SDN - The Great Warsie Bread Party

[Tyralak]

If anyone didn't believe SDN was an over moderated groupthink, check out this thread. Probably the last one I'll post in there.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=131102

Given that thread is unreadable by anyone without SDN membership, you might want to summarize what you're talking about.

Sorry. I thought it was readable to anyone. To sum it up, it was a thread where an SDNer was asking why ASVSers seemed to be given special status on SDN (or at least treated like The Ancients) What followed was a discussion reminiscing over the old days at ASVS. Then Atomik Chiken and Marina got into an entertaining spat. Then the discussion turned to the overmoderated nature of SDN, and the contrast between that and ASVS. (Or even SDN and other web boards) Dalton (who I'm on really good terms with) got slightly defensive about it, but not too much. Then a couple of non-ASVSer mods came in and started whining that they didn't want this kind of discussion on *their* board. (Sorry, I thought it was Wong's board) I didn't realize one of them was a mod, (not that it would have mattered) and I asked "If you don't like the discussion, why are you here in this thread?" The another one said he was a mod and his job was "to wipe my eyes when I stopped crying" I humorously suggested something else he could wipe instead. Then others started warning me that I shouldn't "piss off the mods". I assumed they had a thicker skin than that, so I mentioned that it was a joke, and this kind of behavior is exactly what was being discussed here. I was basically told that "This isn't ASVS" and I shouldn't challenge the mods here, etc. At that point, I said that I would take my leave for now, and pop back in from time to time. I haven't posted there since, but they childishly moved the thread to the hall of shame, and continued mocking me in my absence. I suggested that some of them meet me in ASVS for a proper debate, but none have had the guts to take me up on it. That's basically it in a nutshell.

It's 11 pages long, but check out the nasty turn at the end. As much as they protest, SDNs true colors were exposed.

What's a Bread Party, you may ask?

I can't help but thinking there's some intention for causing insult or provoking a reaction by choosing this metaphor to describe a discussion thread. I would much prefer discussion was constructive.

Yeah, the metaphor was a bit over the top. Sorry. I deleted the link.

[Jedi Master Spock]

And? Debate is encouraged and allowed on SDN, within the framework of its guidelines. It is expected that you be able to back up your opinions with facts. The thought that people have some intrinsic right to absolute free expression on a forum just because it is the internet is ridiculous.

I disagree. Debate may be allowed - within certain strictures - on SDN; however, it is not encouraged. It is tightly regulated in order to discourage it. Many of the rules, although perhaps initially plausible-sounding, can and have been used to discourage debate.

Review, if you will:

1. Do not "hijack" threads by trying to change the subject in mid-stream. We are aware that a discussion may meander into different tangents and even different subjects without any conscious effort to make it do so. However, there are times when, in the judgement of our staff, someone has deliberately ignored or tried to change the subject of a thread.

The ordinary method of dealing with this on a forum is to split the new topic into a new thread. "In the judgment of staff" makes this a highly subjective matter, and can be used as an excuse for closing a discussion or disciplining a user, restricting their ability to debate on SDN.

2. The "vendetta" rule: pursuant to the hijacking rule, do not "follow someone around" because you dislike him, hijacking threads in which he participates in order to carry on your feud with him. This particular form of hijacking is considered the least acceptable of all hijacking offenses.

If a member in good standing on SDN doesn't like you when you disagree with him or her all the time, this can be used as an excuse to ban.

3. Pursuant to the previous rule, do not start threads solely for the purpose of criticizing an individual member of the board. Only the administrative staff is permitted to attack people in that manner, and they generally do it because the person has broken the rules.

If the staff don't like you, they will mock you publicly. You will not be able to respond in kind. This discourages continuing participation by dissidents.

4. Do not use someone's rudeness as an excuse to ignore his points.

Ad hominem attacks are barred in formal debate for very good reason. They obscure logical argumentation, distract from dialog, and in many cases sway judgment without reason.

5. Do not employ the "broken record" debating style. Continuously repeating yourself regardless of what others say is a quick way to get banned.

If you restate your points following the failure of SDN regulars to address them in an effective and logical manner, you can be banned for repeating the same perfectly valid arguments for perfectly good reasons.

6. If you are asked for evidence to support a claim you've made, you should either produce this evidence or concede the point until such time as you can produce this evidence. People who consistently ignore requests for evidence to support their claims (particularly contentious claims) are not looked upon kindly here.

I believe this is the most often cited rule by SDN residents claiming the need for extensive debate rules. It is also a rule present in similar form on SB.com. From what I've seen, neither board has been able to enforce this rule consistently and fairly, generally holding some members to much higher standards of "evidence" than others. In conjunction with the other SDN rules, I expect it to never be enforced consistently.

7. If you dismiss an argument because of its use of profanity, you can be instantly banned.

See discussion of rule #4. These two rules combine to create a hostile atmosphere in which minority opinions may be ridiculed and swamped with ad hominem noise, over which they cannot be clearly heard.

1. If you have a complaint about another member, contact one of the moderators of the forum in which the alleged offense took place. Do not be a "back-seat moderator". Please note that this complaint should reference one of our rules, not the rules at xyz forum which you prefer over our rules.

If you're on the bad side of the moderators, expect to be suppressed if you publicly point out other members are violating the debate rules. This rule helps create inconsistency in rules enforcement.

2. If you strongly disagree with our forum's policies, either keep it to yourself or leave. This is our forum, these are our rules, and if you don't like it, there are plenty of other forums out there. If you insist on staying and ranting about how you much you object to our rules, we will make you leave.

Forum policy and the rules of debate are restricted topics not allowed for debate.

3. Pursuant to the previous rule, if you are upset at the mods for enforcing our rules, either complain privately to an admin (who may or may not ridicule your complaint), keep your trap shut, or leave.

As with rule #1 above, this helps create an atmosphere where the rules are enforced inconsistently.

4. If you have a complaint about the whole board, you are obviously unhappy here, so leave. Complaints like "so this is the way you do things at SD.Net" and "the prevailing attitude here seems to be" etc clearly indicate that you dislike something about our entire board culture and you should leave. If you persist on staying and acting like this, we will make you leave.

A rule intended solely to reduce dissent and increase the unanimity on the board.

5. If you are found to be harassing another member (particularly a female member, and especially one who is less than 18 years old) via PM or some other means, particularly in a manner that makes the other member feel threatened in some way (such as "stalking", etc), you will be banned. Do not pester female members for personal info, and do not ignore requests to stop bothering them. Do not add lines to your sig to proclaim your love for some female member or declare some membership in a "cult" of worship for her. We are aware that some of you are young and prone to this sort of behaviour, but we do not tolerate it.

This rule does not contribute to the suppression of debate, AFAIK. This makes it unique among the administrative rules.

6. Flaming of the staff is permitted, but only with respect to their views stated in any given thread, not their administrative actions. Those who pre-emptively or falsely accuse the moderators of "abuse of power" (a common troll tactic designed to discourage enforcement of rules against them) will be disciplined.

Most similar to rule #2, this effectively restricts not only the rules, but the enforcement of the rules from the topics allowed for public debate.

So out of those 13 rules on debate and administrative practices, 12 contribute to stifling debate. Then there are the "posting rules." I would in particular like to point to rule #10:

10. If you intend to start a debate, search the forum and the associated websites first, to see if your arguments have been raised before. If you are too lazy to search the forum and the associated websites before launching what you no doubt believe to be an innovative and original argument, then do not complain if you are flamed to a crisp.

This can be easily used to close discussion on any topic that any moderator on SDN thinks is an argument that's been concluded. E.g., almost anything talking about Star Wars vs Star Trek, for which the official party line would appear to be that the AOTC:ICS ended all debate.






So, no, I don't believe SDN encourages debate. The rules of the board - regardless of what their original intentions were - have the effect of discouraging debate.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Look the bottom line is that anyone can see even before they join what the board is like.

Yes, I can't disagree with this. You hardly land and register at SDN by mistake.

To join up and then complain about its culture or the way it does things is ridiculous. If one prefers another way then your not being forced to post there.

It is not ridiculous if you were not aware of how the board truly worked.
I suppose some people, years ago, moved to SDN without expecting the problems they're highlighting now.

[Mr. Oragahn]

JMS,

I agree that certain rules don't favour debate. You either have to behave like a SDN denizen, or leave. You're expected to be capable of growing a though skin and filter out the insults, post your own insults and keep going on as long as there's meat between your teeth.

That said, many rules you quoted are just plain normal rules as well, and like any bills of right or chart, it can be as pure as you want it to be, if it's solely used in a biased way, you won't get anything good out of it.

[Jedi Master Spock]

That said, many rules you quoted are just plain normal rules as well, and like any bills of right or chart, it can be as pure as you want it to be, if it's solely used in a biased way, you won't get anything good out of it.

I disagree.

Now, a few have close relatives on other boards; on a board claiming to focus on debate, for example, requiring people to come up with evidence to back up their claims is hardly unusual. I've noted that it seems to have often had trouble on SB as well. However, even the "normal" rules tend to have unusual SDN features.

The rule regarding appealing moderator action is particularly worth noting, because you can see an analogous phrase within our board rules. It's listed not as a rule, but as a "good piece of advice:"

If you feel the moderators have acted unjustly, you are welcome to make an appeal in private to the administrator - but have all your ducks in a row. Don't waste my time with unfounded complaints.

(As there are currently no other moderators, this is currently a meaningless piece of advice. However, when I wrote up all the board policies, I had no idea whether or not I would have the time to moderate SFJ myself or would have to rely on others, and preferred to write the basic stickies up once for the long term.)

However, even then, note the distinctions. I don't disallow publicly questioning moderator - or administrator - action. SDN's rule appears to, since it lists three permissible options for dealing with moderator misbehavior (in conjunction with AR#6, that seems more clear):

3. Pursuant to the previous rule, if you are upset at the mods for enforcing our rules, either complain privately to an admin (who may or may not ridicule your complaint), keep your trap shut, or leave.

I think it's pretty typical of discussion boards to provide a venue for questioning moderator actions. It's not unusual to direct complaints to a specific section of the forum, or for board administration to be slow in responding to complaints (e.g., as has been complained of SB.com and ST.com in the past, although not all the time). I think it's atypical, however, to restrict it to private messages to administrators who "may or may not ridicule your complaint."





As I said, most of the rules are individually plausible, at least naively. However, each of the rules I mentioned (with the unique exception of AR#5) has the effect of stifling debate, particularly in conjunction with the other rules.

[Mith]

Not sure what you're asking. Wong's doing the same stuff he always has, and his band of fluffers still shape the debate by over moderation, intimidation, and banning members. Their "Senate" is ridiculous pompery and self aggrandizement as well. If all you've known is SDN, then it's hard to explain where us ASVSers are coming from.

Considering it's Mike's money that runs the board, he can do whatever the heck he wants. Why this is an issue with so many people is beyond me, would you go into someones house and then complain that he wants you to take your shoes off?

So what?

Yeah, it's his website, but if someone built a sign with his own money on his own property that basically amounted to "blacks should be shot on sight," you don't honestly believe that people are going to not comment on how he's a douche?

That's the problem here. Wong may own the site, but he's putting forth dishonest arguments, making hypocritical arguments, but that's not the worse; no, it's the point of limiting ideas. And I don't just mean ideas that are just bad (like white supermacy or even issues on abortion), but ideas that express one's thoughts, beliefs, and political opinion. It's all about making someone you don't agree with look like a complete and utter idiot. Honestly, I discovered their lack of maturity when I went to their site and debated star trek.

I had next to zero experience in the fields that debates, but the idea of two different franchises going at it was simply fascinating and I was hoping for a good intellectual debate by a group that presented themselves as enlightened people...and sourly disapointed. They were complete and utter assholes. And yeah, you can say that them not being nice is kind of childish, but I'd never been to such a childish site before. All the former sites I visited had impartial mods who gave fair rulings and did their best to keep the peace. There was no form of civility in their discussions, nor did they seem to understand that debating was trying to get the other person to understand your point, not a "I'm RIGHT, I'm RIGHT, l00k @t h0w awe-s0me I @m!"

That's why I don't like SDN. It's full of immature children who only care about being right and sounding important. It's like the pride parade; it makes you feel good, but in the end, you haven't really done anything worthwhile.

[ILikeDeathNote]

Considering it's Mike's money that runs the board, he can do whatever the heck he wants. Why this is an issue with so many people is beyond me, would you go into someones house and then complain that he wants you to take your shoes off?

So what?

Yeah, it's his website, but private ownership does not prevent outsiders from scrutinizing the practices used to run and govern his website

I hope you don't mind my critique, but that should be a more intellectually honest and less inflammatory way of phrasing your statement.

[Mith]

Considering it's Mike's money that runs the board, he can do whatever the heck he wants. Why this is an issue with so many people is beyond me, would you go into someones house and then complain that he wants you to take your shoes off?

So what?

Yeah, it's his website, but private ownership does not prevent outsiders from scrutinizing the practices used to run and govern his website

I hope you don't mind my critique, but that should be a more intellectually honest and less inflammatory way of phrasing your statement.

It isn't dishonest in any form.0o

It's simply putting out in simple terms, that even if it is his sight, people are going to comment on what he does, especially if he's a douche. Nor am I sure how it's flamatory. Are you really telling me that someone of African descent is going to read that and become angry over the example? Why? I clearly don't care for such things myself and sadly, there are people who would do that (presuming they could gather the brain cells to spell the sign). To me, it's just about as bad as saying "All geeks should be shot on sight" or some such. I realize the comparison is a bit of cold water in the face, but the point of such a thing is to grab the reader's attention and get them to understand your point.

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

I believe the inflammation(that sounds funny in this context) come from the hostile tone of your post, not the content itself.

I must say, though, that I found it to be a rather humorous way to make your point.

[The Corporal]

So what?

Yeah, it's his website, but if someone built a sign with his own money on his own property that basically amounted to "blacks should be shot on sight," you don't honestly believe that people are going to not comment on how he's a douche?

How are the two remotely comparable? One is a sign on your lawn proclaiming your a racist POS and no one can do anything about and your forced to see it. SDN is a webboard, which means you can't see it unless you actively look for it.

And yes Mike is an asshole, a snob and a tonne of other things. However he setup the board because he found nanny-boards tiresome and its pretty obvious to me that he did it in a way that wouldn't allow people to get away with the BS they did on ASVS. In other words, your accountable for your actions, just like in RL.

That's the problem here. Wong may own the site, but he's putting forth dishonest arguments, making hypocritical arguments, but that's not the worse; no, it's the point of limiting ideas. And I don't just mean ideas that are just bad (like white supermacy or even issues on abortion), but ideas that express one's thoughts, beliefs, and political opinion. It's all about making someone you don't agree with look like a complete and utter idiot. Honestly, I discovered their lack of maturity when I went to their site and debated star trek.

Err...when where you there? At any rate that is the purpose of the site, it says so right on the header! You know what your in for before you start posting.

I had next to zero experience in the fields that debates, but the idea of two different franchises going at it was simply fascinating and I was hoping for a good intellectual debate by a group that presented themselves as enlightened people...and sourly disapointed. They were complete and utter assholes. And yeah, you can say that them not being nice is kind of childish, but I'd never been to such a childish site before. All the former sites I visited had impartial mods who gave fair rulings and did their best to keep the peace. There was no form of civility in their discussions, nor did they seem to understand that debating was trying to get the other person to understand your point, not a "I'm RIGHT, I'm RIGHT, l00k @t h0w awe-s0me I @m!"

For what its worth, I don't VS debate anymore for this exact reason. I got tired of the peanut gallery.

That's why I don't like SDN. It's full of immature children who only care about being right and sounding important. It's like the pride parade; it makes you feel good, but in the end, you haven't really done anything worthwhile.

Dude, its the internet. Why people are getting worked up about some loser sitting in moms basement 4000kms away is beyond me.

[Mr. Oragahn]

You're, not your.
*sigh*
Did you go to school or what?

[Praeothmin]

You're, not your.
*sigh*
Did you go to school or what?

Of his entire post, that's the only thing you comment on?
Does it really matter?

I don't know what's gotten up your behind lately, but man you've been acting mean to a lot of people for no fragging reason.

So he's made a small grammatical error, like the ones you and I make once in a while.
This doesn't make his post less valuable, and calling him on this one mistake is basically inciting flame...

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

Yeah, douche, I mean, you catch that mistake but you miss him using "where" instead of "were". At least be consistent. Gosh.

In all seriousness though, the idea that the oppression of personal belief and opinion is okay because it is openly advertised is ridiculous. Being open about douche-baggery does make it any more palatable.

If I kicked you in the groin and, when reprimanded, did not deny kicking you in the groin, you would still be angry. Same principle here. Hell, sometimes internet douche-baggery can be more infuriating than being kicked in the groin.

While I agree that it is rather silly to be seriously upset about a versus forum gone wrong, I don't see how it can be argued that SDN's policy, if not "wrong", is not clearly biased and oppressive against free thinkers.

[The Corporal]

You're, not your.
*sigh*
Did you go to school or what?

Oh pardon me for not bothering to run it through Words spellchecker first. Somebody piss in your Cheerio’s this morning?

Yeah, douche, I mean, you catch that mistake but you miss him using "where" instead of "were". At least be consistent. Gosh.

In all seriousness though, the idea that the oppression of personal belief and opinion is okay because it is openly advertised is ridiculous. Being open about douche-baggery does make it any more palatable.

If I kicked you in the groin and, when reprimanded, did not deny kicking you in the groin, you would still be angry. Same principle here. Hell, sometimes internet douche-baggery can be more infuriating than being kicked in the groin.

While I agree that it is rather silly to be seriously upset about a versus forum gone wrong, I don't see how it can be argued that SDN's policy, if not "wrong", is not clearly biased and oppressive against free thinkers.

*shrug* There are no rules and law on the internet. Whether its right or wrong really doesn't matter does it? Seeing as there’s no way to enforce it.

[Mike DiCenso]

And yes Mike is an asshole, a snob and a tonne of other things. However he set up the board because he found nanny-boards tiresome and its pretty obvious to me that he did it in a way that wouldn't allow people to get away with the BS they did on ASVS. In other words, your accountable for your actions, just like in RL.

Accountable? How? It's like he took a number of the very worst traits of ASVS and well... made them worse!
-Mike