Community Guidelines: Our Report & Your Feedback

of course, since the system is about as transparent as guantanamo bay, we may never know...

I like how you refer to yourself in the first person.

From your comment, Micah, I am assuming you have not actually seen the game threads being referenced; from your user ID number, this makes sense.

In any event, I posed the question merely as a conduit of the feedback I have received privately since the last CG discussion.

I'd just add a suggestion that folks should take a moment and calm down before re-entering the conversation -- that's all.

Since this isn't the public square, but instead a private group which with its own membership criteria, there's no right to free speech or due process except insofar as management wants to allow it.  What can often happen on internet boards is an all-consuming obsession by participants, 95% of them well-intentioned, to debate the merits of each instance of management code enforcement.  A catalogue of previous violations would surely provoke such a storm of opinions.

I'm about as libertarian as they come on speech issues, but when it comes to internet boards of which I am fond I have come to prefer the benevolent dictator approach.  The CGV Committee offers a decent check and balance, I think.  And if folks wanted more say, perhaps a CGV member or two could be elected by users of, say, 3-6 months seniority.  But the more this gets dragged out into the normal site discourse, the more the content we alll actually come here for gets diluted, or worse.

And I've just assumed your name is "Bhaskar" with post-modern cool x's added front and back.  I knew another Bhaskar once.

The reason I focus on the person attacks is because I've heard from a couple of my A's friends that read this site, but don't post, that they some users are a little too harsh. The user may not say idiot, but it's often implied.

At the same time, most of the personal attacks I'm referring to are more like blatant rudeness than outright violations of the Community Guidelines. So, I tend to shy away from reporting these offences since I don't want to be my complaint to be the third strike, especially if it is (in my opinion) a borderline offense. But how does one deal with a user who tiptoes around the Guidelines, but is often rude? I would say a warning srike is the best way to approach the problem, but I generally don't do that for the reason above. One solution would be to post the list of people with strikes, but that is unlikely to happen. I guess I should just put more faith in the CGV committee, I just don't want to adopt a reputation as a complainer.

What I mean by "more transparent" is not outing the committee members, the person, or even the specific comments - just to state what a CGV was given for. A category, persay - "Calling the community (blah)" (or maybe Conduct Detrimental to AN, so the [blah] doesn't have to be said) or "Taking Political Discussion too far."  Obviously, those of us who are addicted to the place will know exactly which thread it's in and likely, who said it, but having an idea of what is a CGV would be nice.

I said before that the complaints kind of fall into a black hole, and mentioned Wikipedia's RfAr process - having a similar process wouldn't work here (thought about it for about 15 seconds, decided that was the case) since we're <4000 members right now, and wiki is probably >100000; in that way we're still too close.
Obviously, it'd be nice for the defendant to support their point of view in questionable situations, but I'd imagine that those situations would not garner a majority anyhow. Maybe, though, it would save someone like Reztips.
But maybe you have that process already; outside of the 4 (or 6, if Blez and Nico aren't part of it) of you, noone has any real clue of how the process works. Are there deliberations? Do you look at the comment and vote? Can you defend yourself? A very small group knows; noone else does.

Great, I've made a huge block of text again.

<BaNs SeLf>

Sal, I've never seen Six Feet Under, but I'm often told that I look like death warmed over, so maybe that's what people mean.

In the subject line you wrote the words "I'm opposed to..." and in the body-comment you wrote that "I'm much more in favor..."  I'm a little murky on your point-of-view: care to provide some additional clarity?

In other words, while some users think talking politics should always be fine and some think it should always be avoided, I assume there are also some users who would say it should be ok to discuss the congressional hearings on steroids but it shouldn't be ok to discuss the war.

In terms of compromise, given that a given community of people might want to discuss any topic--especially a "hot topic"--together, should there be room for dairies (labeled as such in the title) where political comments can be included, where the diary's contents (and all the posts therein) are immune from that CGV consideration, with all other threads "politic-free zones"?

Just putting it out there for feedback.

I'd prefer something along the lines of a sort of disclaimer about OT comments and diaries:  "The AN community has grown a great deal since its inception, and as on-line friendships develop, community members naturally start to discuss topics outside of baseball -- everything from tv shows to whose high-school class is coolest to English football.  OT discussions are fine as long as (a) they don't crowd out the main topic of discussion, which is baseball, (b) they adhere to the other Community Guidelines, and (c) they don't inflame personal divisiveness and bickering over OT topics.  This is a particular concern when ANers discuss political issues, but is not limited to political topics:  if a debate over whether Rush deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame turns into an ongoing flame-war, Blez and the other moderators reserve the right to step in and tell those involved to take their debate elsewhere."

Also, it seems to me that everyone agrees that CVGs should expire at some point.  Has anyone disagreed with this suggestion yet?

# of complaints: 25
# of complaints against female users: 0

Damn testosterone.

like the damon looking gay thing, what if the general consensus is that damon does in fact look gay?  can one produce expert testimony, say the queer eye guys, to support the assertion and avoid a CGV?