Welcome back to The Hiddens, my series documenting and exploring the issues of Community Moderation on Daily Kos, on a daily basis. Feel free to contribute thoughts, information, or questions in comments. Thank you to all of you, my silent audience, and most particularly to my detractors. I apologize to anyone I've upset, and for making it seem like I am having too much fun taunting both trolls and other Kossacks. It is merely an attempt to use humor to defuse rather than enflame, to amuse the reader more than anger the target. Issues surrounding rhetoric are actually intensely personal and fundamentally important, and I'm hopefully avoiding the risk of taking myself too seriously as I attempt to deal with them. I am sure there are many who would like to see a change in the tone of The Hiddens, just as I would like to see a change in the tone of the discussions on Daily Kos. Perhaps in the end we can come to some mutually satisfying arrangement, all of you and I.
The numbers in "incident notes" are recs/HRs/replies as displayed on the hidden comments list at the time of writing. If they're followed by a number in parenthesis, that is the total number of replies downthread. If there are multiple sets, the record covers multiple comments, which may or may not be in the same thread. Other special symbols may appear, such as a hash/number sign (#) which indicates the statistics are for a non-hidden comment or other special circumstances.
Yesterday's edition ended rather unceremoniously due to family obligations, and we're falling behind. I anticipate that it should be easy to catch up on Sunday, if every Sunday is as quiet as the last one was. We shall see. So I'd like to jump in, but I do have one thing to say first.
"You got that call wrong so I will never believe anything you say."
That isn't a quote, it is a fictional bit of dialog, just so nobody freaks out because I used double quote marks. But it fairly expresses, I think, the way a lot of people react to this effort, and in fact to discussion in general. It is a serious problem, related to post-modernism, but I have vowed (to myself) not to get into that in The Hiddens. But in this context, that imaginary quote does evidence a fatal flaw in the reasoning.
If it were ever possible for any one person to ever get moderation calls "right", moderation itself would not be needed. To say a forum is "self-moderated" would simply mean that everyone always speaks calmly and cheerfully, because everyone would all have the same information, use the same line of reasoning, and produce the same result. Nobody can ever do all that enough to even get one call completely right. But just as the HR decision both is and is not based on the single comment being considered, the accuracy of that decision both is and is not true in both of those contexts. The whole reason pie fights start is because of this intense and understandable desire to be right, to defend our positions, our politics, and our rhetoric.
The goal is to improve the level of rhetoric, the value of debate, and the accuracy of the polemics. It is a humble one, because, despite the editorial pose and authorial persona I've adopted, I am a humble person. I can't help you. But if I try hard enough, I do believe I can convince you to help yourselves.
So on to the pseudo-snark. Let's treat this issue with all the serious irreverence it deserves.
A dedicated I/P troll newbie:
Incident: 'A dedicated I/P troll newbie'
Incident I/P (anti-P) (0/5/5)
Diary notes: I/P, republished by Middle East groups
User notes: newbie
HR notes: unsubstantiated (but not necessarily inappropriate) accusations of zombie status
Disposition: more Status: again, open
If TUs could learn to hide and then ignore troll comments, the problem they cause would be minimized. It is the insistence on getting trolled that is where the breakdown in the system occurs, not in lack of swift banning by Admin.
And on that note (I swear I wrote it before looking at this next case), some of our less popular Kossacks illustrate the process, though not the ideal:
Incident: 'Peaceful streets around here, huh?'
Incident RKBA, flash (1/8/1)
Diary notes: RKBA
User notes: newbie
HR notes: see below, TU uprate
Disposition: Hi! Status: Kablam, open
As often happens when I give advice, the next thing that happens reminds you not to go too far with that advice. Here a newbie varment (who is clearly a dedicated but amateur troll in the RKBA group) gets his head blowed clean off, but other than the contested donuts, the only rhetorical response was this:
Please do not respond to this user.
This particular user has a history in these threads of coming in to do nothing but disrupt discussions and engage in insulting and unacceptable behavior.
We think it best to not engage the commenter in any way whatsoever, so as not to encourage continued bad behavior.
Thank you.
RKBA is just like BK or LGBT or Feminists or any other political special interest group on DK. They must find a balance between suppressing debate and suppressing opinions, and that task must fall not only to the Kossacks who end up being trolls to other groups, but to the TUs of those groups to allow even contentious contributions in the discussion. The only way you can legitimately claim that trolls are being "stomped" to prevent distractions from the discussion
is if there is an actual discussion, not simply polemic discourse, going on.
Despite that, the above instance does illustrate the success of my advice. Hiding the comment only makes sense (regardless of the language it uses; we are all adults here) if no other response is necessary. TUs that contest the call might well want to contribute to a hidden thread to make their case. TUs that are merely piling on donuts should STFU and save their derision for the next time. Anything else is purposefully inflaming the situation, and by definition that makes it trolling, no matter who's diary it is.
And then we come to the ongoing thorny problem of RSA. I'm just going to give a summary:
Incident: 'Admin? (or: Seriously; Admin?)'
Incident notes: RSA totals (3/83/46)
Diary notes: 4
User notes: ?
HR notes: 14 comments
Disposition: Hmmm Status: See below
I'm going to say that this user is a fool who is mistaken to think he is making a point, despite the number of you that I know will immediately think that the same could be said about me. I invite those who can still see this bozo's comments to judge for yourself which of us is trying to help DK, and which of us is trolling it.
It is nice to see that the SSP folks in DKE are doing an adequate if not exceptional job of keeping things in those diaries focused on "horse race politics":
Incident: 'Doesn't get it'
Incident DKE disruptive (0/6/3, 0/6/1, 0/5/0, 0/4/0)
Diary notes: DKE
User notes: TU (no diaries)
HR notes: pointless OT contention
Disposition: Waste Status: Sigh, open
The reply stats tell the tale. When a diary that wants to be trolled is visited by a disruptor, you can see massive traffic jams of comments from TUs eager to try whatever belittling or derailing or undermining rhetoric they are used to using. But that, as I've explained, isn't responding to trolls, it is being trolled. This here, with the zero replies on the last two hiddens, is how you know a group is honestly interested in some other discussion, not just posting polemics designed to be bear traps.
Let me post this to get you started and I'll update before lunch. Thanks for coming. Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
&&&
I've been contemplating my view stats. Other than the nascent attempts to contribute or detract which I somewhat rudely deterred, it is about the only feedback I get to help me guide this process. General discussion of my efforts would risk putting someone in a position of agreeing with me, and I understand why at this point nobody feels like doing that. In fact I find that encouraging, which is my point.
I check my view stats to see if anyone's paying attention, and they indicate, as I've mentioned before, that they do. Quite clearly. So why, if more than a hundred Kossacks are reading this sheet every single day, would I be encouraged by the general lack of feedback? I just checked the edition which has (by a horse length) the highest view rate. It was the one that started with "DK used to be a clubhouse, but now it is a community center." Apparently that struck a chord.
So I interpret the silence as encouragement because it seems to me that it indicates that you actually are contemplating my words. Considering your perspective. Perhaps even rethinking some of your opinions. And I really am in this to help, not for self-glorification, so it doesn't even matter to me if there never does come a time when anyone needs to explain or describe how their thinking might have changed because of what I'm doing here. So remember, if you read it as passive-aggressive when I write "Thanks for your time. Hope it helps." that's just projection. It is meant sincerely; the few seconds, minutes, or even hours (because I do go on and on, don't I?) that anyone spends reading my words is a gift they are giving me, whether I ever find out about it or not, and the most I can hope to accomplish is to help someone somehow by writing them.
Anyway, enough blah blah blah about Yours Truly and his Great Project And Job Interview. Back to the fun part:
Incident: 'Trollhole' (or: not really, but good idea)
Incident Individual diary, elections (2/23/4, 0/4/2)
Diary notes: Deleted
User notes: 2, Average Kossack wrote diary, raw newbie commented in reply
HR notes: tip jar and first response ("Good for you!")
Disposition: threads Status: DD
The diary title was a supposed admission of 'voter fraud'. The deleted diary has apparently been replaced with one admitting to registering as a Republican as a tactical approach, which is not voter fraud, AFAIK. The problem with deleting diaries is that it is always the ones that shouldn't be deleted that are, and the ones that should be deleted that aren't. Diaries can be edited after posting, and titles can be changed, and there is nothing necessarily nefarious about doing either in response to initial criticism or advice. The original diary being deleted, there is no way to know how similar it was to its replacement. I've had some success with Google's cache service reading deleted diaries, but not always and rarely if the diary wasn't up for a while.
The TU trolling the CIJK diary from yesterday racked up another (0/4/1) making this next incident a hop on, technically. I think both instances (CIJK and the next record) illustrate similar points about how groups can and/or should respond to contrarians. In both cases I see the group response essentially creating the trolling by being too defensive in avoiding contention. In BK, it was the issue of balancing the real value of prisons with the social value of not having prisons. In this Feminist diary example below, it is the thorny (legally if not philosophically, but that too) issue of free will itself, and in which cases responsibility for consequences is or is not deferred by intoxication. Obviously the eternal qualities of these contentions makes members of groups quite weary of constantly responding to the same naive "talking points". But when that happens over time and with multiple contributors, it may well be because they aren't talking points so much as inconvenient facts. There are some people we need to keep locked up to protect society, and there are thorny issues about free will which impact both legal and philosophical discussions about sexual assault.
But anyway, here's the record. This unexpently brings us up to real time again, as well, so there probably won't be another update until late, and perhaps none at all. If so, I hope you will join me again for tomorrow's edition.
