Charles Anthony

Folks, Stop the personal attacks. Ch. A.

I am not sure my personal philosophy has any bearing in that regard but it might. However, I see you guys primarily as creative writers. Your opinions are largely secondary. As a reader of the forums, I am interested in learning new information about current affairs. I learn from all you guys. The arguments between you guys get in the way of that but slogging through your nitter-nattering is worth it most of the time because you all share different facts and sources and experiences. Secondly, I appreciate good creative writing. Some of you guys are exciting to read because of your debating skills and or your humor. In short, I do not care about your opinions much the way you guys do. I care that your opinions are expressed clearly more than I care about judging your opinions. Yes. Put it this way: If my kids grew up to hold "outrageous mainstream views" such as many of you do then I would consider myself to have failed as a father. I used to hold most of your "views" at one point. My own father did too. However, my opinions of other people's opinions are irrelevent. I find it exciting to discover different opinions on the same matters. Indeed, I have. You have recently made me re-adjust my tolerance level more towards yours. That is not what I said. I said that I would be perceived to be trolling. I did not say that I would be trolling. Nobody ever does now. I think we can cope either way. How about you? Can you report that stuff with a clear conscience without making sure those ads are improper?

If you Report a post and you expect moderator intervention, please offer a recommendation of precisely what that intervention should be --- in your opinion. If you Report a post and you want an explanation, start by explaining yourself first. Do not just say: "This is trolling OBVIOUSLY!!! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!" but rather say: "This is obviously trolling because....." and give us something to discuss with you through the PM function. It does not have to be clear. None of that is a concern for people who follow the forum rules. If I can understand the message in a post and if I believe it is on-topic-enough, then the post fails the "no constructive purpose" test and I deem it to NOT be trolling. If you can not understand the message in a post or if you can not understand how it is on topic, then I would expect you to politely ask for an explanation in the public forum rather than to seek censorship privately from a moderator. If you wish to censor a fellow member, then it behooves you to justify YOUR "subjective blah blah" blah to the moderating team. Nobody owes YOU an explanation why a fellow member is NOT censored, for goodness' sake. For instance: "This is obviously trolling because I asked troll to explain his off-topic inflammatory comment and he did not. He just repeated his flame-bait comment. I asked him a 2nd time POLITELY and he repeated it over and over again without explanation. Thus, I believe troll should be permanentaly banned from the forums due to posting an off-topic comment." or something like that. Your question was answered the 1st time and linked the 2nd time. If you ask again, your actions would be deemed to be trolling by myself --- mild trolling and easy enough to ignore but trolling nevertheless. The advice is the same: Follow the forum rules and you will do fine. Ignore those who do not follow the rules and be proud of the discipline you bring to the forum. What I am getting at is that my own political views on most matters are more offensive and shocking than anything your "trolls" may serve up. On top of that, I have no interest in defending my views. Thus, if I was compelled to participate in the discussions, I would come across as trolling. I am also suggesting that occasionally charges of "trolling" are really just confused requests for censorship at their core. In other words, I have a better sense of the partisanship than you do.

I understand the intention and I am sorry to burst your bubble: You would not likely be getting much input from me anyways --- save a few one-liners at most. My thoughts on most current affairs are so extreme as to be bland when laid out bare as well as very inflammatory. You would undoubtedly want me to be banned given how I perceive your tolerance of what is out there right now. I would have to refrain from offering my honest opinions on matters. I do not believe in argumentation much any more because I see most disagreements as being no more than differences in preferences and chosen facts. [i do not argue with vegetarians over where to eat.] In other words, I do not believe any of you are right or wrong in any profound sense on these matters --- given your available sources, that is. My perspective is reductionist in that I have very little to add that would not lead to massive thread drift directly into a discussion of individual morality. To get around the impression of me having no clue of what is going on, I offer the following compromise: If you Report a post and you want an explanation, start by explaining yourself first. Do not just say: "This is trolling OBVIOUSLY!!!" but rather say: "This is obviously trolling because....." and give us something to discuss with you through the PM function. With all due respect, many of you guys label something as "trolling" because you fail to understand the message of your alleged-troll and sometimes, you fail to want understand.

I agree with Bryan. Conversations will inevitably go off in another direction and I personally don't see what is wrong with that. Inevitably, they do come back to the topic at hand and branching out into other areas just makes for a more lively conversation. I do think that warning points for something so silly is not really conducive to an engaging and informative forum.How do you guys define thread drift? How do you guys define derail? That is a good idea. Charges should be more precise.

Folks, This is not your mother's basement and this is not fight club. Stick to the topic of discussion and avoid making personal attacks. Ch. A.

This thread is open again.

Folks, This thread is locked until further notice. There is something heavy that I got to sort out. In the meantime, those of you who wish to post in this discussion, hold your thoughts. Make sure they are on topic and play the ball as opposed to any player or any fan for that matter. Ch. A.

so what if it's subjective...Good. We agree the definition is subjective. Let us move on.

We do. I consider each one on its own individual merit. Ignore? What do you mean by that???? Please define your terms because I do not trust you and I are using the same language. I read nearly everything each one of you writes here --- minus a lot of the television, sports and the rest of the entertainment discussions. Yet, I do not participate in any of your discussions. Help me understand what the word IGNORE means to you as you question my actions. HERE IS A CLUE: There is a little bitty troll in each one of you, as far as I can tell. Answered already up above: What do you think of this recent one? ....come sneaking back in through the kitchen window? so what if it's subjective...Good. We agree the definition is subjective. Let us move on. You ask: "So what?" Well, the subjectivity of the definition is critical because it means you are asking the wrong question. The question you SHOULD be asking is "When and how should a moderator intervene here at MLW?" ANSWER: As little as possible because if you stop feeding trolls, they go away. Before intervening, I ask a few questions starting with "Can these guys sort it out on their own without me lifting a finger?" and 99% of the time the answer is "Yes, you can.... if you want." Then I ask myself: "Is there even a sliver of a possibility that the alleged-infraction-post offers one iota of a contribution to the discussion??" and again, 99% of the time the answer is "Yes, there is." I see a glimmer of hopeful merit in each one of your posts --- including the inflammatory ones. Very few of your opinions are "better" than any other member's opinion. I see "merit" in a discussion that exposes and or explains different views more thoroughly. You all have different views and you each express them in different interesting ways. The 2nd questions I ask are "What harm will my censorship create? Will I stifle a burgeoning view that is about to be expressed?" and I balance it with "What good will my intervention make? that could not otherwise be achieved without censorship?" The balance is usually tipped in favor of non-censorship because as much as some of you get up in arms against alleged-trolls, you still happen to further the discussion and debate --- I bet unwittingly so. I, for one, usually want to keep reading uncensored discussion even if you do not. For those of you who refuse to ignore alleged-trolls, I suggest that you make an effort to understand opposing views for curiosity's sake rather than try to argue or shut them down. It is easier. Try to come to agreements on issues of fact and less on normative/policy prescriptions. If you must, ask "How do you, Mr. Troll, expect to convince us of X, Y and or Z?" Make your "troll" work harder. Avoid making things personal, too, by the way. That always helps.

A sense of humor.

That is correct. Ignore it. Alternatively, you could engage it differently by pretending the person you perceive-to-be-trolling is serious. For instance, you could ask: "Mr.Troll, you keep insisting that the Sun does NOT rotate around the Earth. Could you provide some evidence of this? Without any evidence, it seems like you are just cluttering the forum with nonsense. Flyers and junk mail falling out of my daily paper is annoying enough. I can not deal with it online. Last week, you kept repeating to us how round the Earth must be. Now, you want us to believe that the Earth is NOT the center of the universe. If you keep making these inexplicable claims without providing evidence, then we must report your pattern of disruptive behavior to the moderators. However, we want you to convince us that your claims are true." Why do some of you folks have to be so caustic? or take things so personally? How do you define personal attack? Do you still read that person's posts? Do you learn anything at all from their posts? Do you at least get to chuckle? Darn near every one of you in this thread has been accused of trolling by your fellow members at some point. Most of the accusations are frivolous because the accuser does not understand what the alleged-troll has written. Often the accuser does not want to understand either. A troll acts to disrupt a forum and or to stifle discussion and or to propagate misinformation. You are right. Everbody is provocative at some point. Being provocative alone is observably no big deal because most often it has a positive effect of engaging on-topic responses --- sometimes with comedic effect. I suppose you could do that but no, that is not the reason. By going legal, what I meant was to tighten up my verbiage so that it was clear. I am sorry about the confusion. Regardless, I am not sure what your argument is here. I would not expect anybody to associate any "part of the legal system" to an argument in this discussion. Help me isolate some variables in your logic by answering this question: If we were having this discussion in a different country with a different "legal system" than ours --- say, for instance, we were the children of goat-herders stuck in Sharialandistan dodging a constant influx of pirates and trolls --- would you still make the same argument? Would Argus say: "If you want to go legal, there is a part of Sharia Law, in terms of criminal trials, where EVERYTHING is open for discussion and attack --- if the defendant must bother us with a trial!" as he tightened his turban? Be that as it may, you are missing the point. The point is accountability in relation to the perception of trolling. Not that this thread drift matters but I must tell you that just because The King Said So, that does not magically make it a morally correct resolution nor does it mean it is wise. Secondly, the distinction between "his past" and "The case stands on its own." is purely arbitrary as I see it. I would like to hear you explain the difference objectively. I do not know how you can isolate for the variable of time. For example: Time 1: AllegedTroll posts inflammatory rhetoric. Time 2: Ch.A. sends Argus warning: "Please stop posting inflammatory rhetoric." Time 3: AllegedTroll replies: "I am sorry. I will never do that again." Time 4: AllegedTroll stops posting inflammatory rhetoric nor anything that could remotely be miscontrued as inflammatory rhetoric. Time 5: Mr.Whiner complains that nothing was done. Time 6: Mr.Whiner posts inflammatory rhetoric in kind. Time 7: Ch.A. sends Mr.Whiner warning: "Please stop posting inflammatory rhetoric." Time 8: Mr.Whiner replies: "WHAT?!??!?!??!?! You let Argus get away with it!!! YOU DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!!!!! You must be biased against my religion or race, right??? I get it." Time 9: Mr.Whiner keeps posting inflammatory rhetoric. ..... Time 99: AllegedTroll falls off the wagon and posts inflammatory rhetoric. Time 100: Mr.Whiner sends Report: "SEEE!!!! I told you! You did nothing!! He is at it again!!" Time 101: Ch.A. sends AllegedTroll 2nd warning: "Please stop posting inflammatory rhetoric. This is the 2nd time you are being warned about this." Time 102: AllegedTroll replies: "WHAT??? I have no idea what you are talking about here!!! I have NEVER posted inflammatory rhetoric in my entire life!!" Time 103: Ch.A replies: "Uh... no. See, we have accountability here. I can see you were warned at Time 2 and at Time 3 you acknowledged it. So, yes. This is 2nd time you posted inflammatory rhetoric. Here is the link to the first one." Time 104: AllegedTroll replies: "YEAH?!?? Well, you are obviously doing nothing about Mr.Whiner who gets away with posting inflammatory rhetoric all of the time. So OBVIOUSLY you are trying to censor me. Is it because of my race or my religion?? That must be it!!" DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance to actual events is likely a result of the author's false memory syndrome. Not when somebody has a history of trolling. This is not about researching a person's opinions for consistency. I hope this is not where you are going with this? Opinions change. New facts are discovered. Some people's opinions never change. Morals are clarified and differentiated. So on and so on. This is about being able to research a person's posting style when the accusation of trolling is made. We all seem to be in agreement that a member who makes a first-time infraction should be treated more gently than a member who makes repeat offences and perhaps that a member who repeats or escalates their inflammatory posting style should be suspended or possibly banned. I guess we are in disagreement in many specific cases. I see argumentative merit within an inflammatory post (or in a patern of posts) when other folks are quick to dismiss the entire post as 100% trolling. So, we leave the final decision to you guys: If you believe it is trolling, ignore it. That way, we moderators do not have to stifle any of your fellow members who may be able to understand the alleged-troll response. I am not denying that trolling exists. I deny that every single allegation of trolling is warrants banning people which is what some of you folks seem to both fear and demand. Which is stupid. It's specifically about their posting and their so-called arguments. Not about them personally. Calling someone obtuse is a personal attack. Suggesting someone is a pedophile or supports pedophiles is a personal attack and possibly libel. Telling posters they don't know how to read is a personal attack. Yet, all of those things have slid in the past because apparently they're related to the threads and arguments in the threads enough not to be personal attacks. Yet saying someone is trolling is a personal attack? Come on.Can you play the ball rather than the player? Come on. Saying someone is trolling speaks to the intentions of the member and not to the substance of the post. If your Report of trolling is made publicly, then it is a personal attack because your intent is to silence the alleged-troll unfairly by virtue of the fact that you refuse to engage the substance of the posts. Thus calling a person a troll in public in the context of your refusal to politely discuss the disagreement is a personal attack. It is also disruptive because, like I said above, most reports are frivolous. Maybe the source of our disagreement comes form a difference in how we discriminate between "personal" and non-personal affairs. Maybe you think what is mine is actually some of yours and what is yours is also some of mine. It does not stop there. You are missing a whole different dimension of human action. The moderator picks and chooses when to intervene and how to intervene as well. Some personal attacks do not warrant the same moderator intervention as others --- that is not to say they are not personal attacks nor does it speak to the severity of alleged personal attacks. In one dimension, it may look like nothing is done and that is misinterpreted as a disagreement on whether an infraction has occurred. A personal attack that occurred a year ago will not get the same moderator intervention today as would a personal attack that occurred today even if both personal attacks are of the same caliber. No. The term "troll" implies deliberate nefarious intent. Fallacious reasoning could be deliberate nefarious intent too but not necessarily. Fallacious reasoning could also imply an innocent mistake or an instinctual bias. Not if "lack discipline" is defined as a failure to ignore what you perceive to be trolling. .... slow down! It is an observation of a person's behavior much like saying posters "like hockey" is quite clearly an observation. It may also be a Rorschach test. How you take personal offence in response to an outsider's observation of his environment** comes from you too. ** which may or may not include you Good, contributing members have also been banned from this forum because they went bad. Some views have to be silenced for practical reasons. If somebody posts something that is nasty or that may break The Law Of The Land or that may send thugs to the door, we will nix it. However, that happens rarely and most of you are cool with that.

It does not matter if we think this, or any rule is good.Yes, it does. Regardless, I reckon you folks behave in such a way that is motivated by whether you think the rule is any good or not -- unwittingly, no doubt. I am not saying you all log into the forums and type in your passwords saying "Oh, goody, goody! I get to type in my single user registration at MLW and dive into some fun thanks to this specific rule!" but rather, that you post knowing fully that your posting history is open and accountable to your fellow members. Some of these people are disruptive in their departures and want to avoid any recognition of their previous histories. The important difference is in accountability for their past posts. In my opinion, this is how things should be: If you cared to discern Guy from Ghosth, there would be no open impediment to you distinguishing their posts. You could do so by sifting through the open historical record of this forum. Also, if you cared to follow the writing of either of those registrations, you could go all the way back to their first post. However, the way in which some folks have circumvented and justified their circumvention makes them openly unaccountable to their previous history. No. I am talking about all of them. Let me paint a mosaic: A drama queen pisses on his fellow members and disses the forum before leaving "never to come back again." This brings down the quality and disrupts communication in the forum. Other folks complain about the people leaving the forum and yet, the very people who left try to sneak back in. I want to know what your all think about the long term effect of letting that slide. That is exactly how it is being handled now. I want to know what you all think about what criteria should be used. I believe there should be the following criteria: The new registration must be linked to the previous one in such a way in that there is a full accountability of their previous posts AS IS WITH A SINGLE MEMBERSHIP or words to that effect. Maybe some of you lawyer-likes can tighten up my legaloise with better jargon.

You and I disagree on what constitutes a troll and the act of trolling. Do you think it is a good rule? Yes? or No? Where do you think this forum would go if members were free to silently get away with relinquishing a profile and starting a new one? multiple times? I believe it is a good rule. Some of the membership disagrees. I want to hear what people think and I want those thoughts expressed openly. I believe it is a good rule because it provides an incentive to members to be more careful with their posts. That makes sense. That is not the activity that gets my goat. Not exactly. They stop using their old profile and start using new ones.

I believe following that rule would lead to an improvement in this forum. That rule is not being followed currently. What do you think? Do you think it matters? Of all the violations of the forum rules that occur, this one is very bizarre because I have received very different private explanations for violating this rule and none of them make any sense to me whatsoever. Yet, all of these people share one thing in common. Anybody up for debating my this suggested improvement?

I believe this long-standing rule should be respected and enforced. At the bottom of the Forum Rules And Guidelines.

It was barely any effort on my part. Most of the work was done by CyberC in that he told me: a) there was a problem with thread drift; that I should split one thread into a new one; c) what the title of the new thread could be; d) a list of post #s that should be split off; e) a reasonable timeline for which to accomplish this split. All I did was say: "Duh. Ok." and then I pushed a few buttons on a computer. Great! I am glad to learn you are on board! No. No more than before, I would suppose. However, I am not certain what action on my part would qualify as proactive in your opinion. Tell me: After you file a report of a clear personal insult and or attacks, what do you want us moderators to do? Yes. You should report those posts to us and then ignore the offensive poster. Do not respond in kind.

Folks, Stop the personal attacks. Ch. A.

Some posts have been split off from this thread and placed into a new thread called: "Step Parent Child Support Laws and Ethics"

This thread is split off from the "Pro/Con?Life" thread.

I do not think that is practical due to the fleeting presence of the text. However, if you want that, sure. Do as JBG said above and we can look into it. Just make sure your report answers the question: "What do you want us to do about it?"

No.

I believe we should aim to combine and merge concurrent uninterrupted post-streams (particularly a slew of one-lineers) by the same author. Here is an example of what I mean. Posts #519 to #528 in the Pro/Con?Life thread would hypothetically be combined thusly into 1 single post: What you're saying is that you believe Justin Trudeau is lying through his teeth about his Catholicism, making a sham of his visits to churches. Perhaps your standards of morality are so low that you accept blatant dishonesty without issue but many people, religious or not, would take issue with that level of phonyness. Don't you think, then, that Justin Trudeau ought to know that instead of claiming he's defending a Charter right? American laws are a patchwork because they're mostly state laws. That you don't understand isn't surprising since everything you have to say about the US seems to be based on blind ideological extremism. You don't think it might have been a good idea to at least inform his caucus before going to the press? Or maybe that that is an indication of how much respect he has for them? If men weren't required by law to support the baby a woman decides to have, for the next 18 years you might have a point. Are you saying the Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Danish, Belgian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, British, Australian, Austrian, Icelandic etc governments are all misogynistic? Are you concerned about people starving in Africa? About brutalities in Syria? About Russian agressiveness in Europe? About slavery, pollution, corruption and other issues beyond the borders of your country? None of that personally concerns you. What do you all think of that?

I do not believe it is lazy. Rather, I believe it is discriminatory --- I see it discriminating between people who are genuinely interested in the topic from people who are not. Regardless, that is neither here nor there. I believe it is more foolish than it is lazy. Failing to provide a reference/link commonly provokes a slew of posts by people who ask for a link and add nothing more to the discussion. That is as predictable as clockwork. How odd. What do you want as you publish an Opening Post? Do you want all of your discussions to begin with a bunch of your fellow members requesting a link to verify your facts? or Do you want all of your discussions to provoke inflammatory rhetoric? or Do you want all of your discussions to begin with fruitful, exciting and fun debate --- that just happens to be on topic? You have a lot of power in your own hands without the crutch of moderator intervention.

References and or links are required when starting a thread discussion.