patrick.net

poor Trump, ever the victim

errc says

poor Trump, ever the victim

Are you kidding?

Dan went on a tirade where he wrote a 3 paragraph rant about someone liking black dick "long dick style". It cheapens the forum, and attracts trolls without adding anything to the quality of the content.

You're right.

Going to get serious about enforcing civility without suppressing anyone's sincere views.

Goran_K says

errc says

poor Trump, ever the victim

Are you kidding?

Dan went on a rant where he wrote a 3 paragraph rant about someone liking black dick "long dick style". It cheapens the forum, and attracts trolls without adding anything to the quality of the content.

I don't read that crap.

Nothing cheapens the forum more than people pretending to discuss and debate, while avoiding answering questions

rando says

You're right.

Going to get serious about enforcing civility without suppressing anyone's sincere views.

Ditch the usernames.

So would everyone be anonymous then? I don't quite get what the forum would look like.

It would be just ideas and discussions, rather than personal attacks.

Isn't that what you're after?

It would relegate those incapable of actual discussion to repeatedly blaming "liberals" for all their own personal failings

jazz_music says

It would be funny to read ad hom about users who all are 6-digit hexadecimal names

....randomly re-assigned with every new comment. ;)

007145 is a damn librul! They ruin everything with der hi taxes and so forth

MAGA!!!

End Free Speech or the Antifas WIN!!!

(Oh, HOW THICK THE IRONY!)

Patrick, this is not ad hominem because it's objectively, factually true; you are a hypocrite and should withdraw the essay you wrote recently on why speech short of that inciting or threatening physical violence should be uncensored (as is strongly consistent with the 1st Amendment).

jazz_music says

It would be funny to read ad hom about users who all are 6-digit hexadecimal names

That's my question. If you don't have usernames, what do you have? Just a stream of comments with no user attached at all?

if anyone wants to chat about black dicks, there are forums out there. Why do you guys have to do it on Pat net?

We can't have nice things...

Changing "ad hominem" link to be "uncivil" since that's what it's really all about.

rando says

jazz_music says

It would be funny to read ad hom about users who all are 6-digit hexadecimal names

That's my question. If you don't have usernames, what do you have? Just a stream of comments with no user attached at all?

Have you ever used Reddit?

I do, and I don't know one single user by their username

I read the topics
Then I read the comments

Zero reason to emote over an alias

errc says

Have you ever used Reddit?

I do, and I don't know one single user by their username

Good point. Every post and comment is by some named user, but they don't have icons and the names are small. Maybe that does help keep it more about the topic and less about the person.

What is the value in the usernames?

To maintain a clear mental record of what you said to whom. Maybe it's not really necessary.

Let's see what happens if I de-emphasize individual users by not showing their icons for a while.

OK, icons and civility scores are gone for the moment. Would be easy enough to put them back.

To maintain a clear mental record of what you said to whom.

-----------------

Never thought of that aspect, but then again, I'm an honest person, so I can just recall from memory

Hell, while I'm at it, I'm going to replace usernames by their user_id in the database. So all comments will just come from a number. You can still click the number to see the username.

Don't worry, it's not permanent. Just trying it out.

What do you think? Does it make discussions more about the topics and less likely to devolve into personal attacks?

@errc opinion?

I like the new experiment. Lets see if people get as triggered by Posts made by people they don't know who it is from.

I bet common sense prevails.

rando says

@errc opinion?

I like the idea, but it'll depend on what your users are looking for when they come to your site.

What do you want of the site?

P.S I'm Patrick

errc says

What do you want of the site?

Here are some goals for the site:

* to give people an anonymous place to express their real opinion, unlike Facebook
* to push the boundaries of acceptable discussion, but in a civil manner
* to learn things from other people about housing, politics, investing
* to get feedback about random ideas I have
* to get to know some new and interesting people that I may want to meet up with for a beer someday

Patrick says

End of Thunderdome

By 1

1 has spoken. 1 is the law. I am number 6.

www.youtube.com/embed/d0LaT6qVRpg

@1, I think you're passing your identity(1,1) userId column, not the username to the page.

I created the database, and the user_id field is auto-increment:

| user_id | bigint(20) unsigned | PRI | auto_increment |

It starts from 1.

So you can tell how long a user has been registered by the number.

Excellent! Now I understand Dan8267's name.

I like it

1.) read comment
2.) click on user number to reveal their alias, so I know if I can agree or disagree with them, based on previous history of being a got dam librul, or an unquestioning Real American Christian

But that extra bit of work is the important thing.

Will people bother to click to find the identity of the commenter and respond to that, or will they just respond to the point?

If the latter, this will be a great success.

rando says

But that extra bit of work is the important thing.

Will people bother to click to find the identity of the commenter and respond to that, or will they just respond to the point?

If the latter, this will be a great success.

Good luck!

Thanks for all the work over the years, 1.

Patrick says

Topics like this which are extremely, offensively, gratuitously nasty are a turn-off to your website. AF does this way too much as well.

AF posts are just jokes. It's the nasty threads and posts of trolls that turn people off. And yes, there is too much petty trolling and too little productive conversation on this site today. Before it became a political forum, conversations were better.

The question is can you have a political forum open to the public without trolls ruining it? Probably not. To have civilized conversations you need to keep trolls out because anonymity attracts them and makes them behave worse than they would dare to do so in public.

rando says

Excellent! Now I understand Dan8267's name.

It must have been auto-suggested. I forgot the details. I remember trying to register just Dan, but it was taken.

Dan8267 says

To have civilized conversations you need to keep trolls out

Let's use the "uncivil" link for that. (formerly named the ad hominem link, still works the same, puts a comment in comment jail)

You know, just displaying the user ID might make PatNet better since the trolls won't know who to act like an ass to and who's their butt buddies. Maybe it would make things more civilized if all posts were written without identifying who the author is, forcing people to deal with the content of the post rather than the author.

Of course, you could tell who wrote certain things by their writing styles or political positions unless the author masked those things.

Dan8267 says

Maybe it would make things more civilized if all posts were written without identifying who the author is, forcing people to deal with the content of the post rather than the author.

Yes, that could make another interesting experiment.

rando says

Yes, that could make another interesting experiment.

Maybe open a sister site or subsite of PatNet to try that out.

Yes, I do have plans for sub-sites.

What should drive people away are White Male Republican & Democrat voters.
They've had more than their share of bringing America to the place where she is now &
they've done a great job.

Next thread should be titled "FUCK Ds & Rs" but snowflakes don't like inappropriate language.
So fuck them too!

I want to know who got the user ID 1488. Was it zzyzzx? I bet it was zzyzzx? If it wasn't, he should be assigned that number.

I wish I had the user ID 69.