Moderators not doing their jobs...

[photobyalan]

Online anonymity lets users get nasty

Another fine example of the decline of western civilization.

MK and the bartenders are a bastion against this sort of behavior and their vigilance has kept this site the most civilized place on the internet. Kudos.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

yes they are.

It's amazing what people will say from the safety of the couch . . .

bk

 

[Feraud]

Thanks for posting the article photobyalan.

yes they are.

It's amazing what people will say from the safety of the couch . . .

bk

And behind the scenes via email.
I recently read a news article about the negative and positive aspects of office gossip. I concluded for myself the drawbacks ultimately outweight any possible benefits of this kind of behavior.

Unfortunately some people have nothing better to contribute than trolling behavior and gossip. Ignorance and insecurity drive these types.

"It takes one person 20 minutes to destroy your reputation, and it costs them nothing," says Michael Fertik, who employs about 40 part-time "agents" on what he calls "search and destroy" missions against unwarranted Internet attacks. "It can take you 200 hours to try to clean it up."

Terrible, isn't it?

In my professional and personal life I have given notice that no one speaks for me. If you do not hear me saying it then do not assume a co-worker, friend, or family member knows my opinion or speaks for me.

 

[Grnidwitch]

I was saying yesterday to my BF, this place is wonderful. No "F" word, or any other such things, and no flaming. I truly enjoy coming here and reading what everyone has to say. This is the classiest place on the internet.

 

[warbird]

Goes back to that adage, don't type something that you wouldn't say directly to their face if you were sitting at a table with them.

Now for me I can be abrasive anyway and and probably tell people like I see it more than I ought. But I do try on most occasions not to allow myself to get into 'work mode'. The business of politics can be abrasive and confrontational no matter how much you try to avoid being in too deep. But still I try to be online as I am in real life, which is polite, honest and humorous MOST of the time, but as in real life, sometimes I post just what I think or what will possibly cause someone to really think, yet they become offended instead.

Being a member of a couple of bulletin boards I have seen many many trolls, and RedPop, as a moderator on another, can really tell some stories of trolls. I feel sorry for people who's only purpose in life is to waste their time on the internet trying to harm, insult and other wise cause division and hate and discontent for their own humor.

I will also note that the board I'm on with RedPop has a political forum. Now you want to talk about difficult to moderate, that can be trying to say the least. Especially with guys like me in there.

 

[RedPop4]

Thanks for the compliment, warbird. Truer words have never been spoken.
The perverse pleasure some get, by making others angry is simply incomprehensible to me.

 

[cookie]

Perverse Internet Behaviour

Even Jesus had one bad disciple!

 

[Miss Sis]

You know the saying: If you can't say anything nice....

It should apply everywhere.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

It must be working as I had to look up trolls and flaming.

 

[Paisley]

People need to stop believing everything they read on the internet and start dismissing many of the opinions it contains as rants written by cranks.

There was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on this same topic a few days ago:

Trash Talk
Some lawyers-to-be should exercise their right to remain silent.

BY ELIZABETH WURTZEL
Monday, March 19, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

NEW HAVEN, Conn.--It's hard out there for a law student. All the stuff to stumble through on the way to that J.D.: torts, property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, AutoAdmit.

That last item is a new development: a Web site of postings for law schools prestigious and otherwise, where students blab about whatever. An awful lot of it is about other students, most of it mean-spirited. This is all extremely weird for those of us born before the Carter administration, who tend to assume that scrutiny about breast implants--there was a whole thread of discussion devoted to whether one Ms. J.D.-to-be was silicone-enhanced--is reserved for celebrities. The flat, affectless sexual bravado of the trash-talk on AutoAdmit is also a bit of a shock, coming from allegedly intelligent legal minds.

The AutoAdmitters were happily going about their gossip, yakking away like yentas pinning laundry on the clothesline, until sometime last week. That's when the Washington Post ran a front-page story about some young women here at Yale Law School whose careers--if not their lives--had been ruined by some salacious postings. The descriptions of them--sluts and whores--and the suggestions about what might be done to them--rape and sodomy--were showing up on Google searches of their names, and had prevented at least one of them from securing employment.

Since then, Dean Elena Kagan at Harvard Law School and Dean Harold Koh here at Yale have sent out open letters, condemning the nasty communications. We've had speak-outs and write-ins, organized blue-ribbon panels and worn red outfits for solidarity. There's talk of legal remedies and media campaigns. Mostly, the young women would simply like the offending postings removed from the bulletin board. This is not likely to happen. Not because it shouldn't--of course it should. But because once again, for about the 80th time in my memory and for at least the 80,000th time in the life of this country, here is an issue in which the right to free speech--as opposed to the need for everyone to just shut up--is going to overwhelm us all.​

 

[Classydame]

So true, Miss Sis...

You know the saying: If you can't say anything nice....

It should apply everywhere.

I have often wondered why some people resort to name calling when there is a difference of opinion or why some people feel good about trying to hurt someone else. The bad part of human nature I guess.

Thanks for the articles...very interesting.

Shellie

 

[Rockapin-up]

Online anonymity lets users get nasty

Another fine example of the decline of western civilization.

MK and the bartenders are a bastion against this sort of behavior and their vigilance has kept this site the most civilized place on the internet. Kudos.

That's what I love about the Lounge. Everyone in here is civilized. I'v seen way to many arguments, rants and personal attacks on people in the myspace groups, one girl was even referred to the C word, and the group leaders don't step in to put things right. It's just so tacky and sad.

 

[jake_fink]

I'm actually much ruder in person than I am online, but that's just because I like getting in fights and feel depressed if I don't get to punch someone now and again. :essen:

I have never seen a forum attached to a news item or something similar (like the one mentioned in the article) that wasn't a sty for trolls. Frankly, who cares what anyone thinks of the news. Write a letter, be subject to editorial policy and if useful and/or amusing let the editors post your comment. Old fashioned, yeah; labour intensive; a little; a good way not to waste bandwidth on nonsense, absolutely.




But... you know what is a lot of fun... Posting ludicrous rumours and comments on IMDB where everyone seems to be a very serious ten year old. Go on, try it, you know you want to.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I'm actually much ruder in person than I am online, but that's just because I like getting in fights and feel depressed if I don't get to punch someone now and again. :essen:

Understandable.

I'm much less square in person.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Understandable.

I'm much less square in person.

You're a pretty hep gal online too.
I think am pretty much exactly the same offline as I am online.
I think most folks here are also.
If anything, people here are maybe more polite online than off.
Our old-fashioned values and decorum?
Totally opposite of the typical forum.
That's what makes this such a great forum.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

You're a pretty hep gal online too.

What? But...the apron...and my attempts at June Cleaver talk...

However, thank you.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

What? But...the apron...and my attempts at June Cleaver talk...

However, thank you.

Hep is in the eye of the beholder. lol

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I'm really impressed with our bartenders. They've grown with the job and are getting better by the day. This place lives or dies by the performance of its moderators. If we are its heart, they are its brain.

.

 

[Clara Noir]

I wonder if it's partly down to needing a real e-mail address to use the Lounge?

Compared to sites where you can browse and post as a "Guest" user, I think it may make a difference to the way this site works.

But since this is the ideal place to big up the Bartenders, this is the friendliest and best maintained site going I think.
Bizarrely, the worst, least accommodating, website I've had the misfortune to be a member of was the official Star Wars forum. Everyone competed to be a better fan, and have more and know more, and you were looked down on if you didn't live and breathe Star Wars and learn to speak Jawa.

Imagine here having fights over who owns more fedoras or genuine sling back shoes!

The internet really can bring out the worst in some people.
And the best in others :eusa_clap

 

[RedPop4]

It's more than just the e-mail address. It's the culture that is created by the owners and administrators when the forum is young. The continued involvement of either the original owners and mods. and FOGs. As warbird has said, the atmosphere was created, certain things were not tolerated early on, in fact, the board I moderate was created because people got tired of the flames at another board and formed this one.

For whatever reason, lots of people seemed to like the atmosphere we offer and we've grown. But the groundwork was laid early, before I was a moderator, and it's been followed. We get retards from other boards on occasion who come to start flame wars and then return to their boards to laugh at us for enforcing rules they find silly, tell us to grow a set of balls or what have you.