Denial of a positive

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You know, that's actually been a longstanding concern of mine, that the rules are not actually clear, check this out:



What is "offensive"? How do you determine if something is "intended to provoke or belittle" or is merely a provocative opinion? I mean a lot of the other stuff is pretty loose too, swearing doesn't specify a language, and I've heard both that it's to be avoided, or that it's okay if it gets through the swear filter without any help, isn't excessive, etc, 'violent content' is fairly vague, the whole Adult forum should be gone according to this, and so on.



Enforced literally, the entire forum would be banned by now, including Alex and the mod team(s), especially when you start counting "insinuations" and "indirect attacks", I mean that's pretty damn broad, and could be interpreted to encompass virtually any statement beyond the most bland disagreement. Certainly if you considered attacking groups that members here belong to as indirect personal attacks or insinuations, we'd have to toss all the liberals and atheists, and I don't see that happening.

My point here is that the rules as written are practically meaningless, and it all comes down to the discretion of the active mods at any given time, which is both a blessing and a curse depending on the current team. When I first started posting here, I had a real problem with the ambiguity, which was not helped by the then team who blatantly abused that discretion, but I've come to embrace it as necessary when dealing with a community that doesn't fit neatly into a box. Really, I think intent and tone over time are the important points, I mean someone who patiently explains themselves repeatedly before telling someone that the problem is that they simply can't follow what is being said is much different than someone who follows the letter of the rules but is combative and abusive in every post, and I think the former is more within the spirit of the rules.

Glad to hear it, you're a thoughtful and introspective poster who I usually pay attention to, and I periodically like to get people thinking about these things from a different angle, which not everyone is able to do. This is really a thought exercise for me that I thought some on the board might find interesting and useful, so I'm glad at least someone is.

I think it's very simple - address the facts, not the poster.

Thanks for all the reports btw

The state of play in PPR would be improved considerably if certain users had their juvenile, vacuous anti-feminist and anti-theist threads automatically locked. There's never any attempt to engage in debate. Create some kind of echo-chamber forum where these sorts of threads can be posted and never read.

I don't mind admitting in public that I've been lobbying for sanctions regarding that for some time, as it's not helpful, it's ongoing, needlessly antagonizes a group that already feels persecuted, and it clogs up the forum to boot, but the consensus seems to be that he's harmless and allowed to continue out of pity. Really, I'd like to see a handful of serial malcontents discouraged from repeatedly posting the same inflammatory garbage over and over, like 'okay, that's your 3rd "X"-bashing thread this week, knock it off', but that's a spirit vs letter of the rules thing that the mods generally don't have time for, which is part of the reason I've wanted a forum specific mod for PPR for so long, or at least enough staff in general that someone could take the time to look it over when I send in a report concerning such a pattern. I used to be able to do that with Cornflake, he and I had been working together long enough that he could see what I was talking about and prune some of the pointless and needlessly antagonistic threads, as well as break things up when some posters would circle endlessly bashing on some group or another.

Heh, I'm happy to admit I was wrong about that report button, I really thought it would clog up the mod system with frivolous reports as it made the process frictionless and people here often don't really understand the rules, but it works much better than I anticipated. I don't seem to run into as many spammers as others on the site do, just because of what forums I tend to use, but I do feel like I'm constantly requesting thread moves when I find stuff in the wrong forums, my organizational impulse can be pretty strong.

No worries, an additional pair of eyes and a bit of extra organizational impulse can come in handy on a site as big as this one.

[XFG's worthless perspective]

Ironically, for a forum full of autistics, I find it necessary that this place needs flexible rules. We have a glut of posters with a host of communication difficulties, co-morbids, lack of social skills, ect. It's not always clear who's being a jerk on purpose, who's not good at writing, and who's just having a bad day.

What it usually comes down to is moderator discretion. Personally, I tend to look at someone's posting history to attempt to determine if intervention is required. I realize that this sort of ambiguity is likely frustrating to some posters, which is why I try to remain transparent.

Of course, feel free to offer constructive criticism. My ego isn't so fragile that it can't handle a polite suggestion or three.

[/XFG's Worthless Perspective]

No, actually, I think that's exactly right, I wanted less ambiguous rules back when I first started on because I saw them as providing some protection against a personal vendetta from the then mod team, but in the end that didn't even matter, and experience has shown me that rigidity is infinity worse than flexibility in these things. I think swearing is an excellent example, as someone who occasionally swears for emphasis or to punch up a joke in the appropriate forums is different from someone who curses up a storm in one of the Kids forums, who is in turn different than someone who swears at people, but rigidly applied rules would treat them all the same. I think it does make it harder to select good site mods though, as Aspies who deal well with ambiguity are not as common as we'd like, and the sort of random-ish selection process hasn't always been the best.

PPR is sometimes topped by threads intended to do nothing but bash others instead of beginning actual debate or discussion. That would be a great place for them.

What one person views as trollish another person may not.

I view some of the OP's posts as a little bit trollish (just being honest). Does this mean he's a troll? Does it even matter? You've got a problem with someone, just report it or ignore them.

If someone is not causing you emotional pain or verbally bullying you, I think you can sort of just let it go.

Yeah, he's far from the only one ("I've found another hole in evolution!! !" and "Israel kills babies" can be grating too). I simultaneously agree with your point and Boo's about not excluding people whose disabilities mean they're likely to just be s**t at forums. Of course, the problem would be solved if the "ignore" function worked... ahem...

Yeah, I find myself doing playing this game far more often than I'd like...

The Hardest Game On The Internet