Ratings. Trolls. Civility. We’ve been through all of these topics before, and no doubt we’ll go through them all again. Here’s where we stand today.
For a few days, the community’s ability to hide a comment by giving it five 0 ratings has been disabled. That was, in part, because of some miscommunications among your editors, for which we apologize — the change should have been publicly announced, and it wasn’t. It was also because of a well-founded concern that more than one member of the BMG community is too free with the 0 rating. However, we’ve decided that we’re going to reinstate the hidden comments feature, with the change that it will now take eight 0 ratings to hide a comment, instead of five. As the site’s traffic increases, we need to raise the threshold for hidden comments, since that feature is supposed to reflect something like a consensus.
All three of us have read over the Rules of the Road that we hammered out during the last go-round on this, and we’re all comfortable that they express the way we want this site to run. So here are the two lessons to draw:
- Civility counts. Here’s what we said back in May. It’s still what we want, and what we think we and the community have a right to insist on.
We welcome bold, constructive observations. To us, this means commentary typical of thoughtful discussion between acquaintances who may hold differing views on important issues, but who debate those issues in a respectful manner. Insults, personal attacks, rudeness, and blanket unsupported statements reduce the level of discourse, interfere with our basic objective, and are not permitted.
If you’ve got something to say, say it in a civil, respectful manner. Or don’t say it at all. If you disagree with someone, great — explain why, and do so calmly and rationally, as though you were at a dinner party. Don’t just name-call and toss accusations of bad faith. That happens on both sides around here from time to time, and it doesn’t do anyone any credit. Just don’t do it.
- Don’t overuse the 0 rating. The 0 rating is only for comments that, in your good faith judgment, clearly violate the Rules of the Road. It is not for when you disagree with the substance of a comment. Again, if you disagree, great — explain why according to the site’s rules. Or rate the comment 3 or 4, and leave it at that. But don’t misuse the 0 rating. One of the worst things that could happen to this site is for it to become an echo chamber, and if the 0 rating is used to express disagreement, that’s the direction the site would go, if it were allowed to do so (which it won’t be).
One final thought: one of the best ways to shut down the provocateurs is, as has often been stated, not to respond. If someone’s just looking for a reaction, don’t give one. Give the comment a 3 if you want. Or just do nothing, and have a constructive conversation with someone else. Be better than the person who’s trying to get your goat.
But I think you’ve set the “0” threshold for deletion too high. Right now, some comments that are undisputably trollish and have been regarded as such by the most responsible posters here have still not been deleted despite being up for well over a day. Most of these comments are now coming from one or two names, but I can guarantee you it is going to take a very small effort on the part of people who are jealous of this site to turn the whole site upside down.
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In fact some of the comments are so trolly, it’s almost parody, and I wonder if someone is pulling my leg when I read them. The pasted together catch phrases, the obvious and silly spelling errors – I don’t know.
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In any case, its easy to say “don’t respond” but anyone familiar with blogs knows that isn’t going to work. What BMG will become unfortunately is just another site among many where two sides toss rhetorical firebombs at each other.
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I was hoping BMG would be a place where progressives in Massachusetts could gather and hatch ideas. And we can do that with the participation of conservatives, people like Peter Porcupine, but most of the people on the right will only come here to taunt us.
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I think that setting the threshold that high is likely to give unpleasant results.
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I hope I’m wrong.
like I said, for a while the 0/delete option was shut down entirely. It should be back up now, with the new threshold of 8 rather than 5 votes to delete.
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And, again, if in good faith (and please, try to stay dispassionate on these things) you think a comment clearly violates the Rules of the Road — that it’s non-constructive, insulting, rude, etc. — then it’s a good candidate for a 0. That said, I think the threshold for deleting a comment should be pretty high.
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So I hope you’re wrong too. If you’re not, we can adjust. This thing is perpetually a work in progress.
Even when I preview, I miss many.
Firefox automagically underlines misspelled words in comment boxes, and is smart enough to not highlight HTML tags.
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That it also has adblock, greasemonkey, weather widgets, and renders HTML correctly is a bonus.
I confidently expect an announcement every day that malaria could be eradicated, and peace could be brought to Darfur, if ONLY we’d all begin using Firefox!
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It’s bad enough that Google has eaten my blog…>:~{
And it’s not the first time that I’ve posted firefox as a solution to the specific browser problem you’ve mentioned.
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If you don’t like the solution, don’t gripe about the problem.
If everyone was using Firefox there would be a lot less viruses and unwanted advertising etc… In short, less distractions.
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Therefore you may be able to conclude the mass adoption of Firefox would free up more time to concentrate on and fix/cure important matters like Dafur, malaria, global warming etc…
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Excellent point PP đŸ˜‰
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Google Toolbar for Firefox also has a spelling checker.
Well more than 8 people see the comment quickly. If you see a comment worthy of a 0, moderate. If you see a comment with a number of 0s… check it out, and decide if it’s worth a 0.
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Rate early and often, that’s what I always say.
We don’t overuse the zero rating. Occasionally a comment will get one 0, or maaaybe two, that doesn’t really “deserve” to be deleted, but you know what? The threshold was five, not one and not even two. And even those cases are unusual.
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Every single time a comment has gotten five or more zeroes that I’ve seen, it was a good thing that it did. And I’ll go further than that: I have never ever seen a comment get even three zeros, that should not have been zeroed out.
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So,
I think you’re in denial, misunderstanding the situation, too swayed by Bob’s tantrum, and are hurting the blog with a bad decision and bad rhetoric.
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And I hope Bob isn’t calling for “civility” while still not understanding the extreme lack of civility he showed in that incident.
Or to put it more plainly…
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We’ve never sufferred from a dearth of debate, disagreement, and different points of view here. Given the community we have now, I see no chance of us ever sufferring from that.
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We have repeatedly sufferred from trolling that derails productive discussion, and ridiculous pointless comments. We are likely to continue to suffer from those.
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… and yet you decide that what we really need to make this blog better is a higher threshold on the troll-rate feature, so that we can shift the balance towards more trolling, in order to protect us from the danger of groupthink and lacking disagreement.
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In what universe does that make the slightest bit of sense?
to merit being zeroed out, surely 8 people will think so.
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Beyond that, I stand by my post.
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‘Nuff said.
I agreed with your meta-thoughts then, and I still do. But, (1) there was at least one poster who had given 16 0’s in a 2 day period spanning many different threads. That poster was definitely misusing the 0. (2) calling out Bob on this thread isn’t necessary. You two hashed it out civilly, and if you still disagree, you aren’t going to change his mind with a comment on this thread.
There was an incidence recently of one poster revealing the real name of another poster who uses a pseudonym. This to me is a major intrusion on another person’s privacy. I request that this issue be addressed in Rules of the Road, complete with a stated consequence for the identity outer.
There is a continuum here of “speech acts” as linguists call them:
The fourth should be treated very seriously because it undermines the safety necessary for discussion.
and are dealing with it. Can’t really say more than that.
If you know a BMG’ers true identity you can’t go and tell everyone. Especially if you think harm could be done to that person.
Your “Rules of the Road” say nothing about trolling. Either that means you don’t mind trolling and welcome it here, or it means that you don’t understand what trolling is or how it works, and think that you should somehow be able to cover all “bad” trolling through talking about things like civility and rudeness, and “good” trolling that doesn’t disobey your written rules doesn’t help.
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Why, exactly, don’t the rules say anything about trolling?
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For review: Feeding the Trolls.
Apparently as an oblique commentary on my comments here (irony or passive-aggressive, I can’t tell?), Peter Dolan went through and troll-rated all of my comments. So, for example, one 0 from Peter Dolan plus three 5’s = 3.75, etc.
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I doubt he thinks I’m trolling, so my best guess is he’s doing this to demonstrate abuse of the 0-rating in order to … what, make me think that overuse of the 0-rating is an actual problem on BMG?
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However, it’s not. Just because someone does it sometimes, doesn’t mean it was ever likely to result in non-troll comments getting deleted. As you can see, Peter’s actions have in no way threatened my comments with deletion, so whether it’s a childish stunt or a misplaced attempt at ironic humor, it has no point: we do not have a problem with 0-rating abuse that needs solving.
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We do have a problem with trolling that needs solving.
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Moving the threshold up makes the real problem worse in a misdirected attempt to solve a nonexistent problem (and, I suspect, to salve Bob’s ego).
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Perhaps in protest, I should start 0-rating everything?
Or everything from David, Charley, and Bob?
I mean, if they insist this was a problem that needed action, I can do my part to make it become a problem – although my actions wouldn’t be enough.
is RRRM a parody or serious? I honestly can’t even tell.
either way, such posters are disruptive and undermine the value of the blog.
make us conservatives look stupid.
JoeTS
sometimes I do parody
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you had me fooled there with all of that ‘to,too’ business.
We saw that canard a bunch of times in the recent discussions about trolling, primarily from Bob. It is a strawman that misdirects us into stupid mistakes. Because, in fact, the BMG community does not use 0 to indicate disagreement with the substance. We simply don’t. But by repeatedly urging people not to do it, you imply that we do.
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Here’s what does happen: People troll-rate comments they think are trolly, unproductive, abusive, or otherwise don’t belong. Then Bob, or someone like Bob, jumps self-righteously to the defense of dissent, as if that was what the troll-rating was about. That is a problem.
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I’d like to see a front page post from you guys exhorting us not to accuse those who troll-rate of trying to stifle dissent. That (unlike the phantom problem of people supposedly using 0 to indicate disagreement) is a real problem on this blog recently, and it hurts us. Why focus on the phantom invention and ignore the real problem?
Email me if you’d like to know userids who have been doing just that.
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There haven’t been many, but there have been more than zero of ’em.
The fact that it seems like a non-problem is just an indiciation that the editors are doing there job.
From what I remember, Cos, actually you have a central role in this, since some weeks ago you urged other people to delete the following content, with regard to Boston’s new policy on 18+ events:
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I actually agree with Bob that this particular comment was a marginal case: There’s actual arguable content there, mixed in with some gratuitous but rather mild jeering. This is a good example of what David is suggesting you give a 3 and otherwise ignore, or take the actual argument, thin as it may be, and respond to that.
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OTOH, you may have noticed another new poster whose comments are only invective, and that’s pretty tedious. I’ve given zeros to some of his comments.
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I can’t defend any one of the editors changing or suspending the rules without notice. Hence the apology.
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But actually, this change and clarification of the policy comes partly in reaction to your actions. I do feel that you overreacted on that particular comment. I don’t agree with Bob that it necessarily reflects some censorious instinct on your part, but I think we do want to encourage people to use a higher threshold than what you used.
Yeah “crazy liberals” is “marginal” at best.
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but I like the new rule about needing 8 zeros instead of 5
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count me in
All we have here are the Rules of the Road. If you’d like to propose some kind of revision to the rules, to include whatever you think is “trolling,” by all means please do so. As to my self-righteousness, if by that you mean trying to encourage a range of views on the blog, I’ll take it as a compliment đŸ™‚
Thank you for all your great posts, and for livening up debate on BMG!
My most recent substantial post, of the sort that required research and a few hours to write and that I wanted some good discussion on, got destroyed by a troll with your active assistance. You not only supported the troll and extended the subthread in response to him, but I think you also pulled it off the front page – did you? I know it was on the front page and then it was off.
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Given that experience, I’m not contributing new posts now. I had actually half-written a couple of new posts of substance (one on the federal fire department grants that Cheshire and other Massachusetts towns got, that a Globe article sensationalized last week; the other on the identity fraud legislation authored by Bill Straus that Jarrett Barrios is co-sponsoring – I’ve been talking to Bill Straus about this for two years). The reason I haven’t posted them is because of my experience with the Boston 18+ post. Basically, I don’t want to do it when the result will be to get trolled with the support of one of the blog editors.
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So, thanks for the thanks, but if you actually want me to contribute, please do something about the problem. Stop supporting trolls, and lower the threshold to four 0’s.
Well, okay, I made an exception for the Random Panic post. That was was important enough to me to overcome my reluctance to write and post something serious. So perhaps your support of trolling hasn’t totally shut me down, it just dampens my participation significantly.
Sometimes we have to defer to authority.
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David, Charley, and Bob have gone out of their ways to say something to the effect of “Hey, it’s not us that make BMG great, it’s you the contributors with your posts and your comments”. But lets give these guys some credit, this is a kick ass blog, and while we the users may be what propels BMG to greatness, the engine, the nitty gritty, at the core of BMG are The Editors. We are all standing on their backs; they have undisputibly invested more “sweat equity” and actual capital in BMG than anyone.
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My point being, if we apply the dinner party rule then David, Charley, and Bob are the party’s hosts. On matters of ettiquette, it is customary for the host to have a little more respect and to defer to the hosts’ wishes. We tend to allow the hosts leeway on discretionary matters. Perhaps that’s not the way we would do it at our house, but the hosts have their reasons; sure, they could try to please everyone, but too many cooks spoil the soup.
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The other way I look at the Editors is as referees/umpires. Refs are human and occasionally “blow calls” (I have seen few if any uncorrected blown calls here). Sometimes there are close calls where refs make the right call but the athelete sees the call as a blown call because it goes against him/her. The bottom line is that good refs are entitled to blow calls once and a while because they’re human and because with out their presence the game would just get out of hand; they are necessary to keep the game going smoothly, even on bad days. If atheletes don’t accept bad calls and move on, the game will never progress.
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I know poeople who contribute to community blogs have a lot invested and feel a sense of ownership; it’s the key to any community blog. But The Editors are still the majority shareholders. They’re smart guys who know this blog inside and out; and even if they do things differently than we would, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. They are also savy enough to reverse any bad decisions that will affect the quality of BMG; they know if people don’t want to come and participate here, then the terrorists have won, er, that BMG will come to an end.
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It’s David, Charley, and Bob’s dinner party, and they have been more than accomadating.
I don’t think it’s instructive to think of this as “David, Bob, and Charley: good or bad?” I think most of us would vote “good” without hesitation, but that doesn’t help make any sense of this discussion.
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The real issue is, what effects do the various policies and practices they decide on have on the quality of the blog?
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In this case, they’re articulating a policy (“trolling is not a violation of the rules”) that I know seriously hurts the quality of the blog, and also is a strong disincentive for me posting here.
…more in line of David, Charely and Bob are different than any other user. And if they do make a mistake, they will be smart enough to realize it does hurt BMG and they will take action to correct it. It’s a blog any rule that seosn’t work won’t be set in stone.
I agree 100%. I like the increase to 8 0’s to combat the abuse of the zero.
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Is zero even a number???
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David, I always hold close to my heart the fact that it was you who gave me my first zero.
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Yes. Yes it is.
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Interesting to me is that its (known) usage by humans is less than 2500 years.
wrote a book on this subject.
I love books about stuff like this – Krakatoa, the Madman who wrote the OED, The White City, Bill Bryson’s stuff – this looks like a real winner.
The lowest rating you could award a BMG (Babylon Mesopotamian Group) post was 3.
we blogged in cuneiform! AND WE LIKED IT!
Windows XT v. Cuneiform
…who it was at the moment, but there was an historian who hypothesized, quite convincingly as I recall, that if the Ancient Romans had begun their civilization with a numrical concept of zero that the would have reached the nuclear age by the birth of Christ. Read it in college. Fascinating stuff.
I knew we could all agree on something!
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BTW – There is some debate as to whether 0 is a natural number…