Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[benji]

For example, people from South America are going to look at US politics through a lens of neo-colonialism and distrust due to what we did down there as a nation. They might look at the former Soviet Union more positively, being the geopolitical rival of the US, as a result. However, someone from Eastern Europe is going to have the exact opposite lens and view the Soviet Union as the neo-imperialist power and the US as the positive influence. Neither of these are inherently wrong opinions, both nations did a lot of harm in those days and any good they did was a result of them trying to stick it to the other. The Cold War was very much just another race for empire, nations scrambling for power in the imperialist tradition.

I mean, a lot of those countries are still destabilized or not in great condition and tend to blame others for their systematic short comings (see how many in the BRICS thread blamed the US for Bolsonaro). That should make you question if their perspectives are entirely because past experiences or there is elements of deflection. The actual reality, is that the mod team cannot know everything about every topic and can just guide themselves seeing who is acting like a prick or not. But because “tone policing” is considered an offense and having guidelines is too hard to write in the rules, most mods limit attention to mass reporting for petty shit or stuff that they passionately about. You cannot eliminate the Cold War mentality by keeping the Cold of War mentality.

I'd note further that B-Dubs is going "BOTH SIDES" at the end there even as he plainly rejects the claim of the Soviet Bloc (and its defenders on his forum) that communism is the complete opposite of imperialism* and communist nations cannot be imperialist by definition making it impossible.

*Even as the nature of socialism demands it. (Which provides a defense to the U.S. position if one were to allow it, namely that the American Empire had no need for states to obey only merely to not join the communist bloc, which is why the U.S. could tolerate the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, etc. but the eventual Soviet-China split tore the communist bloc apart and the Soviets could not allow the Czech, Hungarian and Titoist variations.)

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/climate-change-burning-man-attendees-stuck-in-the-desert-due-to-rains.760398/page-3#post-111486684

They're all partying with the 1%. And let's face it, running off miles deep into the remote desert to do drugs and party isn't exactly something poor people can afford to do.

Royalan

I’m not really interested in getting into a conversation on what exactly the poor can or can’t afford to do. Mostly because I wouldn’t be able to escape the irony of doing so on a gaming enthusiast message board.

[Boredfrom]

They're all partying with the 1%. And let's face it, running off miles deep into the remote desert to do drugs and party isn't exactly something poor people can afford to do.

They can, they did and will still do. Getting high in the desert is not 1% exclusive activity.

[Potato]

Random constructive garbage to give context

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Alright. This needs to be asked because we're less than half a year out from primary season and a year and four months out from an election:

Are y'all prepared to prevent this place from turning into the bad faith shit show it did in 2020? When long time members with institutional knowledge were chased off this site by bad actors using moderators like a bludgeon. Bad actors who have been, almost to a person, banned due to the growing transparency of their actions.

Gonna bring this up again

So... last time, the primaries were an absolute shitshow. I know as well as anybody that moderation dropped the ball there; for my part, I wanted to try and bring everybody together, and clearly failed miserably. The simple fact of the matter is that reconciliation wasn't ever possible, and we shouldn't have treated the conflicts we were seeing like a good faith disagreement, because they weren't. They were an effort to drive "opposition" off the site dressed up like a moral cause, and we let it work to a depressing extent. I'm not going to say that this is something we can only see with the benefit of hindsight, either, because a lot of people called it at the time. We got played. No taking that back at this point.

The entire fiasco with Tara Reade's accusations and the fallout from that demonstrates that we needed a different approach to these kinds of high-volatility situations, and we're going to have that for next time. No more letting people toss around accusations and effectively forcing people to defend themselves. No moral crusades against other members. If somebody thinks somebody else is being a shit, they need to report them and move on. In topics that touch on politics, anyone throwing around accusations of bannable behavior at other members *at all, in any context* will get an immediate threadban, and if we think that they're ban-baiting or otherwise deliberately weaponizing something like Reade's story, they'll get at minimum a 2-week ban, with sharp escalation for subsequent offenses. If we think it's a coordinated effort like last time clearly was, that number goes up dramatically. I'm not going to promise automatic permanent bans for first offenses, because we reserve that kind of thing for troll accounts and bigots, but basically anything short of that is on the table.

We - I - know damn well can't allow something like what happened in 2020 to happen again. Not for any specific community, but for everyone on the site who might have had something terrible happen to them. Too many people were forced to discuss their trauma publicly to try and stave off a group of users who were never interested in anything besides scoring points. The ringleaders of that group are mostly banned now, and good riddance, but we lost too many good people, and hurt too many more, through sheer inability to see what was going on and treat it the way we should've. Our eyes are open to that now, and the team is prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to stop it from happening again.

Since this is in response to my question, so it would be rude for me not to respond.

1. Genuinely, I appreciate y'all actually getting back to that question, as it is a critical one. To that end

2. I also appreciate the concrete steps laid out to prevent a repeat of 2020 but

3. I do not have cause to believe your (broad you, not you specifically) actions will match your stated intent.

To be sure, there is one, let's say brazenly illustrative, reason I already knew things will be better than 2020 by default, even without an answer.

But I was here in 2020. I remember who had what conversations where about what was happening. And while I am certainly a renowned loud mouth here, I do a lot of sitting back and observing elsewhere. I lnow how volatile things hot and I remember what was said.

If you do too, then you can understand my doubt.

But I'll say this. Democrats have an incumbent this year. Which means there will be a lot less in fighting. Which means it is a perfect time to take the steps you have laid out and establish a hard precedent, since there will be less pressure.

Which is why I asked the question in the first place.

So thank you. And I hope you manage to prove me wrong to doubt.

I was here too, and honestly you just have to ignore like 300 people for political topics to have meaningful discussion. There's so much open concern trolling whataboutism and not the actual topic. Once the election ends, clear ignore list. That's what I do anyway. Otherwise I wouldn't read the threads because I would be baited and banned for things I don't even believe.

I hope we're both wrong and I know it is a lot of work so I appreciate that. If it's any consolation, like half of those people I ignored were banned during the election cycle. There's just too many.

This is a fight I've been fighting on this forum since day 1. Not just about politics. There is a massive blindspot when it comes to concerted, coordinated efforts by bad actors to get posters banned.

I'm not exaggerating about day 1 either. I was arguing for this forum to be on the look out for The Bore pulling shit only for Cindy Mayweather to step in and lock horns with me. I shut down one of her points with "so is Clarence Thomas" and she backs off, only to run back to The Bore where they were telling her what to say (she edited her post to turn it from, paraphrasing, "that was a good one," to "how dare you call me an Uncle Tom,") and then posted here to support her. I pointed out this was happening. Nothing.

It happened to Gordon Shumway when one of the hate sites (it wasn't The Bore it was one of the worse ones) brigaded to get him banned, he asked me for help, I provided evidence to the mods that that was happening, and nothing was done. We lost a good poster for nothing.

I've been banging this drum for years and it keeps happening, vut 2020 was the worst due to sheer scale.

Look ma, we’re famous!

Garbage response in case anyone cares:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

So, we've been talking about increased polarization internally, and the community sniping stuff, on and off for a while. I'm just going to point out, remember after Biden took office and every time we had a positive thread on inclusion or whatever it turned into "oh, the drone strikes will be done by an lgbtq+ person/woman/black person" thing when there hadn't actually been any drone strikes since he took office? Remember how those dudes were getting banned?

There's a difference between actually caring about an issue and wanting to discuss/bring attention to it and using it as a cudgel. We've been trying to ban people who do that for a few years now--hell, we permed this one guy who tried to blame the war in Ukraine for a Nazi shooting up a grocery in a black neighborhood a while back--but part of the problem is also members refusing to recognize that people are going to have other perspectives due to the history of the region they live in.

For example, people from South America are going to look at US politics through a lens of neo-colonialism and distrust due to what we did down there as a nation. They might look at the former Soviet Union more positively, being the geopolitical rival of the US, as a result. However, someone from Eastern Europe is going to have the exact opposite lens and view the Soviet Union as the neo-imperialist power and the US as the positive influence. Neither of these are inherently wrong opinions, both nations did a lot of harm in those days and any good they did was a result of them trying to stick it to the other. The Cold War was very much just another race for empire, nations scrambling for power in the imperialist tradition.

What I'm saying is that just because we disagree with someone, that doesn't necessarily make them a concern troll. That said, if you feel that someone is concern trolling or ban baiting or in any way just being a total dipshit in a thread just report them and move on. Like Poodle said, we're going to be coming down a lot harder in more contentious and polarizing threads in the future. Expect to see a LOT more threadbans and warnings, essentially kicking people out of these threads, as we continue on.

Someone should report this post for deadnaming himu and mis-gendering.

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nick-knacks-a-show-by-show-retrospective-of-nickelodeon.136846/page-37#post-111252550

I watched Smurfs as an edgy teenager and it was fine. Less toothless than I thought it would be. And why wouldn't a child today enjoy David the Gnome?

[Potato]

The utopia of productive discussion hasn't happened yet so what else would be the problem except the cops haven't taken out enough people for laws they can't reasonably be aware of?

Worked for Stalin and Pol Pot and seems to be working for Xi. What's your problem with freedom?

[benji]

The utopia of productive discussion hasn't happened yet so what else would be the problem except the cops haven't taken out enough people for laws they can't reasonably be aware of?

Worked for Stalin and Pol Pot and seems to be working for Xi. What's your problem with freedom?

No, it didn't because of the outside bad actors undermining the utopias.

[Pwnz]

They didn't even thanked us for spotting the bad faith posters they banned 

For real. Like I don't know if Adder mentioned the bore because I was in that thread, but whatever the bore isn't a sole entity.

At this point, you could read this thread to see examples of where they could improve on moderation. I pretty much come here to get the latest on where the forum is imploding. If I don't, I usually miss it because I bailed from poliera due to Reade and I largely ignore the concern trolls. The discord very rarely talks about era.

There was one message in there admitting to Reade and giving good steps they claim they'll take, but like literally the problem is going on constantly. Whether it's that person trying to accuse people for being anti trans for highlighting how "only LGBT can play LGBT" has the effect of outing people. Like okay what. Or the "fascist tendencies" for supporting police prudently. So inflammatory. If they are true to their word, Thordison or whatever the name is should be banned. He's constantly responding to my posts in political threads about concerns about trump getting reelected when it isn't the topic and all it does is stir up useless shit and get people banned.

Considering they're still banning people for "dismissing concerns about *wildly uncharitable strawmen about a protected group here*", I do not believe them that I can report ban baiting. I suggested they only allow the report button for obvious bigotry and explicit content because I think it is the problem and it needlessly adds work to them. Anything really bad will be reported once that policy is enforced but instead I guess they want a flood of reports about ban baiting that I'm assuming they'll ignore because they won't have time to go through it all. The discord has this policy and guess what? It's super civil.

Part of peer review is getting independent input.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sen-mitch-mcconnell-freezes-during-a-press-conference-yes-again.759235/page-10#post-111279304

fascists shouldn't get state healthcare. hopefully he gets stuck like this soon.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/opioid-overdose-antidote-narcan-now-widely-available-over-the-counter-in-the-u-s.760272/#post-111435393

Tell me you have a problem with opioids without telling me you have a problem with opioids

wild, callous post. you love people who use opioids whether you know they do or not. everybody should learn how to use narcan and at the very least keep some at home.

[Potato]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sen-mitch-mcconnell-freezes-during-a-press-conference-yes-again.759235/page-10#post-111279304

fascists shouldn't get state healthcare. hopefully he gets stuck like this soon.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/opioid-overdose-antidote-narcan-now-widely-available-over-the-counter-in-the-u-s.760272/#post-111435393

Tell me you have a problem with opioids without telling me you have a problem with opioids

wild, callous post. you love people who use opioids whether you know they do or not. everybody should learn how to use narcan and at the very least keep some at home.

No you fucking junkie, I do not know any opioid addicts and I do not need to know how to use narcan...just like 99% of the population of anywhere.

[HaughtyFrank]

Tell me you have a problem with opioids without telling me you have a problem with opioids

wild, callous post. you love people who use opioids whether you know they do or not. everybody should learn how to use narcan and at the very least keep some at home.

What? That's like saying everyone needs a giant adrenaline syringe at home in case someone goes Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

[HaughtyFrank]

I'll definitely be grabbing some, I have had some close calls here and there. Falling out is scary as heck

Of course Red is also pumped full of drugs

[Boredfrom]

I'll definitely be grabbing some, I have had some close calls here and there. Falling out is scary as heck

Why would admit this shit?

Should be cheap to free but this is a good start. I’ve been doing a lot of care work for my family in the LA area and it’s awful to see how many people on the street are at risk of overdosing just because Narcan is not available widely.

I suppose that's why people do not encourage substance abuse.

[Nintex]

wild, callous post. you love people who use opioids whether you know they do or not. everybody should learn how to use narcan and at the very least keep some at home.

What? That's like saying everyone needs a giant adrenaline syringe at home in case someone goes Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

If you don't want Marcellus Wallace to go medieval on your ass that's probably a good idea.

[benji]

Considering they're still banning people for "dismissing concerns about *wildly uncharitable strawmen about a protected group here*", I do not believe them that I can report ban baiting. I suggested they only allow the report button for obvious bigotry and explicit content because I think it is the problem and it needlessly adds work to them. Anything really bad will be reported once that policy is enforced but instead I guess they want a flood of reports about ban baiting that I'm assuming they'll ignore because they won't have time to go through it all.

If they assume against banning when reading the other reports, as well as in their discussions before at least three staff members sign off, then the need to rely on ban baiting reports is automatically extensively reduced. All they're doing is shifting what should be their burden once again, now to those who write ban baiting reports that match staff priors rather than simply ban requests that do.

They're trying to come up with excuses they can give for not acting rather than adopting an innocent until proven guilty framework and equal justice across the board. (I would argue because their chosen ideology is explicitly opposed to this.)

[MJBarret]

Everyone should know how to cut someone having a syphilitic seizure out of a fursuit, and to say otherwise is bigotry

[Nintex]

The drug epidemic in the US and Canada is entirely depressing. The other day I read a discussion on Reddit and the bottom line was that the US posters were shocked that it isn't "commonly accepted" in Europe to shoot up illegal drugs in the middle of busy streets and if anyone noticed they'd probably inform the police or an ambulance to haul your ass to rehab.

[benji]

The other day I read a discussion on Reddit and the bottom line was that the US posters were shocked that it isn't "commonly accepted" in Europe to shoot up illegal drugs in the middle of busy streets and if anyone noticed they'd probably inform the police or an ambulance to haul your ass to rehab.

Friend, the last thing proponents of "socialist Europe" ever learn about is Europe. Especially not their state policies.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-guardian-lanthimos%E2%80%99s-poor-things-fuels-speculation-of-sex-scene%E2%80%99s-return-to-cinema.760359/page-3#post-111465846

So many prudes on Era, shouldn't really be surprised though and it's all under the veil of being "progressive" and stopping sinister directors for exploiting actors.

Sex is absolutely essential to the continuation of most every species on the planet, and most everyone watching movies engages in sex. It's a far, far, far higher percentage than the people who engage in extreme acts of violence that permeate most every movie coming out of Hollywood. It humanises characters, it's a way to show passion, weakness, desire etc it's not all just for titillation. Grow up and stop watching movies with your parents.

 

[HaughtyFrank]

Should be cheap to free but this is a good start. I’ve been doing a lot of care work for my family in the LA area and it’s awful to see how many people on the street are at risk of overdosing just because Narcan is not available widely.

I suppose that's why people do not encourage substance abuse.

It really bugs me how they present it like it's just natural that people overdose, as if it's completely out of anyone's control. Great that there's a drug that can prevent people from dying but lets also focus a bit on how and why they're overdosing in the first place. With someone like Hachikoma and her harm prevention talk I get the feeling that doesn't matter at all to her.

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-guardian-lanthimos%E2%80%99s-poor-things-fuels-speculation-of-sex-scene%E2%80%99s-return-to-cinema.760359/page-3#post-111465846

So many prudes on Era, shouldn't really be surprised though and it's all under the veil of being "progressive" and stopping sinister directors for exploiting actors.

Sex is absolutely essential to the continuation of most every species on the planet, and most everyone watching movies engages in sex. It's a far, far, far higher percentage than the people who engage in extreme acts of violence that permeate most every movie coming out of Hollywood. It humanises characters, it's a way to show passion, weakness, desire etc it's not all just for titillation. Grow up and stop watching movies with your parents.

 

Morricunt

What the fuck is this shit? You think concerns about exploited women is faked?

GamerJM

I can't afford to move out and we only have one big TV here. It's probably easier for most young adults in extremely expensive cities to just improve the relationships with their parents and get used to being in the same room for sex scenes tbh, which is what I did.

Blue Venus Red Mercury

This is a shitty thing to say amidst a housing pricing catastrophe in so many places where a lot of people can't move out. Or heck, just people who enjoy spending time with their parents I guess

[Boredfrom]

What the fuck is this shit? You think concerns about exploited women is faked?

Yes.

[ClothedMac]

They didn't even thanked us for spotting the bad faith posters they banned 

Part of peer review is getting independent input.

This "peer review," sounds like both siderism.

[Red Cyclone]

GamerJM

I can't afford to move out and we only have one big TV here. It's probably easier for most young adults in extremely expensive cities to just improve the relationships with their parents and get used to being in the same room for sex scenes tbh, which is what I did.

Blue Venus Red Mercury

This is a shitty thing to say amidst a housing pricing catastrophe in so many places where a lot of people can't move out. Or heck, just people who enjoy spending time with their parents I guess

[benji]

It really bugs me how they present it like it's just natural that people overdose, as if it's completely out of anyone's control. Great that there's a drug that can prevent people from dying but lets also focus a bit on how and why they're overdosing in the first place. With someone like Hachikoma and her harm prevention talk I get the feeling that doesn't matter at all to her.

A harm reduction that doesn't seek into the causes of the harm but only to react after it happens is pretty on brand though.

Blue Venus Red Mercury

This is a shitty thing to say amidst a housing pricing catastrophe in so many places where a lot of people can't move out.

And before that amidst the bulk of human history where nobody could afford housing.

[Straight Edge]

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/what-will-starfields-metacritic-opencritic-score-be.753139/page-18#post-111309396

User Banned (2 Weeks): Mocking Ethnic Accent

97

[Straight Edge]

[Boredfrom]

It's even weirder when you look up the history and realize it began 100 years ago as a part of the women's rights movement to move the age of consent up from 7 years old.

Is problematic that you associate sexuality with pedo stuff.

[Besticus Maximus]

B dubs, since you're obviously reading this, do you not have small c concerns that you're the community manager of a bunch of smackheads? Who are recruiting people to ship drugs to through your forum? Has this occurred to you at all?