[Discussion/Announcement] NSG's "Wing" Megathreads

[Valrifell]

Fwiw people would be more open to working with moderation if things didn't seem so stacked against them. Plenty of people in RWDT fully believed moderation was out for them and trying to use any excuse to remove them from the site. That's not unique to RWDT users either, I've seen other communities from all sides of General saying the same things off site. When virtually your entire userbase thinks the mods are biased and out for them it's never going to be a peaceful setting. As I've been saying throughout a lot of this thread, if moderation wants things to change they need to put in a lot of effort themselves.

And it appears that the dissolution of the RWDT was about as effective at putting to mindset to rest as pouring gasoline onto a fire.

This is probably why there was a months long discussion to decide if it was really worth it.

[Agarntrop]

I think it's fair to say this decision was poorly made and now has opened Pandora's fucking box regarding this issue

[Diopolis]

The problem, to my understanding, wasn't a lack of vigilant reporting (I mean, it's NSG, people let things slide), but that there was a culture of actively discouraging users to self-moderate the thread or report rule-breaking to the moderation subforum.

Quite the opposite there were ever increasing attempts to self-moderate content, the thread as a whole just wished to avoid involving moderation for the reasons I stated in my previous post.

Notably, even at the end, I was willing to report obvious spam, trolling, flaming, etc in RWDT, the same as I do elsewhere in the forum(I generally don't report cases that eyeball to me as probably borderline, nor bait-ey, simply because I have other things to do and generally don't enjoy it).
The part that irritated me was that a large number of borderline cases were reported by thread non-participants and faced fairly harsh punishments for behavior that, again, was mostly borderline rather than obvious. I do believe that other posters felt and acted the same.

[Valrifell]

I think it's fair to say this decision was poorly made and now has opened Pandora's fucking box regarding this issue

People say this every time Moderation makes a contentious decision (pausing chat threads in 2016, not demoting Mallorea and Riva, a mass crackdown on non-PG-13 TGs), they're always wrong. The issue usually settles itself after a few weeks.

[La Xinga]

I think it's fair to say this decision was poorly made and now has opened Pandora's fucking box regarding this issue

Hmmm, a lot of other people think like you.

[Diarcesia]

Quite the opposite there were ever increasing attempts to self-moderate content, the thread as a whole just wished to avoid involving moderation for the reasons I stated in my previous post.

Notably, even at the end, I was willing to report obvious spam, trolling, flaming, etc in RWDT, the same as I do elsewhere in the forum(I generally don't report cases that eyeball to me as probably borderline, nor bait-ey, simply because I have other things to do and generally don't enjoy it).
The part that irritated me was that a large number of borderline cases were reported by thread non-participants and faced fairly harsh punishments for behavior that, again, was mostly borderline rather than obvious. I do believe that other posters felt and acted the same.

The past moderation history might be taken into account for the severity. From what I have observed, the mods are more than willing to be lenient towards new players.

Making the rules more detailed and spelled out probably wouldn't work with all the rules-lawyering that would follow.

[The Church of Satan]

Oh sure it's a big deal now but the outrage will die down and people will move on. Sure some of the petty players will hold onto it for as long as they can but the outrage will die down, with time. It is the way of things.

[Valrifell]

Quite the opposite there were ever increasing attempts to self-moderate content, the thread as a whole just wished to avoid involving moderation for the reasons I stated in my previous post.

Notably, even at the end, I was willing to report obvious spam, trolling, flaming, etc in RWDT, the same as I do elsewhere in the forum(I generally don't report cases that eyeball to me as probably borderline, nor bait-ey, simply because I have other things to do and generally don't enjoy it).
The part that irritated me was that a large number of borderline cases were reported by thread non-participants and faced fairly harsh punishments for behavior that, again, was mostly borderline rather than obvious. I do believe that other posters felt and acted the same.

The only people I've seen report the RWDT have had at least one post in the thread at the time, do you have a link to someone where that isn't the case and is an objective non-participant?

Again, the escalating punishment for previously borderline offenses is how moderation operates, it just so happens that several posters in the RWDT had a history doing more obvious spam, bait, flames, and trolling. It's not necessarily ideological, but it is opaque.

[Diopolis]

I think it's fair to say this decision was poorly made and now has opened Pandora's fucking box regarding this issue

People say this every time Moderation makes a contentious decision (pausing chat threads in 2016, not demoting Mallorea and Riva, a mass crackdown on non-PG-13 TGs), they're always wrong. The issue usually settles itself after a few weeks.

I didn't see this kind of backlash for the crackdown on TG's. People had some concerns, sure, but there wasn't a huge backlash.

[Valrifell]

People say this every time Moderation makes a contentious decision (pausing chat threads in 2016, not demoting Mallorea and Riva, a mass crackdown on non-PG-13 TGs), they're always wrong. The issue usually settles itself after a few weeks.

I didn't see this kind of backlash for the crackdown on TG's. People had some concerns, sure, but there wasn't a huge backlash.

I could be overhyping it in my head, but I do remember a fuss about mods being able to read TGs between players and such.

[Diopolis]

I didn't see this kind of backlash for the crackdown on TG's. People had some concerns, sure, but there wasn't a huge backlash.

I could be overhyping it in my head, but I do remember a fuss about mods being able to read TGs between players and such.

I remember privacy concerns, but a playerbase that was overwhelmingly supportive of the crackdowns. And that the concerns were addressed in a way that seemed to satisfy most of the players.

[Alcala-Cordel]

People generally find themselves in groups of like-minded people, and it's not a bad thing. I'm sure just about every nation here can think of a few good comrades. I know I can and I've hardly been in the LWDT.

I see the reasoning behind this decision, but I doubt it will have a positive impact.

[Ghost Land]

bringing one back in F7 might be a good idea too, but that's a different topic

I haven't been active in it, and it hasn't really been active in general lately, but last I checked there was still the Ram's Head Saloon in F7, unless you were thinking about an OOC chat/hangout thread.

I was thinking about the bold: an OOC chat/hangout thread.

I remember Sibirsky and the whole "silver medal debating" thing, stinks he left the NSG community thanks to other people making what amount to basically memes out of his posts; it's happened to me on other sites and it sucks! His nation (Sibirsky) is currently active, though.

As a 2012 myself, I distinctly remember the whole Karinzistan situation, but where was he really bullied before he got DoS'd? All I can remember is him getting his panties in a twist whenever someone called him by a nickname (of which only "Kare-bear" was ever ruled actionable).

Wait what happened? Sorry to intrude, but I'd appreciate it if someone would please explain it to a newer member

About which user: Sibirsky or Karinzistan?

Sibirsky was a once-very-active NSG poster who, one year, got the silver medal for debating in the NSG Poster Awards. One of his signature moves would be, upon seeing a post that he found particularly pathetic or stupid, just to respond with the facepalm emoticon and nothing else. Picking on this tactic of Sibirsky's, whenever someone would make a post consisting solely of a quote and a facepalm emoticon, it would be referred to as "silver medal debating", for the sole reason of making fun of him. Sibirsky was a very active user in his day, so he certainly racked up a long list of people who disagreed and debated/argued with him; it's just a shame that some of them had to be jerks.

Karinzistan, on the other hand, was the guy who in 2012 had a whole campaign of "revolution" against the moderators, whom he considered to be corrupt and fascist, and with his often borderline-trollish threads about this and about Christianity, he ended up attracting the ire of the moderators and getting deleted. His second nation lasted only about three weeks before getting toasted, as he now started reporting anyone who called him a nickname (mods-as-weapons) and got DoS'd for being a nuisance and making threats, after which he kept coming back under new accounts and spamming more garbage about his revolution and a troll website of his, pretty regularly too for like six months, sometimes with flaming or Nazi rhetoric in there too. I don't miss him.

I didn't see this kind of backlash for the crackdown on TG's. People had some concerns, sure, but there wasn't a huge backlash.

I could be overhyping it in my head, but I do remember a fuss about mods being able to read TGs between players and such.

I remember the fuss being made about this circa 2014 as well, but I'm not sure why it was a big deal then as it was already common knowledge before then. That's why moderators always tell you not to delete the telegrams you're reporting: of course they can look through if they want to to see if there's any actionable content in there, but every time they do this is logged so they probably aren't going to be snooping through your telegrams for no reason.

[Joohan]

And it appears that the dissolution of the RWDT was about as effective at putting to mindset to rest as pouring gasoline onto a fire.

This is probably why there was a months long discussion to decide if it was really worth it.

What even was the goal in that decision? To make NS a better more friendly place? The posters from RWDT are still around, deleting the thread didn't get rid of them or wash away their supposedly, toxic, behaviors - it just got rid of their favorite forum and pissed a lot of people off.

HTG, what is the end goal of this decision?

[Grenartia]

I meant precisely what I said. If you cannot parse it, let me put it another way.

1. The RWDT had a core base that was more toxic than other megathreads. There were some very good people in there, to be sure. But a lot of them weren't, and they outweighed the good ones.

Toxic? You'll have to expand upon that. Do you mean to say that we were bad faith posters, or that we were prone to flaming - or, more rather, that you found our political opinions toxic? If it were merely a case of wanting to discourage bad faith posting or flaming, then surely the most prudent action would be to continue warning and banning those problematic posters. Banning the entire thread doesn't encourage good behavior, it silences the discussion completely.

You're trying to get me to make a blanket All X are Y statement, and I won't fall for it. I've already admitted that there were some decent RWDTers. Toxicity is yes, posting in bad faith, being prone to flaming (distinct from having toxic political opinions, though I would certainly argue that if your ideology says that there are people who are inferior to you because of certain characteristics, that you are far more likely to be toxic in general to those people than otherwise), and yes, even harrassment.

No doubt you'll try and twist that statement (and hell, even this one) around, too, but oh well.

2. The RWDT's core base, both toxic and non-toxic, was very cliquey.

What does this mean? That we enjoyed each other's company? I wasn't aware that that broke the rules, and that our companionship somehow led to rule breaking - but do enlighten me!

There's more to cliques than "enjoying each other's company". And cliques aren't inherently bad, but when they combine with toxicity, they must be rooted out.

3. When a RWDT regular (most often, one of the toxic ones) broke the rules (lets face it, toxic people break rules more often than non-toxic ones), the rest of them circled the wagons to defend one of their own, rather than concede that maybe the person in question was actually at fault.

The way to avoid criticism is to do nothing. People protesting a mod's actions does not not detract from the quality of NS, if anything, it helps to keep them accountable. Not that what you say is true is anyway - we've very little tolerance for actual rule breaking behavior.

You can stop sealioning at any time.

You probably don't remember the likes of El-Amin and that one guy who bragged about his actions as a pedophile.

Dude, I've been here longer than you. I remember when BOTH of them were noobs. Hell, I was one of the people who argued for something to be done about both of them. Don't lecture me about NS history you've only heard about when I witnessed it first hand.

The point is, if individuals are the perceived problem, then slashing an extremely popular thread seems to be most ignorant blanket action possible.

At a certain point, so many individuals are involved, it can no longer be treated on an individual basis.

[Alcala-Cordel]

About which user: Sibirsky or Karinzistan?

Sibirsky was a once-very-active NSG poster who, one year, got the silver medal for debating in the NSG Poster Awards. One of his signature moves would be, upon seeing a post that he found particularly pathetic or stupid, just to respond with the facepalm emoticon and nothing else. Picking on this tactic of Sibirsky's, whenever someone would make a post consisting solely of a quote and a facepalm emoticon, it would be referred to as "silver medal debating", for the sole reason of making fun of him. Sibirsky was a very active user in his day, so he certainly racked up a long list of people who disagreed and debated/argued with him; it's just a shame that some of them had to be jerks.

Karinzistan, on the other hand, was the guy who in 2012 had a whole campaign of "revolution" against the moderators, whom he considered to be corrupt and fascist, and with his often borderline-trollish threads about this and about Christianity, he ended up attracting the ire of the moderators and getting deleted. His second nation lasted only about three weeks before getting toasted, as he now started reporting anyone who called him a nickname (mods-as-weapons) and got DoS'd for being a nuisance and making threats, after which he kept coming back under new accounts and spamming more garbage about his revolution and a troll website of his, pretty regularly too for like six months, sometimes with flaming or Nazi rhetoric in there too. I don't miss him.

I was curious about both, thank you for the explanation. Seems like they both have quite a story

[Grenartia]

About which user: Sibirsky or Karinzistan?

Sibirsky was a once-very-active NSG poster who, one year, got the silver medal for debating in the NSG Poster Awards. One of his signature moves would be, upon seeing a post that he found particularly pathetic or stupid, just to respond with the facepalm emoticon and nothing else. Picking on this tactic of Sibirsky's, whenever someone would make a post consisting solely of a quote and a facepalm emoticon, it would be referred to as "silver medal debating", for the sole reason of making fun of him. Sibirsky was a very active user in his day, so he certainly racked up a long list of people who disagreed and debated/argued with him; it's just a shame that some of them had to be jerks.

Karinzistan, on the other hand, was the guy who in 2012 had a whole campaign of "revolution" against the moderators, whom he considered to be corrupt and fascist, and with his often borderline-trollish threads about this and about Christianity, he ended up attracting the ire of the moderators and getting deleted. His second nation lasted only about three weeks before getting toasted, as he now started reporting anyone who called him a nickname (mods-as-weapons) and got DoS'd for being a nuisance and making threats, after which he kept coming back under new accounts and spamming more garbage about his revolution and a troll website of his, pretty regularly too for like six months, sometimes with flaming or Nazi rhetoric in there too. I don't miss him.

I was curious about both, thank you for the explanation. Seems like they both have quite a story

The incident with Sib is the reason why we no longer have the facepalm smiley.

[Valentine Z]

The incident with Sib is the reason why we no longer have the facepalm smiley.

Only a matter of time before we get tired of this one, too:

[Joohan]

You're trying to get me to make a blanket All X are Y statement, and I won't fall for it. I've already admitted that there were some decent RWDTers. Toxicity is yes, posting in bad faith, being prone to flaming , and yes, even harrassment.

No doubt you'll try and twist that statement (and hell, even this one) around, too, but oh well.

Bad Faith has been defined as: seeking to score points, contributes nothing useful, or is deceitful, and being generally anathema to good faith posting - players post with the intent of making the site a better, more enjoyable place to be.

Of the so called, clique, that was the core of RWDT could you please site to me some instances in which they were purposely acting in a way which they thought would be harmful to the NS community?

Flamming did happen on occasion, I will acknowledge that, but I don't think that it was endemic.

I am very curious about your claim of harassment, could you please tell what it is exactly your referencing?

[Grenartia]

The incident with Sib is the reason why we no longer have the facepalm smiley.

Only a matter of time before we get tired of this one, too:

It had nothing to do with the forums getting tired of it. Basically, people turned it into a synonym for the 'silver medal debating' jab.

You're trying to get me to make a blanket All X are Y statement, and I won't fall for it. I've already admitted that there were some decent RWDTers. Toxicity is yes, posting in bad faith, being prone to flaming , and yes, even harrassment.

No doubt you'll try and twist that statement (and hell, even this one) around, too, but oh well.

Bad Faith has been defined as: seeking to score points, contributes nothing useful, or is deceitful, and being generally anathema to good faith posting - players post with the intent of making the site a better, more enjoyable place to be.

Of the so called, clique, that was the core of RWDT could you please site to me some instances in which they were purposely acting in a way which they thought would be harmful to the NS community?

Flamming did happen on occasion, I will acknowledge that, but I don't think that it was endemic.

I am very curious about your claim of harassment, could you please tell what it is exactly your referencing?

Sealioning. You're doing it.

[Joohan]

Sealioning. You're doing it.

You made a claim - now prove it.

There are 21 iterations of RWDT, if what you are saying is truly as big a problem as you make it out to be, then this should be an easy task.

[Grenartia]

Sealioning. You're doing it.

You made a claim - now prove it.

There are 21 iterations of RWDT, if what you are saying is truly as big a problem as you make it out to be, then this should be an easy task.

It happened so often that doing it becomes a chore. Its not a problem of finding a needle in a haystack, its excluding the few bits of hay from a pile of needles.

[Washington Resistance Army]

You made a claim - now prove it.

There are 21 iterations of RWDT, if what you are saying is truly as big a problem as you make it out to be, then this should be an easy task.

It happened so often that doing it becomes a chore. Its not a problem of finding a needle in a haystack, its excluding the few bits of hay from a pile of needles.

That should make it vastly easier to link examples, no?

[Alcala-Cordel]

The incident with Sib is the reason why we no longer have the facepalm smiley.

I got curious and dug up a way to use the facepalm

Code: Select all

[img]https://forum.nationstates.net/images/smilies/sm_facepalm.gif[/img]

[Diopolis]

You made a claim - now prove it.

There are 21 iterations of RWDT, if what you are saying is truly as big a problem as you make it out to be, then this should be an easy task.

It happened so often that doing it becomes a chore. Its not a problem of finding a needle in a haystack, its excluding the few bits of hay from a pile of needles.

If you're going to make a controversial assertion, one would think you would provide some evidence for it.