conduct rules should stay the same, and anyone who likes their no-bull straight-shootin' posting style can keep it, but for crying out loud everyone should take it upon themselves to be good SDN citizens because it's the right thing to do.

[Stravo]

To add to what has already been laid out I think we have a dual set of motivations here that factor in with what Simplicius is talking about:

The internet tough guy - we know it, we've seen it in effect and perhaps we have also been guilty of it. I know that most everyone here does not speak to their friends and family like they do here in casual discussions and even friendly debate. You don't tell your father "Hey assclown this superbowl era Giants is far better than prior teams!" And if you do you must have an interesting home life. Where does it say that when you enter into a discussion you must immediately break out the napalm? I have seen debates and plain discussions where the discourse goes from zero to charcoal briquette in less than 2 posts. Unnecessarily so and I must also add usually against newbies or those not "in" with any of the board cliques. I've raised my concerns in the past with how daunting this board must be for newbies if in their first foray into a debate they're labeled assclowns, douche nozels and god knows what else at the drop of a hat. The usual reply from the main offenders is "But this is SD.Net" which leads to second motivation:

"But this is SD.Net. If you can't stand the heat..." Yeah, if you're a lone newbie that gets ganged on by 5 posters all insulting you and going over the top things seem really reasonable and rational don't you think? We have a reputation for being a no nonsense crowd that really knows their shit and doesn't suffer stupid people lightly. This kind of behavior just demonstrates that we're assholes not the suffer stupid people lightly crowd we like to think we are.

I have not been following the events unfolding right now with Poe, Marina, et al but while they are all veterans and should know better in terms of falling into these dual traps that spring from the board culture I would not doubt that any me tooers and the like are probably from one of these two schools.

We've had flare ups like these in the past - the weekend from hell, etc, and every time they come up there is some discussion about Board Culture. I'd like there to be more than discussion this time if possible. This is a great place, it certainly was when I joined but I am always troubled by this nasty undercurrent in many debates and discussions that are just simply unnecessary.

[Coyote]

Flaming comes way too easy, and the ability to spin creative insults seems to take the place of discourse. There is no need at all to attack so viscerally all the time, and the worn excuse about "that doesn't invalidate my point, we're not a manners board, so yuck it up" doesn't make it any more palatable. Just because flaming can be done doesn't mean it is always right, nor does it make your point any better, more forceful, or clarified.

It really seems, sometimes, that flaming goes beyond adding creative exclaimation points to a subject, and gets right into outright abusive, bullying behavior. The ability to beat someone up physically on a schoolground doesn't make the bully any smarter or better, just as the ability to abuse someone "verbally" here doesn't make a person any better either. In fact, it tends to erode one's position, IMO.

[Lagmonster]

I'd like to re-submit the idea that our troubles are not entirely about board culture, but also about board identity. It's easy to harken back to the early days when the only thing we knew about each other was that we all liked Star Wars and that we all had a similar appreciation for science and for a rational methodology for discussing Star Wars versus Star Trek. Now we know shit about each other that causes people to actually deal with the reality that we're a community of individuals from around the world with vastly different upbringings and ideas, and not just the group of geeks from back when there was no N&P and Marina wasn't out in the open and the greatest public fistfight was over the impossible-to-take-it-seriously issue of whether or not the Enterprise had magical anti-laser technology or Alderran was made of plastic explosives or whatnot.

[Simplicius]

Words from a member-at-large.

A few comments.
One, enforcing existing rules more harshly might help. Moderators will rightly say that theres already alot of work. If feasable, move more mods around, or maybe promote more proper members. Another option is to let senators call other members on behavior, without administrative action.
Two, possibly expanding PR5 to include all vapous additions to stir the flames (vulturing) and enforcing it more harshly.
Three, I've just noticed that there is no actually defined rule about personal attacks even though board culture frowns upon such things. How about we define such a rule, that makes it clear that while flaming and insults are allowed, personal attacks on board members lives are out of line.
Four, senior board members should take a step back and realise that they cannot drag their personal likes and dislikes of members into every discussion. Vendetta's do not apply only to trolls.

A note on point 1: RedImperator has commented on moderating methods and shuffling the mod system in the Shep discussion thread, 13th post down. I think his point about soft power is important; can we really say board culture has 'improved' when it is provoked by harsher moderating?

[Knife]

We've been pretty much through that with the N&P discussion some time back. I think the recent flare up is just a continuation of that problem.

[Simplicius]

I'd like to re-submit the idea that our troubles are not entirely about board culture, but also about board identity. It's easy to harken back to the early days when the only thing we knew about each other was that we all liked Star Wars and that we all had a similar appreciation for science and for a rational methodology for discussing Star Wars versus Star Trek. Now we know shit about each other that causes people to actually deal with the reality that we're a community of individuals from around the world with vastly different upbringings and ideas, and not just the group of geeks from back when there was no N&P and Marina wasn't out in the open and the greatest public fistfight was over the impossible-to-take-it-seriously issue of whether or not the Enterprise had magical anti-laser technology or Alderran was made of plastic explosives or whatnot.

Since I wasn't here in the old days- were the sci-fi debates characterized by the same tenor of insults as now, only no one took them as personally, or have the insults thrown about started to become more bitter and likely to cause offense since N&P became a center of debate?

That is to say, were attacks on real-life characteristics as prevalent then as they have been more recently, or was it basically 100 percent "you cum-guzzling gutter whore" and the like?

[RedImperator]

If you dig through the ASVS FUQ, there are some posts there that get personal (much of it targeted at Guardian2000/Darkstar and Transcend), but nothing on the level that I've seen here. Of course, checking the entire ASVS archive might turn up different story.

So far as I remember, early in the board history, personal insults were very rare, and usually they came in the context of a shitstorm like the Weekend of Hell (incidentally, I hate that name; makes it sound like a wartime massacre, not a slapfight on the internet). Insults in debates were of the "you fucking idiot" type, not "hey you're fat and you don't have a good education and you don't have any friends in real life".

I do think a distinction should be drawn between a personal insult that targets someone's online behavior and one that targets someone's real-life situation. I don't think it's a big secret I disliked brianeyci and got into some raging flamewars with him, and I did insult him for his history of making bad arguments and turning threads into trainwrecks. But I never went after him for his personal situation, which I gathered wasn't super.

[Coyote]

An interesting insight from Gandalf:

="Gandalf"]Hello Senator, I was hoping that you'd be kind enough to post this in the Senate board culture thread.

I think one of the biggest problems is that there just isn't as much to debate as there was in the olden days of SDN. Trek versus Wars versus [other] still had some life in it, the Republican party could be defended, and Iraq had the possibility of not being a mess. Nowadays, most positions have been nutted out and a sort of natural selection combined with SDN's "style" has eliminated many of those with contrary positions. This means of course that there's fewer debates to go around, with more people trying to win them and rise within the SDNet meritocracy.

I have no idea how this would be fixed, but I thought that the viewpoint might be appreciated.

Have we begun to feed on ourselves due to a lack of other targets?

[RedImperator]

One thing I think worth remembering is this board is predominantly populated by young men. And young men, left to their own devices, are aggressive, hot-tempered, and always ready for a fight with other young men. The overwhelming majority of first-post* "RARGH I WILL DESTROY YOU RARGH KILL RARGH!!!!!" posts I see come from young men, usually young men with medium post counts who aren't part of the board power structure (though Senators and mods are by no means angels), and they seem to me to be as much about establishing status and dominance as they are discussing a point. They're also more likely to pursue an argument to ridiculous lengths, both on the losing and the winning sides, harp on minor mistakes, pursue nitpicks and minor points, and jump on a dogpile. All of these things damage board culture. They turn useful threads into shitfests, they drive newbies off the board, they cause grudges that contribute to more pointless flamewars.

This is not to say high-ranked men, older-men, and women can't contribute to the problem. I've seen these behaviors from all groups, myself definitely included. And there are times when someone says something so outrageous that you feel like the only appropriate response is to barge into the thread, guns blazing. I also don't mean to imply that young men can't control their impulses, or need special supervision, or we should moderate them more harshly. But I think it can be argued that part of SDN's problem is that too many members are acting like chimpanzees on a testosterone bender, flinging poop at anything that moves.

*First post as in "first post made by that member in the thread".

[Simplicius]

Have we begun to feed on ourselves due to a lack of other targets?

If so, perhaps the global financial crisis and US presidential election have come at an opportune time. These are both topics in which new debating ground can be broken as the economic situation develops, as Obama brings in new staff and policy, and as the Democratic-led Congress starts passing legislation. These issues might be a shot in the arm for us, provided that anyone debating them is willing to make researched arguments about merits and demerits instead of a simple "I'm for it/I'm against it."

If we all put some real effort into it, we could transplant the serious-debate culture of the sci-fi boards into N&P now that we have material on which no dominant board consensus has been reached.

[RedImperator]

Oni Koneko Damien weighs in:

Feel free to repost this in the Board Culture discussion thread in the Senate if you feel it will help,

I always considered myself one of the least aggressive posters on this forum. I didn't mind the relatively harsh environment here, simply because it was nothing more than words posted on an online forum, they had no more power to offend and disturb than what the reader was willing to give them. In the end, the scientific, political, and fantasy/sci-fi discussions/debates usually outweighed the flames with their occasionally thought-provoking nature. Yeah, I occasionally got into a shouting match, but more often than not ended up backing down partially because I don't really see flaming as worth my time, and partially because I was often in the wrong and, like most people with an ego, had a habit of going out of my depth.

I ended up taking a self-imposed vacation from the board a couple months back. Part of it was due to the fact that real life was rather hectic, starting a new job, regaining financial bearings. But part of it was because I'd noticed a substantial increase in the hostility here. I started posting semi-regularly a week or two ago, but I've once again run into the same problem. The thing is, it's not the hostility that I find distasteful. It's how infectious it is. I took part in the trainwreck that was Havokeff's thread, and jumped happily on the dogpile on Poe. It was pointed out that I had made several completely baseless accusations against him, and I subsequently backed off. The problem is, I gleefully jumped into that flamefest and made some pretty cruel remarks, some of which were completely baseless. That's not something I thought I had the type of personality to do.

The hostility itself isn't the problem, in my view. It's more a case of pack-mentality. Someone's temper flares, they cut loose with the vitriol, and people who would otherwise laugh it off, jump in for the throat. I don't know if this is something that can be better enforced through the administration, or through better 'self-policing' by forum-members... but perhaps a few people should be charged with the role of occasionally dropping into growing flamewars and reminding people, through PMs or forum posts, that in the end this is just an internet forum. The goal is to have a good time and maybe learn something new, not take everyone who disagrees with you and tear them a new asshole.

To draw an analogy (maybe a poor one), when you've got a dog pissed off at you, the worst thing to do is continue poking it. That just pushes it farther into aggression mode. Instead you have to do something completely unexpected to shock it out of its aggression, make it step back and think things through. Flaming the living fuck out of someone who has just stormed into a thread and unleashed a load of personal attacks will most likely just push them further into attack mode, solving nothing.

Include my name with this if you want, I don't have any real desire to remain anonymous.

And this one is from Gandalf, in the thread in Testing. Posted because I think there's something to it.

I think a part of the problem is that there's not a lot left to debate.

Trek and Wars don't have a lot of new content, the Bush admin became a parody of itself, and Iraq went belly up pretty quickly. Since SDNet it somewhat meritocratic, too many people are jostling for too few debating spots. So you get dogpiles because everyone wants to be the one to get the "killshot" for the most inventive flame or something. Everyone wants to be Wong/Dalton/other.

[fgalkin]

The problem is that N&P debates are still going to be more heated and emotional, since the things under discussion are more likely to affect the members personally. Nobody except Darkstar is affected by the fact that the Empire has weapons in the teraton, rather than megaton range, whereas plenty of people are affected by, say, the lack of healthcare in the US and are much more vocal about it.

That's not to say that importing the sci-fi board culture in N&P will fail, but that it will be much harder.

Gandalf nailed the real problem here- observe how we have precisely ONE Coliseum debate and can't find another topic for months. On a debate board, of all places! And that debate was with an outsider, no less. What does that tell you about SDN?

The way I see it, there are two solutions- 1) generate more debate by opening up N&P (with the problems I noted above) or, by loosening restrictions on dead sci-fi debates. Yes, most of them have been done before, but so what? It will give the new membership a chance to prove their mettle and let off some steam on a subject that will not grow into a flamefest. So, bring on the Empire vs Faction X, or the Parthian Hordes in Middle Earth threads, perhaps?

The second solution? Abandon all pretense of being a debate board, and start our gradual transformation into a regular off-topic forum, with all the baggage THAT will entail.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Knife]

I would counter with the opposite. While I'd like to see more collisuem debates; a lot of 'traffic' I think is stifled between the harshness and the hard core debate rather than discussion here. Add to that the dog piles, and the perceived bias and you get pent up rage.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The second solution? Abandon all pretense of being a debate board, and start our gradual transformation into a regular off-topic forum, with all the baggage THAT will entail.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Arguably, this is already happening whether we like it or not. The original SW vs ST forum is all but dead, the number of related sci-fi debates and SLAM topics which haven't yet been bashed out is a very small one, and a growing number of the board's newer members aren't debate-oriented in their mindsets and came from non-debating boards. They weren't drawn here by the debate, but by the geek talk and the board's rough-and-ready character. We've gone from being a sci-fi debate forum filled with like-minded interweb personalities to a community with a rough-and-tumble heritage, (whose paradigm of virtue is the debate,) filled with actual people, (complete with baggage,) of diverse interests who have found that the only things left to debate are things with real-life impact and physical/emotional investment which aren't debated so much as argued over.

[RedImperator]

Three more contributions:

First, from Illuminatus Primus:

I was going to post this in the Senate thread, but here is my offer:

Part of it is in-fighting and staleness that Red speaks of. I think, after consideration, they are based on the same basic starting-point. This board, since its inception, has been held together by pressure and conflict with outsiders, first Trekkies and versus opponents, then the various flamewars and spammers. This continued until it became impossible to join without a paid account or without a PayPal donation. But this meant the influx of new and shake-things-up outsiders with outside opinions slowed to a drip-drop. Look how we all dogpiled on Voluntaryist. The bloodthirst is palpable, and unquenched. Now is the solution to suddenly open the floodgates to all kinds of trolls who we can be allies together again? I doubt it. But conflict with patkelly and the pedophiles, with Axis Kast and internal opposition (real opposition) on Iraq War and what have you. It all helped. Of course the forum then began to slide. By the time the next big confrontation began, over resource constraints and sustainability - which, is a highly-technical topic full of projections which the peakists could simply inundate the opposition with factoids and scream that they are deluded and insane - there were no outsiders, just insiders who were turned-off by threads whose only apparent end goal was to compete over the most bleak possible outcome and fatalism. So there was no longer outside opposition pressure holding the community together, and the choices of conflict were essentially destructive. Also, I think the Senate on some level degraded the quality of administration and the respect it held by the community. At one point, Mods may have shit all over each other in the forum and occasionally disagreed elsewhere, but now that's gone. The Senate is too big and unexclusive to be efficient and a model of good behavior (whatever one thinks of Marina, her actions in the Senate have not consistently been those of sober-minded administrative even-handedness). Worse yet, it aired old hand drama is aired out in the open, it clearly makes a bad example for everyone else.

And everyone else, in lesser or greater parts, must be seconded. Everyone has started to grow into a situation where they have personal grudges and disdain for others and aspects to the community, and have learned to air them out just right so they do not result in discipline. Myself included. We all have grown to one extent or another to the point where we want to turn discussions and our relationship to others here into a "I'm smart/successful/virtuous, and you are part of the hated dumb masses." The vicious condescension has gotten too bad, and we all have become way too self-important. None of us is all powerful, none of us do not have a point of view or action or behavior we later did not sincerely regret, and are now embarrassed by. I must say I certainly am by my worsts on this board. We should recognize the fact we feel like this about things, and be gracious in our behavior toward others, because they may yet regret and be in your shoes just the same. Would you have wanted someone to launch gratuitous attacks on your character, even when you made mistakes?

That is all, I guess.

Reposted from testing, because I think it's worthwhile.

Second, from Dark Hellion:

Since this topic has finally happened (I have wanted to see something like this for quite a while) I think I am uniquely positioned to offer some insight. If I am not mistaken I am now the most senior poster who has a negative title, and I do understand why I have it. However, I believe that it can be pretty easy to imagine how it can be infuriating to watch Senators pull shit that I know that if I pulled would instantly get HOSed and locked, and not even get called for it. Within certain forums, I am treated like any other poster. In ARSE my suggestions are generally heeded, within the STGOD sub-forum my posts are regarded as any other posters, but this does not change the fact that anyone disagreeing with me can simply quote my title to me and be given victory by default. Even when other posters support me, I will field the blame for a thread becoming a shitstorm, which brings up an intersting query; why are Senators and senior members held to a lower standard than normal posters? Why are they allowed to get away with behavior that would probably get me temp. banned, or a new poster titled? Should they not be held to a higher standard in general? Or does post count inertia really mean that much? You can state contribution, but does contribution to the SWvST forum mean you can act like an ass in N&P all you want? Does posting good artwork allow you to get away doucebag vulturing? Is this really what the board wants to be, a form of intellectual bribery were turning in something of value gets you a free pass out of the next couple of jerk moves? Most of us on the board have some form of higher education degree or training, and if we wanted to could turn in some form of assignment. I could write 10-page papers on "Criterial Definitions of Good and Bad as a Solution to the Moral Problem", "The 'Heroic Man of Science' in the Pre-Kuhnian View of Scientific Revolution", or "The Role of Epistemology in the Development of the Scientific Method", but really why would/should any of the posters of the board have to put hours and hours of work in to shoot the shit? We aren't a review panel of scientists here, but a bunch of people from around the world who like to talk about stuff with each other, and when we forget that, we get the sillyness and pettiness of the last few months.

The old boys network is a fine thing for enforcement purposes. Older members know the rules better, know what flies on the forums and really have given stuff to the forums. But how many people on the board really just want to read Fanfics, or post about Orks with giant guns blowing shit up, or make MSpaint drawings of spaceships? Should these posters be considered lesser posters because they don't want to do hard number crunching or spend hours painstakingly researching some new law on the books?

Somewhere, posting became less about being a good poster and more about having done something in the past, good or bad.

I can't say I feel sorry for any of the Senators about this though. You brought it on yourselves. You didn't enforce the rules amongst yourselves, told off the plebes, made those who weren't old boys feel like shit, and now you are reaping what you have sown when crops of pure fucktards spring up in threads. The popular opinions can still be wrong, or said in a way that isn't acceptable, even with the nature of the board as it is. Profanity is just words, but when there is intent behind them, things go to the crapper fast. And the job you guys had was to keep that shit clean, but you have poured a hell of a lot of manure on the board, especially since Warsies stunt, and the whole BAN TESTING RAR BIG PENISES fiasco. And now you still seem very desperate not to point the finger back at all those people who were tasked with making sure the board stayed healthy. Don't blame the regular posters, when you have 75% or more of all posts made distributed between yourselves. You set the pace, tone and culture of the board, and it is your duty to change it. Perhaps you need to shake down the senate. Perhaps the senate should become more democratic? Perhaps a Senatorial Oversight commitee is needed. But whatever it is, the first step is to realize the blame lies with yourselves, not with shitty posters like myself.

Without commenting on most of this, I will say I think the "RAR PUNISH TESTING" incident probably squandered more goodwill and made the Senate look more ridiculous than any debate we've had here. That said, I think it's worth pointing out that nothing happened to Testing. It's a little irritating to have been the guy who repeatedly stood up for Testing (in the mod forum as well as in public), volunteered to moderate Testing, did his best to be a fair and evenhanded mod of Testing, and then get PMs complaining about how the Senate hates Testing.

And third, reposted from memory from a conversation with Metatwaddle:

I think the difference is, no matter what someone's opinion on Death Star firepower, it doesn't really say anything about his personality, except maybe that he's a bad debater. But in debates over the real world, you could suddenly find out somebody you liked holds some horrifying retrograde opinion, and it leads to conflict.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Hey there big guy. Can you throw this into the Senate... The being positive thread or the board culture thread. Either one would work.

I've noticed in the Senate threads that are going right now that a few people have commented on how ST vs SW is dead and that there is nothing left to debate.

That may be true for the majority of the board, but what about the people for whom that is not the case? New members, or current members that weren't around for the good old days of ASVS?

So here is my crazy idea. Reset the SW vs SW forum. Move all the current threads into an archive and let the arguments begin a new for a new generation. Ease up on the modding. Even if an argument has been made and won for either side 100 times, it can be a new topic free from being locked. Let the new kids work their way through the arguments.

Obviously, the older cool cats can wade in all John Wayne with guns blazing and lay a serious smack down if they wanted to, or they could just sit back and watch the dumb and laugh.

Hell, you could do this with all the sci-fi sub forums.

I think something that this would accomplish, which no one seems to be talking about, is bring some FUN back to SD.net. I, personally remember finding this board and being all like "SWEET!!" And then the awe of realizing just how little I knew about the debate. It was lots of fun, but it didn't last as long as it could have because everything had already been said.

Like I said, a crazy idea.

"Big guy"?

Anyway, the main problem I see with this is that all of the arguments have already been done, and they're available for perusal on the main SDN site, so again it's a case of one side bringing a spork to an artillery duel.

[CmdrWilkens]

I will say this, and its solely from my perspective, the hardest thing to do, until one gets used to it, is to learn not to post. Look at some of the old timers from when the board started and folks are getting well into the 20,000+ post range. That's a crapload of talking on this board and it creates a vast sea of clutter amongst which its hard for the newest voices to rise. Folks who haven't been around, don't have a reputaiton, and want to establish themselves will, in any environment, yell louder and longer than any other so that they might get noticed. It harkens a bit to the "me too" discussion we had with regards to N&P wherein that there was so much dogpile and so little actual meat. Unfortunately a good deal of that dogpile does come from the older members, folks who are used to putting 2 cents into every thread.

I personally would like to think that no 5% of the board population knows who I am mostly because I try my damndest to only venture into threads where I can make a meaningful contribution. I'm fine with that but I rather suspect that an awful large amount of the board population wouldn't be, they want to be known, heard, and acknowledged. I don't know if there is a paticularly good way to do that but I will repeat my emphasis that eveyrone should stop and ask themselves, old hands not excepted, whether its actually worthwhile to hit the "Reply" button.

[RedImperator]

Even more opinions, this time from RogueIce:

I see that the Senate has almost pinpointed their scapegoat, those who are not "old heads" or are "outside the power structure" for trying too hard to seek approval, despite the fact that nearly everyone involved in the recent blow up has been part of one group or the other.

This sort of has to do with my point, so I thought I'd requote it.

Anyway, in the N&P cleanup thread I saw that there was an attitude of, when it was pointed out many of the "old hands" (Senators, mods, etc) were engaging in the very behavior that was being complained about, it was ok because they had contributed and it was allowed for them to indulge and so on. That was about the point I knew the effort was doomed to failure.

Simply put, if the "old hands" are allowed to get away with these sorts of things and are never corrected for it, why is it then surprising that the newbies start acting that way? I believe unwritten rules were mentioned earlier, and how does one learn such rules? By seeing what is (apparently) accepted and allowed to go on. So if certain members seem to get away with the very nonsense that people feel is damaging the board, why is it such a shock that newer members tend to emulate that and think it's ok for them to behave the same way?

And that's largely ignoring the folly of trying to moderate to some weird, undefinable double standard that probably is different from one mod to the next anyway in terms of who is "acceptable" and who isn't.

I don't know what the answer is, to be honest. But when you have the "old hands" out there engaging in these massive flamewars that get personal, or go from "zero-to-flame" in the first reply and all the rest of it, you shouldn't be surprised that this attitude in turn gets picked up by the newer crop of posters.

Whether rightly or wrongly, whether you like it or not, whether you want to enforce rules against it or not, the old hands do set the tone for the board. So if they're acting in a way that is damaging to the community, taking it out on the newbies isn't going to help. If anything, it's just going to delay the inevitable when the old hands turn their guns on each other, as we've seen so recently.

I'll ad that, on reflection, I'd like to retract part of this post. The problem isn't confined to lower-ranked men. I stand by my point, however, that part of the problem is that this is a young, male-dominated board, and if you put a bunch of young men in a situation where there are no social norms preventing them from fighting, they'll fight. I know this because I'm a young man myself, and I have the same "RARGH" impulses as everyone else, and I indulge in them too often, like too much of the board.

[Knife]

I'd like to suck the air out of blow hards, but I don't think it's my place besides an 'appeal to authority'.

[Surlethe]

I'm going to quote RedImperator himself from something he wrote a year and three weeks ago:

For many months, during my self-imposed exile, I've had the feeling that something has gone wrong over at SDN, and furthermore, it went wrong a while ago. My original plan was to stay exiled for 90 days, and come back 1 September. It is the middle of October now and I'm still not back. Admittedly, I haven't finished HI yet, but I hadn't expected to get it done in 90 days, either. I really haven't been in any particular hurry to get back. There just seems to be something off about the place, and I haven't been able to articulate what it is.

Then this morning, I looked in Off Topic, and discovered Kanastrous did it for me.

Hey, fucktard, are y'all such total obnoxious asswipes that your pleasure in life is calling people names when they ask a simple (or what ought to be a simple) question?

Searching a board for the meaning of an acronym is a waste of time, at least, if I'm going out on a limb and thinking that just maybe people around here aren't such a pack of assholes-for-the-sake-of-being-assholes that they can't even bring themselves to answer a pig-fucking simple question.

You must be one incredible fucking coward in real life, if you have to build yourself up and get off on pointless rudeness to total strangers who are too far away to smash your fucking teeth in, just for daring to ask a simple question.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Didn't your mother pay you enough attention, when you were young?!

The background: Kanastrous asked the meaning of the word "RAR!", assuming it was an acronym. DPDarkPrimus responded "It's a board meme", a magnificently unhelpful response to which Kanastrous replied, "Thanks. That's magnificently unhelpful."

At this point, Fleet Admiral JD replied thusly:

Hey, fucktard, why don't you take a look at previous posts and figure it out? It's not a hard thing to grasp unless your skull is as thick as a frigging tree trunk. Then again, judging by some of your posting behavior, maybe the truth is that simple concepts are beyond your comprehension.

Kanastrous then opened fire with both barrels, which I quoted above.

The thing that has been bothering me (and, I suspect, more than a few other people) is not acrimonious debate. That topic was brought up on the board a little while ago, and while I do believe the issue of civility in debate is not limited to the binary choice of "Miss Manners" or "Everybody is an asshole all the time", I think, in the balance, most people get exactly what they deserve in board debates, and at any rate, I would not trade honesty for civility.

(I do think that a good general rule would be to give any poster at least one civil reply, to see if he's debating honestly; if he's not, then call down the napalm).

But this incident didn't happen in a debate; it was just a question, one that would have been easy to answer. I don't want to seem like I'm picking on Fleet Admiral JD here (I don't hold any grudge, or indeed, much of an opinion at all on him), but he DID act like an asshole and, so far as I can tell, for no better reason than because he could. I suppose you could argue that Kanastrous's snippy reply to DPDarkPrimus warranted a hostile response, but really, DP should have answered the question fully (or not said anything at all), it wasn't DP who responded, and really, JD's response still would have been massive overkill if it had come from DP.

In real life, only an epic prick would act like JD did in the thread, and that epic prick would have to be pretty certain he could win the fight that he'd likely start by acting like that. Yet acting like that has become completely acceptable on SDN (one reply to Kanastrous was "Overreact much?").

Somehow, on SDN, the idea that any level of hostility is acceptable in a debate has mutated into "any level of hostility is acceptable, all the time". Especially, I suspect, when it is directed against newbies or unpopular posters. I'm absolutely positive I'm guilty of this too (I didn't bother doing a search of my own posts, in part because I need to do a Google search to find them, and in part because I really didn't want to see them), but that doesn't mean I was right. Part of why Kanastrous's response resonated with me was because he pinned down some of my own motivations for acting like an asshole in the past. I could try to justify it by saying I have had to sit and take shit from bosses, students, parents, etc. in the real world and so my hostility on SDN is driven by a desire to unload what I can't unload on them, but really, it's not much of an excuse. It's still acting like a giant prick because I'm unafraid of retaliation.

So what to do about this? Well, speaking as a Senator and a member of the administration...not very much. There's no practical way to enforce "Don't be an asshole" without A) forcing moderators to make value judgments on what's "too nasty", which they will undoubtedly get wrong often and will be accused of getting wrong oftener, or B) writing a great hairy clot of rules regulating posting behavior that will annoy everyone, accidentally force people to be nice to dishonest jerkoffs in debates, and allow people to act like pricks anyway once all the loopholes have been found. The best way to change the culture on the board to something more civil, without turning it into Miss Manners, is to do exactly what Kanastrous did: when someone acts like a big dildo because he thinks he can get away with it, flame the living shit out of him.

Combat hostility with hostility. It's the SDN way.

I believe it's relevant to the discussion; I agreed with him then, though I don't think I ever mentioned it, and I think that now his point that hostility should be fought with hostility has some merit at least in discussion.

Also, we could get a real grassroots movement started along these lines if we worked at it. Come, brothers and sisters; let us build the future of SDN - a kinder, friendlier future, based on the great truths of camraderie, reason, and the use of fuck every other word.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

To repeat from Testing, since it's in line with Surlethe's comments--and because this is to important to leave unsaid to disappear:

[In regard to a conversation about behaving more like Publius]

I am also reminded of my very dear friend, IDMR -- Drake Irvine-- who was a mod here when the board was quite young. He was the most upright and civil of men I can imagine, and I would do well to hew to his image in the future, I do believe. I say that, in honour of him, we call ourselves The Society of Dragons, and voluntarily abstain from the most abusive of flames, slanders, and attacks, relying instead on honing the cleverness of our wit to aid in our debates. And I should add that I specifically request that people do not put "Society of Dragons" in their profiles or signatures, out of sake of modesty, and rather that we consider anyone to be a member, who holds to the broad rules of its code of conduct over a sustained period of time, and keep track of those individuals informally amongst ourselves.

[Spin Echo]

To post my two cents, I got rather fed up with the board about two months ago and only came back today for a bit of bragging.

I'll echo the sentiments of Simplicus. It seems like conversations have degenerated from discussion into dickwaving. I'm all for being able to call an idiot and idiot, but when disagreement degenerates into flaming from the first response, it gets tedious. When I first joined the board, I felt like there were actual discussions and I learned things. Now it just seems to be arguments over stupid, trivial things and personal vendettas.

I think Coyote and other people have a point. The board culture has become very homogenous. Most of the people posting regularly have views that typically aren't too dissimilar, and those views that are have been debated to death. People with views outside of the views deemed "acceptable" by board culture tend to get quickly driven off. Not that I'm saying we should be tolerant to people that think gays are second class citizens or such view points, but when everyone has been filtered down, it gets hard to have meaningful discussion.

[K. A. Pital]

I would personally favour a top-down "line up, straighten up" approach. The culture is shaped by the leadership; if we become better at enforcing what is the law of SDN, and have less prejudice, perhaps order can be restored. But then, I assume not everyone holds the same view.

Offtopic's quality has degraded magnificently compared to other parts of SDN though: specialized set-on-content forums like Sci-Fi, History, RPGs haven't seen such great flamefests as the ones that ran through OT recently. Perhaps if you're feeling like you most certainly need to vent, go to Venting and avoid the OT forum for a moment?

That doesn't sound terribly hard, and we can simply point it out to people who get terribly emotional about debates or "winning" them.

[Ghost Rider]

A reply to Hav's PM.

1. ST vs SW is dead and the people who still want to debate want a no numbers scream fest. Resetting would mean lots of spam. We see that everytime someone new pokes in with some new revelation that is no different then the last twenty.

2. Reason I, and I do mean myself, am hard on Science Fiction/Fantasy debates is because unlike most N&P and SLAM, there is proof that can be shown via math and concrete examples who is stronger. I let go a few things as people go a tad hogwild, but even the current happy 40K versus is starting to grate as people throw things out to see what will stick instead of demonstrating with concrete examples.

It follows the very thought of burden of proof. Something that without, it gets into Superman versus Captain Marvel with endless writer fiat's being spread along the way.

As for the board culture in general, it has descended into this thought. They see vitrol spewed BUT do not back it up. There is a world of difference between the two and moderators and such should crack down harder on the random vitrol.