Handling a Heated Thread?

ok so this is an odd idea, what if you could in a sense ban someone from a thread?
what I mean by “ban” is where you block them from posting, I think it would be a very useful tool, when someone is violating a community rule in a thread, I think it would be nice to be able to disable them being able to post (in the thread), I had a thread locked because someone was conducting personal attacks, and honestly I think it is a shame to have threads locked because one person is breaking guidelines.
(Please note not naming person so he doesn’t get threats because this is still the internet.)
thread in question: Some questions about albino and the morphpedia if you would like, read through it!

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ooh sorry if this is a bad idea, I don’t know too much it’s just a thought.

I don’t know about banning a specific user, but I do know if a thread is starting to get out of control with personal type attacks, or just even so off topic that the staff will and does intervene. I have seen this personally a couple times and hopefully will not need to see it again. Each time though the staff was very effective in ending some over heated discussions! I don’t think the staff or the majority of users would want a tool that anyone on the community can use to effectively ban other users, I would rather leave that to staff myself. I do understand if it was your thread and things went sideways out of your control, but you can always contact the staff and have them look into it.

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You can hide a use you don’t wish to see for a period of time i believe 6 months.

I whole heartedly disagree with censorship, things forums become echo chambers and sharing of ideas become stagnant. If everyone thinks like you, acts like you, talks like you, and on and on you might as well pull out a mirror and talk to yourself because at that point it wouldn’t matter who you are talking to you are basically talking to yourself.

Im radical, passionate sometimes overzealous, im not going to disallow anothers right to express their thoughts. I definitely don’t appreciate it if someone does it to me.

Now here’s the real kick in the shorts, the rub so to speak. I fought for my country (US) and i bled for her and have permanent injury as a result, my brothers and sisters both past and present fought, bled and died for this country and that wonderful piece of parchment that gives us all freedom. There is a reason our founding fathers put freedom of speech as thee most important right above all others followed by the 2nd in order to pretect the rest.

Im not trying to mean here but most definitely the censorship of free speech is something everyone should be offended by.

You don’t gotta like nor agree with what someone says, but thats what freedom of speech is about, you don’t have the right to silence another person’s voice. Its why America is in the shape its in now, somewhere along the line they threw out the bill of rights and taught censorship instead.

Im not accusing anyone or trying to be disrespectful im only sharing my feelings and the truth. :v:

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If there is an issue that comes up and you feel like a user is personally attacking you, you could always report the comment with the flag icon under the post.
Moderators and community support is here for a reason.

That said, @rmleone is right about the echo chamber effect. It’s why there are so many communities that people get piled on for things that are not even wrong, just the community becomes an angry hive mind.
Having an open discussion with limits is needed. You are free to say what you want, but there can be consequences. And that can be in the form of a mod banning a user or deleting the post. Forum rules are there to be followed and if you feel like a post is specifically attacking you, you can always flag and see what the mod thinks.

There is a lot of issues now where people will not take criticism as an actual form of discussion. Heck even I fell into that trap for a bit when discussing some possible issues on something here in one post. In the end it all worked out and I hope that part of it was the mod that I discussed things with and my attempt to try and see things through because this is one of the two best forums I have found for reptile discussion. The other is more of a specialty forum and not nearly as wide as this one.
Sometimes things we don’t want to hear can sound more pointed and aggressive. Especially in regards to something that we may not have realized wasn’t the good idea that we thought it could be. So on top of keeping the option to report and let mods do their thing, don’t forget to step away and take a look again at things with a cooler head.

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Of course we are humans and sometimes we get passionate and sometimes egos get in the way.

I do try to be respectful here but im human im also sometimes blunt and logical to a fault. I don’t ever mean to sungle someone out and be aggressive, but in a text world sometimes what we read comes across differently than intended because we can bot hear tone and inflection that would signal the persons mood and intentions. We cannot see your face to show if its happy, aggressive or sarcastic. I at times get confusion because of my several traumatic brain injury so sometimes i miss read sometimes or i mis word stuff.

I definitely apologize to anyone i may have rubbed thecwrong way with my passion. Just trust that if i was ever really mad at someone they definitely will know it.

We do need differing opinions and options. Its hard now in todays age where nobody is willing to hear any side but there own, i have fallen here too.

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With all due respect to you and all of the past, present, and future defenders of our country, this is not what the first amendment is about. The first amendment protects you from censure by the government. It does not, and never has, given you the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, and be free of the consequences of those actions. This forum (and all the other forums and FB and IG and all the other social medias) are privately owned and, as such, the owners, and their designees, are absolutely free to censure, silence, ban, edit, etc., anyone they wish for whatever reasons they wish.

The staff here work to have a very light touch in this area but we have, and will again, banned people, removed posts, edited out offensive/problematic material, and many other things according to the rules that every user agrees to when they sign on to use this service. And from a personal point, I get very bothered when someone screams at me for “violating their first amendment rights” (and this is not an accusation at you R, I am speaking broadly from many years as a Mod here and on other sites)

Now, all that aside, I believe the best solution is the one that has been offered up - selectively block users you personally do not wish to see comments from. The only time the Admin/Mods here will undertake any kind of ban will be when someone becomes consistently and intentionally egregious in their behaviour.

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I understand where you are coming from and see the thread you reference. Threads getting locked is not the norm, even if there is a lot of rule breaking. I think that it was a unique situtation where the guidelines being broken weren’t immediately taken into concideration and it was out of hand before that concideration was made. If someone is breaking guidelines, it should be reported. We all agree to them signing up for this forum. Without a report most of us won’t even know something is up and even if I am reading the same thread, there has been many times I’ve thought “this kind of rides the line of rule breaking, but no ones reported so I guess I’ll let it slide”

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I completely agree, and really knew that was part of my agreement went steeping on as a Mod here. Beautifully said by the way :wink:.

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should clarify this would only be a mod/admin power

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I feel like sometimes we as people talk about freedom as if it is escaping structure or rules. At least to me, I am happy that there are rules that people are expected to follow. Even in the real world, we have laws to protect people and to keep sense of morality.

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This already is.

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The Supreme court might say otherwise :woman_shrugging: it has been continually upheld that freedom of speech encompasses artists heck even porn etc. And yes im well aware of our Constitution what its intents in wording are.

I never once claimed that words do not have consequences, i live in the hood and you better believe that mouthing off to the wrong individual could have some very serious end results. ( not to say they are not wrong also because the bigger person should walk away)

You act as if i believe that i can say and do as i wish, life has real consequences.

And to start with "with all due respect " is actually a passive aggressive statement where you are trying to appear “diplomatic” but serving it up with your arrogance. I am quite well aware of what words mean and imply and that statement is not remotely close to being respectful its along the same line that someone would serve up as a backhanded compliment.

You may have the freedom of speech but you absolutely do not have the right to be safe from being offended.

If you want an echo chamber of “yes men” where everyone has to share the same opinion then thatscwhat we’d say happenscunder totalitarian rule such as found in Fascism and communism, while on opposite sides of political ideology they have one thing in common, both are bigbon censorship and oppression of free expression.

Again nobody said, life didn’t have consequences, sure i can say whatever i want to a friend for example but the consequences could be that they refuse to let me come over anymore, they block communication etc.

I believe you misunderstand what i am saying, its ok many people do because i have a mind on a different level than most people. I may have had a traumatic brain injury and have difficulties in everyday life, but i am far from stupid. I wasn’t in intel in the military because i was stupid, i scored a 97 on my ASVAB and brain injury aside i still have a much bigger intelligence than the average person.
Now if you want an echo chamber fine ban me from speaking, if you want the free exchange there of ideas then allow people to say how they feel. The only time a "ban hammer " should be pulled out is if the comments of someone were so egregiously offensive that it leads to some real disharmony as it devolves into cussing or threats so on and so forth.

I never been one to take a back seat to anything when it comes defense of freedoms.

Im not required to like anyone in life, but i do need to respect them, but that respect isn’t free.

Just as it’s a eight for some of yall to burn my flag, so too is it another persons right to hate you for whatever reason.

Yes don’t go on about “well, you can’t scream fire! In a movie theater” line.

Congratulations that you were/are a mod in a forum but rights do trump feelings. ( no pun intended)

In closing i am one of 7% of the entire population of which women are 4% actually had the guts to serve and to uphold our freedoms.

So yall can delete, ban or whatever to me. I come for conversation, most of breeders i use exclusively so its rare that i need a breeder off MM, most of my dealing are through private connection.

I don’t mean to be extra blunt but i take real exception to being censored. Some countries and many more places inpose their will on others, and stifling the free exchange of ideas leads to stagnation of progress.

Im sure my reply will get deleted, but i said my peace.

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Please remember that this is a forum with members from around the world as well…this is not a USA only forum.

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Thank you for providing an example for the topic of this thread. Also I find anyone who has to point out how smart they are is often wrong. This isn’t war, it’s just words on the internet and to be so aggressive about something with no real world impact is…Sad, actually. This isn’t censorship, not at all, it’s adhering to the rules to interact in the space and encourage a positive environment.

You agreed to the TOS when you made your account, that means following the rules and understanding you can’t just attack people or start fights/derail threads. I understand where @lizardkid is coming from because they just wanted information and other people derailed the topic to the point of the thread being closed. This thread again is headed that way, and it’s getting old.

I agree thread bans should be a thing if they can, no reason to close a useful thread over a couple of people not following the rules. This isn’t “banning someone from speaking” it’s just banning someone from continuing to disregard the rules they agreed to. When comments derail a thread from its original topic into personal attacks, such as you’ve just done here, it doesn’t help the discussion in any positive way. As a matter of fact, it takes away from the discussion overall.

To be quite honest, I actually believe moderating is too lax here. The thread that prompted this one was a very good, useful discussion, but it was very obvious early on that one person intended on derailing the thread by making everything into a personal argument because they were right and everyone else wrong. They should have been reprimanded long before it got to that point, especially since they were specifically targeting staff members. I know mods can split topics, perhaps as a compromise, instead of deleting, you can move that section of discussion into its own thread. Either way, I’ve seen enough in my time here to start posting less due to certain users and threads becoming hostile/off topic.

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As a user you can mute and ignore another user from your preferences.

Mute = Suppress all notifications and PMs from these users.

Ignore = Suppress all posts, notifications, and PMs from these users.

As moderators, there are a few tools from silencing a member, to complete suspension. Both are used im rare circumstances, but are used.

This was a odd case in that the discussion had gone so far from the original topic that it warrented splitting into 2 threads.

We can still go back and review it and clean it up… but it may be best to start a new topic on the same original discussion.

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See, this is my sticking point. It shouldn’t have. This is where I think the moderators are too lax. It was obvious from September 30th that the thread was going to be derailed. If you’ve spent enough time on forums, you learn to spot users who want to be contentious. In an effort to be informative and correct inaccuracies, a staff member then engaged one-to-one with the contentious person, derailing the thread entirely while the two then went back and forth trying to prove who was right.

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I think it’s a tough line to walk because no matter what there are going to be individuals who are unhappy and disagree with the moderation style. If you keep things strict, on-topic and regularly remove posts and/or users that seem to violate, people start to freak out about “censorship”. If you let things wander a bit, topics will occasionally derail from their original purpose (but not always in a bad way), and in my opinion, generally stay more peaceful. When I joined this community things were a bit more strict and there were disagreements with that as well.

At the end of the day it’s important to keep in mind that this a really mixed community with members from around the world, individuals who have been keeping snakes longer than I’ve been alive, with others who bought their first snake yesterday. We’ve got language barriers, unique backgrounds, different communication/expression styles and goals when it comes to reptile ownership. While all of that makes for an enriching forum filled with new information and viewpoints, it can lead to conflict. I don’t always think it’s a bad thing as long as we don’t take it too personally. All this to say, I’d very much prefer to not ban people or remove posts (although I absolutely will if the situation requires it), I’d prefer everyone just moderate themselves and sometimes just agree to disagree before it gets personal.

The thread is currently locked after both warnings and putting it into slow mode to try and calm things down, but is still available for people to read through and form their own opinions. That’s not censorship, the conversation is still there, it was just locked once no new useful information was being added and the tone turned to personal attacks. Which is never ok. Maybe it can be revived after a cool down period, or if you still have questions related to the original topic a new thread could be started.

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What personal attack? Did i mention a name? Make threats?no

While i may be responsible for my words i am not responsible for how it was received.

Personal attack based on how you perceived the words typed.

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