People going constantly offtopic and other problems

[iseahound]

r u srsly going to VIOLATE our freedom of speech and expression through CENSORSHIP ???????

[boiler]

If you're referring to me, I never mentioned censorship. And freedom of speech doesn't apply if you mean like US laws. Freedom of speech that is guaranteed by the constitution means that the government cannot pass laws abridging freedom of speech. It does not mean that anyone has to let everyone say whatever they want wherever they want.

[iseahound]

fantastic. Natural rights are "self-evident" and "unailenable" and are different from human rights. Our concept of human rights extends from the natural rights bestowed upon us by our Creator, or whomever you wish to believe in, and they precede our conception of government. For example, the right to self-defense is a natural right. It can be extended to justify a use of force in certain situations, but that justification depends on a written body of law and its precedents. However the natural right is, well, natural. Kind of like saying a dog may bite when kicked.

For further clarification I'd like to point out that when the Declaration of Independence was signed, well the US didn't exist yet. When they talked about rights, they didn't mean the Bill of RIghts (which was to be ratified at a later date). They were talking about the natural rights bestowed upon them by the Creator, Providence, or whomever you believe in, and that these truths are self-evident.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

[gregster]

You are getting offtopic again. This has nothing to do with how an online community works.

[boiler]

There is no natural right that I have to let you say whatever you want in my place of business or my organization.

I am trying to keep this on topic by pointing out that we as a forum do not have to allow people to say whatever they want on our forum. This is a common misapplication of the concept of freedom of speech. I am also calmly stating my position, respecting iseahound as he pointed out we should. I'm not sure the large bolded fonts and "fantastic" are keeping with that sentiment.

[gregster]

I am totally with you on this, boiler. You explained it correctly.

At first, I thought Iseahound was joking (especially because of the font and syntax use of the first post), but you can never be sure, I guess. On a philosophical level, it's a valid opinion, but it's just not applicable or relevant in this context. I mean, these basic questions should be covered sufficiently by our forum rules and our terms of service, iirc; especially, they are out of scope for this topic.

[guest3456]

However the natural right is, well, natural. Kind of like saying a dog may bite when kicked.

in the same vein as your dog example: if you want to use a racial slur to someone's face, they may punch you in the mouth and revoke your supposed "freedom" to say those things to them.

At first, I thought Iseahound was joking (especially because of the font and syntax use of the first post), but you can never be sure, I guess.

same. not sure if he is being sarcastic or not. can't tell anything anymore.

There is no natural right that I have to let you say whatever you want in my place of business or my organization.

I am trying to keep this on topic by pointing out that we as a forum do not have to allow people to say whatever they want on our forum. This is a common misapplication of the concept of freedom of speech. I am also calmly stating my position, respecting iseahound as he pointed out we should.

+100

[iseahound]

This reply is mostly for gregster since he linked a fantastic article on how to moderate an online community:

In essence, there are established interactions between people, and there are rules we can make regarding how we interact with each other. Some of these interactions are trival: people respond when provoked, people do tend to get emotional. Sometimes, we can't help it, they way we respond is just the way respond. We can understand these as natural responses, and make a set of rules permitting or denying our natural responses, or how we can interact with each other. The article you linked suggested a voting system like reddit, but the problem with creating a set of rules, is that it tends to outsource the problem to another dimension. For example, there might be vote manipulation. And this is something that article didn't address, when does a community reach a criticality such that a voting system is preferable. If there's only a group of 5 people, having a voting system seems absurd - it's better to just listen to each other. I'm certain theres only people in the v2 forum in the double digits, and more importantly, it doesn't seem to be a real message board where random lurkers tend to go for content. So it's a small group of people discussing insular ideas. And with a small group of people, the "rules of engagement" will tend to change. People are more predictabale as a group rather than invividuals.

I do agree with the conclusion of the article. However I'd add that there needs to be a quorum, a critical mass of people, for this system to work effectively. Moreover it tends to work best for an open system. I doubt that there are normal people coming here to see their daily dose of AutoHotkey v2 memes.

A voting system might seem like a democratic choice, but it easily reinforces the majority opinion, leading to a tyranny of the majority. To get around this, the forum needs to be not just open to the public, but also assessable to the public. I don't see how an in-depth discussion about v2 might be so.

And likewise there is hardly a critical mass of people here. It's the same group of people again and again. It's easy to gauge how popular the v2 changes are by simply how dead the forum is. And worst of all when people do express their opinions it ends up being a clown fiesta.



GOTTA GO FAST

But yeah, let's see how a voting system actually works before writing it off.

[gregster]

This reply is mostly for gregster since he linked a fantastic article on how to moderate an online community:

You probably meant guest3456, not gregster. I didn't provide any link to an article, afaik.

Apart from that, I am quite critical of this article (well, to be more precise, guest3456's interpretation of it, that we discussed privately) and voting systems in general (at least for a small community like ours):

Let's face it, our website is not that big that regularly active global moderators can't have a good overview about what's going on the whole forum (or most of it). And much of what's going on are newcomers (and reliable, reasonable veteran forum members) asking for directions and basic help or giving support as good as they can - I can see only very few subforums where votes could actually make sense, but the total number of posts in these forums is so low that I see a lot of bureaucracy and technical effort for a rather limited benefit - not to mention all the mess with sockpuppets and multi-accounts that will pop up sooner or later, if the voting system really has some effect.

[guest3456]

The article you linked suggested a voting system like reddit, but the problem with creating a set of rules, is that it tends to outsource the problem to another dimension. For example, there might be vote manipulation. And this is something that article didn't address, when does a community reach a criticality such that a voting system is preferable. If there's only a group of 5 people, having a voting system seems absurd - it's better to just listen to each other.
..
I do agree with the conclusion of the article. However I'd add that there needs to be a quorum, a critical mass of people, for this system to work effectively.

the ending of that article did mention a voting system, and i think it did so because the article was meant directly for the site it was posted on, which does have an upvote system in the comments below the article.

however, i did not come away from that article that his conclusion or solution was a voting system. what i took away from that article is that censorship (gasp) isn't always an automatic bad idea, despite how bad that sounds on the surface, and that early and fast moderation is better than delaying or doubting yourself out of fear of being the censor. and that many many regular users are likely qualified to be moderators to enable such quick moderation practices. also that trust and faith in the moderators should be extended wide, even if they make mistakes and overstep. all of this is done in the best interest of the community at large, lest the quality of discussion deteriorate.

[joedf]

This topic seems to have been split from another. This breaks forum integrity and the progression of the original discussion from this/these topic(s).
Everything about this split topic is now offtopic, even the title itself doesn't make much sense either.

As such, I cannot make a fair judgement of the situation here. I do not condone the finger-pointing type behaviour I see here.
This is a breach of the forum rules. It is clearly stated to report the situation, not anywhere does it say to respond to it.

I have no choice but to lock this topic.

[nnnik]

It was reported we are now discussing the report in this split topic.
Things seem to have gotten out of hand though.