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The Death of Comments


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Gene Steinberg

Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
I've run message boards of one sort or another for 25 years, starting up first on AOL when it actually counted for something. I was also active in Usenet newsgroups, which consisted of active online discussions about all sorts of topics. Call them the forerunner of forums.

Well, as many of you know, the anonymity of a forum sometimes conveys the feeling of power on the part of some people, so they become far more aggressive — and sometimes more inflammatory — in their online comments. Sometimes they'll even gang up on people with contrary points of view and attack them.

One of these people once told me it was a sort of game, "you flame me, I flame you." But I was having none of it. I have other priorities in my life.

If anything the arrival of social networking has managed to empower even more people to behave in a disagreeable fashion.

Well, one major tech site has decided to just give up on allowing readers to post comments:

A Note to Re/code Readers | Re/code

I like to think we keep a balance, mostly, here. When people go over the top we sometimes give them a little time off to count from one to ten and return with calmer nerves.

When I venture into the outside world, in an unmanaged setting, I see such unsavory behavior more than ever. Unfortunate, but we'll keep on keeping on here and do our best to tone it down when emotions run high.
 
Its a forum for a paranormal broadcast show Gene, which is great, bouncing ideas around that in others places would be mocked mercilessly.

Ban political issues, and harmony reigns supreme, well nearly always, unwindable political arguement is both divisive and distracting from the core business.

Pretty safe bet the above is true on the majority of message boards.
 
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There used to be a few forum nazis here that would ban you or lock a thread if there was an opposing point of view to their own. Thankfully they went away.
 
For my part in as much as I am intrigued by paranormal matters, it's not the end all be all of my universe. I have other interests... as does everyone else here. ..and i have zero interest in signing up at other forums dedicated to those topics, i havent the patience either for it either. It seems most, if not all of the others I've come across have a general free wheeling chit chat area in which to discuss other topics. I have found myself looking into other topics and issues that u didn't even know existed that were mentioned in another thread.

Although it's a little strongly worded in this case, I wonder if the saying familarity breeds contempt isn't part of the dynamics here and elsewhere. You stick around in one place long enough you form certain bonds with others, and then when there is a disagreement feathers get rufflef. I can honestly say if a complete stranger questioned my beliefs or made fun of ME personally, I wouldn't give a crap, when that same criticism comes from somone who I know personal things about, it hurts. At the same time I just don't have very many stringent core beliefs. Whether one wants to think that's wishy - washy or backbone less, that's their problem not mine. The fact is in some cases whenever I looked more deeply into some issues i thought I had a handle on i morally speaking I came across something that would conflict with what I thought I was morally justified in believing, sort of an inconvenient truth. Early one when I was new here i kept threatening to start a thread on this. It's something that intrigues me, in what ways do we try to justify or compromise our opinions in a feeling on something in order to make it fit with our moral compass. I know I have. In interest of full disclosure one particular item with me was gay marriage, I thought I was morally o.k.with myself on this when I opposed it but over time, in part because of the discussions in this forum I could see the hypocrisy in my thinking.compared to what I thought I was "about"
 
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Everything is a politicl discussion. You can't extract morality, positions, attitudes or values from most discussions. The important thing is that those who create parameters for behaviour in any communication zone is to keep it equitable and anti-oppressive for everyone. That can be hard to do when people don't share the same notion of what equity looks like.

As Wade points out, healthy forums allow for healthy discussions of topics as opposed to snide comments about the poster. That's a difficult balance to maintain sometimes when the topic or position itself is amoral or inequitable, and who will even judge such pieces? A community that responds to itself is always a good sign. Agreed upon rules of behaviour and common enforcement go a long way to making a place robust and healthy.

Defeating Troll behaviour is critical.
 
Looks like there's a fine line between allowing for freedom of expression and preventing the kind of mud slinging free-for-all game so many online posters love to waste their lives playing. I don't envy the moderator's job. But this forum does an exceptional job of finding that "sweet zone" where we can be ourselves. As long as we focus on the value of ideas instead of those who post them.

The signal to noise ratio here is pretty darned good. :cool:
 
Gene Steinberg said:
I've run message boards of one sort or another for 25 years, starting up first on AOL when it actually counted for something. I was also active in Usenet newsgroups, which consisted of active online discussions about all sorts of topics. Call them the forerunner of forums.

.
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I remember those, you had to dial the individual BB phone numbers.
 
This topic seems to have run its course. But since I just joined, I'd like to add a comment. I was a moderator on a technical forum for 5 years. I honestly did not understand a lot of the jargon being discussed by IT technical wizards. But my job was to keep things civil. This wasn't too difficult in a work related environment where being rude can lead to less pay and demotions (the inability to play nicely with others). Since a lot of the discussion was over-my-head, I often was totally neutral about the outcome of a discussion or debate. But the temptation for a moderator is to take a side, perhaps unconsciously, in a discussion. A moderator can then delete posts that offend his/her view on a subject, or even ban a person, THEN bash that person with the knowledge that the person cannot refute the Moderator, since the bashed person is gone. There was a time on this forum when there was a moderator who succumbed to some of these temptations (especially during the entire Emma Woods debate). I was the Cassandra, wailing into the wind regarding how having a Moderator who took a side in this or any issue violated the Moderator's Code of Ethics, so to speak. I am glad this seems to have resolved itself.
 
A moderator's code of ethics...excellent idea, along with a treatise on the ethics of posting, and removing language that is hate oriented i.e. sexist, racist, bullying, insulting etc.... Still waiting on that one.
 
Burnt State said:
A moderator's code of ethics...excellent idea, along with a treatise on the ethics of posting, and removing language that is hate oriented i.e. sexist, racist, bullying, insulting etc.... Still waiting on that one.
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Well, when I had a Moderator's job (along with many other duties in IT), there was a Code of Ethics for Moderators. Our boss just called the group together and brainstormed, coming up with a list that was then made into part of the job description. This gave the boss a way to evaluate the job being done. The points on the Code of Ethics were very obvious, but I have since realized that humans have a way of avoiding the obvious when they have a strong opinion about something.
 
Sorry, I can't resist......:cool:

manxman said:
Its a forum for a paranormal broadcast show Gene, which is great, bouncing ideas around that in others places would be mocked mercilessly.
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Blarny! :rolleyes:

Plenty posters here are not above hectoring posters for 'paranormal' views. Not so, manxman?
manxman said:
Ban political issues, and harmony reigns supreme, well nearly always, unwindable political arguement is both divisive and distracting from the core business.
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And science, wouldn't you say? Global Warming/AGW? Let's be honest. :mad:
pixelsmith said:
There used to be a few forum nazis here that would ban you or lock a thread if there was an opposing point of view to their own. Thankfully they went away.
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:eek:
 
This is going to be a very naive question, but what accounts for the recent die-off in posters? Of course, I could be totally mistaken. My context is going through all the years of free archives and downloading shows. Included are the Round Table shows that are advertised as having the most erudite and popular forum members. Yet, almost all of the people focused upon in the Round Tables for the last few years do not seem to post here any longer, except for "ufology" and maybe Gogg or one other. Was there a cataclysmic event that I happily missed on the forum that resulted in a scorched earth policy? Is this all in my imagination?
 
People have lives. I hope. And sometimes they take a break from posting. Our numbers lately have actually increased somewhat.

And sometimes they return after a while. Sound familiar?
 
beyondthestargate said:
This is going to be a very naive question, but what accounts for the recent die-off in posters? Of course, I could be totally mistaken. My context is going through all the years of free archives and downloading shows. Included are the Round Table shows that are advertised as having the most erudite and popular forum members. Yet, almost all of the people focused upon in the Round Tables for the last few years do not seem to post here any longer, except for "ufology" and maybe Gogg or one other. Was there a cataclysmic event that I happily missed on the forum that resulted in a scorched earth policy? Is this all in my imagination?
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A few posters expressed their feelings privately to me, and it wasn't all simply because they "had lives" and became busy with other things, and I tended to empathize. Nevertheless, IMO the forum and the show still rank above the others I've checked out, so I'm hoping it does really well in 2015.
 
ufology said:
A few posters expressed their feelings privately to me, and it wasn't all simply because they "had lives" and became busy with other things, and I tended to empathize. Nevertheless, IMO the forum and the show still rank above the others I've checked out, so I'm hoping it does really well in 2015.
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Well some felt they were disrespected too. We can cover a variety of reasons. But forum activity is always up and down. It's more up these days.
 
Gene Steinberg said:
Well some felt they were disrespected too. We can cover a variety of reasons. But forum activity is always up and down. It's more up these days.
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Just because some people feel disrespected doesn't mean they actually were, and besides that, not everyone's opinions and comments necessarily deserve respect. This isn't a mutual admiration society, and differing opinions don't automatically qualify as "personal attacks". But those aren't the only issues, and I hope to see ( and experience ) less of those problems in the future. So I'm being cautiously optimistic about the new year.

Based on my own experiences, I think a lot of discord could have been avoided by participants responding to the substance of posts rather than by responding with assumptions about what they think the content of a post says about the participant's personality, and then finding a way to be critical of them personally rather than addressing the issues raised.
 
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