Insults, personal attacks, rudeness, and blanket unsupported statements reduce the level of discourse, interfere with our basic objective, and are not permitted.
is not being applied to a string of comments from one user such as
you’re an idiot for thinking the guy wasn’t caught
Sounds like you’ve been sucking a lot of police anatomy lately.
Now you’re sitting at home watching law enforcement perform oral sex with each other
So as to all you a-holes who love to point out…
I’d be very interested to hear from one of those who run this site how comments like the above mesh with your claimed desire for “commentary typical of thoughtful discussion between acquaintances who may hold differing views on important issues, but who debate those issues in a respectful manner.” Is that seriously how you define respectful?
If this is the kind of commentary you now find acceptable, please at least be honest about it and re-write your site rules.
And I’d like to report that the recommend button appears to be broken, since I was able to recommend this post twice. Also, I got the “unable to establish a database connection” error when trying to post this comment.
You see ocean I made a mistake years ago. I thought this was a good place to do my time. Easy time. Spend it here with all the nuts.
But I did not know that once you come in it is very very difficult to get out. There are rules I did not know about.
So, now that I am stuck here I usually break the rules so I may bring some sunshine to these pathetic and scared little souls who really don’t know about the outside world.
But because I am stuck here by law they have nowhere to send me when I do break the laws.
Cal me Mr. McMurphy please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADvvhvBIuRg
Can’t wait for the World Series
Anybody with a reasonable command of the language can construct flagrantly offensive comments that at least superficially stay within the literal constraints of the TOS. This launches the moderators and the site onto the slippery slope of what the commentator meant, rather than what he or she wrote. On an explicitly political site that intentionally focuses on issues that all sides feel passionately about, my bottom line is I’d rather handle my annoyance at the garbage than see a more intrusive moderation policy.
I suspect, absolutely without evidence (except in the case of our most prolific Waltham contingent), that some back-channel communication happens as well.
All in all, I share your reaction to this garbage. I would prefer the more explicitly offensive items to be swiftly and silently removed. There was, at one time, a “soft” standard that these pages should be readable in any office and on any screen in an typical family living room or dining room. I think that’s about right. In my view, the middle two items cited in the thread-starter fail that standard.
Beyond that, I think the editors are doing fine.
to say that comments should be “office-safe” and not that “rudeness” is prohibited.
I’m not sure how “You’re an idiot” is polite, respectful conversation, but it’s office-safe (to have up on your screen although not to say at a meeting, at least where I work). I can tell you that when I have moderated comments, no personal attacks were tolerated, period.
“That is an idiotic policy” was acceptable in the context of explaining why someone thought something was wrong. “You’re an idiot” was not. If people didn’t like it, they were free to take their conversation elsewhere, because allowing things like that ends up driving away valuable participants who are seeking civil discourse.
and wouldn’t want the “one user” to be banned, but his/her rhetoric and posts of late needs to dialed back.
it’s not my rhetoric it’s the target of my rhetoric.
Nothing in my tone or phraseology is new for me. You have seen it many times before.
It’s clear it’s because my target is law enforcement. And it is clear you object to that.
Yet Ryan you haven’t explained. You only launch into personal attacks. That’s fine, I don’t mind the personal attacks but Ryan you need some concrete argument tother than I’m a dick and how dare I question law enforcement on this.
I’ll give you another shot on this ryan.
This time with a coherent argument please. It would make my job easier.
Okay Ryan, you ready? Ok get set ryan aaaaaand …… begin!
You could have asked the same questions you did and framed them as anything up to and including mistakes, without casting the brave and heroic efforts of the cops as incompetent. You weren’t there, you don’t know the procedures and it wasn’t your neck on the line.
You could have at least showed a little respect by recognizing your limited scope, and then maybe more people would have taken your points seriously.
The dumb thing about your criticisms toward me directly on this is I’ve been very critical of cops in the past — go back to Occupy and numerous other events. I just don’t see the huge mistakes here, not of the gross incompetence variety that you suggest exists with your inflamed rhetoric.
We should instead take a look at the whole process of what went on and reevaluate. I’m sure many things could be done better. But let’s not pretend they weren’t done fairly well this time, given the circumstances.
—–
And let’s not even start on some of your more offensive statements. Growing up in Swampscott and having worked at the JCC for years back in the day, I know people who had family members who died in the holocaust. I’ve seen the videos of hundreds of emaciated corpses being tossed in cavernous holes in the ground. That stuff gets me upset, like it should every human being across this planet.
Saying what you did there went way beyond just being a dick. I can handle dicks. Making light of half of the Holocaust, on the other hand, isn’t something I handle well.
on the appropriateness of telling someone they should “hop on” a holocaust train? I think that’s sad, Ernie. Real sad.
I’ve addressed your know-it-all-ism on another post I just answered re: the helicopters. Feel free to read what I said there and apply it to this inane concept that you have in which you think you know law enforcement procedure and capabilities better than the people on the ground.
The world’s second-greatest deliberative body 🙂
Thanks for helping keep BMG civil!
Fact is, folks, we all have day jobs. We do not, and cannot, monitor BMG 24/7, and in many cases we (or, at least, I) do not read every comment on every post. There is a limit to the amount of time any of your editors can reasonably spend on BMG, and personally, I prefer to spend that time writing rather than monitoring.
If you see something you find offensive, please feel free to call it to our attention via email. (See something, say something, as the saying goes.) If there’s a comment on the site that seems an obvious rules violation, chances are good that we simply have not seen it.
don’t involve giving up your day job. And I say this as someone who in the past has pitched in to help moderate comments at another website that receives several million page views per month. So I am well aware of how difficult it can be to read every comment on a site.
1) Make sure to look at all comments that have been downrated by your community. That’s a small subset of your comments. There’s usually a good reason why your users thumbs-down a comment. If it’s a bad reason (i.e. people disagree with a point that’s made respectfully), well, then it’s easy enough to take no action and move on.
2) If you don’t have time to do this, perhaps you want to seek trusted volunteers from the community to do so. I would guess it would not take more than 10 to 15 minutes a day to scan downrated comments. I don’t see that many here.
3) There needs to be some consequences for a user who consistently breaks the rules besides removing offending comments. Otherwise there doesn’t seem to be much point to having rules. If you think banning is too extreme, how about limiting the quantity of comments and posts for awhile? Or pre-moderation of that user’s comments and posts?
i’m not sure exactly what i said about ocean’s bizarre control attempt in the above comment. I don’t believe I mentioned “kissy face” but whatever I said the editors decided to take it out.
Lame guys, real lame.
Ocean wants “appropriate office standards” for BMG my friends.
As oppose to big people talk.
And she wants to volunteer to monitor people and then harass david and Bob until they take it off.
Probably what she did to them here. E-mail after e-mail after e-mail.
Really guys …. and you wonder why I…..ahh never mind.
based on recommendations from the “volunteers” I bet.
It teaches the offenders absolutely nothing. Either leave them up for everyone to heap scorn upon and to remain part of their permanent record here, or shut down their account.
There’s been a (mostly) reasonable and informative dialogue here about standards and about how to deal with troubling commentary. Deleting comments, when they violate stated standards, is not pointless. I don’t care about somebody’s record of comments and I try to avoid feeding the trolls. If somebody wants to go on an unreasonable rampage, the best policy is for those moderating to keep an eye on it, making sure it doesn’t violate standards, and for the rest of us to just ignore it until it shrivels up and blows away in the wind.
Really?
Weasel words my friend
You are being obtuse.
I suggest you season your phrases liberally with “progressive.”
(Not the soup)
then mission accomplished.
Love to see you there.
BTW how’s that BMG coup of yours going?