But seriously, I appreciate the thought you put into the proposal. I'm afraid I don't see how it will work on B77. You are, it appears, making these assumptions:
I think I haven't been able to speak clearly for ages, as the assumptions are completely not what I was trying to say. Let me attempt to clarify
1. We want a republic. We want a representative democracy in which we elect someone to do our rulemaking for us, even if the representative does things that don't represent the majority opinion. We don't want a true democracy where everyone has equal voice.
No, I don't want someone to do the rulemaking for us. I want someone who doesn't have to fear anything when enforcing the rules we already have in place.
2. The drama queen will listen to a poster wearing a mask who keeps popping in to say "please don't be a drama queen".
If the drama-queen doesn't listen, they will be confined to the bikeracks - a rule we already have in place but is very rarely enforced. Since the uber-ranger would only be called in by the normal rangers when things get really out of hand, then the drama-queen would know, just by the appearance of the uber-ranger, that they are only one or two posts away from being confined and would hopefully take the uber-ranger seriously.
3. The uber-ranger will be above the law, and capable of committing actions not subject to the Charter, and not subject to appeal, since that might reveal the uber-ranger's identity.
The uber-ranger would only be called in by the normal rangers, and only be able to do actions approved by the the normal rangers. The uber-rangers only abilities would be to tell people to be nice or they will be confined to the bikeracks, and to confine people to the bikeracks. I thought I said that in my original post
4. A ranger who is protected by anonymity will say things that he/she wouldn't dare say to a person's face, and that's a good thing. If I find out later that a poster was patting me on the back in public and stabbing me in the back anonymously, I won't feel bad at all.
Anyone who would say something that could be construed as stabbing in the back would not be an appropriate person for the job. The uber-rangers only function would be to tell people to stop the bad behavior or they would be sent to the bikeracks.
I do not go along with those assumptions.
Thats great, cause neither do I
I am very sorry that those assumptions are what you thought I was saying. It wasn't - not at all.
My assumptions are instead:
1. Drama queen bating is not a pretty sport. It is a group sport. It cannot be done by a single person without the support of others. Therefore, we are all responsible for making this a decent place to post, by the way we act or refrain from acting.
I agree, but as so often has happened, some people cannot or will not refrain. By having an anony-ranger who can say "
Stop it." without fear of reprisal or personal attack, perhaps we can get to a state where people will refrain.
2. High drama is like wildfire. It produces pages and pages of angsty posts in a very short time. Perhaps, like the brakes on the Wall Street Stock Market, we need to have automatic cutoffs if a topic or a poster get too hot. Maybe post a 5 hour lock for cooling down. The automatic cutoff should be predetermined - say a certain number of posts in an hour in a thread or by a poster - so that it is not up to a reluctant ranger. This would also take the finger pointing away from the ranger, and the accusations about one thread being closed in preference to another kept open.
It's a great idea, but this depends on there being a very clearly defined post or two that takes the thread from being a basic debate to being a fight with drama-queen tendencies and angst. There could be different opinions of where that started, and thus lead to Rangers being attacked for the decision they made. Plus, as has happened so many times before, people just continue their fight in another thread, or start a new one to have it there. If the thread is already in the angsty fight state, why not do what we already have in the charter, and confine everybody who is actively fighting to the bikeracks with ranger moderation so they can have it out without sucking the rest of the board into it? As I said, we already have the rules in the charter in place for that, but sometimes rangers are afraid of using them for fear of personal attack and reprisals. With an anony-ranger controlled by the normal rangers, we finally have someone who doesn't have to be afraid of saying - this has gone too far. Everyone in the bikeracks.
3. Some people need to resist reading upsetting threads. Perhaps the thread could be temporarily labeled "DRAMA" so as to warn people. Or the whole thread could be moved to the bike racks for a while. People who don't like meltdowns should avoid looking at posts in the bike racks.
Problem is, sometimes writing DRAMA on a thread would draw people in as well. I could see moving the whole thread to the bikeracks as being an issue - lets say the person who started the thread meant it as an intelligent debate and two or more people turned it into a big fight. Is it fair to say the whole thread is a big fight and move the whole thing? Or should it just be the drama-posters who are removed to the bikeracks, and the thread allowed to continue where it is so that people who really are more interested in intelligent debate, rather than fighting, need not miss out because some people were being jerks.
4. Anonymity on the board is a bad thing. We do not allow it by Charter because it has historically caused a lot of grief.
100% of the time, no questions asked, a bad thing? When people who could make a change are afraid to because of personal attacks, it would be a bad thing to have an id who has no personality and thus can't be personally attacked?
I was under the impression that we didn't allow anonymity because we didn't want to have people to have a lot of user names thus confusing other posters. I know I had a lot of user-names on TORC and was a bit miffed that I wasn't allowed them here, but at the same time understood the reasoning.
Either way, this wouldn't be an anonymous poster per say. It would be anony-ranger - a simple username that could only be used when the rangers called upon someone in the pool to use it and at no other time. Because the rangers would be responsible for the actions of anony-ranger, they would only call upon the ID if absolutely necessary. Because no one actually
is the anony-ranger the way people are normal rangers it wouldn't be possible to abuse the power the way it was for mods on TORC.
That's besides the fact that the anony-ranger wouldn't actually have any powers beyond what the normal rangers gave it. The anony-ranger would have to ask in the rangers forum if it was ok to confine people to the bikeracks. The only time AR would be able to do it without permission is if things were really really really bad and no normal ranger was online.
I just don't see how it's bad having an id that the rangers could call upon when things get out of hand, no one is listening to them and they're being attacked for trying to stop the nonsense. I don't see how it's bad when the only thing the id could do is say
"Stop this or you will be confined to the bikeracks" and to, with permission in the vast majority cases, confine people to the bikeracks.
If I felt that anyone would actually listen to me, I would say several things:
1. the desire for a "super-ranger" or any way to ban someone just because some people don't want to deal with that someone, is entirely a way to circumvent what this board was started to do... that is, to treat everyone the same, with respect, as opposed to one or a few getting rid of the ones they don't like.
I said a super-ranger to put someone in the bikeracks, not to ban. Don't complain about people not listening to you when you don't listen to me either.
2. People seem to forget the concept of "mutual respect" that I always thought was the only way a "member moderated" board could work. Maybe it never worked this way, but I always assumed that if "one member" felt mistreated and disrespected, and complained about it, and no one listened, and that "one member" got angry, and lashed out about it, then the first response of the board would still be to treat that person with respect, and try to understand what upset them, and work as a whole board to "fix the problem" not "eliminate the one member."
Everyone seems to be afraid to moderate each other though, including the rangers who are supposed to step in when things really get out of control. I agree that banning anyone is a bad idea. We have the bikeracks - why not use them.
3. The charter sucks. I've said this forever. It is built to be a set of rules that define how to deal with the board, and changing it. It has no real say in how members treat each other. It has been very loosely interpreted to punish some people, and allow others to do whatever they want. It pretends to offer the "mutual respect" concept, far more than what other boards do, but it fails because it gives the rangers no teeth to see that people do maintain a level of respect, but at the same time it fails by seeming to imply that some behavior is unacceptable just because a small group deems it to be a "personal attack."
It's not that it sucks - it's that it's cumbersome and incomprehensible to people who don't speak legalise. I think that was the main problem with it from the beginning. It was great as an experiment, but to understand it well enough to put it into use, you would have to be Jnyusa or the V-Man or one of the others who understood it. For rangers that get put in through a pool process and who aren't rangers 100% of the time, it would take two weeks to understand it and memorize it before putting it into use and working with it. How many rangers do we have who make sure to read through the whole thing at the start of their term let alone get to know it well enough to use it in day to day rangering? I would be quite comfortable betting $100 that none of them do.
4. If Board77 ever intends to be what it was created to be, then a few things need to happen.
First, members need to give people the benefit of the doubt when conflict happens. People cannot assume guilt and treat others based on that assumption. This is a concept I believe is fundamental to the concept of democracy, which is another thing this board was founded on.
I agree
Second, while rangers must excercise their authority to prevent abuse on the board, they cannot be authorized to arbitrarily decide in favor of one side or another in a dispute. They are not judges, or a jury. If they are forced to do something to "maintain peace" they should do so in an unbiased way. Even if it seems one person is central to a conflict, they cannot confine that one person and let others be free... ALL involved in a conflict must be treated the same. If one person feels that 10 others are ganging up on them, they cannot be singled out, but if they and the 10 others are all confined to the "bike racks" or whatever, then there can be no complaint.
I agree again - I really wish we would use the bikeracks more.
Third, personal attacks and offenses must be based on the perception of the one offended. If a person feels offended or attacked, THAT should be the concern of the rangers. Rangers should not decide one way or another if a statement was REALLY a personal attack or not. If someone feels they have been insulted or attacked, then 99% of the time they have, and it was intentional on the behalf of the attacker. If the attacker can hide behind some technicality or hide becuase they can convince the rangers they were ONLY attacking the opinion, not the person, then we've lost all concept of "mutual respect." At the same time, someone who is quick to claim they have been "personally attacked" should be asked to resolve the dispute without rule enforcement or ranger involvement. If someone claims they are attacked without any attempt to resolve the dispute in the spirit of mutual respect, then they are essentially attacking their percieved attacker with the accusation. The whole concept of B77 (at least as I had thought it) was that we could resolve disputes without rules, technicalities, and moderators (ie. super-rangers).
Yes! Keeps the rangers from getting to much power but allows them to use the power they do have when necessary. I agree that the person attacked should try to resolve without using a ranger, and if possible, without using the board. Perhaps first, through private PM so as not to disturb the board, say something to the person who "attacked" them. If the rangers are called upon to do something every time someone complained, then not only would their time be wasted, but we would also have a board basically controlled by the people who complained the most (even if they were a minority) plus I wouldn't want to think about how many disallusioned rangers we would have who would no longer be willing to do the job.
5. I have been appalled by people's discussion of me. Some have made up their mind about me, obviously, and I have abandoned any hope that such minds could be changed. I have not abandoned Board77, though, because if the principles of the board as it was founded actually are important to the members here, if people here can treat other members with respect, no matter what the disagreement, then people's biases and past abhorant treatment of me doesn't matter... because I can always expect fair treatment and discussion. I have not found this to be the case for a long time. I have felt that any time I wish to present a strong disagreement with people, i am ganged up on, and some pretense is presented for me to be characterized as a troublemaker and instigator, thus nulifying any argument I can put forth for my own opinion. Who's going to listen to the percieved troublemaker? Who's going to listen to the sick, depressed, asshole who lashes out at everyone and everything just for attention? How can that person have a viable opinion about anything?
This board once stood for something, and the people that made it up could have made what it stood for happen... most of them have moved on, giving up on the concept. How many are still here that actually believe in that "something" for a messageboard? Seriously, who is left that feels that way?
I believe in posting, not having to much drama, in being treated as an adult and not having all powerful mods. We usually have that here, so I'm happy here. There's drama now and then, but it's not that often. People think it happens a lot simply because the board gets busy when there's drama and it seems like that's the only time the board exists for some people. However, there are long quiet periods when we may wish for more posting, but this is still a place where we can speak to friends.
Don't give up on the board Hal.... or anyone else for that matter.
Remember when you give up on the board for the sake of a few people, you're giving up a hell of a lot of people who had nothing to do with whatever went on. Leaving takes more from you than staying and dealing with all the shit that comes with family does. What was it Kahlil Gibran said in the Prophet? Something like, the more sorrow carves out of your soul, the more joy you can contain.
I think of this board like that - we have our dramas and our crazy moments, but those moments allow us to get to know both the best and the worst of the people around us. Allows us to both hate and love the people around us - even to love and hate one person at the same time.
We wouldn't have emotions that strong if we didn't care, and since caring is the basis of this board, I think we have a basis that we can continue to work on and grow from
I believe in us. Everyone who still posts here believes in us. We're family