patrick.net

Maybe he's an asshole, but there is actually content in his posts and comments

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I'm calling your bluff

The the guy is on this forum all day long, every day. The majority of his posts are personal attacks, and they're not even a little bit witty.

His posts seem entirely political, and not ad hominem against forum members:

https://patrick.net/users/Ironman

OK, his comments are frequently ad hominem, but there is actually some content there too:

https://patrick.net/comments.php?a=27600

Now let's say he's the worst member on the site? What is the best response, the one which:

1. protects his right to be heard
2. prevents him from drowning out others, violating their right to be heard

Remember: simply banning his current email or IP will not stop him from registering again, and again, and again.

So far, my solution is the ignore function, which even impinges on his right to be heard somewhat.

Alternate solutions:

1. Delete his account and content, pissing him off and making him register again under a different email or IP.
2. Give users the right to delete comments on their own posts, leading to the "Facebook effect", where opinions become siloed.
3. Personally judge "politeness", censoring those who violate it, taking tons of my time making distinctions.
4. Put up some "ad hominem" link, which lets users censor those who violate politeness, but lets me override their ability to do that if they flag legitimate arguments.

@patrick

Can we make the Sexy Picture Thread by YesYNot a sticky? This will also apply pressure for zzyzzx to continue posting such beautiful artwork.

If you ignore him, he can't post comments on your thread anyway. That functionality already exists.

You're afraid of his alternate users posting comments? He could create an infinite number of those.

It feels wrong to let a thread owner simply delete a comment. How about putting "comment deleted" with a link to it? Then people would have to navigate away to see it. A cost which would stop a lot of people, but would not be complete censorship.

just any guy says

Can we make the Sexy Picture Thread by YesYNot a sticky? This will also apply pressure for zzyzzx to continue posting such beautiful artwork.

It might get annoying to have it always there if he didn't update it after all. Hey, you can bump that thread with a picture of your own any time!

rando says

How about putting "comment deleted" with a link to it?

OK, let's see if I can do that. On the list right after getting the site more resistant to shutdown by making it portable. Hopefully done with that this week.

rando says

just any guy says

Can we make the Sexy Picture Thread by YesYNot a sticky? This will also apply pressure for zzyzzx to continue posting such beautiful artwork.

It might get annoying to have it always there if he didn't update it after all. Hey, you can bump that thread with a picture of your own any time!

rando says

2. Give users the right to delete comments on their own posts, leading to the "Facebook effect", where opinions become siloed.

This is the best option. It hurts trolls if it takes effort to get into a thread with an alt only to have their troll posts deleted. It doesn't prevent any free speech. If trolls open their own threads just to troll, they just look like idiots and advertise that they aren't worth listening to. If special snowflakes ban people and delete posts that are non-trolling opposition, they look weak and only isolate themselves. All the problems become self-correcting.

rando says

You're afraid of his alternate users posting comments? He could create an infinite number of those

Allowing thread authors to whitelist users and prevent users without a post history of N months and P posts from joining a thread solves this problem. There is a slight cost in losing quick access for new users, but it's worth it.

Patrick, the moment a comment of mine gets deleted, "sidelined" or whatever, will the list time I post here. Just not worth my time to write something and have somebody else decide if it's worth being seen. I keep my word.

FP says

Patrick, the moment a comment of mine gets deleted, "sidelined" or whatever, will the list time I post here. Just not worth my time to write something and have somebody else decide if it's worth being seen. I keep my word.

Why do you so strongly support personal attacks, and the right of trolls to derail and impede free speech?

FP says

Patrick, the moment a comment of mine gets deleted, "sidelined" or whatever, will the list time I post here. Just not worth my time to write something and have somebody else decide if it's worth being seen. I keep my word.

+1

The reason why deletes are needed is that trolls will constantly us alts to repost. And trolls make other people think it's just not worth their time to write something in a forum.

PatNet had a fine mechanism where if a user's post got deleted, they would be emailed a copy of it so that they could post it in their own thread if they felt it was necessary. Even trolls used this feature extensively. The delete is effectively soft.

The point is that the troll will fail to disrupt the conversation.

Is it merely coincidence that the same people threatening to leave the site if trolling and personal attacks are addressed, are the same people who always respond to debate and discussion over the nuts and bolts of their positions, by saying "I don't have the time to explain!"

The problem comes down to this. Free-for-all shouting matches are not an effective way to communicate. In all discussion, there has to be rules for spoken or written conversations whether on the Internet or in person.
- You have to use the same language, or your audience won't understand you.
- You cannot speak at the same as others. Nor can you listen to two conversations at once.
- You have to listen to the other side, and they have to listen to you. Neither you nor they can construct counter-argument and attack the central point of the other side without listening to the other side in order to understand what that central point is.
- You have to make the best effort to clearly communicate what you actually mean. This requires both honesty and writing or speaking skills.
- You have to make the best effort to understand what the other side means. This requires both honesty and reading or listening skills.
- You have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt initially.
- But you also have to disengage conversation with trolls. Ignoring them doesn't work. Trying to have honest discussion with them doesn't work. Only being brutally unaccepting of them works.

Without adherence to the above rules, free speech cannot and will not happen. Free speech is not free of cost. It takes effort to practice.

Personal biases get in a way, deleting people's posts seems like it's just a decision on who gets the final say in what is ok to say. Both good and bad.

Well, there is a way to eliminate personal biases, but it would take considerable effort. One could write an A.I. to determine the trolliness of posts and of users and purge comments appropriately. However, this is a very non-trivial project. It's the kind of problem that is interesting to work on, but requires considerable free time if it's not your job.

This is exactly the kind of thing you'd expect Google labs to work on. It would really leverage their crawling technology.

errc says

Why do you so strongly support personal attacks,

What? Where did you get this from? If you check my interactions on PatNet, you'll see that I tend to pull off from discussion once insults begin to fly. I also rarely insult. Compare my comments with yours in this thread.

Noting that people have let a troll get into their heads is not the same as supporting trolling.

My point here, if it still not clear, is that I do not think that deleting comments is the best way to deal with personal attacks. I have been dealing with them by simply not giving shit and ignoring the comments of the offenders. Just like I'll do with you now.

rando says

I want to find some set of self-service rules that lets readers get what they want without my being the judge of content.

I think ignore works like a champ. I've only had to use it on a few people, and it works.
I can even temporarily ignore someone that may have posted a recent not work friendly picture on the main page, until that post has left the main page.

I would like to give kudos to Patrick for going back to having a thread number in all the URLs. The only thing that would be better would be to have the starting DATE (YYYY-MM-DD or similar) in there, too ;)

Current example:

https://patrick.net/1302130/patnet-improvement-suggestions
https://patrick.net/?p=1302130&c=1375150#comment-1375150

Earlier year 2016 example:

http://patrick.net/Corporate+buybacks+are+99%25+of+NET+stock+purchases+in+2016+so+far
which is now
https://patrick.net/1289861/corporate-buybacks-are-99-of-net-stock-purchases-in-2016-so-far
and under the hood has URLs like this for the comment section:
https://patrick.net/?p=1289861&c=1271301#comment-1271301

I realize that the numeric thread ID always existed under the hood--just want to laud that its now always visible together with the thread title. Thanks, Patrick. It is just the better way to do it. Having a thread with just a Title to identify it seems not so robust when trying to refer to or find old threads one might have saved. What if two have the same title, for example,

A Preview Button for posts!

Is there a way to dislike & ignore everyone with one click?
Post HEY YOU next to all his dislikes & ignores.
It nice to let people know what one thinks of them.

HEY YOU says

It nice to let people know what one thinks of them.

When people dislike they usually comment. Not so much when they like/agree.

I remember clicking "dislike" only twice. One of them by mistake, which I neutralized with a "like."

HEY YOU says

Is there a way to dislike & ignore everyone with one click?

Yes, delete your PatNet bookmark.

justme says

What if two have the same title, for example,

Can't happen, because title is a unique field in the table.

justme says

The only thing that would be better would be to have the starting DATE (YYYY-MM-DD or similar) in there, too ;)

Could do that, but then urls get longer. Maybe that's ok. In fact, it would be easily to put the date in the "slug" title like this:

https://patrick.net/1302399/2017-02-2-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-amazon

@justme Good enough?

>>https://patrick.net/1302399/2017-02-2-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-amazon

@patrick, sure, that will work although I hope you mean always DD and not just D (probably just a typo). Leading 0s are a must for easy sorting!

That was just a typo. How about https://patrick.net/1302399/2017-feb-02-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-amazon

If you sort the URLs it will still be sorted by creation date since the post_ID comes first.

justme says

@patrick, sure, that will work although I hope you mean always DD and not just D (probably just a typo). Leading 0s are a must for easy sorting!

Yeah, DDs are better than Ds for sure.

Although some say more than a handful... I ain't one of them.

Lol, I can totally get by with firm well-formed C's.

justme says

The only thing that would be better would be to have the starting DATE (YYYY-MM-DD or similar) in there, too ;)

@justme your wish has been granted.

Post slugs now start with YYYY-MM-DD.

I still think that having all the changing aliases of all the usual suspects on their "home page" would be useful.

Agree. I'd much rather the homepage be most recent posts.

OK, ad hominem comments will no longer be deleted right away, but instead will go to ad hominem comment jail where they can be viewed by everyone and edited by the comment owner.

If a comment in jail is edited, I'll get notified and look at it again, perhaps removing it from jail.

The ad hominem comment jail link is now also in the footer.

So what's the difference between "active" and "comments" on the front page?

"active" is all posts ever, sorted the most recent creation time or last comment time.

"comments" is posts created in the last day, sorted by the most comments.

You can now follow specific topics, for example #housing

You'll get an email of each new post in housing. But you won't get duplicates if you're already following the author.

Not tested yet, might not really work.

Let me know if problems.

I've done away with the 2k comment limit @Dan8267 and hopefully simplified making comments and posts.

Let me know if problems!

@Patrick, the ignore link is gone. Please bring it back before the trolls start taking advantage of it. I, for one, will ad hom any troll doing any post on my thread while the ignore/ban function is disabled.

Hmm, don't know where that ignore link went. Will put it back.

Dan8267 says

ignore link is gone. Please bring it back

@Dan8267 OK, it's back now. Was a typo.

If people would just stick to arguing the point rather than hating on the person personally, the forum would be a lot easier to run.

But I guess that's true of life as well.