227. Your Help Needed Defining Rules of New Skeptiko Forum

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Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
I believe these requirements are unenforceable.

Baiting:
"Evolution is random."

Obfuscation:
"This involves some kind of human energy field."

Evasiveness:
"I've explained this before; go find the thread."

Conversations will consist of 10% content and 90% calling out violations of the rules.

~~ Paul
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Ditto.
Long-time listener, first-time caller here.
Some mechanism to squelch the trolls is certainly a necessity, but I fear too many arcane rules to the forum will only hinder deeper discussions...
 
alex.tsakiris said:
Hi Craig... not sure I agree (note that I gave you a disagree rating, but this neutral in points... a way of saying I appreciate the post/perspective, but just don't agree). It's been my experience that some folks who come off as being rigid and dogmatic are actaully open to new info. Moreover, from a spiritual perspective I want to try stay open letting folks work out their darma... but balance that with my own iconoclastic nature :)
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My experience is that people who are skeptical are either open to new ideas or they aren't. This is something that I've been able to discern pretty quickly in my conversations with skeptics. It doesn't take very long before you find out how they think based on how the approach the evidence. Just compare Bishop, a skeptic who everyone respects around here, to Scott, who quickly established a reputation for being hardcore. Who would you rather have a conversation with?
 
Craig Weiler said:
If you have a controversial opinion, you must state "In my opinion." Then you must give your reasons for your opinion in the same post.
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This I agree with. But it must apply to the replies as well. If someone wants to call a raised concern nitpicking, they'll have to say why its nitpicking in their opinion

Obfuscation is using highly technical language to describe simple concepts.

ex: "The ganzfeld suffers from selective reporting." (s/b "filedrawer.")

New rules:
Make your points in clear, easy to understand language.
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While I agree with trying to use clear, easy to understand language, let's not confuse using technical terms with deliberate obfuscation. Sometimes we have to use technical terms. What I'll suggest is to provide brief explanations or links to such explanations. For example "selective reporting" involves more than just the file drawer issue and so replacing SR with FD will often not convey the point being addressed.

To prevent evasiveness:
Evasiveness is ignoring important questions or re-directing the argument

New rules:
You have to answer questions that pertain to your argument in a clear, straightforward manner as soon as you can.
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I agree with this too but it should apply as well to the post you're replying to. Ie: we should be responding to what is actually posted by the member, not using the post to make a comment on what some other person said outside of the forum, replying to that and ignoring the content of the post ostensibly being replied to.




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Was it really that bad in the old forum? Can't you just employ that system where enough "dislikes" collapses an annoying post, thus flagging it as a problem, and then it's up to the reader if they want to open it up and read...
 
Jacob said:
I see a problem with how links are displayed.
The problem is that I don't see the links. See what I did here?
Did you see that "here" above is a link?

It's very inconvenient to not be able to see links in posts. Alex, I hope you can customize it and either underline the links — the established way to decorate hyperlinks — or at least give them a different color.
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good catch. fixed.
 
Andrew Paquette said:
I was thinking the same thing until I remembered some posters seriously abused this kind of feature on the old forum. That is, if the feature had been used, their mass post-flagging spam activities would have seriously distorted the reputation meters. I like the idea, but if we used it, I would want to know how to avoid abusing it.

AP
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the xenforo has some nice tools for monitoring this... little extra work, but worth it I think. everyone is free to nudge me (a bit :)) if it isn't working.

my real hope with the rating system is that it allow lurkers to interact a little.
 
Topo said:
Ditto.
Long-time listener, first-time caller here.
Some mechanism to squelch the trolls is certainly a necessity, but I fear too many arcane rules to the forum will only hinder deeper discussions...
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You can, if you choose, interpret this in the most lawyer-esque way possible, as Paul has done so as to obfuscate the intent of the rules, or you can rely on good moderators to know the difference.
 
Andrew Paquette said:
This does make sense, but as we all know, some people are pretty slippery. Regardless, I like this rule. To make it work, I think a mod will have to post a warning to draw a line in the sand here. This means the post gets flagged, the mod checks and agrees with the flag, posts a warning, then if it is ignored, a three week ban. I also think that ignoring warnings should start with a three week ban, not two days.

AP
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wow... three weeks seems long... especially since these topics can cause brief moments to insanity that soon pass. what do you think about 1 week?
 
Robert Perry said:
I don't think we are going to achieve the desired result just through effective moderation. The skeptics could be quite polite and considerate and the forum could be free of interpersonal conflict, yet without that sense of fundamental accord growing up. I don't know if my suggestion would work or if it's even right, but I think it's worth considering.
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thx for this Robert. I have a sense that you're onto something. Perhaps we could look at reviving something like the Skeptiko Haven, but in reverse... i.e. have a forum for "Believer versus Skeptic" debates (because there's a need for that sometimes, but keep the "Skeptiko Podcast" forum free from skeptical nincompoopery... cause you're right, it can get draining... and it's defiantly unproductive.
 
Bart V said:
Alex, I am sparky subscribed here under my real name, you banned me on the old forum.
If you do not like me posting over here, let me know, but I would like to wheig in on the subject of this thread since it has to do directly with my banning, so what do you think are you going to give me a chance to state my case?
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sure... thx for reaching out to me via email... been too busy to reply, but would be happy to have you weigh-in here
 
Vortex said:
Hello to everyone, Vortex is here! :D

I have a thought - maybe, if we now have a new forum, we could give a new chance to the previously banned members of the old one? Let's call it Forum Renovation Amnesty Act. Or let's pretend that they have achieved a kind of a virtual reincarnation, and now have a new chance to build a forum life. ;)

If this idea is not acceptable in full, here is the milder version: maybe we can accept them again, but give them a probation period of harsher moderating, and ban them again if try to repeat the bad behavior which led to their ban on the old forum?

Alex, Andy, what do you think?
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I'm somewhat open to this.
 
Craig's suggestions highlight the problem with attempting to make rules seem to be about promoting useful discussion when people want them to be about promoting ideology.

Craig's example of obfuscation was my referral to "selective outcome reporting". Now, before Alex/Andy censored all my posts, my use of the term included a thorough description of what that term means, in addition to making it clear that it is very different from the file drawer. From my perspective, it is clear that Craig's complaint is invalid. So how do I avoid being found guilty of breaking Craig's rule when I haven't broken Craig's rule in the first place? By recognizing that it's really just a palatable excuse to overcome dissent, and by directing my behaviour at avoiding dissent. If you tell me not to obfuscate, I will get it wrong by trying not to obfuscate, instead of trying to avoid dissent.

I'm not whining or complaining about this. I'm pointing out that if you aren't honest about what you are really going for, your rules won't work to squelch the kind of behaviour you really intend to squelch.

Linda
 
Topo said:
Was it really that bad in the old forum? Can't you just employ that system where enough "dislikes" collapses an annoying post, thus flagging it as a problem, and then it's up to the reader if they want to open it up and read...
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Yeah, like on Amazon. I'll bet you can do it in Xenforo (the engine used for this forum), and if not, there'll probably be an add-on for it.
 
Michael Larkin said:
I've been thinking about maybe having a constructive way to deal with certain issues. Helps first to identify the issues.

1. Bad behaviour
2. Constantly using the same tired old responses as if somehow they're new
3. Off-topic responses: diversions
etc.

So maybe we could get together a list of specific issues in the rules section, and along with each, indicate the way to deal with them. This doesn't have to be as draconian as banning.

I don't think we want to overload mods, so if there was some way of being able to drive this without the need for their intervention, that might be better. I'll give a for instance: suppose someone is guilty of 2. Okay. Then maybe if I felt that was the case, I could post a brief message to the thread saying that issue no. 2 in the rules had been breached. We could maybe require a certain number of people to also post such a message, and if that were the case, the rules could stipulate the way to deal with the infraction. Types of action could be:

1. Requirement to stop doing it and stop responding to it. Failure to do so to be reported to a mod
2. If people want to carry on arguing the toss, requirement to do so in private conversations (akin to the PMs on the old forum, and allowing for the participation of up to 5 people [BTW, is that number fixed? can it be increased by admin?])
3. Requirement to raise a new thread with a clear indication in the title that it's contentious or whatever.

Maybe something like that would help keep threads on track but at the same time not necessitate banning: those who wanted to argue the toss could do so, but not on the main thread. All issues, in the end, boil down to what disrupts civil and relevant discourse. If people are prevented from engaging in such disruption, yet not necessarily completely muzzled, they won't have grounds to whinge and moan. It'd all be spelt out in the rules, and there'd be a way for the general membership to drive enforcement, moderators only needing to get involved if the required action weren't complied with.
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I get the spirit behind this, but it might be hard to implement and maintain. I hoping the rating system may help a bit. As you mentioned before (I think), if a person starts trending toward a lot of negative, out-of-sync posts then we can ask them to censor themselves... or move on.
 
Andrew Paquette said:
I tried this in the old forum and didn't like the result. Too many people started arguing about the information contained there. Also, I don't think it is fair to the people who have been banned because it can become a kind of rogue's gallery. If the thread was closed after entries were made, and no threads were started on the subject, maybe, but I'd want to get a second opinion on this.

AP
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noted.
 
alex.tsakiris said:
thx for this Robert. I have a sense that you're onto something. Perhaps we could look at reviving something like the Skeptiko Haven, but in reverse... i.e. have a forum for "Believer versus Skeptic" debates (because there's a need for that sometimes, but keep the "Skeptiko Podcast" forum free from skeptical nincompoopery... cause you're right, it can get draining... and it's defiantly unproductive.
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But how does one figure out what is nincompoopery. For example, you suggested my write up of the Lancet article made the same error as a Michael Shermer article. However, none of the issues I raised in my post are even brought up in the Michael Shermer article.

Look Alex - the journal of parapsychology doesn't consider these issues to be nincompoopery (see the Kennedy paper as an example)- so why should you?
 
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