Discussion thread for possible FP/moderation changes to ILX

fwiw, i agree with the general direction of the proposed changes; don't have quibbles with the specific fp numbers/time involved

and please also consider me another voice in support of more transparency, like el tomboto just mentioned, also more direct communication lines between mods and posters, like WmC mentioned.

The main problem with the communication thing is we only have access to posters’ ilx email accounts, which in some cases are not their “real” email and may be rarely checked.

I still shouldn’t have handled the silby situation the way I did, not trying to make any more excuses for that.

I mean, he hasn't posted since, so I think you did good work there.

I would also suggest that perhaps some imagination is required, to think of ways to head off, or defuse situations *before* they escalate into requiring a site ban?

This is a good idea, but it's also a good idea for everyone, not just the mods.

I dunno, remember this?

An open letter to ILX & mods re: an alternative to the current system

600 posts of snark and ad hominem and "that never happens" and people doing ~exactly what I said people did, as if to prove my point~ in reply to the most reasonable and well-thought-out suggestion as to how to improve moderation... which was eventually taken up and implemented once a cis male moderator came along and said exactly the same things I said?

We've been through all this before; we'll go through all this again.

Suggest ban has a better ring than flagpost and most of the time I am really sbing in spirit when I fp (only exception was a previously innocuous poster having a wee anti-semitic spree in a world music thread)

OK in a bit I'm going to post a general breakdown of the kinds of things that - based on recent evidence - are actually likely to push people over the limit.

Since the function was renamed from Suggest Ban to Flag Post there's been a marked change in the way in which people use the function and in general they only use it for very specific kinds of post.

There aren't very many of them but they fall into a few broad categories - none of which should be any great surprise to anyone but otherwise we're going to end up with hypotheticals that aren't grounded in people's real life use of the function.

It's also worth reemphasising that the overwhelming majority of posters have zero flagged posts or one or two at most.

(not sure if that was in response to me, Branwell?)

Things that, in general, attract a large number of flags in a short period of time. The posters doing the flagging are often, in large part, people who do not get involved in fights or meta-discussions and just want to quietly make a point.

- Straight-up personal abuse of the "fuck you, epithet" variety (this is the vast majority of it, really)
- Gratuitous use of NSFW images
- Blunt political challops or widespread condescension of the "I alone see what you idiots all refuse to admit" variety + doubling down on it in a way that derails a thread for hours
- Racism or racist trolling (there hasn't been very much of this of this lately but I'm including it for obvious reasons)
- Straight-up or more insidious misogyny, homophobia, transphobia etc (ditto)
- Posts that, in one way or another, refuse to respect or even acknowledge the sensitivities of the posters around them (this includes generalisations about sexual orientation or gender identity, violent imagery, lecturing minorities about race or religion, rape or sexual assault apologism, tone deaf language about mental illness or suicide, casual use of ableist language etc)
- Continuing to do any of the above when you've been asked to stop or furiously asserting the right of other posters to do so
- Skirting any of the above for edgy lols or to hammer home a point

There are of course exceptions, but if you avoid doing any of these you are highly unlikely to hit any kind of threshold, and if you do it's because the community is saying "we don't want this here".

Also:

- Dragging a personal beef out endlessly on a thread or reviving a thread to reheat days-old beef (the latter is unlikely to push anyone over the threshold but the people who hate it seem to really hate it and flag for it often)

"Dragging a personal beef out endlessly on a thread"

It me

Nah you drag it out over several threads iirc

Thanks, Matt. Those all appear to be legitimate uses of the FP button.

LBI - yes, mainly one, but sometimes the calling is strong.

Aren’t you ever bored of or embarrassed by it the way we are?

I mean, he hasn't posted since, so I think you did good work there.

wins is correct

idk ... it was a self-imposed break that they have maintained the self-discipline to continue to self-impose so ... there have been really bad instances where heavy-handed modding was done against a vulnerable, fragile poster whose "bannable behavior" was a result of being a bad place, one in which sympathy and gentleness would have been a better response. Silby's FP count was rampaging righteousness of a crusading white knight variety. Pretty sure ILX has plenty of white knights in waiting ...

Aren’t you ever bored of or embarrassed by it the way we are?

― beef stannin’ (gyac), Friday, 28 August 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I've no shame gyac.

My goal with that post would have been much better accomplished with a terse yellow card.

My idea for robust reform to FP

1) For each flagged post, the author of the flagged post gets a letter in the mail explaining they were FPed, along with a one-sheet job aid for how to avoid FPs im the future.

3) Fifth FP, your account is temporarily suspended and you are forced to watch a 20 minute sensitivity video and pass the quiz at the end

4) 10th FP - Your posts are limited to 10/day

5) 15th FP - All instances of the letter E are removed from any new post

6) 20th FP - All instances of the letter A are removed from any new post

7) 25th FP - Account suspended for 24 hours. You must then go through a 2 hour pre-ban diversion program and complete it to reinstate posting rights.

8) 30th FP - your DN is changed to burt_stanton for all future posts.

9) 35th FP - All vowels are removed from your posts, except for your dn

10) 40th FP - your posting is limited to ILM only

11) 45th FP - your posting is limited to Beatles threads only

12) 51st FP - You receive a commemorative certificate denoting the milestone. You are banned for one year. You must pay a $200 reinstatement fee to rejoin the board afterwards for a 1-Year Probation. The ban goes on your permanent record. Any FPs while you are on probation is a permaban and you will also be kicked out of Big HOOS's hotel

i think it would be better "punishment" to remove popular consonants rather than vowels. A lack of vowels has a certain cachet ... a lack of consonants does not.

Also, I would prefer a restorative justice circle as opposed the diversion program.

your DN is changed to burt_stanton for all future posts.

cruel and unusual punishment!

Not directly related, but how much has number of posters / number of posts dropped over the years, and when did the usership decline start?

probably when the suggest ban flag post pish was introduced

for example, removing all the vowels:

51st FP - Y rcv cmmmrtv crtfct dntng th mlstn. Y r bnnd fr n yr. Y mst py $200 rnsttmnt f t rjn th brd ftrwrds fr 1-Yr Probtn. Th bn gs n yr prmnnt rcrd. ny FPs whl y r n probtn s prmbn nd y wll ls b kckd t f Bg HS's htl

now let's remove the consonants instead:

51 - ou eeie a oeoaie eiiae eoi e ieoe. ou ae ae o oe ea. ou u a a $200 eiaee ee o eoi e oa aea o a 1-ea oaio. e a oe o ou eae eo. Ay ie ou ae o oaio i a eaa a ou i ao e ie ou o i OO' oe

lol

o

re switching flag post back to suggest ban:

this messes up my vanity googling (ftb "bookmark suggest ban") so don't enact unless you hate me

poor mark f ... won't someone think of poor mark f

i've been thinking of the phrase "reheat days-old beef" for hours now

lol me too

Not directly related, but how much has number of posters / number of posts dropped over the years, and when did the usership decline start?

In reader terms it's not actually very different in recent years — we have roughly the same number of monthly unique users (100k) that we did 3 years ago. Lurkers (defined as people who visit the same thread multiple times in a month, or multiple threads, but don't post/sign in) usually are about 10,000 a month. I can't easily access the old stats, but that doesn't seem massively different to what it was before the suggest ban flag post pish came in.

I haven't done the numbers on post volumes though, I'll run some DB queries to figure out numbers there.

That’s a lot more witnesses to my shitposting than I thought.

I've convinced myself 300 of them are people I know from work looking for ways to cancel me out of a job

That's kind of astonishing; in my head, there are about a dozen people here.

is that 10,000 unique IPs or 10,000 impressions

that's users, we do that in impressions in about 25 minutes

fackin hell

surely most of them are just popping by to read darraghmac's "coal bucket" story and then quickly retreat

post volumes, though – big difference there.

Biggest-ever year was 2004, with 1.2m posts
In the period 2005-2012 we averaged around 900k––1m posts per year.
In 2013 that fell to around 700k, and further in 2014 to a new average of around 450k posts a year.

2013 seems to really have been the year to make the difference in post volumes, there's a clear before/after. This year shows a slight uptick vs the last couple but not much.

what happened in 2012-2013? 2012 was the year of Twitter's explosive growth iirc, and it's when mobile browsing got really big, they could be factors. Can't remember the board drama of that year.

when did we switch to requiring registration to post?

I've been pretty good at suppressing unhappy board memories. I kind of hope someone's been keeping notes on the site/history for the last 20+ years; it would be pretty interesting to read and find out what we did. xp

2007 it was on site-wide, iirc xp

I feel like new ILM posters used to show up via Google and that's kinda stopped - y/n?

HOW DARE U TALK SHIT ON THE NEW ZEBRAHEAD, U ARE FUCKER, U R NOTHING BUT A FUCKER

-geoff

I signed up in 2006 or so, drifted, and returned (at a guess) in 2014 via a Twitter link to the amazing ILX Gonna Shine in My Back Door thread and never looked back.

you can never look back

That’s an attack

I’m like this 110% time you know, except when I’m starting threads about nonsense, or posting about books, or UK politics, or telling the pinefox I love him

three people have been temp-banned for assholish posting in the past 2 weeks, you could just flag the posts and move on instead of peppering multiple threads with this.

― towards fungal computer (harbl), Saturday, March 12, 2022 3:45 PM (two minutes ago)

harbl otm as usual

Of the three ppl banned only VHS is the asshole. Other two were most unfair.

lmao

haha, fair