Can we bring a policy back?

The thread is a big referendum on just one user right now so I want to add myself to the group of people that are saying it’s about more than just the posting habits of one user—it’s several.

Lots of users just embed YouTube videos in Senate threads with no commentary. Others make walls of text copy/pasted from somewhere with no commentary of their own. And, of course, there are the drive-by tweets. You also have the tv/movie/whatever media product kind of threads where people post the latest thing they’ve watched.

I started one of those threads (the tv episode thread) and as the person who did that, I feel like it’s incumbent upon me to monitor the thread and make sure it doesn’t turn into rote listing with no personal touch of commentary or review. Every once in a while, I drop a reminder in there when it seems like some posters have forgotten or don’t know about the guideline I want to make sure the thread follows.

We’ve been talking about what moderators can do about all this, what new rules can be written or old rules resurrected, but I think the starter of a thread has some agency, too. They have a responsibility by that thread to keep a steady guiding hand, so that the thread adheres to whatever level of discourse they have in mind. And if enough people don’t like the thread, the thread will simply die, or be replaced.

What kind of expectations are placed on thread starters, especially of the big, official kind? This isn’t really talked about because we place so much of the burden on mods. Punk is the starter of the covid thread—what kind of limits do we allow him to lay down in the thread he started?

How can the level of discourse be set at the beginning of the thread, or at such a point that it becomes “official,” so as to cut off at the pass problems like the kind detailed in this thread?

 

Well, you of all people should know, really. It's not a school. It's a community. This is not the uncool kid but the loud neighbor. The guitar player that won't stop playing during the rehearsal break.

I have been told off whenever I was too loud, too. And rightly so. Anybody who doesn't pick up on that becomes that "nerd" you speak of.

 

Here's my patented, ultra-repetitive wall of text. None of this is particularly important. JTS can tell me to just suck it up and I will.

Yeah. It's not this, either. JCC threads are not similar to a feed on any other information system.

The JCC is about people. More specifically, it's about us. The full title is actually Your Jedi Council Community. It's about our community. Not the Twitter community, which isn't here.

It's about people sharing the same space. You can think of it as everyone living under the same roof. When you're under the same roof, you have chats, you don't throw twitter links at each other.

You've been spamming the Pandemic thread with twitter posts for months. People have felt this way for some time but haven't said much about it before.

You don't chat, though. The majority of your posts are not participatory, and could be made by a bot that retweets. Multiple people have observed this.

He was describing the way you post, which as I said, could be mistaken for the posting of a bot. That's not intelligent. There is hardly any sign of a unique individual to your posts, because you don't put any of yourself in your posts. This is what we've been trying to get at all along.

I think he is encouraging, requesting, more. To give more of yourself than empty posts, because that is what this community values.

We don't really care what is posted on twitter, we can get that from twitter. We want something from you that only you can give us. We want your personality.

We've been through this before. We've seen people go from empty posting to showing more of themselves and we like it.

I agree that this period has encouraged more links to follow what's going on, but that something more is something that we aren't getting. We can forgive some spamming if we also get that something more.

We have quite a few neurodivergent folks who share their personality and thrive here.

This entire thread is a very clear, unambiguous, written confrontation backed up by multiple users. There's nothing unambiguous about it.

We are, quite clearly and repeatedly, asking you to reduce your empty posting and contribute more original posting from yourself.

Great! Do that and provide your own insight so that we have something and someone to engage with. We can't really engage with posts from people who aren't here. We cannot engage with Twitter on the JCC, we can only engage with the JCC and JCCers.

Yes, I'm asking you to do it the long way. You want to know why? Because when it comes from you, the likelihood that your personality will shine through and offer something extra is, like, infinity times higher. There's basically zero chance to get anything from you with just a twitter link.

When you and others post nothing but twitter links, it's often like reading through junk mail.

We've actually had this discussion about empty posting several times before.

Here is a thread in Comms about basically the same complaint:

community is being overrun by spam


It's not just about you, Tina. Personally, I've felt uncomfortable singling you out.

We've been through this several times before. It's not necessarily about any individual, but about some standard of posting that is higher than junk mail. Too many people don't even bother to try to rise above junk mail.

Indeed.

I can't do this:

Because it's just everywhere and I can't go around asking everyone for more commentary. I'd be guilty of spamming myself if I even tried.


tom and JTS called it. TJCCINAGAIUTB. The JCC is what it is. We're just gonna have to deal with it.

 

It's a good thing you bring this up.

I started a thread in January in the CT forum about the 40th anniversary of ESB.

Last month one of the forum moderators there PM me and said to me that they wanted to make some changes and that interest was much greater in May that there was in January and IIRC they wanted to make some changes to the thread and maybe start a similar one as well with a slightly different focus - I don't really remember the details very well, but basically it meant that I wasn't the sole owner of the thread and that mods were asking nicely about making a couple of changes or what not.

So I'm going to assume this is the same policy for all the forums. (If that's not the case maybe someone can clarify)

The pandemic thread is obviously drawing a lot more interest now than when it started and the way DP has tried to maintain some kind of control over it has been, to put it mildly, extremely aggressive, and he has gone so far as to make sexually-explicit personal attacks against me after many months of being incredibly hostile.

If he only wants people to participate there whom he doesn't strongly dislike personally, then where does it stop? He continued being very passive-aggressive toward me even after I asked him very nicely to just leave me alone. I remember it seemed to me at the time he was offended by the mere idea that I didn't particularly understand his sense of humor (if that's what he intended it to be) and I honestly was dealing with too many things at the time to clarify any further that his brand of "humor" for lack of a better word was making me uncomfortable.

This whole thing could easily open up a whole Pandera's box on any number of forums and threads.

@CT-867 you do indeed bring up a wall of text, and although I'm not going to respond point-by-point, I'm thinking it would probably be very helpful if we had a more detailed explanation inside the forum rules as to what exactly are the general expectations and what we can all do to have a better and more interesting discussions.

I'm all for anything that helps the forums become a better and more welcoming place for everyone. As I just explained to Grand Admiral Jello a few posts ago, it seems odd to me that so much emphasis is being put simply on the formatting of an idea. If I take something that I read somewhere else that is obviously pertinent, and more or less paraphrase it, and write it out in 2-3 sentences in a post, isn't it very much the same information that is being shared with others, just in a different format?

It seems to me that the information would be exactly the same, except for the graphic formatting part.

Also there are many people in the forums who occasionally chime in and share something without necessarily having read up all the posts that they may have missed - a lot of us have busy lives or other distractions.

A lot of these issues are things that maybe would be best discussed directly on the JC Community section as I'm sure there are a lot of people who might have suggestions or comments.

But one thing that does seem risky is a whole set of very loosely defined things that seem clear allegedly to some people but not clear to others, and that can seemingly change from week to week or be selectively enforced depending on who someone likes or doesn't like.

You sound like you genuinely mean well, so I'm definitely open to an ongoing discussion about the topic if you want.

 

lol, I don't think that "this is not a school board, it's a homeowners association" is the higher standard you think it is, Watto, but I get what you mean.

I still disagree, though. I'm sorry, I don't think annoyance is a strong reason for bringing back any rules. I'm sorry you are currently annoyed. I am too! I loathe that style of posting as well. You and Diggy and Punk and anyone else: you are all good people and I do keep you as a golden standard (okay, silvery standard) of what a good Community poster should be. But again: this same issue comes up every couple of years, every single time triggered by a new presence in the boards, and every single time it feels to me like a side-effect of the JCC's insularity and longevity. We are an old community, we don't like change.

(Also, as mentioned before, ruling around one single person (or maybe two) is not a good idea. Or I swear to god that we would have a rule rewarding any mentions of "sex person" with a profile deletion.)

 

@JoinTheSchwarz - I think you're being fair so I'll just add that even styles of posting can change over time. And even the exact same style of posting sometimes gets interpreted very differently in different threads and different forums.
The current world situation definitely may have an influence, speaking personally. Whatever the case, it certainly never was some kind of deliberate attempt to do something intentionally annoying, or anything like that.
The forums have changed a lot in the last 20 years, and just when I think I understand them, they seem to change again. I think given the uncertainty in the world today, we owe it to ourselves to try to be a little bit nicer and kinder to each other each day. It isn't easy, of course, but I promise I will keep at it.

 

But JTS, it's worse this time. This is a Zaz level event. Just check the first page of Community. Doesn't that make you want to cry? The place is actually unrecognizable. Good conversations have already been drowned out.

And it's not just Tina at all, Tina is only the latest and greatest poster to mindlessly keep posting crap.

 

Firstly, I'm appreciative that Tina has pointed out her personal condition. I can now put her posts into context and have more empathy for them.

But at the same time that's no excuse for a complete lack of self reflection. I've made mistakes here, and when people have pointed them out, I've self reflected. I have never seen Tina do that and it's incredibly frustrating. I even tried to say "no hard feelings" after a heated exchange between us, but even then it was just all my fault.

It's of course not just Tina. There are a few posters who spam threads with either just news articles or absolutely vacuous statements. The latter can't really be helped - some people just don't have very good insights, and I'm sure people think that about me. But I don't think it's too much to ask that threads aren't spammed with just nonsense tweets and news articles which don't actually further discussion. The pandemic thread in particular has lots of nonsense news articles with no commentary. Also, no one is really wanting a new rule or anything, but rather that people self-censor their spamming.

 

Just wanted to point out that the last page of the "political ****posting thread" right now contains no less than 9 posts from different individuals which all consist of a single photo, cartoon or Twitter link without the post author having added any text or commentary whatsoever. There is also one post by PG with a photo and a single line of text.
This is the kind of stuff that, frankly, I hadn't even paid attention to in the past, but I think this posting style is actually a lot more common than some people are saying it is.
Unless I'm missing something, I think some people are focusing on certain things only when done by people they already don't like for some other reason.

 

I think @DarthPhilosopher gets at a frustration that a few have alluded to but I think many more share without having said anything publicly: @Princess_Tina, what changes are you interested in or willing to make? Do you think you ought to make any changes at all, or should everyone else change to suit your needs?

I ask that in recognition that you are not the only person this thread is about-- there's someone else in particular I have in mind as well, and others probably have their own people. For all I know, I'm one of them.

I think this is unintentionally revealing-- I've never posted in it myself, but the political ****posting thread is meant for posts just like the ones you described, or if not specifically meant for it, then certainly open to it. Perhaps this is another case of something being unwritten that most people pick up on, but not everyone does (for understandable reasons).

Did it occur to you in this case that rather than there being a double standard at work that perhaps you yourself are overlooking something essential?

 

As I understand it, the political **** posting thread is tagged as part of JCC and not Senate. So, there are two types of expectations. JCC is where nothing but just the tweet or image works based on the thread. But for Senate, the hope is that whatever is shared adds to the discussion. So just posting tweets without adding any context, while perhaps relevant to the topic, may not add to the current discussion.

 

Look, I'll be honest here, 99% of the time I won't even notice whether a thread is Senate, Amphitheater or JCC, it seems those differences were a lot more profound before than they are now, aren't they? I remember the Senate 10 or more years ago. I thought the point of changes that have taken place since then were meant to keep it more casual...

I literally just said "unless I'm missing something.."

If a person is missing something, hasn't noticed a piece of information or misunderstood some aspect of the issue, whatever, then you don't need to lecture them because it's an honest oversight.

 

Tina, there are brightly colored tags meant to distinguish each thread. That's on you, unless there's something keeping you from seeing these or understanding what they mean.

I think you're going to have to give a little here, Tina. You've said that you've read the rules, but there's more at work than just the rules. What I'm getting here is the sense that everyone else should be aware of your perspective, but that you are free to continue on as you have in the past, and anyone who has a problem with that needs to adjust accordingly.

Am I mistaken?

To put it another way and to borrow from @Coruscant-- what agency do you have in this?

 

I am color blind.

Did it occur you to try to imagine not everyone perceives the world the same way you do? Guess not.

Talk about putting words in someone else's mouth.

Please go back and re-read my very first post in this thread, I've never even remotely insinuated anything even remotely like what you are saying.
You're also completely overlooking that the most outrageous behavior on these boards is actually what certain individuals playing forum sheriff have done to me, including (I believe I mentioned this before) the person who "jokingly" said he wished he could shoot me and also the vulgar and sexually-explicit personal attack from just two days ago. When the people claiming they're annoyed by something that isn't even part of the forum rules display even more appalling behavior and do things that are actually against the rules, then it becomes clear the bigger problem here is not the one that you are suggesting.

Why aren't you saying anything about the people reacting to something they don't like in an even worse way and with worse behavior?

 

I've circled the letters-- the letters are in black text. Are you unable to see this text?

Tina, you're unintentionally giving credence to what I've said, which is that it seems to always be other people that need to change and never you. Other people have done wrong to you-- we agree on that. That's not what I'm talking about right now, however. What I'm asking about is what changes (if any) you're willing to make. What agency do you have here?

Listing the ways you've been wronged is a way of evading responsibility for yourself as well as casting aside any agency you have.

I'm reminded of my art experience. Someone can make work that with one thing in mind, show it to a group of people, and be told that it really seems like it's about something else. If you're in a room of 15-20 people and most people say it's about Y even as you're saying it's about X, they're not wrong. It means that you've overlooked something and need to investigate what it is you're missing.

 

You are still missing the point.

Look, if at any point during the last six months a moderator had come in and simply posted a friendly reminder ANYWHERE on the forums to remind people that different policies may apply to different kinds of threads, then of course I would have tried to pay attention to it, if I haven't paid any attention to it, it's because frankly no one had mentioned anything to me.

And yes OF COURSE I'm aware the Senate used to be much different, the point is that these days all threads seem to be much closer in style and I honestly don't recall any moderators ever trying to post a general reminder that we should look at certain threads in a different light.

Now, do you want to have a stricter policy for ALL senate threads? That's fine by me, we can change the policies back to what they used to be.

Once again, you are completely misrepresenting the situation. I believe all of us should abide by the forum rules, obviously. And in this instance it's undeniable that what others did in response to stuff they didn't like was actually against the forum rules, it wasn't just me saying "those people must not be posting that kind of stuff," it was actual forum moderators who had to go in there and edit the offensive posts.

Now, I ask you, why has this gone on for several months now? All the passive-aggressive stuff happening in the forums, this stuff that nobody really needs?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if we want to change the policies or enforce some things differently there is a healthier and more transparent way to do that, and that's to have an open discussion in the JCC forums. Let's open it up to all the voices, and let's hear what everyone's concerns might be.

But doing things in stealthy, secretive ways and talking about people behind their backs doesn't seem honest or transparent, honestly.

If we want to make the forums a friendlier, more welcoming and more relaxing place we can definitely do that.

How can you possibly not understand that this is exactly what I want to see happening, also?

 

Tina, what can you do differently? What changes (if any) are you willing to make?

 

"Ask not what your forums can do for you, ask what you can do for your forums"

 

I think this is actually a good point. At least a tiny bit of the responsibility here falls on the mods (assuming they feel there is an issue here to begin with).

Again going back to this:

Do the mods (@JoinTheSchwarz @anakinfansince1983, etc) think Senate threads are being held to higher standards? If the answer is yes then there's probably not much more to be discussed here.

 

I don't. People have been misinterpreted or misrepresented either in good or bad faith. It's looking more and more like bad faith.

 

@Princess_Tina: I’m forced to conclude that you believe that there’s nothing you should do to change, and that you believe you have no responsibility or agency in making things better. Each time I’ve asked you directly, you have shifted responsibility to others, or discussed the forum in general.

If this is in error, please feel free to correct me.