Charles Anthony
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Everything posted by Charles Anthony
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Folks, Stop making this discussion personal. Carry your personal discussions via the Personal Messaging function. Ch. A. -
....slow down! You are changing the goal-posts. The rule is not that complicated. The rule is no personal attacks. Labelling somebody a troll (or anything else for that matter) is a personal attack. You are not allowed to make personal attacks and you know it. When you make a personal attack, you discourage a member from explaining himself because your intent is demonstrated to be closed to learning. From my pespective, you are stifling debate. Why? Does it do any good ?Yes. I can only speak for myself but on a daily basis, I am reading more varied, candid and civil discourse here in the forums than ever before. I am constantly learning from all of you guys. People are freely discussing stuff that was commonly shouted down in the past by partisan hacks. It is simple game theory where self-moderation is intended to be maximized and moderator-action is intended to be minimized while simultanously fostering civil and varied discourse. If you believe somebody is trolling and you ignore it and if everybody who is in agreement with your judgement ignores it too, then the trolling(-as-you-perceive-it) will go away and you will be proven right. Thus, there is no need for a moderator to even question your perception nor to act in that matter. it requires that everybody follows the rules. Ignore a troll and the troll will go away. In fact, if you ignore a non-troll, he will go away too. If somebody-who-is-not-a-troll posts something that is boring but does not contravene the forum rules, it will be ignored and that somebody will likely go away or at worst, have no effect on the board. I hope you can agree with me on this one. From my perspective, true trolling is also a different type of boring. Sometimes it can be clever. The problem is a matter of perspective. Many times MemberA reports MemberB for trolling but I do not think it is trolling. ... and with good reason. Most people who troll and get called out on it by a moderator stop doing it or at least tone things down. By keeping their reprimand quiet and discrete, it gives them an opportunity to save face without any public humiliating ---- if they want to stop trolling in the future, that is. It is a small minortiy of members who complain about their warnings. What do you want to discuss? A - whether what you perceive to be trolling is genuinely trolling? or B - are people ignoring what you perceive to be trolling? to the exclusion of whether it is genuinely trolling or not, that is. None of the above. It is run by Greg.
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Forgive me for my delay in responding. You addressed me personally and all I can tell you is that for me, my plan is to stay the course until I am given further notice. I have a closer appreciation for how busy Greg is than most members do here in the forum. It is easy for me to be patient with him. He has a few revolutionary ideas about re-vamping the moderation aspect and I am itching as much as you all are for those changes. However, it takes a lot of planning and customization of the forum which is WAY above my level of ingenuity. When Greg pulls it off, I am confident everybody will like it. Until I am instructed otherwise, I continue to expect all members to respect the forum rules and to report any trolling-as-they-perceive-it and to refrain from responding in kind. LOL I would buy the forum from Greg if I had enough dough. There is nothing stopping anybody from making him an offer.
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What are all of your thoughts on the activity in the Status Updates column? Sometimes they develop into dynamic mini-discussions that would otherwise fit well into the forum. On the one hand, this is something I would hope we could avoid but on the other, maybe it is indicative of something that the Status Updates format has that the formality of the forum lacks. Any ideas? Perhaps we should have a 3rd box in the right hand column that shows Recent Posts with the most recent post on display?
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Toronto Municipal Election Thread 2014
Charles Anthony replied to Black Dog's topic in Local Politics in Canada
The threads are now merged. -
Moderating Mapleafweb's Moderation
Charles Anthony replied to Argus's topic in Support and Questions
I think that would be a great but unpopular idea. Logistically, it would work. I would call it a mercenary form of a free market. In other words, the "intellectual" property holder has the ability to defend his "property" for lack of an accurate term. I bet you and I would be in the minority on this one but I would pitch this to Greg in the form of a pilot project of some sort. Surely somebody here in the forum has studied elementary game theory. I dream of a free market in perception and expression. The definition of trolling -- both in general and in any particular case -- no longer becomes a significant variable if everybody ignores what they each perceive to be trolling. I would think that is apparent among most of you clever folk but clearly it is not popular. I now suspect that many of you secretly enjoy trolling. Report it and ignore it. -
Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto UPDATES
Charles Anthony replied to WWWTT's topic in Local Politics in Canada
Folks, This thread is locked until further notice. You all should be ashamed of yourselves. This thread is filled with absolutely irresponsible and inflammatory comments that have lowered this thread to little more than name calling. Stop making inflammatory accusations. None of that helps further civil debate. I will be reviewing this thread and sending some of you off without warning for at least a week. If your posting privileges are suspended, reflect upon how you chose to post in this thread. Ch. A. -
The opinions expressed in the following post do not come from my status as a mod. The decision is ultimately Greg's to make. Feel free to discuss or offer a differing opinion on newbie introduction sections. I do not like newbie introduction sections for the reason that they make the forum too personable. Not everybody wants to be personable. Some people just want to discuss stuff openly and anonymously without being prejudged. I think your conclusion is wrong. I conclude the opposite. Here at MLW, anybody can join without having to introduce themselves. I see that as a good thing because it means that a new member is under NO OBLIGATION to offer personal information. They will not be prejudged if they do not want to be. They can be judged solely by the merit of their posts. Thus, if you want to know something about somebody here on the forum, your choices are limited to: 1) ask the person 2) read their blurb on their profile page or 3) read what they write. If you want to introduce yourself, write an introduction on your profile. That is sufficient, in my opinion. Yes.
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FACEPALM
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Folks, Anybody who posts any more personal attacks from this point onward will have their posting privileges suspended temporarily. Govern yourselves accordingly. If you can not Report and Ignore, do not respond to anything that deserves a Report IN YOUR OPINION. Ch. A.
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Voila une idee farfelu: Peut-etre devrait-on inviter d'autres americains!?! L'Ol! Reculez!
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When Do We Say "No" to More Gov't, U.N. and I.P.C.C.?
Charles Anthony replied to jbg's topic in The Rest of the World
Enough. This thread is locked. You all should be ashamed of yourselves. Be that as it may, anybody who wants to re-start this discussion, feel free to do so but here is my recommendation: try to avoid inflammatory rhetoric and try to avoid inciting inflammatory rhetoric. Just in case my advice falls on sensitive ears, ignore it and replace it with this: Define your terms. Ch. A. -
Oui, ce format sera facile a creer mais j'attend a voir plus qu'un sequestration des discussions. Peut-etre j'ai la tete dans la lune mais j'adore la discussion couramment et librement billinge --- comme ca se fait au Canada et le reste du monde. Parcontre, ca se peut que le bilinguisme detourne certaines parmi nous. SVP Pensez-y. Nous avons beaucoup de pouvoir au bout de nos doigts.
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Yes --- by supplying the questions first. That was how it was done in the past. Greg would arrange and announce an upcoming interview. MWLers were invited to post their questions in a thread. Greg would compile them all and present them to the interviewee either in a live recording or by letter. The interview would then be posted crediting the member's who posed the questions. Example: Jack Layton interview That is the idea. If MLWers can contact or recommend a political or public character for such a feature, that would be great.
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I think we should revive some interviews with politicans and or popular political folks.
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Sorry! Enough of that thread drift. --- I would like to see some discussion in French here! Heck, why not get some First Nations out here too? There is a lot of Canadian (let alone international) politics that is never engaged here at MLW and the only way we will see it is if this board steps out of the Anglo-Saxon lingo. I have no idea how to promote this or how to kick it off. Anybody with me? Any ideas? Come to think of it, I would be willing to step down from moderating just so that I may participate in French discussion to help kick it off!!! Anybody with me? Anybody want to practice their French? Anybody want to help teach us some French??
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--- because over time, whatever is ignored will go away. It is not for me to label somebody a "troll" while people are seriously conversing with that person. There are lots of other reasons but they all pivot on the fact that everybody has a different opinion on what constitutes trolling or thread-drift or whatever. People are left alone to do that 99% of the time. [in fact, I am complicit in that right now because Greg asked us all to wait for a separate thread on moderation.] Unfortunately, that liberty is abused by members. I rarely intervene except to give people reminders like "Please avoid thread drift." Despite that, lots of people make frivolous reports and they complain incessantly when there is no intervention upon their frivolous report. In other words, they do not want what you want. Lots of people report posts as trolling when I do not believe it is trolling. Lots of people provoke trolling/thread-drift and then report their fellow members who are baited. Lots of people go back and dig up discussions from the past to report old incidents of trolling-in-their-opinion as retaliation to their personal warning. My message is to those lots of people more so than anybody else. Trolling is being disruptive which is largely a subjective judgement. From the rules and guidelines: If everybody avoids responding to every incidence of disruption/trolling-in-their-own-individual-personal-opinion, then an exact universally accepted definition of trolling is a moot point and I will not have to send anybody a personal message that says: "Please avoid thread drift." because some people flip out when I do that too.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Lots of things are violations of the forum rules and most of you all are guilty more than you realize. Responding in kind to somebody else's violation of the forum rules is the most common violation that occurs in the forum -- much more than any other. Here is a little secret about my bias as moderator: At approximately 99% of the time, I hate it when you folks respond to trolling more than I hate the trolling to which you respond. Please govern yourselves accordingly. I would encourage you all to meditate upon Cyber's call to regulate yourselves. Ch. A.
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Cutting The Cord -- How to leave cable companies?
Charles Anthony replied to August1991's topic in Arts and Culture
Yes. Done. I took mAC's title and put it into Aug91's thread. -- I used to merge more threads but that confused some of the discussion. These 2 threads are separated in time and thus, the merging would not disturb the train of discussion between them. If there was more cross-over in time between the threads, I would probably leave them separate. -
Speaking of obsessions.... Guys, Stop the thread drift. Ch. A.
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Iraq and it's Al-Queda problem
Charles Anthony replied to GostHacked's topic in The Rest of the World
Guys, Stop the thread drift. Ch. A. -
Greg, As mods, is there any way we could insert tags ourselves into OPs? I do not see that capability right now. I have encountered this feature in a different forum where we would assign relevant tags to posts/OPs where the member left them blank. If we had that capability, we could take suggestions from other members. Yeah, that is how I read it too. Nevertheless, I have a different idea on how to deal with this issue: remove TIME as the variable and let people edit their post as many times as they want until somebody attempts to reply directly to the post in question. Once somebody clicks on REPLY to that post or thread, the previous posts are locked and everybody involved is notified that they have to wake up a bit earlier next time!
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I want to see sub-titles again for threads. Everybody should be encouraged to create tags with all of their Opening Posts. Just in case it is unclear, the tags for this thread discussion are improvements, discussion, forum, Canada, politics and members. I want to see the option to tag individual posts also.
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It suspect that I am being misunderstood. Scratch everything I wrote about my suggestion. Replace it with: "I dream of an extra template that looks like Reddit or My Little Forum while still retaining the motif and functionality of the current forum for those who like it the way it is." Speaking of which, I would love to include links to the above sites sending you directly to see what I mean. Alas, my computer is on the blink. I have the misfortune of using a Microsoft box and what-MS-passes-off-as-a-browser just to scrape by and post this. I feel the pain of all you Microsoft clients.
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Argus, I do not like your idea about limiting pages in a thread --- not that I expect anybody to care, mind you. I know many other forums tend to do that. I believe you under-estimate the value of old discussions. As a regular member and as a mod, I find great interest in digging up old discussions sometimes and reading them entirely. Sometimes there is great information there. Sometimes it is entertaining. Maybe I am odd in this regard but I think there is great value to letting threads free to evolve. I interject here because I believe my idea of nested thread displays provides a great compromised for members like you. You would be able to easily skip all meandering aspects of a discussion. The rest of us could still get to read the entire script if we wanted.