Post by stevedtrm on Apr 5, 2016 12:54:11 GMT
This is to discuss a specific example of discussion censorship, but i hope it serves as an initial outline on how censorship here will work differently from censorship in other fora.
We had some threads going there where on several occasions, Kitty or her other admins in the forum had threatened censorship. There had been some internal dialogue among the admins and after an apology, i was trying to dissect what discrimination is and where "liking" or "disliking" becomes "racism" or "unacceptable racism" or "dangerous racism" or "murdeorus racism" and the boundaries between these things. I also hoped to define boundaries between "hate speech" and "unacceptable hate speech" and "dangerous hate speech" and "trolling" and "unacceptable trolling" and so on.
Kitty had posted a thread explaining how admins were unpaid work:-
"@stevemanc1 I am only in the habit of being a "trigger happy bullying admin" when dealing with people whom I suspect to be trolls, or people who use hate speech.
If you feel that your writing is more appropriate to your own Blog, then I respect your decision to do so. Equally you are also welcome to continue posting in here.
It is worth remembering, though that all the Mods here run this group on a voluntary basis. We don't get paid to be here and politics is a highly controversial issue, so it can be a very difficult task. There is a fine line between vibrant debate and arguing. Swing one way and it becomes too restrictive and boring, swing another way it turns into trolling and flame wars."
In one of the threads, i think, the admins had prohibited discussion of censorship policy. I've placed my response here therefore. This is my response to her, but also to the wider wold who want nto see a more transparent censorship and appeal process in all fora, but especially momentumunofficial:-
===
I never said it was easy moderating, Kitty, but censorship is always something that needs to be minimised and when you've seen a handful of threads where censorship has either been practiced or threatened in order to intimidate several times, you know the admins aren't taking their roles or free speech seriously enough.
and that thing where masterstoy accused me of misrepresenting her words when the dictionary definition showed that in fact there was no misrepresentation and so she threatened censorship even then was absurdly trigger happy.
I ran political fora for ages. Yes i was unpaid. On one occasions WIth 200 constantly changing people in a single, hugely popular chat room for months. I was up day and night for many many hours. I couldnt find enough reliable assistants and ended up having to shut it, collapsing onto my bed in exhaustion for a mammoth hibernation.
I never once found a reason for censoring anyone other than
a) violence threats and
b) spam.
Sometimes you are overruled by the website manager, which creates a third potential reason
c) not of the room admins own making.
But beyond these three jusitifcations, there is really nothing which disrupts debate to the point that it cant be either ignored or, in a board style forum like this, seperated into a different thread to avoid repetition and improve focus.
Either way, when as a reasonable, non violent, non spamming person, you step into a fora and run into censorship a few times in a few days, you know that free speech isnt really protected there.
i think theres a gap in the market for a seriously transparent minimised censorship process.
Which is what my momentumunofficial.freeforums.net is and will improve on over time.
I have a LOT of respect for your apology earlier, Kitty, but I cant in all honesty say that i think speech is protected here.
And that means, when i post freqeuntly, 10,000 words of analysis in a thread, i already know that my content isnt safe. So i put it somehwere where it is. On my writing.
Soon i intend to improve this by duplicating all posts onto a provate server where they can be recovered.
Take a look at the "dont know where to look" writing on my fet profile. That is a HUUUUGE thread about a kink incident near Liverpool where a bunch of cliquey prudes got offended by my tone. They tried to censor it but i saw it coming and istead of simply reaching for the ban button they ended up begging each other not to respond to me so i wouldnt hurt them by repeating my withering critique of their behaviour all over again.
If i hadnt moved that thread to my own writing area, the entire defence and analysis would have been eliminated at the first critique i posted when an admin felt i wasn't being "nice".
I can lose a thousand words and not flinch, but a thousand words that includes a brilliantly eloquent solution to a problem that comes up with a solution that took hours of relection to idetnify? Thats just a waste of my life and an admission by the censor that theyre not interested in finding the turth if it isnt a comfortable palatable truth. And it disgusts me. And 5, 000 words? or 10k or 40k? An intolarable loss of time, thought and energy.
You have to take defensive measures to protect your analyses, especially when they involve a lot of work.
And a large part of that is avoiding trigger happy, authoritarian censors.
===
I'd like to make this thread about the general principles of censorship in fora, but use the "britain sucks" thread on british politics on fetlife as a sample of where admin intimidation can lead to unnecessary disputes and fragmentation of people who might otherwise be allies.
If that happens on a significant scale, people simply become alienated from each other even when they could be working together.
Steven.
We had some threads going there where on several occasions, Kitty or her other admins in the forum had threatened censorship. There had been some internal dialogue among the admins and after an apology, i was trying to dissect what discrimination is and where "liking" or "disliking" becomes "racism" or "unacceptable racism" or "dangerous racism" or "murdeorus racism" and the boundaries between these things. I also hoped to define boundaries between "hate speech" and "unacceptable hate speech" and "dangerous hate speech" and "trolling" and "unacceptable trolling" and so on.
Kitty had posted a thread explaining how admins were unpaid work:-
"@stevemanc1 I am only in the habit of being a "trigger happy bullying admin" when dealing with people whom I suspect to be trolls, or people who use hate speech.
If you feel that your writing is more appropriate to your own Blog, then I respect your decision to do so. Equally you are also welcome to continue posting in here.
It is worth remembering, though that all the Mods here run this group on a voluntary basis. We don't get paid to be here and politics is a highly controversial issue, so it can be a very difficult task. There is a fine line between vibrant debate and arguing. Swing one way and it becomes too restrictive and boring, swing another way it turns into trolling and flame wars."
In one of the threads, i think, the admins had prohibited discussion of censorship policy. I've placed my response here therefore. This is my response to her, but also to the wider wold who want nto see a more transparent censorship and appeal process in all fora, but especially momentumunofficial:-
===
I never said it was easy moderating, Kitty, but censorship is always something that needs to be minimised and when you've seen a handful of threads where censorship has either been practiced or threatened in order to intimidate several times, you know the admins aren't taking their roles or free speech seriously enough.
and that thing where masterstoy accused me of misrepresenting her words when the dictionary definition showed that in fact there was no misrepresentation and so she threatened censorship even then was absurdly trigger happy.
I ran political fora for ages. Yes i was unpaid. On one occasions WIth 200 constantly changing people in a single, hugely popular chat room for months. I was up day and night for many many hours. I couldnt find enough reliable assistants and ended up having to shut it, collapsing onto my bed in exhaustion for a mammoth hibernation.
I never once found a reason for censoring anyone other than
a) violence threats and
b) spam.
Sometimes you are overruled by the website manager, which creates a third potential reason
c) not of the room admins own making.
But beyond these three jusitifcations, there is really nothing which disrupts debate to the point that it cant be either ignored or, in a board style forum like this, seperated into a different thread to avoid repetition and improve focus.
Either way, when as a reasonable, non violent, non spamming person, you step into a fora and run into censorship a few times in a few days, you know that free speech isnt really protected there.
i think theres a gap in the market for a seriously transparent minimised censorship process.
Which is what my momentumunofficial.freeforums.net is and will improve on over time.
I have a LOT of respect for your apology earlier, Kitty, but I cant in all honesty say that i think speech is protected here.
And that means, when i post freqeuntly, 10,000 words of analysis in a thread, i already know that my content isnt safe. So i put it somehwere where it is. On my writing.
Soon i intend to improve this by duplicating all posts onto a provate server where they can be recovered.
Take a look at the "dont know where to look" writing on my fet profile. That is a HUUUUGE thread about a kink incident near Liverpool where a bunch of cliquey prudes got offended by my tone. They tried to censor it but i saw it coming and istead of simply reaching for the ban button they ended up begging each other not to respond to me so i wouldnt hurt them by repeating my withering critique of their behaviour all over again.
If i hadnt moved that thread to my own writing area, the entire defence and analysis would have been eliminated at the first critique i posted when an admin felt i wasn't being "nice".
I can lose a thousand words and not flinch, but a thousand words that includes a brilliantly eloquent solution to a problem that comes up with a solution that took hours of relection to idetnify? Thats just a waste of my life and an admission by the censor that theyre not interested in finding the turth if it isnt a comfortable palatable truth. And it disgusts me. And 5, 000 words? or 10k or 40k? An intolarable loss of time, thought and energy.
You have to take defensive measures to protect your analyses, especially when they involve a lot of work.
And a large part of that is avoiding trigger happy, authoritarian censors.
===
I'd like to make this thread about the general principles of censorship in fora, but use the "britain sucks" thread on british politics on fetlife as a sample of where admin intimidation can lead to unnecessary disputes and fragmentation of people who might otherwise be allies.
If that happens on a significant scale, people simply become alienated from each other even when they could be working together.
Steven.