The negative tally? It's worthless. I don't vote on anyone's posts. Does that mean none of seem "abusive" to me? No, it simply means that I don't bother voting. Looking at the tallies around here, you'd have to believe that the proponents are lovely, pleasant people while the skeptics are jerks. ~~ Paul
The tallies now are ambiguous - that's what's causing a lot of the confusion (but perhaps that can't be easily fixed?) Regardless, that's why I suggested a "rude" button (I don't like the word either - think of it as a placeholder.) That button would apply equally to everybody, regardless of worldview. The "report" button requires the moderators to examine each instance individually, a tedious job which should only be required for the occasional completely inappropriate post; what I'm concerned with are patterns that are best tracked statistically.
??? I'm pretty sure that's what the proponents believe. And this thread isn't about suggesting otherwise. Linda
See response to Paul above. Speaking for myself, I'm starting fresh with the Skeptiko forum and I don't have any axe to grind towards people who don't agree with me. I hope I never do. Truth is, sometimes I don't even agree with myself.
I'm not sure it makes sense to expect the mods to follow all the tallies. It's much easier just to let them know there is a problem by using the report button. That sends them a quick notification they can follow up on, rather than leaving them to go looking through the threads for issues (which takes a lot more time).
I'd be happy if they checked them weekly or even monthly. Rome wasn't built in a day; the same applies to a civil forum.
If a post is uncivil*, you can do all those things together: dislike the post, say something about it in that thread (like bringing up the rules of the forum), and report it.
(*I understood the initial post on this thread about being a member of any stripe. The only post I reported up until now has been by a proponent saying something rude towards Paul.)
Regarding the first part, I very much hope we can make the system much clearer and easier to administer than that - that's a lot of data to integrate for each instance of uncivil behavior. Regarding the parenthetical part, I agree, uncivil behavior is not a function of one's views but rather how one expresses those views. If anyone doesn't agree with that I'd like to hear their reasoning. Terms like "objectionable" and "dislike" are ambiguous and are not a good substitute for the "rude" button - you can object to a post or dislike it for all sorts of reasons. Again, I'm aware the "rude" button may not be possible for technical or manpower reasons.
Maybe a script could be written which automatically tags any post written by a 'skeptic' with "dislike"? It would save a lot of trouble. (I say this because I notice that my last post was tagged with "dislike", but I haven't the foggiest idea why. As far as I can tell, proponents regard the rating system as fair and accurate, so how can my mention of this warrant a "dislike", other than "it was a 'skeptic' whot said it"? Surely nobody is suggesting that all the "dislikes" the proponents are handing out are undeserved, right?) Linda
Dislike is ambiguous. I've used it improperly a time or two (I think) because I was unclear on exactly what "dislike" means - it's not very nuanced. I don't remember whose post(s) that was so I hereby issue a blanket apology - I was wrong, out of ignorance.
Clarity! Above all we need clarity. We need to say what we mean, as politely as we can manage, and especially avoid ambiguous mutterings that are subject to various interpretations - passive aggression so to speak. I try to avoid the use of innuendo like the plague.
Clearly there is a lot of of unhappiness brewing around the forum now. I consider myself very lucky to be new enough not to be caught up in it. I know that may be a temporary condition for me but I'm going to do my best to resist getting involved in the tit-for-tat gamesmanship. In the terminology of transactional analysis psychology (which sadly dates me), we need to do our best to communicate as adult to adult rather than parent to child or vise versa.