Making it Better: The future of WP

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Sorry, who?

You mean the forum that bans people for posting hip-hop (technically Nitro said n-word music)? f**k 'em.

Like it did just now ... ?

Just some dude ... nobody important ...

I feel someone should create an "evidence please" meme for Fnord to use as his avatar! It's his catchphrase!

That said, I took a look at the "Heaven" thread HL linked to. While I feel EP (Fnord) could have been a bit kinder, e.g. about MM's experience, it's a thread from April and clearly no one reported anything at the time. Like one of the posters said, users have the right to ignore posts.

Certainly that wouldn't be considered acceptable in Haven.

Actually he was banned but got unbanned by a new mod team or by Alex.

Honestly I have no problem with him. I used to think he was a troll but I realize he is just someone who relies on facts and not feelings and he just communicates differently and he isn't on anyone's side or against anyone and he plays the devil's advocate. It doesn't mean he is against you.

It's a shame when people take an small excerpt from a larger statement like this, as it can lead to the impression that there are parts that were excluded which may have an impact on how it is understood.



As can be seen, it is an opinion (not a "statement of fact", as presented in the excerpt), indicating a belief that a member seems to me to be like the sort of person who would push boundaries, which is later narrowed to someone who appears to sit as close as possible to actions within the site rules, which can give rise to the appearance of going outside them, even if this does not occur.

This can lead others to feel the site is unwelcoming (or assign a certain opinion of the person who acted in this way), and can lead to people feeling they are being attacked, and so push people away from the site, or to lash out in retaliation and potentially banned.

An example of the "pushing boundaries" - Participating in a thread where people are reminded that making statement about groups is against the rules. Follows up a few days later by posting that anyone who disagrees with a given group are "perceptive enough to see what is really going on, intelligent enough to know why it is going on, and wise enough to understand what it all means" - Potentially staying within the rules by not directly attacking a group, yet still attacking the group through stating the group lack certain attributes...Had that comment been about certain "protected" groups (for example "African Americans"), then it would have received a much more forceful responce than it likely did, as it was merely about "conservatives".

My personal thoughts are that this sort of "boundary pushing"/pushing the limits of the rules is a detriment to any site and shouldn't be tolerated (If someone has a reputation/pattern of actions which are close, but not quite breaking the rules, then any infraction should not be treated as a "first offence" or an "accident", as they were obviously aware of where the limits were), as it does nothing towards encouraging civil discourse, rather this sort of action inflames people and can lead to others breaching the rules in responce (which appears to me to be the intent), or to cause others to see the site as unwelcoming and leave\not sign up.

Fnord seems like a "mall cop".

No real cop (mod) power, yet enjoys reporting and threatening to report people for trivial infractions.

A few days ago, a new user even apologized because he was reported by Fnord for a trivial issue that the mods (real cops) dismissed.

You are welcome

You a very obtuse and enjoy scoring points on technicalities.

No, technically you didn't use the word stupid. but you were condescending and implied the OP was being stupid.

You're the quintessential troll having fun winding people up and feeling superior.

"Ah, but, yeah, but this tiny thing, you need to use your words very precisely because I'm an aspie and I don't see nuance".

BS,

you can understand the nuance and you deliberately point score. It's a game to you and you get off on it.

I couldn't provide anything recent because I don't use this site much anymore.

We sorted it out between ourselves anyway. Is someone only problematic if it's reported to the mods? Really? Can't you guys see things for yourselves?

This doesn't really affect me. I'm not incensed for myself. It's younger users, used to abuse in real life, who don't know how to advocate for themselves I worry about. They'll internalise the toxicity. It doesn't nurture them or help them learn and grow. It just slaps them down.

Interesting to see AC brought up - unfortunately with the same good old attitude "us versus them" while the two sites are not necessarily competitors: they overlap to some extent but cover very different needs and styles otherwise. One could easily use both depending what they're looking for.

I made an account there recently, thinking it might be a good place to hang out while waiting out the American elections and the circus here, but I was wrong, AC isn't a substitute and it stands on its own. No matter if or how much I'll be able to use this forum in the future, I'll definitely keep my account there and use it.

Some of the things I noticed, both on their own and compared to here - I'm going to split this up for people with low attention spans:

Technical and layout:

My registration with email address went smoothly and quickly, no captcha or hoops, the avatar was automatically sized, a lot of options about how much information you want to give and display or not.

It looks sleeker, it's very clean and runs well. You can easily tell it has an admin (two I think) that's doing their job and it's running up-to-date software. Anybody here who understands basic web-design will know what I'm talking about.

There are quite a few extra features, like a blog or having a status or (public) conversations in your profile. There is no upvoting/downvoting system actually and no popularity contests: you can only rate posts positively, but purpose-specific: like, agree, informative, creative, friendly etc. Very useful and discourages empty one-liners and post farming.

You can add tags and trigger-warnings or spoilers to your posts and threads. Notifications work flawlessly and people can hide their public profile if they desire and give access to it only to specific users.

Edit: there are also no pyramid quotes and long quotes are half-hidden and can be expanded by clicking on them - no clutter.

Last edited by BenderRodriguez on 02 Aug 2020, 5:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Moderation and membership:

The active membership is roughly the same size. The perception of less traffic comes from the fact that things move more slowly and pressing "new posts" will only show a segment of the site, while many others stay "hidden", even from members. As in, there are a lot more sub-forums than here and some of the content can be accessed only by checking them out directly. It's less of a hassle than it sounds once you get used to the layout.

They seem to have only two mods, but they are very present and aware. The very few interventions I've seen this far happened very quickly and were polite and to the point and I haven't seen either of them publically insulting members or pulling rank in non-moderation discussions. I understand engaging them privately also works very well but I haven't done that yet. Both mods will personally greet every new member if they make an introduction thread: a great way of both making them feel welcome and keeping an eye out for trouble. They also keep threads alive and give new people links to helpful old threads and various resources.

New members are also encouraged through getting positive votes and I had a surprising amount of regulars and old members going out of their way to engage me.

I have seen no spammers whatsoever so I guess they have both guards in place and move very fast when one happens to get through.

It's very PG13 indeed, but I have been explained why that is and I understand their reasons: it's not because they're "Disney" or prudes. This had a surprisingly positive effect that I haven't foreseen: people are forced when either agreeing or disagreeing to present arguments instead of insults: one needs to think things through before posting and it raises the quality of their posts significantly.

There are no fast and snappy exchanges or banter, this is true, but there's also a lot more substance and practical advice in people's posts.

Purpose and style:

It really does what it says on the tin: an autism support forum. It's not true that you cannot discuss politics and the like, but they mention that news, politics, dating etc topics have to be autism-related (they also have an off-topic area). The support part is very well executed: it's not at all full of agreement and empty reassuring as one might wrongly assume. I was extremely impressed by the treasure of knowledge related to autism and common co-morbids. If you suffer from depression, insomnia, (C)PTSD etc, nobody will tell you to get over it or think happy thoughts: you'll get real help from people who overcame or are still struggling with the same issues. There used to be a lot more knowledgeable people here too, but there are very few of them left now and General Discussion lost activity and is mostly used by new members asking the same old questions (and getting snapped at) or those who ask stuff like: I have two moles on my back, is this an autism thing?

Zero bullying, trolling and edge-lording tolerance, no cliques that I could see and no ganging-up. No belittling, victim-blaming, making fun of one's struggles either: you either have something nice or useful to say or you STFU. The nice part is often rather substantial too, not just a few meaningless or cheesy words.

It's not allowed to derail other people threads with random small-talk, making it about you or starting a pissing contest.

As long as you reasonably stay on topic and your post has meaning, you can write as much or as little as you want. Nobody snaps because they don't have the attention span to read a long message: and for the most part, there are a lot of long messages that are extremely insightful and chock-full of information and knowledge: the site inserts spacing automatically and I haven't seen any wall of text, inarticulate rants. But they have a place for ranting too

Culture:

This one really impressed me: while it's supportive, as already mentioned it's not cheesy or hollow and it's also very pragmatical: people really look for advice and they get it. While bullying isn't tolerated, constant complaining and angry rejection of any kind of advice or suggestion isn't encouraged either. There's actually a lot of talk about acquiring, sharing or teaching life-skills: You want help putting together a grocery list of cheap and healthy foods or recipes? You'll get a lot of suggestions. You like cooking from scratch or growing your own food? Nobody will accuse you of being a rich, entitled hipster or snob

Same thing seems to apply to social skills and other life-skills or coping strategies, people go there to learn, not to claim aspies are the biggest martyrs in the world who can never succeed at anything. Or to vent their envy and resentment.

Local culture has a huge effect on both how members behave and how they are treated and I'll give two very different examples: Ezra, who was seen as a problem here is very well-liked and behaved there. Magna, who is posting exactly the same way he was here, is also liked and respected, instead of insulted.

With the recent sizeable wave of refugees from WP driven away by the toxicity, an old member there publically apologised for his past behaviour and said he didn't realise how much it affected people (here, such situations usually lead to people accusing others of being too sensitive or claiming they are allowed to insult and harass because "they're right"). He did mention both having various personal issues at the time and also local culture on WP encouraging the worst in people, while the culture on AC does not support territorial attitudes or people who would rather break/destroy the toy than fix it and share it with others.

Conclusion (mine): for a lot of people, both sites will have their use, advantages and disadvantages. You won't like AC at all if: you like point-scoring, bullying others and see insults as "arguments", you push a one-size-fits-all mentality, you like claiming that your own problems are universal for all people on the spectrum and they can't be solved, you like blaming everybody else or specific categories of people for your struggles. If your posting style consists mostly or exclusively of one-liners, sexual innuendo or risque banter, you'll also not be happy there.

Everybody else should at least check it out, both sites could learn from one another and so could those who use them.