[Bond]

As some of you moderators are doubtless aware, I am involved in a bit of what could be characterized as a spat with another sffworld member. I find myself somewhat hamstrung and in a bind because of what I see as unclear sffworld policy. So I hope you can clarify the various related issues to my problem. I would also like to provide if I may certain concerns and suggestions to improve sffworld policy as a result of my experience that it is to be hoped you will consider.

But first to some of the things I seek clarification on.

What is sffworld's definition of a troll?
What is sffworld's definition of trollish behavior?
Could you give examples of trollish behavior or tactics?
What is sffworld's recommended response to members when trollish behavior is observed?

On a somewhat different but related matter, Hobbit in one of his posts says regarding a certain thread that "The tone of some of the posts have IMO effectively isolated the majority of the rest of the Forum". I find this potentially very bothersome. If Hobbit is referring to the thread being intimidating then I must ask this: Is he referring solely to the intimidating nature of being subject to personal attack and trolling tactics, or does he also include the intimidating nature of having one's ideas attacked? Simply put, is it okay to attack someone's ideas in this forum?

Sammie says "be nice". But what is one to do when the other party is determined not to be? Moreover related to the above does this mean we are not to question and dispute another's ideas even if conducted with intellectual integrity and civility? Are we expected to let mediocre wishy-washy ideas stand unchallenged merely to preserve a sense of harmony?



I would also like to share what I see as some weaknesses I perceive in current sffworld policy due to my experience.

Juzzza articulated the sffworld policy that "Nobody has greater claim to any forums over anyone else, period."

Although this policy in general certainly makes sense, special attention has to be paid to the matter when potential trolling becomes an issue. To apply this policy blindly in such cases strikes me as naive.

If the definition of a troll's goal includes not only the provocation of flames but also the disruption of relevant and interesting discussion then logically any disruption tends to serve the troll's interests rather than those with a genuine interest in furthering discussion on a topic.

That's why I find it hard to believe that moderators refuse to take the stated interests and inclinations of the various members into consideration when they intervene.

As I see it, would-be trolls in general really have little power in a discussion. Since they do not have genuine interest in the subject under discussion they tend to provide little or no actual content. Without providing content they do not really have power to dictate the thread. Those who do provide content can play with the trolls or not as they wish. The trolls in the meantime can go on making themselves look silly because it inevitably becomes obvious how little real substance they provide, which I guess explains their increasingly desperate attempts to agitate as discussions go along. Unfortunately though I get the feeling moderators here in their wish to maintain order, too easily adopt policies that end up bailing out trolls. When moderators close a thread they play into the hands of the trolls. When the mods indiscriminately dole out punitive measures they aid the trolls. I have been issued a strike 1, which I would like now to formally protest and pray be rescinded, without being given SPECIFIC instances of where I overstepped the line. Without being given such information how am I supposed to avoid doing so in the future? Just stop posting? Well that's playing into the hands of the trolls since it tends to end discussion. But that is what current policy seems to suggest.

While unfortunate, it is also understandable why in the interests of expediency a sense of "balance" seems to be the preferred method of determining how to set things aright rather than a time consuming tedious critical analysis of the true sources of conflict. That's why I advocate a simple convenient shortcut to test for trolls: figure out who doesn't belong in the forum or who has little reason for being there. The reasoning is simple. Why would someone with a professed and shown interest in a subject and who has given a lot of content into discussion of said subject want to have a thread devoted to their subject of interest closed? The answer is such people usually don't. When a thread is closed mods are punishing those interested in the subject and rewarding the trolls who aren't. True this test has its weaknesses and things should still be done on a case-by-case basis but it is a useful way of cutting through the muck in many instances. That is why I feel the current policy that goes on along the lines of "nobody has greater claim to any forums over anyone else" should be reexamined.

One more thing, by pointing out someone I thought was engaging in trollish behavior, I was deemed to have committed in the words of one moderator "a personal attack". Considering how long things have been simmering with no change and taking into account also that the situation was no secret I hope the moderators can understand that my action was not undertaken lightly or prematurely. Clearly I do not feel that a superior alternative was available. True the kind of action I initiated can be easily overused and abused but I came to the conclusion that calling what I perceive as a spade a spade and letting the dice fall where they may was possibly the most effective and flexible option for all concerned. By clearly drawing attention to the trolling behavior, it puts the onus on the troll to carry on without trolling. In case the trolling behavior was unconscious and unintentional, the behavior can in good faith be modified and eliminated. Moreover, another advantage is that moderators are given a reprieve from making decisive irreversible decisions. Personally just because I perceive someone as acting like a troll doesn't necessarily mean I want them banned immediately. What I want is for the party to be served notice so they can shape up, drop the idiocy, and be compelled to resume using reasonable and respectable arguments to carry their point across presuming they have one. Unfortunately, I do not think exhortations from moderators asking participants to simply be nice and avoid vague unspecified negative behavior have the same effect. Making mod scrutiny known is double-edged. It enforces order a bit true but it also makes known to the troll that someone who can really deal damage has entered the fray. Trollish behavior after a temporary lull may actually increase after a mod warning. Sometimes giving time and leeway for things to naturally sort themselves out might be beneficial.

Thank you for your attention and understanding on this matter.

[Jenab]

Now this is an interesting subject! The study of moderator decisions, their justifications, and what really motivates them, could become a science in itself: a branch of psychology maybe.

By the way, I'm not the person with whom Bond is having a spat. At least, I don't think that I am.

On other forums, I've witnessed political differences of opinion becoming the actual motive for censorship and banning, while pretexts of a loftily judicious nature were aired as the justification. I've also seen high-minded moderators regretfully imposing those penalties to enforce politically biased content rules with which they did not agree, but believed they had no other choice in the matter.

I have also discovered one good rule for censorship. If a forum is openly declared as being dedicated to the advancement an ideological (political or religious) or commercial cause, it has no moral obligation to share its bandwidth with anyone demonstrably opposed to that cause. An advertiser doesn't have to let into his advertisements anyone who will say that the product he hopes to sell is worthless. And whereas you may legally criticize Jesus, you shouldn't go into a church to do it, since a church has openly declared itself to be a place to venerate Jesus; if you do, the preacher has the right to throw you out.

But there are, on the other hand, forums that pretend to be places where honest opinions may be offered for honest debate with the expected return being honest criticism. Such forums, including ePhilosopher, have no declared ideological or commercial agenda and purport to be no more or less than a public forum open to all for the purpose of giving thoughtful consideration to ideas.

On closer inspection, however, that presumption often falls apart. There are hidden biases in the spectrum of permissible opinion, and forum-users may not advance ideas that fall outside that spectrum. Sometimes, the limits are mentioned in a general sort of way in the forum's Terms of Service or Guidelines. Typically, the allowed spectrum of ideas excludes discussions of race from any point of view that might offend (someone politically entitled to be offended).

So if someone has such opinions, if someone believes that a potentially offensive idea is nonetheless a true idea, he may not argue for its truth in any debate within the forum. If he does, the moderators will censor him, no matter how mild his manner or how reasonable, plausible, or well-documented his points are.

It's as if Galileo went into a meeting of the scientists of his day and, upon being assured that all scientific ideas were welcome at the meeting, told them of his discoveries with the telescope. Whereupon, the other "scientists" immediately laid hands on him and dragged him before the church authorities to accuse him of impiety. Galileo had "offended," and it matters not a bit whether or not his discoveries were true.

In politics, there's a phrase for such behavior - it comes from China: "Let a hundred flowers bloom" ... and then cut them all down with a lawnmower. When a despotic regime wants to identify its opponents, one thing it can do is feign an atmosphere of tolerance and forgiveness for a while. After the opponents have announced themselves by presenting their views in good faith, the despotic regime has them arrested and shot.

I've seen something similar happen occasionally to politically incorrect posters on some forums: a forum manager tried to bait a suspected poster into making a remark in conflict with the biased Terms of Service, in order to create a pretext for banning him. The wiley suspected poster spotted the subterfuge and didn't fall into the trap. The moderator actually admitted that laying a trap was what he had been doing! (That was the only thing that surprised me; usually, they aren't quite that brazen.)

I've seen moderators cooperate against a poster they didn't like, playing a sort of "good cop - bad cop" kind of game. I've seen threads begin on-topic but subsequently led off tangentially (a point of disagreement that someone else wanted to discuss), and while on that tangent the debate generates interest while relating to a subject the moderator considers controversial, with points being made that the moderator considers inadmissible, and so the moderator sets all the blame for the thread's "off topicness" on the fellow (often the original poster) who made the inadmissible points. That worthy complains that he was doing nothing more than responding to other people's comments, and if the thread wandered off-topic it was none of his doing. The moderator says it does not matter that you were "trolling" only after others did it, "trolling" isn't allowed. See how that word sneaked in as a loftily judicial pretext? Even if we agree that trolling is an apt description, it remains a valid question as to why the only poster(s) specifically blamed for trolling are those whose ideas had displeased the moderator.

And I've seen moderators declare that someone is a troll, after that someone began a controversial thread that quickly generated massive interest (judging by the number of participants in argument), however the moderator may have believed that the "wrong side" was winning, so therefore he decided that the thread was "off topic."

Anyway, here is a field of study that has yet to be well systematized. If someone wants to do the systematizing, I'm willing to share my data.

The format of a forum may be important for determining what is a troll and what is not. In a forum such as this, where posts are all presented sequentially, a series of long boring posts might be considered trolls. The same posts on a forum where browsers selected posts from an index (list or tree), where he can see the author's name and title before he chooses whether to view the post's content, might not be trolls (because they are easily avoided).

The question is a matter of whether the posts in a thread a resolved in a manner that allows unwanted posts to go unread. Is the content of the unwanted posts necessarily intrusive - i.e., in your way - when you want to read some other post instead? Or can you avoid the unwanted content? Do the unwanted posts intrude like a loud boor in a coffeeshop, using his booming voice to trample the conversation of politer speakers with more melodious tones? Or do the unwanted posts NOT intrude, as Channel 6 on your TV set does NOT intrude when you have chosen to watch Channel 9, instead?

Jerry Abbott

[Holbrook]

Just want to say the following; when you joined you ticked agree. Dag pays the bills, it's his forum, his rules, and on the whole this place is lightly moderated.

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[Jenab]

Just want to say the following; when you joined you ticked agree. Dag pays the bills, it's his forum, his rules, and on the whole this place is lightly moderated.
In case that post was aimed at me, Holbrook, please notice that I was not referring especially to this forum.

Jerry Abbott

[Holbrook]

In case that post was aimed at me, Holbrook, please notice that I was not referring especially to this forum.

Jerry Abbott

Jerry: if I was aiming my post at you, I would have said so. I don't do sneak attacks, as old timers here will tell you ;)

It was a general reminder to all about the rules they signed up to on becoming a member of the forum... It is also worth remembering this is just an internet forum about fictional works, and no matter how much we like or dislike the work of one author or another, is it really worth getting all steamed up about and upsetting both yourself and others?

To be honest 18 months ago I would have said yes and gone on about the rights of forum members to state their opinion etc, etc.... but since then I have looked the grim reaper in the face twice and well that's changed my opinons about a lot of things. In all I have come to look at internet exchanges on forums in the same light as talks over a pint in a pub Interesting to listen too, but not life altering and not worth losing my temper over or getting upset about.

[daigoro]

Hi Bond

We do of course not have any special definition of Trollish behaviour other than what is a defacto Internet definition of it. No more no less.

Attention seeking... amusement... boredom... wasting time... etc...

I don't think we demand much of the members of the forum, behave in a civil way towards each other, if there is a problem contact the moderators, don't be drawn into a fight and keep on topic.

* If members attack each other in what we deem is an unjust manner we will intervene...

* If we see what you call trollish behavior we will intervene...

* If a discussion turns into a meaningless contest of words where the topic of the discussion is lost to most and people only seem to seek attention and attacking each other we will intervene...

and so on and so on....

Follow the forum rules (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/announcement.php?f=6&announcementid=10) and everyone will be happy.

That's pretty much all we ask of anyone that want to spend their time here with the rest of us.

Dag

[Sir Stephen]

I think this place is heavily moderated. Over moderated in fact. However, Dag owns the site (which is very nice btw), so the level of moderation is completley up to him.

Regarding the thread Bond is talking about, I also think there was plenty of unnecessary warnings. Take into account that two very different views were being argued, over the course of several pages and the worst thing that happened was someone called someone else a troll. A troll? How offensive is that? Considering the context, things were very cival. Still there was no shortage of mod warnings. If I wasn't so cynical, I probably wouldn't think that this quote applied so much...
Attention seeking... amusement... boredom... wasting time...

Btw, I've never been a member of a forum before so I can't compare the moderation on here to anywhere else, so maybe this is the norm. Either way, I think I will eventualy get banned for something somewhere down the line. Still, while I'm still here, I think its an excellent forum.

[Rocket Sheep]

Moderators are your friends...
Moderators are your friends...
Moderators are your friends...

We spread the load here by having a lot of moderators and we all interpret things slightly differently (for instance I'm the only mod who laughs hysterically at those swear-ridden tanty posts that other mods remove so quickly).

We come to a general consensus on major things but we cover several nationalities and timezones and quite frankly we consider ourselves human rather than some great inflexible moderating machine - in that we draw on past experiences and outcomes to make judgements.

Other boards may have rules chiselled in rock that say cross line A once and you're gone, whereas we can say, don't think we don't notice that you're scuffing your shoe on line A all day long!

The worst forums are the ones that don't say anything. They don't encourage debate, they encourage inbred arguments and bullying.

The absolute worst/best example of this is Terry Pratchett's official messageboad off his books site. Talk about a room for an argument. (Perhaps Terry thinks he's doing the world a service by keeping those people busy, because its certainly not good at promoting discussion about his work).

[Eurytus]

It would appear that some users (and indeed some Mods) do not understand the difference between detailed arguing of a point (challenging people to provide evidence for conclusions reached and countering them with evidence of your own and following the debate to its logical conclusion) and actually being insulting.

It is quite obvious that in general throughout SFFWorld the threads that evolve into challenging debates are those that sustain the greatest post counts and the most participation/readership.

However some seem to want to stamp out that debate in favour of endless discussions about "who is your favourite character?", "LOL he's mine too" etc etc.
Endless round robins of back slapping resulting in no real debate and therefore no light being thrown on opposing viewpoints.

I have on occasion learnt new ways of looking at things by reading challenging posts.
I have never done so by reading "LOLs" and similies.

It seems a pity that an element in this forum prefer the latter over the former.

[Leiali]

It would appear that some users (and indeed some Mods) do not understand the difference between detailed arguing of a point (challenging people to provide evidence for conclusions reached and countering them with evidence of your own and following the debate to its logical conclusion) and actually being insulting.



I have followed some of the debate between the two antagonists, and I have to point some things out before I burst.

This comment Eurytus, is something I see you do time and time again and I just don't think you are aware of it. I consider it an insult because you state that it looks like some people can't tell one thing from another. Not an insult to me personally, but it is an indication of what I think the moderators look out for, intentional or unintentional attacks are attacks which should only apply to views on literature, not intelligence or understanding. There are members in this forum who are perhaps too young to compete with your level of knowledge, or just not as bright, and this kind of behaviour is a real contemptive exclusicivity which is quite frankly unappreciated by me.

I appreciate that some disagreements can be quite contentious - especially when it comes to the things we care about, and I must confess I like biting sarcasm and wit; but I do believe in the respect and moderation that the administrators here protect quite rightly.