Discussion of TV Tropes

Unknown · 2012-02-22 17:27:16

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Viani · 2012-02-22 17:40:13

Yes we do. As long as we know it exists, we must post in it.

Unknown · 2012-02-22 17:41:29

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Viani · 2012-02-22 17:43:20

Then you whine about not being able to post, like me.

Unknown · 2012-02-22 17:43:56

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Morven · 2012-02-22 18:05:43

@Naney: No, his racism was already leading us toward banning him; that those things were from Stormfront et al. is bad, but they were bad anyway, even without that connection.

We'd hitherto been very loath to ban people for opinions rather than behavior (and still are, to some degree).

Ace Rimmer · 2012-02-22 18:17:28

Morven, shitty white supremacist opinions only really fly on shitty white supremacist forums. But why is TVT reluctant to ban people with shitty god awful opinions?

Mr. Darcy · 2012-02-22 18:57:36

Probably because they'd have to define which opinions merit censorship.

Morven · 2012-02-22 18:57:39

A belief in minimal moderation, fundamentally; and a lack of a desire to be the morality police, both out of a belief in freedom of thought and out of being a small moderation team with enough to worry about as it is.

Manly McMacho · 2012-02-22 18:57:58

A belief in minimal moderation

Yikes.

I can understand not wanting to try to censor opinions or be the morality police, but minimal moderation is rarely / never a good thing. Not saying maximum security modding is the way to go, but somewhere in the middle would work just fine.

Morven · 2012-02-22 19:02:41

Hmm?

Examine the history; for a long period, only Eddie had the ability to do anything in the forums. Following that, only Madrugada was added in terms of bans; slowly the rest of us got the ability to edit posts, blank posts, delete threads etc.

This has never been a system that encourages the use of mod tools very much, by their sheer rarity.

So therefore the moderation team has been firefighters, rushing in to put out the flames of conflict (hopefully) rather than day-to-day monitoring of what's being said when nobody's calling 911.

Unknown · 2012-02-22 19:05:07

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Manly McMacho · 2012-02-22 19:09:25

All sites attract bad people. Because people just sort of suck in general.

A lot of tropers just seem worse because

1) Not trying to be rude or insult the moderation, but the "let's not ban them just yet" attitude lets the really shitty users stay much longer, and

2) due to shared nerdy interests, they're allowed to develop a fanbase of sort so their idiots friends fight to defend them even if they shouldn't.

Unknown · 2012-02-22 19:11:38

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Morven · 2012-02-22 19:22:24

Yeah, we've had a tendency to give people a few more chances than they should have had, in many cases. Partly because "being a horrible person with horrible opinions" has generally not been a valid ban reason; sometimes because we feel sorry for someone; sometimes because someone's popular enough that their awful behavior gets overlooked, and sometimes simply because we haven't seen the full picture of someone's behavior. Quite frequently the pitching a fit that someone hasn't been banned happens before anyone has even reported them.

Manly McMacho · 2012-02-22 19:25:32

That is pretty weird. I guess way too many tropers just take for granted that someone else should've reported them by now, those lazy fat fucks. At any rate, I sympathize, but still, those aren't really valid reasons not to ban someone, at least temporarily. A temp ban works best for people you feel sorry for because it lets them know there's still hope for them while also getting the point across that they seriously need to cut out whatever they're doing.

As far as popular asshole tropers, well, lets just say maybe it's a good thing I'm not a mod or a lot of tropers would be pissed. Popularity doesn't excuse dickishness.

Morven · 2012-02-22 19:31:41

I'm not saying those things to justify past decisions, but as thinking about the causes of inconsistent or insufficient moderation in the past.

I'm more in favor of temp bans than I was. A week away from the site tends to result in a cooler head, I find.

Popularity, alas, is always going to play a role -- in at least that one is more likely to be familiar with that person and thus have more empathy for them. We've had our share of popular posters who should have been shut dow quicker; Guitar Bizarre being one, Kino another (and no, he's not (AFAIK) banned, but some of the things he's said would have been practically auto-bans if a newbie had said them).

Obā-san · 2012-02-22 20:39:02

Eh, Kino is rarely to never serious about anything.

Haven · 2012-02-22 20:45:21

Reading these discussions is always so weird to me. I don't know if offensive opinions should be ban-worthy; I just wish harassment was. I feel like that's the answer to squid's question, actually: if you don't ban the bad ones, eventually all the good ones will leave.

That may sound like an oversimplification, but at this point I'm not convinced it is. If someone declares they're posting just to get a rise out of someone else, or if someone literally only posts when they want to harass another poster, who contacts the mods and hears that it's barely worth a talking-to, much less a ban, then eventually the posters who are targeted like this are going to decide the benefits of staying on the fora are outweighed by the negatives and leave. Which means after a while, only the trolls will remain.

(On that note, it doesn't help that the operational definition of troll includes things like "quotes other posters" and not "posts specifically to stir up trouble".)

Obā-san · 2012-02-22 20:47:55

the operational definition of troll includes things like "quotes other posters"

Wait, really?

Please tell me you're just screwing with me.

Mr. Darcy · 2012-02-22 20:54:26

^ He's not. Eddie has repeatedly argued that quotes are trollish.

Haven · 2012-02-22 20:54:52

Yeah. There was a more specific post I had in mind which is since gone, but see number 3.

That's just an example of a general trend of esoteric definitions of "trolling", though.

Obā-san · 2012-02-22 20:56:34

....I've heard.....

THAT IS THE STUPIDEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

It makes NO sense. It makes no sense so much that it sucks sense out of the surrounding area.n It makes Un-sense.

Hershele Ostropoler: Trollingest troll EVAR amirite?

Mr. Darcy · 2012-02-22 20:58:09

Citation needed... for trolling!

Boney · 2012-02-22 20:59:00

I dislike that staying out of OTC isn't enough to escape the stupidity anymore.

Obā-san · 2012-02-22 21:00:26

OTC is amazing. I have never before seen such a gathering of so many different amazingly horrible ideas before in my life.

Yarrun XIX · 2012-02-22 21:02:05

I guess I can see how 3 would be a problem (I've certainly seen something of the sort on BTL), but I don't think it's really a troll thing. I'd say that the perpetrators are more often terrible debaters than deliberate trolls. Also, there are a lot of neutral uses for multiquotes with replies for each of them. For example, Fawriel did a few posts like that in the New Touhou Alternate Compendium because he likes to respond to each idea that's put out.

lee4hmz · 2012-02-22 21:05:21

Now, see, quoting exists for a reason -- so that the people in a conversation don't get lost when the topic changes. While it's not as useful on a Web board as it would be in email or on Usenet, it's still something people are used to having, and Eddie's reasons for not having it are pretty much completely arbitrary.

That or he's so used to seeing it used in long posts rebutting a bunch of arguments at once that he assumes that UNPLEASANT NOTES and what they used to call "permanent flaming flamewars" on Usenet are all they're useful for. While Web boards do tend toward linear conversations, it seems what he really wants is Twitter, and we kind of already have that. :P

All of which makes me wonder why the quoteblock markup exists at all. If he feels that strongly about it, I'm surprised the software doesn't make using it an automatic rudeness thump.

INUH · 2012-02-22 21:05:29

Apparently, the logic behind quotes being trolling is that it allows you to cherry-pick phrases from people's posts and build a strawman from them.

Which is true, but wouldn't it make more sense to just focus on the people who are doing that, rather than everyone who quotes someone?

millercross · 2012-02-22 21:06:19

That's just an example of a general trend of esoteric definitions of "trolling", though.

...I think you just articulated exactly what has managed to consistently bother me ever since I've got there. The way everything "bad" (IE, everything Eddie does not like) is called, "being a troll" in order to simply dissuade the userbase from doing things is pretty damn grating. Not only that, but it's used to demonize the banned by the userbase, like Charlatan and Cygan the day they were both banned

Unknown · 2012-02-22 21:06:23

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Obā-san · 2012-02-22 21:07:15

He does seem to have a distinctive lack of forethought an rationality.

lee4hmz · 2012-02-22 21:08:11

Really? Apparently the only part of Usenet he's ever read is *.advocacy. :P They are horrible debaters and do that kind of crap all the time.

What bugs me is that multiquoting is also useful in situations where people have actual, multiple points to address. It's not strawmanning in that case, just a way to stay organized.

squiddle: I wouldn't say "insane" as much as really, really sheltered, apparently. I know I used to make derpy decisions like that in the late 1990s, when I was still very Mormon and getting used to being around people who weren't perfect all the time. And while I don't want this to come off as invoking Hitler Ate Sugar, it should be noted that a lot of Chris-chan's problems were from being sheltered.

Princess Alice · 2012-02-22 21:11:58

The way everything "bad" (IE, everything Eddie does not like) is called, "being a troll" in order to simply dissuade the userbase from doing things is pretty damn grating.

I remember last year when he did that let's-give-everyone-the-same-avatar thing for April Fool's Day. That was dumb, but dumb April Fool's jokes on the internet are nothing new.

What pissed me off was that in the thread about it in Wiki Talk, everyone who dared complain about it had their posts deleted and marked "Troll Post". 'Cause you know, expressing dislike of a dumb joke is TOTALLY trolling.

millercross · 2012-02-22 21:13:44

Which is true, but wouldn't it make more sense to just focus on the people who are doing that, rather than everyone who quotes someone?

also, what's the point to thump/ban/censor a person for making a bad argument or cherrypicking? Wouldn't it be better to just let the other users note it and explain why his argument doesn't work? If he's a troll, then he will move on to attacking other people or say something in order to rile other people up, but as it is, it shouldn't be against the rules to just quote people, or even cherrypick, even if it's bad argumentation.

PlutoniumFist · 2012-02-22 21:14:09

It might just be me, but complaining about the April Fool's thing seems...petty.

Is your avatar that great that you can't wait until tomorrow for it to change back? Do you hate being Spider-Man that much? Is it that difficult to spend an extra second or two looking at the username?

INUH · 2012-02-22 21:18:12

Is it that difficult to spend an extra second or two looking at the username?

For every post you read, and with the payoff being...a small chuckle the first time you load a page, at best.

Princess Alice · 2012-02-22 21:18:15

It's petty, yes--which is why I didn't complain about it despite finding it dumb--but it's hardly trolling.

millercross · 2012-02-22 21:18:39

I wouldn't say it's petty. I understand how menial and trivial such a prank is, and I never understood why it bothered people so much that day, but I wouldn't take their right to complain away from them.

Justice4243 · 2012-02-22 21:22:59

"Do you hate being Spider-Man that much?"

Unknown · 2012-02-22 21:25:49

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Obā-san · 2012-02-22 21:26:56

I believe that from this we can reach the conclusion.....

TVT is dumb.

Boney · 2012-02-22 21:28:13

It's like a limit, and as x approaches infinity, TV Tropes is dumb.

Haven · 2012-02-22 21:28:50

It might just be me, but complaining about the April Fool's thing seems...petty.

I wouldn't necessarily call it petty, depending. If they just left a quick note "I don't like this, can we not do this again?" and then went on, that's the kind of feedback that should be taken into consideration; if they ranted on and on then that would be petty.

Either way, though, it's a situation that indicates they'll tolerate controversial opinions about genocide or child porn but not forum avatars.

Viani · 2012-02-22 21:33:12

OH GOD, I CAN'T USE A PONY AVATAR ON APRIL 1st? HOW FUCKING HORRIBLE, FUCK YOU FAST EDDIE

-TheMightyAnonym

Justice4243 · 2012-02-22 21:37:07

I think one of the avatars WAS of My Little Pony. It was just an older generation.

Misery · 2012-02-22 21:37:58

TVT is pure stupidity.

Justice4243 · 2012-02-22 21:39:12

And THAT'S coming from a fora devoted to wonder-posting! :P

Lunate · 2012-02-22 21:53:21

I remember he called me a Chris-troller over an argument he didn't bother to read during the Sonichu debacle. Good times, they weren't.

Irene · 2012-02-22 23:32:59

Only time any complaints were justified were when the avatars were literally painful on the eyes.

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