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New theme for this site: "Civil Debate"


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2020 Jun 2, 10:00am   3,586 views  169 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (61)   💰tip   ignore  

I'm very tired of the hate in partisan politics, and want to have productive discussions with people of good will on how we can improve life in the US and around the world.

So no more pictures of Trump as an insane clown or talk of his being raped by Putin. That does not address his policies specifically and helps nothing. It just divides us.

And no more phrases like "liberals". That immediately eliminates the possibility of a liberal wanting to have a polite discussion of his point of view here. Again, it just divides us.

We need unity, not more division. E pluribus unum.

I'm just going to flag posts and comments I find to be stirring up hate and division. Don't worry, you'll know what that means, and the author will be able to click the "edit" button to see just what it was that got the post or comment flagged. It will be clear and fair.

Yes, it's a kind of censorship, but my hope is that it will make this site more useful to people of good will who really want to understand their fellow citizens and improve life. While the MSM routinely censors "offensive" ideas like the Red Pill theory, or our innate differences by sex and race, I'm not going to do that. All ideas are still open for discussion in a civil manner. The tag-line "Freedom to Offend" was not being understood as I intended. It seemed to be generating posts that were deliberately and angrily offensive.

Sorry if it seems like the food-fight is over. Everyone is still very welcome to have their say, just treat others as you would wish to be treated, including other political parties and public figures, and you'll still be able to make any point you want.

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67   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 2:44pm  

HEYYOU says
Can I no longer say Fuck Scum RepCons in this new site of no Freedom.


That's right.

Maybe you can come up with something unifying instead of divisive.

There are many ideas that we will never agree on. The left and the right have different ways of approaching governance, based on contrasting philosophies. But many of the ultimate goals — economic prosperity, better health care and education, etc. — are the same. We just don’t share the same vision of how to achieve them.
- Dan Crenshaw
68   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 2:45pm  

Maybe the main thing should be unifying vs divisive. That may be even more important than civility.
69   mell   2020 Jun 2, 2:55pm  

Agreed but we need to also establish ideas to discuss that are worth everyone's time and input. For example discussing mandatory body cameras on cops and protocols for other officers witnessing malpractice without even mentioning race as it is neither part of the problem nor the solution would be a thread that could be discussed rationally and without unscientific distractions.
70   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Jun 2, 3:00pm  

Patrick says
Maybe the main thing should be unifying vs divisive. That may be even more important than civility.


Sorry Pat, that can't happen until at a minimum, we get control back of education from Intersectionals.

K-12 literally teaches that unity is Evil Whiteness and that every non-White group must be encouraged not to assimiliate, but all Whites must endorse (but not culturally appropriate or ignore)
71   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:07pm  

ad says
richwicks says
Allow downvotes in two modes:


I'll automatically downvote the reply someone makes to justify their downvote of my original post.


That's silly - what if they are correct and you were wrong?

If they are incorrect, you have to explain it, in order to do a downvote - in that mode. Maybe have 2 downvote counts.

If a post has 100 downvotes but no responses to it explaining why they are wrong, that tells me somebody is right over target. It doesn't convince me they are wrong. This is true of many people, and why downvotes were eliminated on many sites - like youtube (t least for comments). Now I can't tell where the average population is just outright wrong about something on youtube in a comment.

A thousand downvotes and one upvote and no explanation of why what was said is wrong, tells me it was right over the mark, and it just blew 1000 minds and they are upset and angry. It tells me one person had the courage to agree despite it being very unpopular.

That's why both counts should be kept.
72   marcus   2020 Jun 2, 3:07pm  

marcus says
More balance would improve the site.


Another option might be letting people post links directly to that list, where it could be voted up or down. The interesting thing is that ones that both sides agree on would go to the top of the list, becasue neither side is downvoting it much. Achieving one of your goals - impacting politics and the world with ideas we can agree on.

Hence anonymously posting to the list is good so that it doesn't get downvoted just becasue of the source. Who knows, maybe some reads I give more of a chance if I don't know who the asshole is that posted it (just kidding).
73   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:10pm  

jazz_music says
How does following a cult make you qualified to diagnose all non-cultists as deranged as soon as you criticize the demigod leader?


How is this constructive communication?

You're making an assumption that it's a cult, and people would follow Tump into the gates of hell. If Trump bombs Iran, he's dead to me, and a lot of other people.

What makes you certain that all people who oppose Trump are "non cultists" - certainly some seem to qualify. They complain about his racism, his misogyny, his hair, his skin color - who cares? Complain about a policy, or I don't care.

And demigod? The only thing I think that he's done that is really useful is that he's discredited our horrible, poor, propaganda system. If anything, he's a preacher waking them up from the false religion of "mainstream media". Find that weapons of mass destruction program? It's the same place where the Russian Collusion is.

You're projecting a lot of venom on people. The main reason I like Trump, for example, is he's not started a new war. I'm not hard to please, but the last time we had a president that didn't start a new war in his first term was Jimmy Carter. I was 9 when he left office. I get tired of people calling me a "fanatic" or something similar just because I'm overjoyed about not starting up another war to steal shit in my name, with my tax money. Tired of this murderous government keeping us in endless wars.
74   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:14pm  

jazz_music says
From the same article in Quora

https://www.quora.com/Has-the-US-ever-used-military-power-against-its-citizens


What does that have to do with the topic? Why are you posting it in this thread?
75   mell   2020 Jun 2, 3:16pm  

richwicks says
jazz_music says
From the same article in Quora

https://www.quora.com/Has-the-US-ever-used-military-power-against-its-citizens


What does that have to do with the topic? Why are you posting it in this thread?


Agreed nothing to do with it
76   GNL   2020 Jun 2, 3:18pm  

I vote to moderate VERY CAREFULLY.

Have a line that people can't cross (I suggest to block anyone who consistently denigrates the Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights), give X number of warnings and then block their IP address.
77   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:19pm  

mell says
richwicks says
jazz_music says
From the same article in Quora

https://www.quora.com/Has-the-US-ever-used-military-power-against-its-citizens


What does that have to do with the topic? Why are you posting it in this thread?


Agreed nothing to do with it


Maybe he just posted in the wrong place - I've done that before.
78   GNL   2020 Jun 2, 3:19pm  

Sorry to bring up another blog, but I love the way The Burning Platform moderates. Anything goes. Commentators beat the hell out of each other and the odiots tend to slink away.
79   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:23pm  

WineHorror1 says
I vote to moderate VERY CAREFULLY.

Have a line that people can't cross (I suggest to block anyone who consistently denigrates the Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights), give X number of warnings and then block their IP address.


Oh come on!

Part of Freedom of Speech is to identify who the nuts are after all.

Somebody talking crap about the Bill of rights and Constitution - if you can't explain to them how wrong they are, you haven't thought too much about history.

Some fool talking about ending 1st amendment rights - fine - that means they can live as non human animals, who can never complain about our condition and have to accept a religion called Scientology and be required to tithe to this church 15% of our income and go to services every day. It's the law!

BTW - we lost 4th amendment rights with the Patriot Act. That's gone.
80   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:28pm  

mell says
Agreed but we need to also establish ideas to discuss that are worth everyone's time and input. For example discussing mandatory body cameras on cops and protocols for other officers witnessing malpractice without even mentioning race as it is neither part of the problem nor the solution would be a thread that could be discussed rationally and without unscientific distractions.


I would disagree because who is to determine what subject is worth somebody's time?

Here's a suggestion though - let us mute (ignore) topics on the main page. For example (and no offense to the person posting it)

https://www.patrick.net/post/1331911/2020-05-01-help-me-save-my-neighbor

I will never contribute to that thread, and I'm not particularly interested in the topic, but it shows up because people keep posting to it. I don't personally have any input for it, and I'm not particularly interested in what input is sent to it. I'd just like to be able to ignore entire topics of discussion.

But also, be able to turn them back on with a click. I like the idea of "world mode" and "my mode".
81   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:31pm  

jazz_music says
richwicks says
What does that have to do with the topic? Why are you posting it in this thread?
A direct response to the question from wookieman.


I always do some sort of a quote, even something like this:

In response to jazz_music's earlier post

So people are able to easily reference the flow of thinking. Nobody is going to go through this entire thread to find out what you MIGHT have been responding to, so you're essentially talking to just one person - maybe 2 but presenting it to everybody.
82   mell   2020 Jun 2, 3:48pm  

richwicks says
mell says
Agreed but we need to also establish ideas to discuss that are worth everyone's time and input. For example discussing mandatory body cameras on cops and protocols for other officers witnessing malpractice without even mentioning race as it is neither part of the problem nor the solution would be a thread that could be discussed rationally and without unscientific distractions.


I would disagree because who is to determine what subject is worth somebody's time?

Here's a suggestion though - let us mute (ignore) topics on the main page. For example (and no offense to the person posting it)

https://www.patrick.net/post/1331911/2020-05-01-help-me-save-my-neighbor

I will never contribute to that thread, and I'm not particularly interested in t...


Nobody needs to determine if a thread is worthy but if you start such a thread you can basically say that you will delete all posts containing race amd ban the person from the thread if necessary so you can keep a scientific and rational discussion that leads to solution and ideas instead of blaming the boogeyman.
83   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:51pm  

Patrick says
richwicks says
2) the downvotes only count if there's a response from the person who downvoted it.


Yes, with civility rules this could be good. Maybe "dislike" should require a comment to explain why. So you click dislike, and it puts a quote of that comment in the comment box starting with: "Patrick disliked: ..."


I think that is a too much of a burden. This is why I suggested categories.

Doing a written explanation of what is wrong with a post is tedious. A

"don't call people stupid" or
"don't use vulgarity" or
"don't XXX"

in a pull down menu - maybe.

Even that is a lot of work.

But then again anything other than:

You have violated our terms and services - please search through here to guess randomly which one of them you think it might be. If you do not think you have violated the terms and services, you may hire a lawyer of which we have 2,000 to argue in court.

We are an open platform.


Because that's just bullshit, and we all know it.
84   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 3:58pm  

mell says
Nobody needs to determine if a thread is worthy but if you start such a thread you can basically say that you will delete all posts containing race and ban the person from the thread if necessary so you can keep a scientific and rational discussion that leads to solution and ideas instead of blaming the boogeyman.


Banning doesn't work. It creates a bubble, and it doesn't give the opportunity of the person who has been banned to reconsider their position.

And it's not that I want to obliterate entire discussions, I just would like the ability to hide them from myself since I have no input - this way I can keep track of conversations that I might be interested in.

I may also find that all the conversations I'm interested in, nobody else here is - so there needs to be a way to reverse it as well.
85   rocketjoe79   2020 Jun 2, 4:15pm  

I think this move is fine. I've blocked those I find offensive already. I started reading this site for Housing advice and news. It's morphed into an "anything" site, which has attracted trolls. I've called some of those posts out, and blocked the real trashy offenders. No biggie. I come here for alternative views anyway.
86   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 4:31pm  

OK, I implemented a few things today:

- Now when any comment is flagged, you can always see it in the html source by doing a "view source" of the page and searching for <!--
It will be there in the html source as an html comment. This is kind of tedious, more work than clicking the button, and that's deliberate. It should be a little bit hard to read those comments so that they are not really part of the conversation, but it should be possible, which it is now.

- There is a new kind of flag called "divisive". Users will still just click "flag" and the comment will go into moderation, where a moderator (there are currently seven moderators, let me know if you'd like to be one) will classify it, or just approve it, undoing the flag.

- You can no longer just edit and save a comment to undo its flag. That was a bug.

Still going to work on jazz's idea of extracting links from posts.
87   GNL   2020 Jun 2, 4:33pm  

richwicks says
WineHorror1 says
I vote to moderate VERY CAREFULLY.

Have a line that people can't cross (I suggest to block anyone who consistently denigrates the Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights), give X number of warnings and then block their IP address.


Oh come on!

Part of Freedom of Speech is to identify who the nuts are after all.

Somebody talking crap about the Bill of rights and Constitution - if you can't explain to them how wrong they are, you haven't thought too much about history.

Some fool talking about ending 1st amendment rights - fine - that means they can live as non human animals, who can never complain about our condition and have to accept a religion called Scientology and be required to tithe to this church 15% of our income and go to services every day. It's the law!

BTW - we lost 4th amendment rights with the Patriot Act. That's gone.

Actually, I don't think there should be any moderating or censoring on patrick.net. There are very few places on the internet where a person can say any damn thing they want anonymously. Free speech should be treasured.
88   GNL   2020 Jun 2, 4:34pm  

What's with all the "false" add-ons at the end of everyone's comment?
89   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 4:35pm  

WineHorror1 says
What's with all the "false" add-ons at the end of everyone's comment?


Damn, that's was a bug I just introduced. Should be gone now. Thanks for telling me.
90   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 4:48pm  

Patrick says
WineHorror1 says
What's with all the "false" add-ons at the end of everyone's comment?


Damn, that's was a bug I just introduced. Should be gone now. Thanks for telling me.


@Patrick - Are you developing on Apache? I can setup a virtual machine for you to develop on, and mirror your site. I have a GB internet speed.

But I would have access to your code - and you probably don't want that.

If it is Apache, I can setup a raspberry pi 4 for you, clone the enabled mods, and just send you an SD card or even the box. It's only $100. Then you have a local place to develop. You can even duplicate the site. 256GB of space should be enough.
91   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 4:50pm  

NoCoupForYou says
Patrick says
Maybe the main thing should be unifying vs divisive. That may be even more important than civility.


Sorry Pat, that can't happen until at a minimum, we get control back of education from Intersectionals.

K-12 literally teaches that unity is Evil Whiteness and that every non-White group must be encouraged not to assimiliate, but all Whites must endorse (but not culturally appropriate or ignore)


I think it can happen here at least.

Comments about "Evil Whiteness" should be flagged by users, and a moderator should mark them as "divisive", a new category.

It's about as divisive as one can imagine.
92   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 4:53pm  

WineHorror1 says
Actually, I don't think there should be any moderating or censoring on patrick.net. There are very few places on the internet where a person can say any damn thing they want anonymously. Free speech should be treasured.


I made a suggestion that Patrick mentioned he would follow. It won't really be moderated, it's an opt in moderation basically.

I don't generally like moderation, but sometimes I feel people post just to gunk up the conversation and they are doing it just purposely to destroy the ability to have a conversation.

Moderators do that as well, particularly on Disqus. I used to do screenshots on Disqus when I was "moderated" and post a picture to the person I was attempting to have a conversation. I got a lot of people to realize there really was political censorship on that site doing that because the script banning discussions didn't have OCR. I finally got banned from the entire site, then I blocked disqus from my hosts file. You can't contradict the official government story on Disqus in many cases.
93   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 4:54pm  

jazz_music says
How does following a cult make you qualified...


That's divisive. It really is. And personal too.

Please don't do that. Debate ends at the very moment you type those divisive personal words.

To fix problems, we have to forget about The People's Front of Judea (the rival party) and concentrate on the Romans (the actual oppressor).

The Romans being global capital, imho.
94   GNL   2020 Jun 2, 4:56pm  

Are there banned words on patrick.net?
95   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 5:00pm  

richwicks says
A thousand downvotes and one upvote and no explanation of why what was said is wrong, tells me it was right over the mark, and it just blew 1000 minds and they are upset and angry. It tells me one person had the courage to agree despite it being very unpopular.

That's why both counts should be kept.


I like the idea of needing to make a comment to have a downvote, but I'm not sure we need to measure the 1000 minds who downvoted just because they are upset and angry.

It does seem productive to ask people why they disliked a comment. Then maybe there can be some self-reflection by the disliker, who might conclude they don't really have any rational reason. And maybe there can be some good feedback to the author of the comment.

I always found that the negative Amazon reviews were more valuable than the positive ones.
96   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2020 Jun 2, 5:02pm  

No one should be able to simply link and quote an editorial or editorialized(IE Washington post) article and not themselves explain why it’s relevant or the point they are attempting to make.

Nearly all the leftists do this and it comprises most of their postings...Tim, Jazz, and the recurring guy who keeps coming back with different accounts every week. I think Marcus is the only left leaning poster who does not do this.

It’s a ton of work to debunk a false news article, and frankly disheartening for someone like me who has been working full time to see bullshit that poster takes five seconds to put up but takes substantial amounts of time to correctly disprove.

It’s why so many of my posts are one line or two and super dismissive...all I have time to do is refute one or two points and it has to be something I already know.
97   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 5:04pm  

richwicks says
You're projecting a lot of venom on people. The main reason I like Trump, for example, is he's not started a new war. I'm not hard to please, but the last time we had a president that didn't start a new war in his first term was Jimmy Carter. I was 9 when he left office. I get tired of people calling me a "fanatic" or something similar just because I'm overjoyed about not starting up another war to steal shit in my name, with my tax money. Tired of this murderous government keeping us in endless wars.


Bingo!

Trump absolutely has that claim to be a good president: not starting wars.

That doesn't make people who object to war into "Trump cultists".
98   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 5:07pm  

WineHorror1 says
I vote to moderate VERY CAREFULLY.

Have a line that people can't cross (I suggest to block anyone who consistently denigrates the Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights), give X number of warnings and then block their IP address.


If you can use "view source" in a browser, you can see what comments are being blocked now.

Hopefully that will reassure you that no one is being blocked for having an opinion, only for being deliberately divisive, weakening all of us so that we cannot unify against the powers that exploit us.
99   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 5:09pm  

richwicks says
BTW - we lost 4th amendment rights with the Patriot Act. That's gone.


We should fight to get it back. The game is never over! They will keep taking away rights until people resist one way or another.

And as soon as we slack off, they will start taking away rights again.

The current situation is terrible, but it's not hopeless.
100   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 5:11pm  

richwicks says
I'd just like to be able to ignore entire topics of discussion.


So are you saying that you want ignore for individual threads? That could be done. But ignore for entire topics is harder. How would I define a topic programmatically?

I could pretty easily make something that ignores threads with certain keywords in them.
101   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 5:12pm  

jazz_music says
Patrick says
That's divisive. It really is. And personal too.
Oh?

That comment was to the commenter above that starts right in with “TDS” since the accuser is actually the afflicted.

You wouldn’t overlook that would you?


You often don't quote people so it's difficult to ascertain to whom you are responding to.

I just followed the thread up clicking the "soinso says" part, and ended up with your post - it wasn't even clear to me you were responding to somebody. I thought you were just randomly ranting.

@Patrick - maybe (just as a suggestion), a "reply to" button that is like quote - but it just references who you are replying to, would be nice. I'm sure you have enough work to do though. Let me know if you want a development box. If you're not using any commercial packages, I should be able to give you a near complete system.
102   Patrick   2020 Jun 2, 5:18pm  

richwicks says
Patrick says
WineHorror1 says
What's with all the "false" add-ons at the end of everyone's comment?


Damn, that's was a bug I just introduced. Should be gone now. Thanks for telling me.


Patrick - Are you developing on Apache? I can setup a virtual machine for you to develop on, and mirror your site. I have a GB internet speed.

But I would have access to your code - and you probably don't want that.

If it is Apache, I can setup a raspberry pi 4 for you, clone the enabled mods, and just send you an SD card or even the box. It's only $100. Then you have a local place to develop. You can even duplicate the site. 256GB of space should be enough.


I'm on nginx and node on a Digital Ocean virtual server.

I develop locally on my laptop on node, and just rsync. It works pretty well.

I'm grateful for the offer, but doing ok with laptop to server development. The source code is at https://github.com/killelea/node.patrick.net It's not all that well done and you might run into problems trying to set it up.
103   richwicks   2020 Jun 2, 5:22pm  

Patrick says
The source code is at


You sure you want to leave it open for, well, theft?

Remember, that's how Fuckerberg made his money, stealing code.
104   marcus   2020 Jun 2, 5:22pm  

Patrick says
- There is a new kind of flag called "divisive"


I don't like that. Patrick, Patrck, Patrick. I don't know why I even try to give the awesome suggestions I do.

Your doing that divisive feature becasue you're upset about "Trump Cultist" supposedly being divisive. Not realizing that Trump being President was the most politically divisive thing I've seen in my life. Using the term "Trump cult" is more than anything commenting on how divisive Trump is, something you knowingly chose to support.

It's a mistake. Divisive is in the eyes of the beholder.

Can I flag any comment where you advocate massive deportation of millions of illegal immigrants as divisive ?

What if someone is for strong strong gun control. Isn't that divisive ?
105   rdm   2020 Jun 2, 5:24pm  

Patrick says
How does following a cult make you qualified...


That's divisive. It really is


So I suppose a certain thread that has been around for months, titled only the left is violent is not divisive? Seems to me that the whole idea of the change is to allow the moderators more power to censor the left leaning/anti Trumpists all in the name of civility. Because aren't all the moderators right leaning? My guess is this site which is already 80% right will become the right wing echo chamber that is reflected on multiple threads. But it will be civil and un-divisive because everyone on the right generally agrees with each other as to the main issues. And those on the left will follow those that have already departed. Oh yes there will be a bit of pecking around the edges but mostly mutual oral genital stimulation will prevail. Kumbaya. But prove me wrong.
106   GNL   2020 Jun 2, 5:25pm  

Patrick says
richwicks says
BTW - we lost 4th amendment rights with the Patriot Act. That's gone.


We should fight to get it back. The game is never over! They will keep taking away rights until people resist one way or another.

And as soon as we slack off, they will start taking away rights again.

The current situation is terrible, but it's not hopeless.

I pray you are correct.

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