So… Discourse has myriad settings related to flagging and how they affect posts, topics, users, etc. To be honest, we haven’t had to deal with it before. There’s a “Max Flags Per User Per Day” setting that is currently at its default, which, IMO, is high. However, if people start to abuse it, we’ll adjust settings until they make sense.
Flagging is a good feedback tool and a good part of Discourse. It’s meant to be used to help promote a healthy community. Might we need to tweak settings? Sure. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, though.
…hey I’m alive. Since just before the switch to Discourse, I’ve been busy with various life things…joyful and sad and crazy work etc. (just like real life), and that pushed QT3 out of the way (among others…#backlog). No need for bargain hunting for me.
Thanks for calling me here to catch up on something momentous. Stay safe for those of you near fires.
I hate it when stuff in P&R disrupts friendships that have existed here for a decade or more. Just say no to P&R, folks. I did, and I didn’t know things were horrible here until Wumpus announced he was leaving.
The thing is, even if this is Tom’s board, it’s a community. Sometimes you might not like a community’s leadership. But hey, look at the USA’s leader – but I haven’t moved to Canada, because I have friends here.
And I have friends on Qt3 and I would hope if you have issues with how things are administered, you would express that to the management but stick around to hang out with the rest of us. Because I for one would find this a less interesting place without @ArmandoPenblade and @Nesrie and the others. (I even miss Wumpus, though having been around since the Blue Boards, it’s not like this is the first Wumpus membership drama.)
Still hate the schism because while I am member of some of the other forums folks went to, I really only have time to hang in one and Qt3 remains the most overall civil and intelligent place around, with a manageable message load. And I happen to like Tom even though I do at times disagree with him.
Right, but the existence of the twit who got banned or how one person deals with him does not affect my relationship with the hundreds of other people I talk with here.
As for politics, arguing about them online accomplishes effectively nothing. If they concern you, actually getting involved with campaigning, feedback, etc will have exponentially more effect than trying to change people’s minds on message boards or FB.
You might as well say that arguing about politics anywhere accomplishes nothing, since there’s nothing particularly different about arguing them online, except of course you can reach more people that way. This thesis might be true, but since politics basically is arguing, I doubt that it’s true. Campaigning is arguing. Feedback is arguing. There’s nothing special about online that prevents it from being as effective there as anywhere else.
I was a notorious champion of the “ignore it, it’s just the internet, who gives a shit?” perspective myself. Recent events proved the truism that crap on the internet doesn’t matter in the real world to be false.
Obviously actively protesting and campaigning in meatspace has a dramatically greater effect. But liking a tweet or whatever matters too.
I don’t know about that. At times @Timex has changed my mind on topics, and @Scuzz and @Strollen have made me realize that my view is certainly fallible, and sometimes needs to revised.
On the other hand, @ArmandoPenblade has made me realize that smart rationale people can have views that are more extreme than mine and might also be valid.
Maybe you don’t get anything from P&R, but it has helped me grow as a citizen.
And, as for how it can impact my life? Well, for several decades, social pressure and stigma has kept the worst of Americans silent (well, except the Christian Right) but recently those villians have found themselves growing confident in the dark corners of the web. I think it’s important to confront people and either dissuade them of their beliefs, or at least let them know that they beliefs aren’t welcome.
We should tolerate what we must(like the Christian Right) but otherwise, confront evil where ever it is (and also be mindful that we don’t always know what evil is, so we should keep an open mind).
I agree with you, to the extent that I don’t argue politics here, like I wouldn’t at my local gaming/sci fi /film club. Why would I want to endlessly impose my views on friends who have gathered for another purpose? That is why I, as well, avoid and 99% perma-ignore P & R. And now I will probably do the same with this thread as well. The one critique I’d offer the people here who dwell a great amount of time in P & R is that they think they leave P & R there, but they don’t leave the endlessly confrontational attitude that arguing politics brings there. And they frequently look for political undertones in other categories via an argumentative partisan lens.
I don’t have the illusion that I leave P & R at the door. How the hell could I? If someone won’t hire me because of my sex, because of my hair, because of the color of my skin, if people get angry because I simply ask if they considered having something on the screen that looks more like me… this isn’t politics for those of us who are not white males… it’s life and it’s pretty much everyday. If more people understood that, perhaps their ability to dismiss things so casually wouldn’t be so grating.
I don’t think anyone does. That’s human nature. I think, though, that after “having it out” in Tom’s rumpus room about partisan political issues, some people’s adrenaline stays at a high level and they begin wanting to have confrontations out in the back porch where the Call of Cthulhu game is going on. And Tom has a sign on his door that says “Do P & R in P & R” and “Leave things in one room (thread) in that room”.
In any case, as I mentioned earlier, this thread is now rapidly becoming a P & R thread, which I don’t do, and I’ll be muting it.
This is an interesting comment that has me wondering… “Does it?” Does actively protesting and campaigning in the streets actually lead to greater effects or is it true that manipulation of people via Social Media protesting and campaigning has a much greater real world effect? We’ve seen thousands in the streets since the election on a number of issues… it’s been ignored. We’ve seen someone perish when one of those crowds was rammed. It’s been ignored.
On the other hand, every day there are things rolling through people’s feeds on Facebook and the like that reinforce all the hatred and fear in ways that make the real world happenings seem like isolated incidents by comparison to the people swayed by living in their self-imposed bubbles.
This isn’t the thread to discuss it… but I think it’s definitely something that people aren’t taking seriously enough.
Well if this was the topic for people who are missing and are they coming back but if you come back let’s not say why you left or why you came back, that’s fine.
I came and was quite surprised with who had left while I was gone for only a few weeks. And wumpus leaving, I feel partially responsible for that. I reached out to him, and it had nothing to do with politics and everything about being human and trying to figure out if there was a good way for me to address the hell on earth that QT3 became.
If that’s too PR for people, I don’t know what tell you. That’s just reality for some of us.
Manipulation online is a far greater return on effort, certainly. Very easy to like a post. That doesn’t mean it has greater effect overall, it’s easier and reaches further but lacks visceral impact of a protest or march.
Not at all. My comments earlier there really weren’t talking about this thread, at all. It is gettin’ political now, so I’ll mute it, but that’'s nothing personal. Personally, I am pleased to see you here and active again, as I said way up there in this thread. :)
Ditto. In fact you could say this was the ultimate in a “Political act”. He was unhappy with governance at Qt3. And emigrated. But he always had issues with the Constitution in Qt3-landia.
