Forumulating Guidelines for Forum Debate

[Geo]

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the NSA has substantially increased its spying on Americans in the last 5 years.

I reckon not only on Americans.

[Yitzi]

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the NSA has substantially increased its spying on Americans in the last 5 years.

I reckon not only on Americans.

Yeah, but spying on citizens of other countries isn't really a mark of a police state.

[Geo]

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the NSA has substantially increased its spying on Americans in the last 5 years.

I reckon not only on Americans.

Yeah, but spying on citizens of other countries isn't really a mark of a police state.

Depends on circumstances. Tourists/visitors to said police state for instance.

[Vishniac]

Obama, of course.

Yeah, he's very Chamberlain-like; that's one thing I think both sides can agree to criticize him about, though in different areas.

There's a thing that gets my goat - it's like the entire political right had a secret meeting when he was elected, and decided as one to just throw mud at the man until something stuck.  Do you follow the Daily Show?  After the Republican Convention, they played a clip of Clint Eastwood talking to the empty chair, and Jon Stewart exclaimed "There's an INVISIBLE Obama that only republicans can see!"  The man has failed as a leader, and failed to see that compromise with unvarnished evil; I was sick of all the Opposite Day lies years ago, they could have been hitting him with things he actually did, or failed to do.

Gitmo is still open and NASA has its budget year - for the first time as an adult, I've sat out a presidential election, because he failed the audition rather badly.

For as long as i remember, I have always been pro-US. But now...
Obama is easily the worst US president I have seen (I just didn't know Carter. I barely remember the radio saying Reagan has been elected when en route to school at 10).
Obama is at the same time an idiot, an hypocrite and a coward, and he's clearly more dangerous than W ever was.

[Dio]

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the NSA has substantially increased its spying on Americans in the last 5 years.

I reckon not only on Americans.

Yeah, but spying on citizens of other countries isn't really a mark of a police state.

Depends on circumstances. Tourists/visitors to said police state for instance.

Their is presently no expectation of privacy outside certain locations. Even those locations have limits when it comes to the police and the government.

[Buster's Uncle]

I just want to say that my position on arguing has evolved since the OP; because of our natures as nerdz being what it is, aiming for conversation between people who disagree over argument keeps it calmer, more rational.  Almost the entire difference being that with both parties focused on whatever's under discussion, winning and losing don't muddy maters and get testosterone involved.  (Nerdtosterone is a bad thing, leading to much immaturity and stupid.)

[Buster's Uncle]

I'd still encourage everyone to familiarize themselves with the observations I quoted in the OP - even in a non-adversarial disagreement conversation, almost the whole thing still applies...

[Buster's Uncle]

-Bumping this mostly for an observation that didn't get mentioned in the thread so far - that spontaneous "argument" -really exactly the conversation between friends who don't completely agree/disagree I like to talk about, and it wasn't particularly on purpose on my end. IIRC- between Yitzi and I was actually a MODEL of the purpose of the thread.  Nothing wrong with the cute use of leaderheads -we mostly understood each other well enough, and the huge digressions clarifying where we didn't were interesting and very on-topic for this forum as a whole.  I didn't know Yang said atheist stuff in diplomacy text, 'cause I don't play SMAC(X) in a way that triggers such talk - I learned something, and should have said so.  Yitzi is good people, and that there was a good argument.

[Elok]

I have to go to work soon, but I agree with the late Shamus Young on moderation: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=19709

[bvanevery]

I don't think freaks are usually the problem or the reason to do preemptive forum moderation.  I think it's about handling normal and semi-normal people's willingness to devolve.

[Buster's Uncle]

...As I said openly in the rules thread in site over a decade ago, I don't need no steenking rules...

[bvanevery]

Rules are necessary at millions of users scale.  r/truegaming is evidence of this.  It's one of the only subs that delivers on its mission of higher quality essay writing, because the community standards are embodied in rules, and the moderator cadre enforces them.  Additionally, community members report posts and comments that break the rules, which reduces moderator workload some.  It's not feasible to expect moderators to read every comment at millions of users scale, although in r/truegaming, you could expect them to read every post.  Turnaround times for posts are faster though, if a pile of regulars are flagging it.

At scales substantially less than that, the main rule I've seen that needs to be enforced is "Be Civil".  Not much of a rule to have, but there it is.  And I believe in handling that with warnings, not permanent bans.  I get a 3 day temp ban in r/truegaming probably every 6 months or so.  In smaller subs I've rarely thought someone should be banned, and have rarely resorted to blocking someone (my choice as a user).  Lots of stuff can be handled with some version of "if we could all just chill" and then the stronger "you are REQUIRED to chill" if necessary.

Back in the days of my co-moderated gamedesign-l, there was a rule that disputing parties were expected to de-escalate voluntarily.  Yes, that was a rule, which embodies a community standard.  And when disputes happened, it was cited and enforced.  Which had the tendency of doing the hoped-for social engineering, so that people didn't have to be told to do that the next time.  Or not as frequently, as humans are humans.

r/4Xgaming had a run where some devs were spamming about their work too frequently.  It really was excessive; I argued from the pro-dev position and do always advocate for the sub remaining a dev-friendly place.  But yeah this guy really was hogging the talking stick too much.  He got talked to by the mods, and the problem did abate.

And that's about all I've seen on Reddit in recent years.  I don't inhabit the toxic cesspool groups.  Since it's a big site, there are plenty of them.  I have a teeny weeny footprint by Reddit standards.  That's my way of avoiding their capitalist misfeatures and cutting some things down to community scale.

[Buster's Uncle]

I read Shamus Young's post at Elok's link, mind, and I don't disagree - he omits taking about community tone being a function of the tone of what's draws his crowd to thew site - it's his own tone doing it.  That there's part of the Leadership function I talk about.

No, the reason we have any rules here that I don't need to run the place is that's what I would want as a common citizen, as protection from the management.

Alas, it's simply not possible to cover every single thing w/o some ridiculously broad rules, something I've all-too-frequently had to resort to making as policy statements - I try to make those Policy Announcements in the rules thread when I think to, to reduce the appearance that I'm doing everything on the fly according to whims.  I'd pretty much worked out policy and my style 13 years ago, but I still sometimes stumble over some Official Policy there all along that I hadn't thought to share with the membership all these years later...

It's complicated.