You're forgeting hewitt and archangel. Those 2 have crossed the line quite a few times in the last months. The rest of the regular users just jump in the douchbagery-chain or posts the above start.

I didn't forget arch, what has he done that's so bad? The only infraction he's ever received is from double posting a week ago. If he's crossed the line "quite a few times" recently to the point where he requires special attention I would assume he'd have at least one infraction against him relevant to what we're discussing but there's nothing.


Hewitt posts while I'm offline so I can't really monitor his activity or comment on it, so I'm not getting involved, but I think considering the history between you two I think it should be up to someone else to decide whether he's a problem or not.

Quote from Exilement

I agree that his tactics were shady at best but I think the "instead of actually trying to help him" comment is coming a couple of months too late. I don't expect anyone to put any effort into helping him after what he's done, not that it excuses his behavior, but it definitely doesn't make it any worse. Nish was one of the first people to try and reach out to him in the first place.

I didn't really see Nish as making a genuine attempt at friendship, since I've seen him bash new members before simply because he perceived them as a threat to how people saw him. I agree it's a bit too late, and I DON'T really expect people to put effort into helping him after what he did, what I expect is for people to show some common decency and not pull this manipulative bullshit.

Quote from Exilement

As for the rest of your post, I think most of this negativity you're talking about stems from conversations largely involving Nish, Jutsu, Captain Cook and sss. Those four stand out to me as the biggest trouble-makers in terms of instigating people for their own amusement. Except Jutsu and Nish tend to be the two who make an effort to get along with new users, and they are very active in terms of normal discussion and even debates to the point where I don't see them as problems in general. Captain Cook and sss just generally don't take this place seriously and they both receive their fair share of punishment when they take things too far. If you want to give those two special attention I'm fine with it but I seriously disagree with that "thought-police" style of moderation you mentioned and I'll butt up against it if I see it happen, as I'm sure you would too.

That is correct, I am heavily against telling people what to think, but I almost think it's a convenient argument against any sort of punishment for abusing other people. I don't want to be afraid of people thinking that's how we operate, because we all know that is some next-level Orwellian shit, but there needs to be a way for us to put our foot down and say, "Okay, this kind of behavior is bad and we don't want it to represent us. You can either stop or get out."

Members who are toxic but occasionally capable of decency are still a problem. I am not willing to ignore that. Especially with what Nish just did, which I think alone is deserving of a ban from this community.

Quote from Exilement

Beyond that I don't see any users consistently involved in controversial situations to the point where they stand out to me. I don't think there's anything systemic going on other than the fact that Mike brought out the worst in a lot of us and we've been forced to focus on it the last couple of weeks. I especially don't see anything severe enough to require considering "starting over", what does that even mean?

This type of behavior doesn't have to stand out to be a problem, I feel like you just used to that being the case that when it happen you just look the other way as if it were normal, but that's exactly the problem I want to address. If you don't see what I'm talking about then that's exactly the problem. I'm not talking about the mods, I'm just talking about the general behavior of this community. For example, I was JUST complaining about the help section having shit posts, do we want to be seen as the community where trying to get help gets you insulted and sarcastic replies? The most common complaint I hear is that SP is unappealing because of how we present ourselves and that's hard to see as someone who's here every day, but actually looking at things being posted I can definitely see how someone would get that impression. We've got a decent sized group of people harassing anyone who doesn't think or act like they do. I can go ahead and pick out several examples of people posting and getting insulting replies. It happens often.

This forum's purpose isn't to serve as a hang out place for a bunch of old members, and I feel that's what it's become. We aren't focused on what we should be focused on: art and animation. The first thing people see when they come here is the general section and a debate section. What do those have to do with art or animation? We're promoting these places BEFORE any of the stuff we should be focusing on. They're also the only places that the most toxic members hang out in, so it's a double-whammy of misdirected focus and putting our worst qualities on our cover.

Stone, Jason and myself are going to be having a big discussion soon about the fate of this entire site and I want to go into it with good intentions to help this community, but I really can't help but feel there's no point in keeping this forum the way it is because it's just not working out the way we want it to. This is what I'm referring to when I say "starting over", I literally mean we would have to completely remove this forum and begin again with something else. A completely fresh start where we can establish from the beginning that the purpose of the site is for art, animation, and other creative fields, and we can get rid of the toxic members before they're even a problem. This is instead of the big job of revitalizing the community as it is now and potentially dealing with those members unwilling to change because they think they have more say over what this site does than the creator of it.

Again, I am not suggesting this HAS to happen, I'm saying it MIGHT BE the decision that gets made if we CAN'T fix it. I think the least we could do in the short term would be to shuffle the main forum page to promote the creative sections first, that way we can put in more of an effort to convince the powers that be that it's worth the effort. Showing everyone that we're capable of more than just shitty behavior and looking the other way.

I've read up on everything so far, and will make my post and a suggestion some time later, due to class. However, while I can speak now, I will say that I understand and can agree with both sides of things. The forum community has started growing a bit more toxic, and it's possibly due to older users treating it as a hangout and getting away with more than they should. Simultaneously, it's difficult to just uproot things and hit the core of the problem as things stand now. Banning Nish may be a necessary course of action, but it will have some huge impacts that we can't fully predict. I've a neutral stance for now.

Maybe banning him is a little drastic but I don't feel like any other response is proportional, given that what he did was also very drastic. Telling him he's on his last legs is basically saying, "we know what you did was horrible, you have a history of being horrible, but we're just gonna see what happens..."

EDIT:

Here's how I think we should reorganize the forums in order to shift the focus to the creative fields:

Official Stuff

Show Off
- works in progress
- animations (no sub forums)
- artwork
- creative writing
- other

Community
- challenges
- collaborations
- resources
- tutorials
- help

RHG

SE

Off Topic
- Introduce Yourself
- General Chat
- Debate
- Polls
- Trash

Quote from Jeff

That is correct, I am heavily against telling people what to think, but I almost think it's a convenient argument against any sort of punishment for abusing other people.

It is, but unfortunately we don't have objective standards for what constitutes "abuse", that's all I'm saying. Expressing a negative opinion about someone is not abuse as far as I'm concerned, yet Hewitt just recently got an infraction from Camila for doing so and I'm sure we'll have plenty more examples of that going forward.

Quote from Jeff

Members who are toxic but occasionally capable of decency are still a problem. I am not willing to ignore that.

me neither. I'm not talking about people who occasionally exhibit the capacity for decency, I'm talking about members who spend a majority of their time engaged in normal discussion in addition to their instigative tendencies.

actually for the sake of clarity I'm specifically talking about four people and in my opinion jutsu fits the above description, sss to a lesser degree (is he even still here? I haven't seen him in a while), captain cook not so much and Nish is a special situation considering recent events.

I'm not saying those tendencies shouldn't be addressed, I'm just saying we don't have members here who do nothing but cause problems like we've had in the past, so really the only solution seems to be infracting problems when they happen since it's just a pattern of isolated instances of harassment. I'm only naming specific members because you mentioned watching individuals for their behavior and those are literally the only 4 I can think of.

Quote from Jeff

Especially with what Nish just did, which I think alone is deserving of a ban from this community.

I don't. You said this was the result of "extreme bullying" but Mike contacted Nish first with the intent to "take over" this place and somehow break up Camila and her boyfriend, and he threatened NIsh saying if he didn't play along he would try to get him in trouble. Yes he's literally retarded and none of this shit had any chance to be successful, but his intent was purely toxic and he's the one who set this all in motion as a result of his actions.

This to me is a case of "if you can't take it, don't dish it" and I don't see how it's even remotely fair to ban Nish for lying to Mike when we never once responded to Mike's lying with a ban. I don't see how someone has a fair claim to being bullied when they're the ones who start it, so I'm not even sure which rule Nish was breaking by doing this. I'm not condoning his behavior in a general sense but I wouldn't consider this specific circumstance "horrible" by any stretch of the imagination and I don't see any justification for a ban.


I still don't think the overall "toxicity" you're referring to is anything other than a result of increased tensions because of this Mike situation. Now that he's gone I bet things will calm down, and when they don't we can address it when it happens. If you have examples of what you're talking about they might help because I haven't noticed much of a difference in overall behavior outside of topics related to Mike. Certainly nothing extensive enough to make a forum reset seem like a possible solution.

Quote from Jeff

This forum's purpose isn't serve as a hang out place for a bunch of old members, and I feel that's what it's become. We aren't focused on what we should be focused on: art and animation. The first thing people see when they come here is the general section and a debate section. What do those have to do with art or animation? We're promoting these places BEFORE any of the stuff we should be focusing on. They're also the only places that the most toxic members hang out in, so it's a double-whammy of misdirected focus and putting our worst qualities on our cover.

Pretty much every forum I've been to puts the general chat topics at the top, but if you want to move them below the creative sections go ahead. It's not like they're hard to find or use for people who actually do want to focus on art and animation, though. This would probably just result in me and a bunch of other users having to scroll a lot more while we're here, but I'm willing to do it if you think it would help somehow.

Exilement is pretty much saying everything I have to say for me, but I'm open to the rearrangement I guess? Even dojo has the animation sections below general though, I'm not sure why that would make a difference in how stickpage presents itself.
and an entire forum overhaul seems needlessly excessive don't you think? If it's only a few choice users contributing to this kind of behavior, why would you need to shut down and restart the entire forum for it? I think it would make much more sense for you to make a new set of rules encompassing these new ideas of yours and anyone who doesn't comply will be banned as a natural consequence of their own unwillingness to change, just like douchington or 2d during the merge
A new member, Tugz, also made a good point, if drastic changes are to be made it would be nice to have a place for members to share their ideas and concerns about the forum as a whole, maybe not a whole subforum as he's suggesting, but a thread would probably be fine

Quote from Exilement

It is, but unfortunately we don't have objective standards for what constitutes "abuse", that's all I'm saying. Expressing a negative opinion about someone is not abuse as far as I'm concerned, yet Hewitt just recently got an infraction from Camila for doing so and I'm sure we'll have plenty more examples of that going forward.

I agree completely, those instances are not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to instances where members will consistently respond negatively to certain users or types of posts. Off-hand comments about something someone did is not my concern, my concern is people like cook constantly putting certain members down whenever they post.

Quote from Exilement

me neither. I'm not talking about people who occasionally exhibit the capacity for decency, I'm talking about members who spend a majority of their time engaged in normal discussion in addition to their instigative tendencies.

actually for the sake of clarity I'm specifically talking about four people and in my opinion jutsu fits the above description, sss to a lesser degree (is he even still here? I haven't seen him in a while), captain cook not so much and Nish is a special situation considering recent events.

To be clear I don't really have a problem with Jutsu other than what you state, that he's occasionally a huge asshole. In the instances where he IS a huge asshole, we shouldn't give him a pass because he's "normally" decent. I feel that is what happens, and is part of the reason people see us in a negative light. We don't do enough to prevent it.

Quote from Exilement

I don't. You said this was the result of "extreme bullying" but Mike contacted Nish first with the intent to "take over" this place and somehow break up Camila and her boyfriend, and he threatened NIsh saying if he didn't play along he would try to get him in trouble. Yes he's literally retarded and none of this shit had any chance to be successful, but his intent was purely toxic and he's the one who set this all in motion as a result of his actions.

This to me is a case of "if you can't take it, don't dish it" and I don't see how it's even remotely fair to ban Nish for lying to Mike when we never once responded to Mike's lying with a ban. I don't see how someone has a fair claim to being bullied when they're the ones who start it, so I'm not even sure which rule Nish was breaking by doing this. I'm not condoning his behavior in a general sense but I wouldn't consider this specific circumstance "horrible" by any stretch of the imagination and I don't see any justification for a ban.

Do you have proof of this? If this is the case then I will definitely change my mind, but as far as I have been shown Nish took it upon himself to harass him and unfortunately given his history that's the story I'm inclined to believe, but this is also the reason I brought this up because I don't have all the facts.

To address your fairness concerns: it's not about Nish lying. It's specifically about manipulating someone who is essentially equivalent to a 10-year-old into doing and saying things that incriminate himself. In what world is that okay? You banned Mike (which you shouldn't have done since you're not a global mod) almost immediately after he posted that thread as if you expected it, so I cant' help but get the feeling that it was planned that way to begin with. Now that it's come to light that Nish convinced him to do that, in what way is Mike's ban then justified? I feel if you're going to ban Mike just because he was "toxic" and not because he was manipulated into asking for it, then you should ban Nish for the same reason because of how he acts and what he did. It's not the same as "just lying" to Mike as if Mike's harmless lies to you are comparable to this. I understand the argument that if Mike was the initiator then it's a bit different, but again I don't know that so my judgement at the moment is based off of what I can glean from second hand reports. Either way, if the argument is that Mike brought it on himself by trying to manipulate Nish into getting himself into a mod position, then Nish brought this on himself by manipulating Mike into getting banned. To me they're the same thing, Nish just turned it on Mike, yet you're still using it as an excuse to keep Mike banned, whereas I see it as only fair that we either unban Mike or ban both of them for the same reason. They're both guilty.

Quote from Exilement

I still don't think the overall "toxicity" you're referring to is anything other than a result of increased tensions because of this Mike situation. Now that he's gone I bet things will calm down, and when they don't we can address it when it happens. If you have examples of what you're talking about they might help because I haven't noticed much of a difference in overall behavior outside of topics related to Mike. Certainly nothing extensive enough to make a forum reset seem like a possible solution.

This isn't coming out of nowhere as a result of the recent tensions, it's coming from literally a year or more of people saying the same thing to me when I was at Dojo. "I like Dojo better because it's a better animation community and SP is full of mean people." That is a generalization of what I hear from a lot of potential users that chose a more inviting site over ours.

I'm curious as to what you think about certain comments like this:

Quote from Captain Cook

lol I don't think he can control if he's being retarded or not

Where people will jump on to arguments they're not a part of just to insult someone. I realize that in this case it was Drone who might not care, but I see this happen all the time especially when it's towards a member that does something that someone else doesn't like. Here's another from where setto made a post in the chat thread and had SSS attack him:

http://forums.stickpage.com/showthread.php?876-The-Chat-Thread&p=1324738&viewfull=1#post1324738

It's these kinds of comments I think should be stopped. There's no reason to be such an asshole to someone just because they said something dumb. Maybe you think people should be tougher, but we're not here to train people for the internet or help them deal with teenage angst, this is an animation forum. The point I was trying to make in regards to resetting the forum wasn't that in doing so we get rid of some offhand comments, it's that we might find it easier than dealing with a cleanup, which goes beyond just harassment. I'm trying to say that if we have a community that's active and doesn't come across to others as mean, it's easier to convince whoever that we should put in the effort to keep the community as it is. I hope I'm making sense here. It's not the awful attitudes that would CAUSE a reset, they just make it easier to land on that decision.

Quote from Exilement

Pretty much every forum I've been to puts the general chat topics at the top, but if you want to move them below the creative sections go ahead. It's not like they're hard to find or use for people who actually do want to focus on art and animation, though. This would probably just result in me and a bunch of other users having to scroll a lot more while we're here, but I'm willing to do it if you think it would help somehow.

I think it will help by promoting the creative sections, as I said. You say "think it would help somehow" and I get the impression you think this is entirely arbitrary but I want to make it clear that the only reasons I believe we should do this are 1) to tuck the section that's most likely to contain vitriol away from where visitors might see it first, and 2) to establish that we're going to be focusing on SP more as a creative community. Moving the general chat section to the "off-topic" section accomplishes this, does it not? Or am I just too hasty in that

This is not about those 4 people Drone. They don't represent the mayority or the community either but like Jeff said they're really "loud". And sadly some newcommers think that to fit in they need to act like them, either that or they'll be the ones flamed. I always see these sort of comments on dojo or even youtube videos when a kid thinks about joining stickpage and a dude jumps and says "join dojo better, it's a nicer and better community", and that's because people that is new here gets rejected or flamed at for not liking/acting/doing the same things as that specific handful of people do.

As of everything else, Jeff's post sums up my thoughts.

Also Idk why wpuld Nish try to manipulate mike if he was "threatening" him? I mean not like nish would be like "Oh crap man, mike is serious I better listen to his demands", personally I wouldn't have taken it THAT serious, to the point of try to manipulate him.

Quote from Jeff

To be clear I don't really have a problem with Jutsu other than what you state, that he's occasionally a huge asshole. In the instances where he IS a huge asshole, we shouldn't give him a pass because he's "normally" decent. I feel that is what happens, and is part of the reason people see us in a negative light. We don't do enough to prevent it.

Cool, we're in agreement then. I wasn't trying to say people should get a pass because they're usually okay, I was just trying to name specific users because you mentioned keeping an eye on them and I guess I let my thoughts get away from the subject when I was describing the way I see them.

Quote from Jeff

Do you have proof of this? If this is the case then I will definitely change my mind, but as far as I have been shown Nish took it upon himself to harass him and unfortunately given his history that's the story I'm inclined to believe, but this is also the reason I brought this up because I don't have all the facts.

it was in the quote from him. "I then realised he was actually a pretty sneaky guy with sneaky intent. He wanted to become a moderator and thought leeching off me would help. He then hinted that he would 'betray' me by telling people that I put him up to doing stupid things (?!) so I'd better keep helping him. He also wanted me to help him break up Cami and her boyfriend."

if you want the actual PMs I could ask for them.

Quote from Jeff

You banned Mike (which you shouldn't have done since you're not a global mod) almost immediately after he posted that thread as if you expected it, so I cant' help but get the feeling that it was planned that way to begin with.

even if I was a global mod I would've banned him through the infraction system, why are we capable of doing it but not allowed to do so even when someone requests it? I'm genuinely confused about our policy regarding this, is there some separate ban system I'm not aware of that only global mods can use or something?

and sorry if it came off as if it were planned, I just happened to refresh as soon as he posted it, I had no idea what was going on until later that day.

Quote from Jeff

Now that it's come to light that Nish convinced him to do that, in what way is Mike's ban then justified? I feel if you're going to ban Mike just because he was "toxic" and not because he was manipulated into asking for it, then you should ban Nish for the same reason because of how he acts and what he did.

I banned him because he asked for it, and I'm encouraging we keep it that way after-the-fact now that we know his sole reason for posting here is to become a moderator by literally any means available to him. That doesn't describe Nish and banning him for being "toxic" kinda depends on ignoring the fact that these are two completely different people and two different patterns of behavior we're dealing with. I don't agree that my justification for not wanting Mike here must necessarily carry over to Nish since it takes into consideration the fact that Mike literally cannot do anything that benefits this community as long as he's here.

I do admit that it's unfair that he was pressured into requesting the ban but since that's the entire reason he was banned in the first place, I'd rather lift the ban off Mike than ban Nish for what he did if you insist one of those actions needs to be taken. I think pragmatically neither is going to do much of anything beneficial for anyone.

Quote from Jeff

I'm curious as to what you think about certain comments like this:

Where people will jump on to arguments they're not a part of just to insult someone.

Might be a bad example since that was in the chat thread, but seeing as we've stated in the past that dumb, pointless comments are allowed there just because there is no ongoing topic that people need to adhere to, I don't see how commenting on an ongoing argument in that thread is any more disruptive than the argument itself.

Like if it was a legitimate back-and-forth between us and cook popped in to call us autistic as he so often does, sure, that's purely disruptive and deserves an infraction, but making a dumb comment about an equally dumb argument in the chat thread seems okay if we're going to also say the argument itself is allowed to be carried out there. I'm more inclined to say if they don't want people weighing in on what they're saying, they should take their argument to PMs.

Quote from Jeff

Here's another from where setto made a post in the chat thread and had SSS attack him:

http://forums.stickpage.com/showthread.php?876-The-Chat-Thread&p=1324738&viewfull=1#post1324738

It's these kinds of comments I think should be stopped. There's no reason to be such an asshole to someone just because they said something dumb.

I mean, I guess you're right, I am used to people being more abrasive than absolutely necessary so I see this and think "if you don't want to be called retarded, don't post retarded shit like "do you like potatoes?" for no reason" because that's behavior that I think should be discouraged just as much as anything else, but if you're trying to push Stickpage away from those kind of negative tendencies I can't really argue against that.

I think ideally we should make an announcement saying anyone who feels harassed, insulted or threatened should report the post and we will issue a warning to the user. Make it clear that people will receive warnings and then infractions if they do something to make someone feel bad enough to report them. That seems like the only way we can keep things fair and consistent for everyone, but then we're deferring our judgment to everyone else in terms of what amounts to harassment. I'm sure that'll cause its own set of problems, but it's an idea.

Quote from Jeff

I think it will help by promoting the creative sections, as I said. You say "think it would help somehow" and I get the impression you think this is entirely arbitrary but I want to make it clear that the only reasons I believe we should do this are 1) to tuck the section that's most likely to contain vitriol away from where visitors might see it first, and 2) to establish that we're going to be focusing on SP more as a creative community. Moving the general chat section to the "off-topic" section accomplishes this, does it not? Or am I just too hasty in that

I do think it's arbitrary and ultimately won't make much of a difference but I don't really care enough either way to fight against it, so I'll leave it up to you.

You guys act like people don't get flamed on dojo. Tj moved from here to dojo and imo he's treated worse there, Dapstart had a whole topic on his profile where people did nothing but flame him, there's this other dude in the "flame and rant" section who gets nothing but ridiculed every time he posts (for good reason but still.) There are more instances but you get my point, saying that dojo is muchmuch better in this regard is false, the only reason people think this way is because it doesn't happen out in the open very much, but recently in the general chat on dojo I was berated by PLasmaghost for like five pages straight for "making fun of" Pokemon lmao. I personally don't see the issue with what we've got going on here, and as I said before if Jeff decided to make a new set of rules encompassing this "toxicity" that he's talking about, eventually people unwilling to conform will be weeded out. I'm just not seeing this being as big of an issue as you two are making it out to be, not everyone is as nice to a fault as you are Camila, not here or on dojo and it's pretty ludicrous to expect or want people to act that way.

Quote from Ashero

Thnx for being so cool and friendly! Have a good day!


btw is acutelatios a bot

Acute, people think you're a bot, RIP ; (

Quote from Exilement

it was in the quote from him. "I then realised he was actually a pretty sneaky guy with sneaky intent. He wanted to become a moderator and thought leeching off me would help. He then hinted that he would 'betray' me by telling people that I put him up to doing stupid things (?!) so I'd better keep helping him. He also wanted me to help him break up Cami and her boyfriend."

if you want the actual PMs I could ask for them.

I was sort of taking both what he said and what Mike has been bitching to me incessantly about on IRC as conjecture, but I'm not sure how much I want to dig into this. I would appreciate some hard evidence since Mike is unwilling to co-operate to back up his claims that Nish threatened his family (also why I'm ignoring him now about his ban). I don't want this to blow up at all, so I'd rather Nish not know about this discussion until after we've come to a conclusion. If you can get the screenshots without revealing that I am interested. I would also prefer to discuss this with him personally if we do end up leaning towards a ban, since I want to give him equal opportunity instead of just ranting behind the scenes and then banning him without recourse. It might not even come to that, since I'm inclined to believe you and him in this case.

Quote from Exilement

even if I was a global mod I would've banned him through the infraction system, why are we capable of doing it but not allowed to do so even when someone requests it? I'm genuinely confused about our policy regarding this, is there some separate ban system I'm not aware of that only global mods can use or something?

and sorry if it came off as if it were planned, I just happened to refresh as soon as he posted it, I had no idea what was going on until later that day.

No worries, I'm only entertaining that thought as a precaution, I would have been genuinely surprised if that were the case. As for the bans system, it's a little weird I'll admit. Basically sectional mods aren't allowed to directly ban someone, they can only do it by proxy through the infraction system which is supposed to only be used when a user has accumulated enough infractions. It's kind of an abuse of the infraction system on the mod's part, because the intention is for milestone bans and not for the mod to just give enough infraction points for the ban. This is different from normal bans which are supposed to be done through the mod control panel by global mods and administrators, and can be set for different time lengths. They're also tracked that way. My policy is that sectional mods shouldn't be in charge of who gets banned since banning someone is a serious thing usually. That is, normal infraction-based bans are fine, but if a sectional mod has a problem with a user they should bring it up here to get me or a global mod to help rather than taking it into their own hands. It happens some times and I'm not crazy about it because usually it's fine, like this instance, I was just pointing it out. I hope that clears it up.

Quote from Exilement

I banned him because he asked for it, and I'm encouraging we keep it that way after-the-fact now that we know his sole reason for posting here is to become a moderator by literally any means available to him. That doesn't describe Nish and banning him for being "toxic" kinda depends on ignoring the fact that these are two completely different people and two different patterns of behavior we're dealing with. I don't agree that my justification for not wanting Mike here must necessarily carry over to Nish since it takes into consideration the fact that Mike literally cannot do anything that benefits this community as long as he's here.

That is a very valid point, I didn't think about it in this regard. I was getting the impression from your quote from Nish that you wanted to keep the ban because he was doing some manipulative shit. This makes a lot more sense now that you put it this way.

Quote from Exilement

I do admit that it's unfair that he was pressured into requesting the ban but since that's the entire reason he was banned in the first place, I'd rather lift the ban off Mike than ban Nish for what he did if you insist one of those actions needs to be taken. I think pragmatically neither is going to do much of anything beneficial for anyone.

I'm not really insisting that, and based off of what you just said I'm not going to pursue it. I'm not going to unban Mike at this point but for separate reasons. I guess we just have to accept at this point that the circumstance was unfair but ultimately keeping it around is justified.

Quote from Exilement

Might be a bad example since that was in the chat thread, but seeing as we've stated in the past that dumb, pointless comments are allowed there just because there is no ongoing topic that people need to adhere to, I don't see how commenting on an ongoing argument in that thread is any more disruptive than the argument itself.

Like if it was a legitimate back-and-forth between us and cook popped in to call us autistic as he so often does, sure, that's purely disruptive and deserves an infraction, but making a dumb comment about an equally dumb argument in the chat thread seems okay if we're going to also say the argument itself is allowed to be carried out there. I'm more inclined to say if they don't want people weighing in on what they're saying, they should take their argument to PMs.

That's not really my point, my point was more about the way he chose to express himself. Calling it "commenting on an ongoing argument" seems like you're ignoring the content of the post, which was pretty unnecessary. In this instance I've already admitted it may not work out the best since Drone probably didn't give two shits about it, but my point was also that regardless of who it's said to, it's still rude and reflects poorly on us for letting THAT kind of response be normal. Your example is actually better to what I'm referring to.

Quote from Exilement

I mean, I guess you're right, I am used to people being more abrasive than absolutely necessary so I see this and think "if you don't want to be called retarded, don't post retarded shit like "do you like potatoes?" for no reason" because that's behavior that I think should be discouraged just as much as anything else, but if you're trying to push Stickpage away from those kind of negative tendencies I can't really argue against that.

I think the same way, believe me, but there HAS to be a better way to discourage it than being a raging asshole towards those offenders. I'm not saying we have to stop telling people we don't like what they're doing, we just have to stop doing so in such a vitriolic way.

Quote from Exilement

I think ideally we should make an announcement saying anyone who feels harassed, insulted or threatened should report the post and we will issue a warning to the user. Make it clear that people will receive warnings and then infractions if they do something to make someone feel bad enough to report them. That seems like the only way we can keep things fair and consistent for everyone, but then we're deferring our judgment to everyone else in terms of what amounts to harassment. I'm sure that'll cause its own set of problems, but it's an idea.

I kind of did this already with my post regarding harassment a while back, and I don't think it had the desired result. What you're describing is exactly what I was hoping to accomplish, except I would also want to allow for the harasser to make their claim as to why they would disagree with the infraction. Maybe we should make the thread more available to everyone? I did have an announcement at the top of every page for it though, I don't know. We could also try again to be more clear since that post also involved a lot of talk about other things.

Quote from Exilement

I do think it's arbitrary and ultimately won't make much of a difference but I don't really care enough either way to fight against it, so I'll leave it up to you.

I'm still thinking about it's value, but do you not agree that putting more emphasis on the creative sections is good for a website about creativity? I'm not saying my suggestion HAS to be that way, I was mostly looking for alternative suggestions or reasons why it wouldn't work. I mean we don't have to push the general chat ALL the way down, just give a bit more attention maybe by doing more minor shuffling?

Quote from Drone

You guys act like people don't get flamed on dojo. Tj moved from here to dojo and imo he's treated worse there, Dapstart had a whole topic on his profile where people did nothing but flame him, there's this other dude in the "flame and rant" section who gets nothing but ridiculed every time he posts (for good reason but still.) There are more instances but you get my point, saying that dojo is muchmuch better in this regard is false, the only reason people think this way is because it doesn't happen out in the open very much, but recently in the general chat on dojo I was berated by PLasmaghost for like five pages straight for "making fun of" Pokemon lmao. I personally don't see the issue with what we've got going on here, and as I said before if Jeff decided to make a new set of rules encompassing this "toxicity" that he's talking about, eventually people unwilling to conform will be weeded out. I'm just not seeing this being as big of an issue as you two are making it out to be, not everyone is as nice to a fault as you are Camila, not here or on dojo and it's pretty ludicrous to expect or want people to act that way.

Acute, people think you're a bot, RIP ; (

No people get flamed on Dojo, I'm not pretending that doesn't happen, but the staff there makes a concerted effort to prevent it, much more than we do I think. Their public image also is already more inviting in general since they also have a strong creative focus, I think people see that over the potential harassment whereas with us it's the complete opposite. I don't see how you can't see this issue, maybe you just don't understand the point I'm trying to make? Because it's not about stopping people from having arguments or whatever, it's stopping people from treating others like shit, and there's enough of a culture here that enforces treating others like shit to look good yourself that I see it as a problem.

gotta leave in 15 so I'll make this quick

Quote from Jeff

I was sort of taking both what he said and what Mike has been bitching to me incessantly about on IRC as conjecture, but I'm not sure how much I want to dig into this.

I talked to Mike for a bit on IRC and he admitted to contacting Nish first, so that's at least confirmed.

Quote from Jeff

This is different from normal bans which are supposed to be done through the mod control panel by global mods and administrators, and can be set for different time lengths. They're also tracked that way.

ah alright, that's all I was wondering, I didn't know we had that system. makes sense to me, I'll defer bans to the globals next time.

Quote from Jeff

That's not really my point, my point was more about the way he chose to express himself. Calling it "commenting on an ongoing argument" seems like you're ignoring the content of the post, which was pretty unnecessary.

Sorry I mentioned that just for future reference because you mentioned people butting into arguments they're not a part of, I think people should be allowed to express an opinion about a public argument even if they're not participating in it, but in your specific example I can't see a good reason to defend that kind of insult.

I know you weren't saying we shouldn't be allowed to comment on other arguments but if it's a particularly annoying/stupid one (like the one you shared) I think a "what the fuck?" sort of reaction is appropriate, but yeah insults directed toward someone for no good reason should get an infraction.

Quote from Jeff

I think the same way, believe me, but there HAS to be a better way to discourage it than being a raging asshole towards those offenders. I'm not saying we have to stop telling people we don't like what they're doing, we just have to stop doing so in such a vitriolic way.

Quote from Jeff

I kind of did this already with my post regarding harassment a while back, and I don't think it had the desired result. What you're describing is exactly what I was hoping to accomplish, except I would also want to allow for the harasser to make their claim as to why they would disagree with the infraction. Maybe we should make the thread more available to everyone? I did have an announcement at the top of every page for it though, I don't know. We could also try again to be more clear since that post also involved a lot of talk about other things.

agreed with the first quote, I actually suggested the announcement as damage control if and when someone bitches about us warning them because they offended someone, but I forgot it was so recent. it did cover a lot of ground so maybe a second, short reminder explaining that insulting members isn't always going to result in an infraction, but if you insult someone and they report you for it you will get a warning no matter what and it's up to them to decide when it is and isn't appropriate. and we'll still take care of cases where it's clearly above what's necessary even when it goes unreported.

that way people who feel threatened/insulted have a clear path to resolving it and no one can whine that we're being inconsistent when we defer our judgment on what is and isn't "harassment" to the people who are actually being harassed.

Quote from Jeff

I'm still thinking about it's value, but do you not agree that putting more emphasis on the creative sections is good for a website about creativity? I'm not saying my suggestion HAS to be that way, I was mostly looking for alternative suggestions or reasons why it wouldn't work. I mean we don't have to push the general chat ALL the way down, just give a bit more attention maybe by doing more minor shuffling?

I've thought about it more and it sounds fine to me, I agree that emphasizing the creative sections is for the best. I don't really think it'll make a noticeable difference but let's see what happens.

I broke the news to Mike about his ban and he seems fine with it, he just thanked me for my help. He might hang around #space, I told him that was fine as long as he didn't cause any problems.

I'm not saying I don't get what you mean, I'm saying I don't see why it's a big deal. Infract prople that treat others like shit for harassment or abuse and eventually if they keep it up they'll be banned, or am I still missing something?

I remember someone talking about banning mike from #space as well... I don't know the reasons tho.