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Sounds great. I hope some forums implement this so that people can have discussions about horrible topics in a civilized manner, instead of everyone just shunn

Sounds great. I hope some forums implement this so that people can have discussions about horrible topics in a civilized manner, instead of everyone just shunning people who think differently, whether that person is otherwise decent or not. I'd love a chance to have civilized discussions with people who I think are very, very wrong. It'd be a chance to actually convince them they're wrong, instead of just screaming hateful things at them and walking away. I'm not at all worried about them convincing me to start hating people, or even to convince other non-hateful people to start.

notheguyouthink 9y ago
As an aside, It would also be a great way to throttle yourself. Eg, I too would love to have the discussions you speak of. Despite this, I often see an escalation in tone and fight the urge to respond in kind. I often fail at not responding in kind. Doing so of course escalates the conversation, something I've now contributed to, and it will likely escalate yet again. Over and over, until all reasonability in the conversation is dead. If I knew it wasn't allowed, and especially if it gave me some type of non-public meter of how much further I can go before my conversation will be blacklisted/etc, then people like me have clear visual feedback over .. well, not being such a douche. It would be like having a state patrol a few lanes over on the interstate. If one is around, most people behave quite well, because we can all see what will happen if we step out of line. Likewise, our speedometer gives us the visual feedback to know what is out of line (with regards to speeding of course). It would feel very weird at first, especially if the system was not perfect, but at it's root I think it's needed for us to be able to discuss sensitive topics. Which, tend to be the ones we need to discuss the most.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  So you would rather sit in a traffic jam because everyone is scared they'll be the one who gets made an example out of for behaving normally? That's what having visible cops patrolling the highway devolves into and it's pretty terrible. I'm not sure if your opinions are bad or you just made bad comparison.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Plus, you're ugly and your mother dresses you funny.
  - nitrogen 9y ago
    Your last paragraph is definitely uncivil. The other two, maybe borderline uncivil in tone, though accurate in reality.
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was promoting/supporting this (or maybe I misunderstand you). I was talking about a tool to monitor yourself if a forum existed where users were banned/etc based on civility. Ie, a speedometer, in the car example. In the case where there is a forum that requires civility, yes I do want a tool to help me stay civil. Likewise, I also like having my speedometer. It's nice to know when I'm speeding, and when I'm not.
- sametmax 9y ago
  It's like forcing everybody to eat lettuce in a restaurant because some clients are on diet. It's horrible.
  - OtterCoder 9y ago
    This is an excellent example of comment escalation.
    - devrandomguy 9y ago
      I disagree, and I'm glad we can do that :) IMO, analogies are fair game, and a useful tool for simplification. They can also work well for highlighting hypocrisy, when a supposedly universal rule is not being applied as widely as we thought it was.
      - OtterCoder 9y ago
        I understand what you're saying, but not all analogies are useful. I've seen variations on the diet analogy applied to vulgarity or pointless offensiveness fairly often, and I think it's a pretty poor one. There's nothing wholesome or 'meaty' about vulgarity. It raises the temperature of the argument and doesn't contribute useful information. It's more akin a diner pouring pig slop on a restaurant table and insisting that it's the other patrons' fault for finding it impossible to eat in those circumstances.
        devrandomguy 9y ago
        Ah, so the problem is hot-button topics, not analogies. That is a bit more complex. It is hard to know where to draw the line between the listener being over-sensitive, and the speaker being a sophisticated troll. Dang and I actually butted heads over that one a few weeks ago. I think it is just as important to take things at face value, instead of assuming malice, as it is to be sensitive to other people's issues (for lack of a better term). I've actually had decent results debating obvious trolls, just by postponing emotion, identifying and avoiding assumptions, and focusing on the actual meaning of their statements.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
LoSboccacc 9y ago
current implementation overfit the word curve. i.e. "chimpanzees" is often associated with trolling insults, resulting in a highly "toxic" scoring even in standard contexts: http://i.imgur.com/HM4cOca.png http://i.imgur.com/HM4cOca.png it will eventually learn as user reports and corrects the correlations between normal and toxic in full sentences, but it's still lacking as of now, and not only for controversial topics: https://i.imgur.com/HGrs4ze.png https://i.imgur.com/HGrs4ze.png
- wccrawford 9y ago
  That's a common problem with "dumb" censors on websites that are trying to keep things civil, except that they always censor those words, instead of just sometimes. And there's no way for the censor to learn from mistakes on those website. One that can learn and get better sounds amazing and would likely be better-tolerated by the userbase. It could even learn automatically over time as the moderators mark each toxic post as such, and un-mark the ones that got mistakenly auto-censored.
oconnor663 9y ago
Partial counter argument, or maybe a thing-that-is-also-true: We should expect some people to feel really hurt by a topic, depending on how close it is to them, even if the wording is civil. For example, it's easy for me to have a civil debate about cross burning, because no one I know has ever had a cross burned in their yard. But I shouldn't be surprised if people who have seen that sort of thing find the debate really really uncomfortable, and maybe even if my comfort with the topic comes across as not having sympathy. So it could be that "XYZ abstract argument about cross burning" is true, and also that talking about it in a dispassionate way is hurtful and rude. I'm not sure exactly what to do in situations like that, but giving 50% or so of the discussion time to acknowledging those feelings seems like a good starting point?
- tomschlick 9y ago
  > I'm not sure exactly what to do in situations like that, but giving 50% or so of the discussion time to acknowledging those feelings seems like a good starting point? Giving half the time for debate to talk about feelings that are not "debate-able"? Thats probably a waste of time that will derail your debate entirely as people will start debating those feelings.
- mcguire 9y ago
  One of my friends, who is probably even more of a devil's advocate than I am in my most cynical mood, once got into a discussion about how bad the Nazis is actually were. One of his points: they did a lot of effective engineering (we worked at MSFC, BTW.), and almost all of the people they killed would be dead now, anyway.
PeachPlum 9y ago
"I would really rather you died an early death, perhaps at your own hand. An improved situation would be if your maternal vessel has imbibed the ejaculant of your genesis than absorbed it through her tissue." One doesn't need to scream to be toxic.
23443463453 9y ago
I find that mentality terrifying because it's ... excuse your probably triggering ... ignorant and does not follow the fallacious logic to it's final disastrous conclusions. You know you are clearly wrong as a liberal when one of the foremost, masquerading communist, Noam Chomsky, disagrees with controlling speech. Some will invariably start trying to make a counter argument that "private company ... blah blah", but the inherent and clear exposure as disingenuous rationalization comes with the understanding that the tech-tyrants are de dafacto governmental actors ... essentially state level actors that are a threat to the government of the people, not even to mention an inherent threat to every single most basic notion of democracy. It does not matter that Google and Facebook, et al. tech-tyrants are private entities when they have formed a tyrannical cabal to suppress the means of communication to the point where alternatives are impractical, let alone impossible. It's the same argument as saying slavery is justified because you can always flee slavery if you so choose. That's also a private enterprise. I don't think many of you would start advocating for slavery though. There's fundamentally no difference between depriving someone of their freedom of movement and depriving them of their freedom to speak, whether you prefer to abuse your power and control to censor and bring to heel the speech you don't like or not.

notheguyouthink 9y ago

As an aside, It would also be a great way to throttle yourself. Eg, I too would love to have the discussions you speak of. Despite this, I often see an escalation in tone and fight the urge to respond in kind. I often fail at not responding in kind. Doing so of course escalates the conversation, something I've now contributed to, and it will likely escalate yet again. Over and over, until all reasonability in the conversation is dead. If I knew it wasn't allowed, and especially if it gave me some type of non-public meter of how much further I can go before my conversation will be blacklisted/etc, then people like me have clear visual feedback over .. well, not being such a douche. It would be like having a state patrol a few lanes over on the interstate. If one is around, most people behave quite well, because we can all see what will happen if we step out of line. Likewise, our speedometer gives us the visual feedback to know what is out of line (with regards to speeding of course). It would feel very weird at first, especially if the system was not perfect, but at it's root I think it's needed for us to be able to discuss sensitive topics. Which, tend to be the ones we need to discuss the most.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
So you would rather sit in a traffic jam because everyone is scared they'll be the one who gets made an example out of for behaving normally? That's what having visible cops patrolling the highway devolves into and it's pretty terrible. I'm not sure if your opinions are bad or you just made bad comparison.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Plus, you're ugly and your mother dresses you funny.
- nitrogen 9y ago
  Your last paragraph is definitely uncivil. The other two, maybe borderline uncivil in tone, though accurate in reality.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was promoting/supporting this (or maybe I misunderstand you). I was talking about a tool to monitor yourself if a forum existed where users were banned/etc based on civility. Ie, a speedometer, in the car example. In the case where there is a forum that requires civility, yes I do want a tool to help me stay civil. Likewise, I also like having my speedometer. It's nice to know when I'm speeding, and when I'm not.
sametmax 9y ago
It's like forcing everybody to eat lettuce in a restaurant because some clients are on diet. It's horrible.
- OtterCoder 9y ago
  This is an excellent example of comment escalation.
  - devrandomguy 9y ago
    I disagree, and I'm glad we can do that :) IMO, analogies are fair game, and a useful tool for simplification. They can also work well for highlighting hypocrisy, when a supposedly universal rule is not being applied as widely as we thought it was.
    - OtterCoder 9y ago
      I understand what you're saying, but not all analogies are useful. I've seen variations on the diet analogy applied to vulgarity or pointless offensiveness fairly often, and I think it's a pretty poor one. There's nothing wholesome or 'meaty' about vulgarity. It raises the temperature of the argument and doesn't contribute useful information. It's more akin a diner pouring pig slop on a restaurant table and insisting that it's the other patrons' fault for finding it impossible to eat in those circumstances.
      - devrandomguy 9y ago
        Ah, so the problem is hot-button topics, not analogies. That is a bit more complex. It is hard to know where to draw the line between the listener being over-sensitive, and the speaker being a sophisticated troll. Dang and I actually butted heads over that one a few weeks ago. I think it is just as important to take things at face value, instead of assuming malice, as it is to be sensitive to other people's issues (for lack of a better term). I've actually had decent results debating obvious trolls, just by postponing emotion, identifying and avoiding assumptions, and focusing on the actual meaning of their statements.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

LoSboccacc 9y ago

current implementation overfit the word curve. i.e. "chimpanzees" is often associated with trolling insults, resulting in a highly "toxic" scoring even in standard contexts: http://i.imgur.com/HM4cOca.png http://i.imgur.com/HM4cOca.png it will eventually learn as user reports and corrects the correlations between normal and toxic in full sentences, but it's still lacking as of now, and not only for controversial topics: https://i.imgur.com/HGrs4ze.png https://i.imgur.com/HGrs4ze.png

wccrawford 9y ago
That's a common problem with "dumb" censors on websites that are trying to keep things civil, except that they always censor those words, instead of just sometimes. And there's no way for the censor to learn from mistakes on those website. One that can learn and get better sounds amazing and would likely be better-tolerated by the userbase. It could even learn automatically over time as the moderators mark each toxic post as such, and un-mark the ones that got mistakenly auto-censored.

oconnor663 9y ago

Partial counter argument, or maybe a thing-that-is-also-true: We should expect some people to feel really hurt by a topic, depending on how close it is to them, even if the wording is civil. For example, it's easy for me to have a civil debate about cross burning, because no one I know has ever had a cross burned in their yard. But I shouldn't be surprised if people who have seen that sort of thing find the debate really really uncomfortable, and maybe even if my comfort with the topic comes across as not having sympathy. So it could be that "XYZ abstract argument about cross burning" is true, and also that talking about it in a dispassionate way is hurtful and rude. I'm not sure exactly what to do in situations like that, but giving 50% or so of the discussion time to acknowledging those feelings seems like a good starting point?

tomschlick 9y ago
> I'm not sure exactly what to do in situations like that, but giving 50% or so of the discussion time to acknowledging those feelings seems like a good starting point? Giving half the time for debate to talk about feelings that are not "debate-able"? Thats probably a waste of time that will derail your debate entirely as people will start debating those feelings.
mcguire 9y ago
One of my friends, who is probably even more of a devil's advocate than I am in my most cynical mood, once got into a discussion about how bad the Nazis is actually were. One of his points: they did a lot of effective engineering (we worked at MSFC, BTW.), and almost all of the people they killed would be dead now, anyway.

PeachPlum 9y ago

"I would really rather you died an early death, perhaps at your own hand. An improved situation would be if your maternal vessel has imbibed the ejaculant of your genesis than absorbed it through her tissue." One doesn't need to scream to be toxic.

23443463453 9y ago

I find that mentality terrifying because it's ... excuse your probably triggering ... ignorant and does not follow the fallacious logic to it's final disastrous conclusions. You know you are clearly wrong as a liberal when one of the foremost, masquerading communist, Noam Chomsky, disagrees with controlling speech. Some will invariably start trying to make a counter argument that "private company ... blah blah", but the inherent and clear exposure as disingenuous rationalization comes with the understanding that the tech-tyrants are de dafacto governmental actors ... essentially state level actors that are a threat to the government of the people, not even to mention an inherent threat to every single most basic notion of democracy. It does not matter that Google and Facebook, et al. tech-tyrants are private entities when they have formed a tyrannical cabal to suppress the means of communication to the point where alternatives are impractical, let alone impossible. It's the same argument as saying slavery is justified because you can always flee slavery if you so choose. That's also a private enterprise. I don't think many of you would start advocating for slavery though. There's fundamentally no difference between depriving someone of their freedom of movement and depriving them of their freedom to speak, whether you prefer to abuse your power and control to censor and bring to heel the speech you don't like or not.