[Senate] Proposed Rules Revision

So the take away from your post then, Violent Violet Menace is that the Senate is not, other than strict subject matter, not substantively different in rules, or "guidelines", from the JCC, with the exception of opening posts, of which it seems there haven't been any in quite some time? I'm not sure how that helps justify the Senate's continued existence, as it makes seem like nothing more than a social club for a handful of otherwise reclusive posters.

 

I fail to see why it needs justification in the first place. We like it. That should be sufficient.

 

http://www.proboards.com

 

What do you hope to achieve by this anyway? As you have yourselves pointed to with excellent examples, the JCC can produce wonderful and thoughtful discussions on its own. The only thing that would change would be that now whenever someone wants to discuss something serious on the JCC, they'll have to label it with the Senate tag. A cosmetic and empty update to something that already works. You gain nothing. While we lose something we like. That's it.

 

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It was inevitable I guess. First The Senate was arbitrarily merged with the JCC (some liked, some didn't), then it was arbitrarily un-merged again (some liked, some didn't) and so the battle for The Senate's soul rages on from both sides.

I was in favour way back when to un-merge The Senate but I barely post anywhere these days so am no longer fussed really since my own (lack of) posting habits aren't really going to change.

It just sucks that either way people got upset which in turn affected their activity to The Senate's detriment both before (people disliking the 'JCC style' creeping in and therefore contributing less) and after (people now refusing to post in the forum on principle).





Anyway ... I'd just say live and let live, and just leave it alone for those who want it. But if The Senate does end up merging back I'm in favour of J-w's original proposal in the opening post.

 

VVM: One major reason I look down on the "status quo" argument is that, if that's the moderators rationale, then they (though not you) are applying it hypocritically. The previous status quo was a merged forum. Without consulting the userbase at all, the Senate moderators decided to split the forums because what seems like less than five people at any time wanted their own special forum. They did not at that time, nor have they ever, tried to acknowledge the loss or respect the opinions of the many users who lost something that they liked in the process.

I can appreciate that you like the way things are. But what makes your desires so much more special than ours? Why are your wants more worthy of consideration? Sometimes people fall on opposite sides of an opinion such that not everyone can be satisfied with the final outcome. That's a reality. I don't understand why, in this case, rather than trying to dialogue and at least search for a solution that partially mollifies many groups, DarthBoba feels comfortably either ignoring or belittling everyone that disagrees with him.That's not fair.

DarthBoba, I think Ender was hoping you'd actually contribute, not merely "like" a post. As the person responsible for the current state of affairs, one would think you have some sort of insight to offer on why things should be the way they are.

I don't think reality bears this out. People don't try to post pornography or hate speech on the JCC. Most all spoiler rule violations are accidental and met with derision by other users. While people pressed for the ability to use acronyms like "wtf" this didn't presage any campaign to make widespread use of vulgar language. When the rules and regulations found a happy match with the way the posters in the JCC operate, they've neither changed nor been the subject of much complaint.

There's nothing "inevitable" about breaking/bending rules. It only happens when there's a mismatch between how people want to behave and how they are required to. Nor does widening that mismatch really seem to improve their behavior. It only creates a confusing double standard that makes moderators unaccountable (Do people get punished based on official or informal rule violations? Is it the same for a new poster as an old one?) and confuses newcomers. The best way to run a forum is to have a clearly explained, succinct body of regulations that accurately captures expectations for all users at all times.

 

"Disgusting" was good, you should have stuck with that concerned, involved moral high ground. Resorting to slander is quite a step down from that.

 

Oh, have you all? Because I'm pretty sure this whole discussion was just dismissed as being driven by "users from another" board when the two primary drivers have been a former Senate mod and myself, who was an active poster for over half a decade, and only stopped specifically because of this incident. The remaining contributors who weighed in at length were Vivec, a current poster, Yodaminch, a known quantity with a multi-year history of Senate posts that stopped because of this issue, and harpua, a frequent reader.

Why are all those experiences, up to and including serving as a moderator, suddenly worthless? Why do you magically define who should and shouldn't be able to consider themselves a legitimate voice of the Senate? How can we even begin to have a discussion when you won't do me the basic courtesy of admitting the fact that A)I have and did post here for a very long period and B)I am trying to act in what I think is the forum's best interest? You've regarded us as nuisances at best and trolls at worst.

That's not fair, and it's frankly unbecoming of a moderator. As much as I disagree with your opinion, I've never presumed to accuse you of holding it just to spite or harass me. Is it so much to ask that we have the same civility extended to our side of this debate?

 

You're living in a different reality, J-w. Or you had me on ignore the previous three times this came up.

Either way, I suggest you read up before you accuse me.

 

Your entire case is people who never post in Senate, wanting to impose on behalf of those of us who actually do, what the Senate should be. Fortunately, this is something as miniscule and insignificant as an internet message board, because if this was real life, that would be called a hostile takeover.

 

VVM, those people don't post in the Senate anymore. Because of this issue. It's not fair for you to drive people off and then say that no one from the forum is complaining. The members of the Tea Party don't see a problem purging moderate Republicans from the party, either. Of course if you throw out anyone who disagrees with you, the remainder will speak with a unanimous voice. That's not a real assessment, it's circular logic. In regards to our situation, these people were just as much a part of the Senate as you were before they were driven off, and the only thing they're asking for is to abandon the hostile environment that pushed them out in the first place.

Superwatto, my last response was all about the specific verbiage you used in the post where you locked the Senate forum thread. Let alone the fact that you locked at all, when it wasn't in violation of any rules, and was yielding productive discussion. How come the laissez faire fair philosophy you want to apply to the whole forum couldn't apply to one thread?

I used a plural because I was trying to discuss the collective behavior of the Senate moderators, not make extensive personal commentary. I felt and feel that you guys, as a group, have been fairly hostile and dismissive about this whole situation. That starts with the fact you didn't even bother to ask users in the first place, and runs right through the way you just suggested that we started this because "it's just fun to start a ruckus." There's not a single place in your post where you said that maybe we are discussing this because we actually care about it. You still haven't said that.

If I did try to make individual commentary, though, I would give you considerably more credit. Even as much as I think the tone of some of your responses have been rude, you have tried to address the issue a few times in public. DarthBoba on other the other hand, has more or less refused to even weigh in on an issue of major importance to his forum and it's users. Even though handling these sorts of issues is the whole reason forums get administrative staff in the first place.

 

I like Ender's proposal, except for this:

All serious topic discussion in the JC is branded Senate.

My preference is that we kill the Senate forum, drop the word "Senate" and never utter it again. Why paint a target on certain threads with a word that invites at this point almost nothing but ridicule? The JoinTheSchwarz compromise is the only viable one. Tag serious discussion threads with some word other than Senate, and enforce Ender's rules. Problem solved.

 

Senate does seem to be a fairly poisoned word, Jabba. In that people instantly react like we're going to impose 2007 era rules or thereabouts on any thread tagged "Senate".

What's the tag, though, if not Senate?

 

Either make it conform or let it die.

 

Parliament

 

I'd agree with that Jabbadabbado but I do like keeping the "Senate" tag as a historical memento/concession. I think the stigma would quickly diminish once every other post stops being edited with a "this is a senate thread, people" remark.

Looking back at the thread on this topic in the Senate (locked now, for whatever reason) where there was the most active participation from the Senate regulars, the thing that I understand the least is this weird fixation Senate regulars have on some kind of illusory JCC that doesn't actually exist anymore. It seems they still conceive of that forum as it was several years ago, when it admittedly was a little rougher going and a lot more in the way of "drive by" posts, trolling, baiting, flaming, certain groups of users-who-shall-not-be-named running around pissing in everybody's porridge, etc...but that forum hasn't really existed in effect since the temp boards changed the organization and the post-temp merge solidified it. And in practice that forum hadn't existed for a couple of years before the move, as traffic slowed and people mellowed out.

The biggest laugh and the biggest frustration that I get out of this is that this argumentative tactic (effectively a large-scale ad hominem) and others used in the Senate thread—and most egregiously by Senate mods themselves—are of such little intellectual rigor that they fly directly in the face of the standards and practices that the Senate was split off to uphold. And I have to ask, if a group has to break with its own supposed standards—and VVM has pointed out that these standards don't really exist in practice—to justify it's own continued existence, than what is the point of the place at all?

"But, but, but, but, but, DarthLowBudget, why should The Senate even have to justify its existence at all, it's the status quo!"

Glad you asked, HypotheticalSenateRegular, because you see, the separate existence of The Senate is not actually the status quo in the first place. Those of us with long enough institutional memory will recall that the Senate was not originally a separate forum in the first place, and was created out of a necessity that no longer exists (except in the minds of certain individuals). Now, now, I understand, that was so long ago it can't really count as the status quo. I agree. But The Senate as an individual forum hasn't actually been the status quo for quite some time. In reality the merged forum has been the status quo since the temp boards. Yes, that was originally done out of necessity for a simplified layout during a time of transition, but the merge was carried over into the reactivated main boards, which was a decision which I am led to believe was discussed in ModSquad prior to implementation. Status quos change over time, due to various pressures. This particular status quo was changed out of necessity and then codified. It may not be what some of you wanted, but it happened. In any normal rules of debate, the one making the extraordinary claim has to present the evidence and make the argument. In this case, I think maintaing that the split Senate is the best option is an extraordinary claim, and I don't see the evidence or argument for keeping it. Really, claiming that a separate Senate as the status quo is no more sound an argument for it's continued separate existence than my hypothetical argument that it should be merged because the original status quo was that it didn't exist.

So what is a good argument for it being remerged? Well, I think a number of other people have already made that argument fairly satisfactorily, but to recap, I think it's clear to most people wiling to see that the nature of the forums was demonstrably improved by the Senate existing as a tag within Community. There were more serious topics, many of them more rigorous than the previous JCC standard, and a lot of that had to do with the combination of a)the senate tag, and b) the people who were participating at the time. Fact is, there was more good, serious discussion happening on the boards during the period of the merge than there has been in both separate forums combined since the split. I don't see how that's arguable.

When the split happened, those of us who were opposed to the split—and there were and are more of us, regardless of what some people may think—made a series of predictions about what would happen after the split: that there would less serious discussion in Community, that tThe Senate would wither away, and that that animosity between the two camps would become widened and codified rather than abated and healed. It's pretty clear to me that all of those predictions have come to pass and that none of the supposed advantages of the split have manifested.

So, the picture that emerges, in my mind at least, is one of a decision being made without querying or even notifying the community in question, in direct opposition to the wishes of many, in order to satisfy the whims of a couple of mods and a handful of users, with the result being a net negative for both communities, or rather I should say, for the community as a whole. Frankly the fact that this was allowed to happen, and continues to persist, is surprising to me, considering that the administration is, more often than not, competent and responsive to the needs of it's userbase.

Which brings me to the question of the hour, and the question I think is on all our minds: Does DarthBoba have embarrassing photos of ModSquad, and where can I see them?

And before anyone says that the slightly jocular nature of this post demonstrates why Senate and Community can never mix, I will refer you to the noted philosopher John Cleese, who outlines my views of serious discussion very succinctly:

 

I don't think so. Names are important, and it needs to be called something else, precisely for historical reasons. If the Senate tag had been launched in the JCC under Ender's Rules to start with maybe things would have turned out differently, but now I think we have to say that the two Senate Floor experiments (merged and de-merged) both failed. I'm glad we gave the non merger a shot, but it wasn't working before, and it's not working now. Let's try something else, and give it a different name, so that everyone knows it's something else.

 

At the same time, I think simply doing away with the concept of the Senate in toto is going to raise more problems than simply reinstating the Senate tag in its place. But hey, maybe a clean break is what's actually needed.

 

Maybe. I don't want to give the impression that I care very much. I like the current Senate Floor mods. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Senate Floor as it now stands except that its mere existence apparently offends a larger number of people than the number of people who actually use it. If there's an acceptable alternative, let's put it in place, but it might make sense to do something else besides just flipping back and forth between what we've already tried.

 

I'm not sure the fact that it exists is what offends people, I think it's more that the split has created a bad atmosphere. There's now a place for more serious discussion, but it's a little stultifying and the members don't seem to like people outside of the established clique. I mean, they claim to welcome more participation, but on the rare occasion that the topic of the general community has come up with them, the tone has been confrontational and ugly enough to be off-putting. It's not that it upsets me, it's just that it doesn't make me inclined to seek out the Senate as a venue for discussion. I guess it's a little poisoned.

And I fail to see how it's much vaunted slowness is an asset. A lot is made of how that slowness is part and parcel with a seriousness that isn't to be found elsewhere on the JCC, but I just don't see that borne out recently. A few people have pointed out that recent posts in the Senate are not really distinguishable from JCC posts. The main difference between the two forums, other than the specificity of topic, really seems to be that there are less posts in the Senate than the Community. That's okay, I guess, but when the forum as a whole is no longer based on minute divisions of general topics of community discussion, having one really slow outlier forum that segregates the majority of "serious" discussion doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

I don't know whether the tone of the Senate is the problem or whether it was the implementation of the split that annoyed people from the getgo, but in any case I think promoting the viability of the JC by supporting active forums is a worthier goal than providing a slow-moving nostalgia monument to a handful of oldies like me. I'm for whatever solution will keep these forums live and active through the release of the next set of Star Wars movies.

 

I get my Star Wars spoilers off of Facebook.

 

Facebook is a flash in the pan. It's tomorrow's America On Line. It's the Compuserve of 2018.

 

Well, whatever comes next, I don't think it's this.

 

Where do you get your substantive, informed, debate, with a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints? Because it certainly isn't the Senate, and I can't imagine it's Facebook.

That might seem like a cheap, low-blow, but really, I think the big obstacle to non-Senate users coming in to post in Senate topics is the fact that, as a group, it's so small. It's a little like an echo chamber, and there's low incentive to getting used to the practices. It was easier to integrate the Senate into Community, because their was a wider, more inclusive group there. And integrating worked, for the most part. That's not hypothetical, it's an actual fact. The Senate simply resplit before all the kinks worked themselves out. As it is now, the Community forum has maybe, one regularly active politics thread that is almost absurdly general. Re-splitting the Senate has created a nether region for people who would like to have a serious discussion without joining the Insider's Club of the Senate, because the split has created mixed expectations as to where certain topics belong. Having a Senate, or Debate tag would give users a sense of greater traction to creating more specific threads, and it would drag a lot of interesting threads out of the Senate into the broader community for renewed discussion.

I'd also like to say that I'm rather nonplussed by the way this topic always engenders flip and condescending responses from the Senate mods, rather than actual substance. It's frustrating, stymies discussion of an issue that is clearly important to a number of users, and is frankly unbecoming.