Charles Anthony

Folks, Please avoid thread drift and trolling. Ch. A.

--- to influence information. At least 1 of the parties to the dialogue is not genuinely communicating with the other. It just looks that way. The intended audience are non-participatory readers, non-member lurkers and employers.

That does not have to be so. Civilized communication can exist between folks who do not respect eachother. Who is to decide what is civilized? If you guys do not than we have to step in. However, you all can make the 1st move by ignoring that which you believe is uncivilized. That is the only objective way of interpreting human action. Animals move away from things they do not like. Engaging with that which we find objectionable is objectively no different than engaging with that which we find attractive. Is a boxing match a dance or a fight?? Personally, I am grateful most folks here are literate and can write coherently. What is the envelope of censorship? I agree with the gist of what you are saying. There are folks who intend to stifle productive discussion and trolling is their modus operandi. However, some folks engage them in intelligent discussion. One man's Tarzan is an other man's troll.

....whatever. Let us agree that the word "idiot" is either inflammatory and or ambiguous. That subtlety is in dispute. Let us keep running with your ironically globalist choice of analogy. Some folks complain about polite comments such as Anybody can see quite plainly that the world is flat. Wrong. Saying something insulting is a sub-set of trolling. Regardless, none of that matters because a personal attack is thread drift and being rude is disrespectful --- both violations are their own sub-sets within all of the rules and guidelines. Once a discussion becomes personal, it becomes thread drift. Once a line of discussion becomes rude, it becomes personal. Once it becomes personal, it is thread drift. Acting on thread drift becomes important in moderation because it strips out the element of bias. If you misunderstand/disbelieve a fellow member's statements and you honestly want to carry on a civil discussion, ask for an explanation and or for evidence. If the explanation and or evidence does not satisfy you, say so and move on. If you believe something is "trolling" then ignore it --- you might be wrong and living an illusion. All you have to do is be polite and you will be fine. The bias is in favor of polite discussion. This sort of leap in discussion is both thread drift and trolling --- trolling because we all accept that "stupid" is an insult. The problem is that your hyperbolic dramatization is a poor illustration of what really happens in discussions. What usually sets people afflame is when somebody says something like Boy, Canada sure is a rainy place too. to which somebody has a conniption fit exclaiming Canada is not rainy!! I live in INSERT WHEREVER and we rarely get rain. How dare you accuse Canada of being rainy!!???!?? and then somebody else piles on with So what if Canada is rainy?!? Do you have anything against that??! Are you jealous? Perhaps you are not satisfied with our crop yields?!?? Invariably a dull drive-by Canada is rainy?? You say that like it is a bad thing! gets tossed into the mix. Leaving any meteorological or geographic variations in perception you folks may have aside, trolling is a sub-set of the larger violation of thread drift --- the identification of which is usually impersonal. The identification of thread drift is more useful than everybody nodding their heads in agreement over some arbitrary concensus over the definition for the act of trolling. No. Reiterating posts "with inflammatory language and personal attacks BEFORE the substance of the discussion is addressed" is trolling. Misrepresenting somebody's writing is at least 1 of 2 things: an error in judgement which happens all of the time and or trolling.

Call it whatver irrelevent labels you want. It is now thread drift and will be deleted shortly.

Guys, If you wish to continue participating in the forum discussions, stop the thread drift. Ch. A.

Folks, I took down some posts. Please avoid rude, foul and obnoxious dialogue.

Folks, Our tolerance for shenanigans is dropping. We will take down posts that contain a whiff of a personal discussion. N.B.: I did not say personal attack. I said discussion --- the motives of which are irrelevent. Follow this logic: If a reader must know ANYTHING about a MLWebber that is NOT already contained in the thread in order to understand your post, then your post is both TOO personal and unacceptably incomprehensible ---- it will be treated as gibberish. We encourage you to re-write it lest we nix it.

Folks, I took down some posts. To be even more clear, if you find anything to be offensive, you are instructed to report it, ignore it and to refrain from responding in kind.

I merged the threads and added a few tags.

If we catch it BEFORE somebody responds to it, we usually nix it right away. If we catch it AFTER somebody responds to it, what we do depends: - if the response ignores the profanity and continues addressing the topic in a civil manner, we do nothing; - if the response adds fuel to the profanity and does not address the topic, we nix both the response and the offending post.

All references to said trolling are being deleted. I imagine this will be as well.If you perceive something/somebody to be trolling or if you fail to understand what somebody writes, you have 2 choices: 1) politely ask that person to explain or 2) report it, ignore it and move on. Let the moderators handle it. Your choice of action demonstrates your intent.

You are free to start a new thread and link to this discussion.

No. Nobody deleted your image. You made a typo in the address of the image and thus, the forum software fails to render the image. It happens all of the time and we get blamed. No...the mods have not declared war. Indeed, we nix images that are on topic but only if they are silly. The mods have raised the bar on what qualifies as "on topic" for images and graphics Not all pictures are worth a thousand words. We have rules but not all rules are equal and many of them have exceptions and or supercede other rules. If you can type whatever-message-is-conveyed-in-the-silly-image instead of going through the extra hassle of posting the image, then for the sake of clarity, the action of posting an image is objectively trolling. If a member goes out of his way to not be clear for some other gain, then it had better be a darn good image/graphic and better than "funny" for us to let it slide.

No, thanks. There is an easier and better way of doing it. Use the following hyperlink in your post: https://www.politicalcompass.org/yourpoliticalcompass?ec=3.0&soc=-5.9and put your score in the variable equations. This link is automatically generated on the results page. Here is my current position: Economic Left/Right: 3.0 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.9

Repeatedly ridiculing posts and repeatedly drifting the topic into personal esoteria are trolling which get further exacerbated by engagement of said trolling.

Folks, This thread is temporarily locked for review. Stay tuned. We will be with you in a moment. The thread is re-opened. Please refrain from trolling and from responding to trolling. Thank you.

Sure, you can do that but I encourage you to second guess your choice to use profanity. Profanity begets profanity. Do you really need it? Rarely does it add clarity to an expression. I think so too. As a reader, I appreciate the cordiality and discipline most of you display in how you express yourselves to eachother. My mouth is a sewer and I could not do it. I do not enjoy this particular rule. It would be a lot more fun if you guys let it all loose but who are we trying to kid? Foul-mouthed ninkompoops litter discussions everywhere else on the innerwebs. Rude language gets in the way of clever discussion and it is intimidating. That is not what Greg wants here. There is a LOT of free speech here. As long as folks are polite and stay on topic, their discussions are fair game. The only people who get banned are those who are repeatedly and intentionally being disorderly. That is not my experience on the web. The vast majority of discussion groups I encounter and in which I participate are riddled with obscene language and trolling. All forms of conversation and communication are artificial constructs. Why do you point it out? That would indeed be censorship. We make no apologies in certain instances such as: If the substance of a post is a personal attack or thread drift or anything distracting and there is no attempt to further the topic, we nix it.

Avoid 4-letter words that either directly or indirectly refer to genitalia or genital action. If there is still any mystery, send us a PM and we will send you that list leaving the debate to you and your own. LOL I realize this may still be a debatable/controversial/offensive rule for some folks but suffice to say, that list is only 3 or 4 words long.

Old and fashion are relative. Talk like you were talking to your future mother-in-law (HINT: She is older than you.) before her husband agrees to give you her daughter's hand in marriage. Does that help? How about talking like you were on a 1st date?

That is fine.... so do I but... it is not the only idea. Talk the way you would want to hear your future son-in-law talk to your daughter. Is that a better idea?? How do you know I have never met your mother?

Wrong. This is MLW and the protocol is coughed out by mod staff. Imagine walking into your local Metro store and forgetting about how Dominion ran the gig. How about this? Ignore the profanity, edit it out yourselves and move on like it never existed: Exactly. Passive aggressive arguments shouldn't change that for any of us. Here is a simple rule, folks: Talk like as if you were talking to your mother.

Topaz, Try again and give folks something clear to discuss. This thread is locked because it is a poor attempt to start a discussion.

Folks, Please avoid thread drift. I shuffled a few posts into the This week in Islam thread. The meaning of the terms racist, bigot and misogynist are up to interpretation. For instance, what does "superior" mean? and would it be racist if I thought my race was "inferior" to other races?? If JoeBleau called me a racist, a bigot or a misogynist, I can not be certain of what he truly means. I could confidently gamble based on my experience in common parlance but until Joe clarifies what he means by "superior" as it could pertain to those 3 concepts, I can not even be certain he is engaging in any truly intelligent conversation. If he directed those labels at me, the odds are that he is trolling or perhaps, he does not have the capacity to carry an intelligent conversation because he demonstrably can not see his reflexive expressed ambiguity. I would not take his attacks any more seriously than I would take a discussion over the superiority of cats over dogs. MOD BIAS: I love cats but I own a guard dog and he chased them all away. I am going to have to get a tiger or a lion next time. Sure but our linguistic culture is inherently ambiguous. Those definitions are meaningless without a definition of the word superior: higher in rank, status, or quality. "a superior officer" synonyms: higher-ranking, higher-level, senior, higher, higher-up Now, we have to agree on a definition of the word higher.... round and round we go until somebody acts. Unfortunately, there is no obvious meaning to the word "higher" as it pertains to race or to creed or to sex --- just like you obviously can not have "higher" flavors of ice cream. Use of such labels obfuscates true meaning and intent of the speaker. I am going to take a wild guess and say that your average run-of-the-mill racists, bigots and misogynists think their race, their creed and their sex should feel good about committing particular acts upon the others. I could be wrong but that is my bias. Either way, until such labels are clearly identified with an association to human action, they are effectively meaningless and of no use to clear discussion. From a moderator's perspective, they are no more interesting than thread drift at best or gobbledy-gook at worst. "Is JoeBlow's racism, bigotry or misogyny the topic of discussion?? No. Then stop it." The same goes if member X was heaping flowering praise upon a fellow member. It is thread drift. Once it becomes the focus of a diatribe and distracts away from the topic of the thread, it is trolling too. Me. I admit to being racist. WHAT difference does that make? Irrelevent. It does not matter HOW personal a discussion gets. Once the discussion gets personal, it is thread drift.

What you are observing is a choice to be subjectively offended when confronted with the ugly reality of objectivity. Try to imagine somebody who takes offense at being called "Canadian" even though he is, for all intents and purposes, a Canadian himself and avidly discussing Canadian issues on a Canadian political discussion forum. I am not saying that is anybody here. It is purely hypothetical to change the frame of reference. Now, try to imagine asking that same person to define what it means to be Canadian and that same person can not do so. If you can wrap your head around such a hypothetical, then you are on your way to understanding the disagreement and fixation on defining trolling as opposed to stopping the behavior. NO, we should not know why. The reason why is between our moderation team and the person who faced the discipline.Correct. If it's subjective, how can they suspend her?--- because the subjectivity is irrelevent. A personal attack violates the forum rules because it is thread drift of the most unjustifiable form. The person is not the subject matter up for discussion. It is that simple. Go ahead and write what you want. The good news is that most MLWebbers are clever enough to see through somebody who throws any type of slur in the 21st century in an online discussion forum. Go ahead and try it. I assure you that there will be no need for any moderating intervention for you to get the answer to your question. Here is a better challenge for you: Try to refer to x member as a "fag" because he is a male homosexual without trolling and without changing the topic of discussion. Here is what you are not getting: The fact that "fag" is insulting (or not) is not an issue of debate because it does not matter whether it is insulting or not. The action of using "fag" as an insult is ALSO an act of diverting a discussion. The fact that some folks may take offense to it is a side issue that dictates whether it is worth any moderator intervention. If better folks ignore it and move on, so do we. It is that simple. I do not understand it either. I am not ashamed to admit that I am all of the above. If somebody called me any of those labels, I would be like "Yeah. So?" That is just me. I lose interest in a conversation whenever I detect folks using silly labels in defiance of more profound understanding of thoughts. Hold on. What do you call a person who disagrees with your definitions?? Hold on. You do not need to go much farther than that. The difference is that those people do something. They act. Being a racist or a bigot or a misogynist does not entail any human activity as a necessary condition. I agree. However, I find it annoying now more than amuzing. This board is filled with people who have a lot of interesting things to say.