patrick.net

The best way to describe Wikipedia is as Citizens United for Encyclopedias. Organizations with sizable financial resources can easily have entire teams of employees that use sets of users to perform various badge-earning activities including cleaning up graffiti and writing legitimate articles on sports or other venues they don't care about. And then these user accounts with great reputations can be used by other employees to control information on articles that are of interest to the organization. And since the user accounts had many badges, their say is far greater than anyone else's even though the individual persons behind the accounts aren't necessarily the ones earning the badges.

I've actually seen this in action. Somebody edits a lot of articles about marshmellows and polo and green tree frogs, but they are a fanatic about a political issue and all the work they did on non-political things somehow gives them weight on tendentious editing of political pages.

59

curious2 2016 Sep 10, 1:45pm

I bet they are...

human, and reacting to "The Original Bankster" and Fortwhine. Patrick, please don't let anger or disappointment cloud your judgment and mislead you into blaming the wrong villain. Your rebrand as a "free speech" zone, "no matter how offensive," doesn't really fit with your site's earlier notability as an "excellent real estate site." It's as if you decided to bury that site under a pile of manure in hope of seeing what grows: maybe something will, but the manure itself isn't necessarily a notable achievement. "The Original Bankster" wants you dead, and your wife and kids, and most of your readers, and he is a Nazi, and he vandalized your Wikipedia page, yet you give him a platform for his Nazi ideology and stupid pranks. That's poignant, but not necessarily notable. Likewise Fortwhine, the racist and anti-gay "church militant" closet case. Nazis and racists and homophobes who vandalize Wikipedia, and have never given any of their time to building it, don't have much credibility there. Turtledove tried to rescue you, but nobody could patch the hole blown beneath PatNet's waterline by TOB and Fortwhine. I wish Wikipedia had kept the page, because there was a lot of notable history related to real estate, but you seal your fate with the choices you make. If I may suggest, instead of "free speech, no matter how offensive" you might want to consider a better option: critical thinking, no matter how contrarian or unpopular. You do have some very smart people here, of many different opinions, and some seem to revel in criticizing each other, and occasionally they get around to criticizing each other's thinking. We live in an era of too much data and not enough analysis, and I think you might do better if you present the site along those lines, and probably if you ban TOB at the very least.

The problem with Nazi ideology (or church militancy, for that matter) is not so much that it's "offensive", but rather it's a stupid waste of time. History disproved Nazi ideology, as the best and brightest had to flee Germany or die, resulting in Germany's loss. Nazi ideology pretends to strength but is actually weak. Similarly, "church militant" means only vanity, because no omnipotent god can ever need your help; it is equally stupid whether Catholic or Muslim, though it tends recently to be more violent among the Muslims. A platform for stupid, disproved, and fundamentally illogical (but possibly offensive) speech isn't necessarily notable, and it is certainly less useful than a site exposing the deceptions in real estate, politics, etc.

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Dan8267 2016 Sep 10, 3:52pm

Well, it was deleted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick.net

This definitely lowers Wikipedia's credibility.

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick.net-2 is still available. How long until we run out of integers?

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turtledove 2016 Sep 10, 5:05pm

Well, it does say that Patrick himself is notable. Perhaps the solution is to switch gears, submit a page on Patrick himself, and mention the web site as the reason for his notability. All of the admins seemed to agree that Patrick is notable.

62

Patrick 2016 Sep 10, 6:43pm

Your rebrand as a "free speech" zone, "no matter how offensive," doesn't really fit with your site's earlier notability as an "excellent real estate site." It's as if you decided to bury that site under a pile of manure in hope of seeing what grows: maybe something will, but the manure itself isn't necessarily a notable achievement.

Thanks @curious2 I do appreciate the helpful comment. But it feels like you're asking me to abandon a principle (speech free of nearly all constraints, even free of politeness) in order to get traffic. Maybe I should do that, and maybe there really is no value in letting people simply insult each other online.

Other opinions, anyone? Is it possible to grow a forum where people are completely uncensored?

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turtledove 2016 Sep 10, 8:41pm

Other opinions, anyone?

Well, what about a system where a person can get "abuse" votes by other members? When that person reaches ten in so many hours, or whatever number, he or she is no longer able to post for a day. The only problem I see here would be CIC and Dan rage voting each other off the system using multiple aliases. Why can't you prevent aliases, BTW? It seems silly that one person would have multiple login names. Doesn't seem to serve much useful purpose. Couldn't it be limited to one per IP and email address, at least? And it wouldn't have to be that the person cannot create a new ID, but the old one would have to be deactivated before a new ID can be created.

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Dan8267 2016 Sep 10, 9:18pm

The only problem I see here would be CIC and Dan rage voting each other off the system using multiple aliases.

I would do no such thing. I would hack PatNet so that everyone else rage voted CIC off the system. Please, give me proper credit.

65

Dan8267 2016 Sep 10, 9:20pm

Why can't you prevent aliases, BTW? It seems silly that one person would have multiple login names. Couldn't it be limited to one per IP and email address, at least?

He could, but then he couldn't preserve anonymity. There are ways to do both, but they require trust or complete transparency.

A user could have multiple IP addresses using TOR or other means and multiple email addresses. So that doesn't work.

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Dan8267 2016 Sep 10, 9:22pm

The ignore system was supposed to chill all that out, but clearly is not working well.

The only good ignore does is keeping trolls out of your own threads. Unfortunately for ignores to work, everyone would have to use them against all the trolls. And even then, the trolls would just create new accounts.

67

turtledove 2016 Sep 10, 9:23pm

I'm a little afraid of "abuse" votes, because what some might regard as abuse others would not. Sure, there are clear cases like "Listen, fuckwad..." but then there are cases like "People like you..."

And there will be people who do that. That's why it needs to be a short time limit. Like ten "abuse" votes in an hour or two, at the most. I would think that something would have to be pretty offensive to rack up that many, legitimately (yes Dan, talking to you) in such a short period of time.

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Patrick 2016 Sep 10, 9:47pm

Let's say everyone who has made than 100 comments gets 5 abuse votes per hour, and if someone gets 5 all from different users in a day, they and their IP address are banned from making posts or comments on the site for a day.

Is that likely to work in keeping things more civil?

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turtledove 2016 Sep 10, 10:24pm

www.youtube.com/embed/vuBWbpTJRqk

Let's say everyone who has made than 100 comments gets 5 abuse votes per hour, and if someone gets 5 all from different users in a day, they and their IP address are banned from making posts or comments on the site for a day.

Is that likely to work in keeping things more civil?

Just to clarify... Are you saying 120 abuse votes in 24 hours from 5 different users/hour would trigger the 24-hour ban? That would certainly discourage frivolous banning, as it would take some serious commitment from a group of people working together in order to make it happen. Whereas something truly offensive might be likely to rack up 120 votes within a few hours, depending on how many unique users login in a typical day.

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Dan8267 2016 Sep 11, 12:19am

There is only one solution to trolling.

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Patrick 2016 Sep 11, 7:18am

Just to clarify... Are you saying 120 abuse votes in 24 hours from 5 different users/hour

No, that's not what I meant. Let's make it all days to be clearer:

5 "abuse" votes in a day (each vote from a distinct user) gets you banned from the site for a day.

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Tenpoundbass 2016 Sep 11, 7:59am

I feel this forum will pick up, when the PC curse on this country gets lifted on November 9th.

73

turtledove 2016 Sep 11, 9:11am

5 "abuse" votes in a day (each vote from a distinct user) gets you banned from the site for a day.

I think I'd be inclined to make that number higher. I feel like there are a few people on this site who could too easily rack up five in an hour. In other words, if I can name five people off the top of my head who'd likely click "abuse" on a set of people I can also name off the top of my head, just out of spite, it might be too easy. So, I think I'd be inclined to make it 10 unique user votes in an hour.

That said, and since I find whiners and tattletales kind of irritating, there might need to be something reciprocal to let people know that the "abuse" click isn't supposed to be frivolous. Maybe I'm over thinking this... But if for every click of the abuse button by a user, that user would accumulate a whiner point. 10 "whiner" points in a day (or a 12 hour time period, or whatever) also results in a temporary ban. That would help to keep people from clicking "abuse" over every discourteous word or opinion they disagree with. And, as much as I think it would be ridiculous that someone would troll someone else to give that person a vote every hour on the hour, a mechanism like this could prevent that. I think most people understand what ABUSE means, but there will be those who think any perceived slight is worthy of a click.

Also, I'm thinking maybe the ban should be for a smaller amount of time. The goal, I think, is to make it inconvenient for people to be disgusting, extremely offensive/nasty, or predatory to others and to allow cooling off periods. So, I'm not sure how easy or difficult it would be to do... But, maybe the first time you get banned in a day it's for four hours. The second time, it's for 12 hours. The 3rd time, it's for 24 hours. Then it starts over again, as obviously a person wouldn't be able to accumulate abuse votes -- that count -- while they're in timeout. And people can't whine about others when they are in timeout. So for whiners who click abuse every time he/she confuses "colorful" with "abuse," there would be a consequence for that... so make your abuse vote count... and opt for "dislike" instead if you aren't sure.

I'm typing out loud, at this point. Just trying to make it fair and consider users' different thresholds when it comes to perceived abuse. It needs to be useful, but a pain in the butt to abuse.

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Dan8267 2016 Sep 11, 11:03am

5 "abuse" votes in a day (each vote from a distinct user) gets you banned from the site for a day.

What's the point of banning for a day? It would do nothing to discourage trolling, and in fact, would give trolls a reason to cooperate with other trolls. Five trolls could easily permaban a person under such a scheme. A single troll with five accounts could do the same. A clever programmer who knows HTTP could automate the process.

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curious2 2016 Sep 11, 12:12pm

Is that likely to work in keeping things more civil?

I tried to think of an automatic algorithm, based on trollishness (Dislike/Like ratio) and Ignores, but nothing seemed to work automatically. Also, some of the worst Users do get some Likes, mainly from alts or each other.

A better model is your method of dealing with spammers, which does generally work.

A determined Nazi or Church Militant, e.g. TOB or Fortwhine, might evade algorithms. Ultimately, if you want to give a platform to someone who wants you dead, that's your choice. The issue is, by emphasizing "free speech, no matter how offensive", you walk into these situations. You can only have one highest priority. If it is to enable people to say anything, no matter how pointless and stupid, then the home page suffers from the most intolerable abuses, as it would from spammers if you decided to allow that.

I hesitate to say that, because some people have elevated the slogan "free speech" the way others have elevated "multiculturalism," sacrificing all else to the cherished fantasy, no matter what the cost. In reality, America has always had (and must have) the ability to respond to defamation, yelling "fire" in a crowded cinema, cutting off people's heads in the name of Islam, and treason (e.g. advocating the violent overthrow of our government, as Islam says to do). We've had a similar exchange about "hate crimes," where I proved to you that racially motivated crime against a white person can and does get prosecuted as a hate crime, and that mental state has been an element of criminal law since Roman times. As I said at the time, all the convicts currently in prison for murder are there only because they thought about the crime before committing it; otherwise, they would have been convicted of manslaughter. Murder requires "malice aforethought," but that doesn't make murder a "thought crime," nor a speech crime. I am probably swimming uphill (block that metaphor!) when trying to explain the scales of justice to computer programmers who tend to think in binary terms.

You might consider an algorithm to promote certain threads on the home page, which would have the effect of demoting others. Or letting people flag as "miscategorized" posts that belong in a different thread, e.g. a thread for "people flinging crap at each other." Meanwhile, just as Wikipedia suffers from too many editors deleting too much, PatNet suffers from too little editing. It's your forum, with your name on it, so the question is this: what do you want to say today?

76 Gestrid 2016 Sep 11, 12:35pm

I realize the topic in this thread has changed by now, but I'd like to point out that the closer of the deletion discussion (who, by the way, was not involved in any way up until deleting the page and closing the discussion) did say that an article on Patrick himself may be notable enough. Of course, the article would likely mention Patrick.net somewhere, and the page Patrick.net, which was deleted, can be recreated as a redirect to the article on Patrick. I would still recommend going through the Article for Creation process, as well as, from the beginning, declaring any conflict of interest the page you guys have as the page creators/editors with the site and its owner.

77 Gestrid 2016 Sep 11, 12:47pm

Dan8267 says

rando says

Well, it was deleted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick.net

This definitely lowers Wikipedia's credibility.

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick.net-2 is still available. How long until we run out of integers?

In order to prevent vandalism (you'd be surprised how much vandalism we get there), pages that look at least nearly identical to a deleted page can actually be speedy deleted (hidden from the public without discussion, most likely with 24 hours or less of it being marked for speedy deletion) because discussion would likely inevitably lead to the same result. As another way to prevent vandalism, accounts and IP addresses that repeatedly recreate pages can actually be blocked for different amounts of timefkr vandalism, depending on the situation and past blocks the user has gotten. If one account gets blocked and another new account does the same thing soon after, they can also get blocked for abusing multiple accounts.
I'm not trying to be mean. I'm trying to explain Wikipedia's policies.

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Dan8267 2016 Sep 11, 2:38pm

Gestrid says

In order to prevent vandalism

One person's vandalism is another person's free speech. Simply labeling material you don't like vandalism doesn't make it so.

Vandalism, by definition, involves the damage or destruction of property. A page on a wiki does not in any way damage or destroy other pages, and therefore cannot be vandalism.

What you are really doing is demonstrating that Wikipedia is not a democracy and is not a repository of all human knowledge. It is a brochure that represents the interests of those in control. And anything they don't like is labeled vandalism and deleted. Don't like evidence that a nation state engaged in torture? Delete it. Don't like evidence that a company's product causes obesity? Delete it. Don't like a quote from a former president that opposed the right of women to vote? Delete it. History be damn when there is money, power, or politics on the line.

This is exactly why Wikipedia is worse than worthless. It's harmful.

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curious2 2016 Sep 11, 2:52pm

Gestrid says

declaring any conflict of interest the page you guys have

Wikipedia suffers from chronic conflicts of interest, including potentially lethal misinformation and disinformation on vital subjects like health and medicine. Some of that results from paid publicists and delusional zealots editing pages, and some of it results from bias in the commercial and government publications that Wikipedia relies on as sources. In contrast, Patrick doesn't pay anyone to write here, and doesn't even get paid for his work running the site. It's conceivable that somebody might be getting paid to shill for something, e.g. Otto for NPVIC, but spammers get deleted. PatNet is privately owned by Patrick, nobody else has any direct stake in it, so somebody from Wikipedia accusing PatNetters of "conflict of interest" is like pointing one finger here and three back at yourself.

The "What I Know Is" (WIKI) function of Wikipedia tends to get washed away by a tsunami of phony commercial and government disinformation, manufacturing consent and too often driving a misguided consensus. It comes down to the difference between facts and truth. The earth is in fact round and does in fact revolve around the sun, but Wikipedia "consensus" would surely have favored the "truth" of geocentrism and maybe even a flat earth for most of human history. In this regard, other WIKIs do have clear avantages, e.g. RationalWiki and WikiIslam. They cover fewer subjects but with often greater objectivity. Whether they have undeclared conflicts or not, they prove what they say, instead of manufacturing "consensus" based on unreliable sources.

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Patrick 2016 Sep 11, 3:04pm

A better model is your method of dealing with spammers, which does generally work.

That's rather complicated. See https://github.com/killelea/patrick.net/blob/master/html/accept_post.php#L179

But spam is much simpler than "incivility". A new user from a foreign country posting a link is always considered a spammer, and that works pretty well for me.

How do you measure the tone of a post or comment? What if someone wants to quote it?

America has always had (and must have) the ability to respond to defamation, yelling "fire" in a crowded cinema, cutting off people's heads in the name of Islam, and treason (e.g. advocating the violent overthrow of our government, as Islam says to do).

Woah woah there. You jump from
1. defamation to
2. putting lives in immediate danger to
3. cutting off heads to
4. advocating violence

Those things are not in the same categories and certainly not all applicable to a blog. #1 is already covered by my prohibition on personally identifying information and #4 is covered by my prohibition on threats (now extended to cover incitement to violence).

So for me, the question remains about civility. Is there some way to get people on an anonymous forum to agree to argue in a polite tone without inhibiting the content of what they are trying to say?

Some would argue that it's impolite to even question multiculturalism, for example.

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curious2 2016 Sep 11, 3:14pm

Those things are not in the same categories and certainly not all applicable to a blog.

They are all restrictions on speech though, with the inherent consequence that speech is never entirely "free."

Also, I have not used the word "incivility," which I hardly even care about anyway. I was thinking in terms of particular users, e.g. TOB. You have banned certain Users, based on your own decision. When a Nazi says he wants you dead, and your family and readers too, that's a good reason to ban him. Also, his alter ego rootvg, and maybe their "friend" Fortwhine. Online as in life, you choose whom you want to associate with. If you want to tolerate incivility, that's up to you, but promoting self-declared Nazis and obvious racists and homophobes comes at a cost. They have already other sites for their stupidity, so the question is whether you want to add your name to their list.

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Patrick 2016 Sep 11, 3:23pm

They are all restrictions on speech though, with the inherent consequence that speech is never entirely "free."

Yes, we actually agree more than we think. Remember I do have 5 forbidden categories of speech:

personal threats or incitement to violence
child porn
spam
copyright violations (upon notice)
personally identifying information

When a Nazi says he wants you dead, and your family and readers too, that's a good reason to ban him.

Here's his post: /I+hope+you+all+die

He did not actually threaten anyone, or incite anyone to violence.

I think it's super-important not to ban Nazis and homophobes from speaking, because those terms and many others are routinely used to shut down legitimate debate by the guardians of political correctness ( our very own zampolit ).

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curious2 2016 Sep 11, 4:49pm

those terms and many others are routinely used to shut down legitimate debate by the guardians of political correctness

You have a point there, and I have witnessed the sometimes debilitating effects. That's why I don't focus on indivual comments or posts. I look at the pattern, and what inferences the pattern supports. TOB is a Nazi, supports Hitler and calls him "a genius," and advocates civil war, as does his alter ego rootvg, who bragged his house was "well fortified" and looked forward to bringing a concealed weapon to San Francisco. The fact he says openly he hopes we all die is only one more data point confirming that pattern. Arguing with such people is a waste of time. The world can always crank out morons faster than you can type. The question is, do you want to spend your life promoting them?

Like creationists pushing "intelligent design," Nazis look for ways to wedge their way into respectability. We've seen a few attempts here already, e.g. TWP, and sadly they seem to fool initially some software engineers, who read literally but don't always recognize the intent behind the words.

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Patrick 2016 Sep 11, 5:12pm

The question is, do you want to spend your life promoting them?

I don't see the site as promoting them, but merely as not censoring them.

TOB is a Nazi, supports Hitler and calls him "a genius," and advocates civil war, as does his alter ego rootvg

I can't see any evidence on the server side that those two are the same person. They use different IP addresses at least.

Arguing with such people is a waste of time.

OK, so don't argue with him. Put him on ignore. But don't ask me to prevent other people from hearing what he has to say, no matter how odious.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.

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curious2 2016 Sep 11, 5:20pm