No.  I'm not talking about how much I enjoy the content of fe43's posts.  I'm saying that I think that it makes CN unreadable because having to scroll through endless pages of punctuation makes it prohibitively difficult to read any other posts in that forum.  Huge image files that crash my browser make CN effectively off limits to me if that's something I can expect to happen with any regularity.  I'm not talking about banning something that I didn't enjoy reading.

Any posts I don't enjoy make it prohibitively difficult to read posts I do enjoy.

That's a completely asinine description of what I said.  There are many, many posts in CN that I do not enjoy and that do not make it prohibitively difficult to read the other posts.  I'm talking about having to scroll through endless pages of punctuation makes it prohibitively difficult to read any other posts in that forum and huge image files that crashed my browser.

If fe43 spammed every single thread in CN with nothing but chapters of books on my reading list that I was planning to purchase, I would still think that was something that ought to be prohibited, regardless of how much I enjoyed reading the material.  It's not at all about my relative enjoyment of the content.  It's that I don't think any user ought to be able to ruin and render useless an entire sub-forum by spamming it.

The difference is that you agree to abide by forum rules when you post. You don't agree to abide by an individual user's personal inclinations. That is why I don't care for any of these "this is annoying so it should be banned" suggestions (specifically looking at you, Saddam). Any one user of authority shouldn't be making judgments based on what personally annoys them, and that includes what they think CN should or should not be for.

I did not suggest any of these things; I'm not suggesting that any rules on this forum should be set according to my individual personal inclinations.  I'm weighing in on a discussion about the rules.  My justification for my opinion isn't based on what I personally enjoy, it's based on what I think one user is able to take away from the rest of the users by spamming.

I also still don't get how it's any different than any other rule on this site, all of which are governed by the preferences of Parsifal, the admins as a group, or the larger community.  They're all based on preferences about how one or more people wants the site to be.

What do you mean by "a single user being allowed"? We're not prohibiting anyone else from spamming CN as well.

I'm saying that I think it's unfair for any one user (or group of users, obviously) to get to decide what CN is for for all the other users, and that to me is effectively what happens when this sort of spamming occurs. 

CN was what it was.  People posted lots of shit, and it was fun for at least some of the users.  Users interacted there, regardless of whatever else it is.  Then one user, fe43, decided that CN was about making it as difficult as possible for any of those users to continue to post there.  This prevented those users from interacting there.  I think that's not ideal.
I have visited from prestigious research institutions of the highest caliber, to which only our administrator holds with confidence.

Saddam Hussein

The difference is that you agree to abide by forum rules when you post. You don't agree to abide by an individual user's personal inclinations. That is why I don't care for any of these "this is annoying so it should be banned" suggestions (specifically looking at you, Saddam). Any one user of authority shouldn't be making judgments based on what personally annoys them, and that includes what they think CN should or should not be for.

You could use this logic to argue against changing the rules for anything, ever, or indeed even having rules at all.  Not wanting NSFW material in the forum is a personal inclination.  Not wanting insults and off-topic posting in the upper forums is a personal inclination.  Not wanting adbots and spam is a personal inclination.  Not wanting mods to have the authority to ban users and delete posts as they freely choose is a personal inclination.  There are no rules that somehow transcend the personal and become objective judgments of inarguable facts.  I'm not saying that the opinions of other people are irrelevant and that everyone should just do what I say, but arguing against an opinion simply because it's just that, an opinion, is a ridiculous stance to take.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2015, 01:39:12 AM by Saddam Hussein »

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
I'm saying that I think it's unfair for any one user (or group of users, obviously) to get to decide what CN is for for all the other users, and that to me is effectively what happens when this sort of spamming occurs.

I guess that's the main gist of the issue. I don't think fe43 is "deciding" anything for other users, this is simply what happens when nobody decides what CN is for. Anyone's had the opportunity to spam CN as they please, and it's been exercised plenty of times in the past, with people trying to have the last post in every thread on the first page, or Saddam posting "Fuck off" 136 times. I think you just have your own idea of what CN should be and you're upset because your expectations are not being met.

The difference is that you agree to abide by forum rules when you post. You don't agree to abide by an individual user's personal inclinations. That is why I don't care for any of these "this is annoying so it should be banned" suggestions (specifically looking at you, Saddam). Any one user of authority shouldn't be making judgments based on what personally annoys them, and that includes what they think CN should or should not be for.

You could use this logic to argue against changing the rules for anything, ever, or indeed even having rules at all.  Not wanting NSFW material in the forum is a personal inclination.  Not wanting  insults and off-topic posting in the upper forums is a personal inclination.  Not wanting adbots and spam is a personal inclination.  Not wanting mods to have the authority to ban users and delete posts as they freely choose is a personal inclination.  There are no rules that somehow transcend the personal and become objective judgments of inarguable facts.  I'm not saying that the opinions of other people are irrelevant and that everyone should just do what I say, but arguing against an opinion simply because it's just that, an opinion, is a ridiculous stance to take.

I literally have no idea what any of what you said has anything to do with what I said. If a particular inclination were to be set up as a rule, it would be another thing users agree to abide by. Anything else would, of course, still be irrelevant.

Unless you're actually suggesting that your personal opinions should be made into rules? In which case, no.

Saddam Hussein

I literally have no idea what any of what you said has anything to do with what I said. If a particular inclination were to be set up as a rule, it would be another thing users agree to abide by. Anything else would, of course, still be irrelevant.

Unless you're actually suggesting that your personal opinions should be made into rules? In which case, no.

Of course the community should agree with potential new rules.  The whole point of making a discussion thread about an issue is to get the community talking about that issue.  I didn't spell it out in the OP because I figured I wouldn't need to, but I suppose I was wrong.  As I said, and I have no idea how you missed this point, I'm NOT arguing that everyone should just do what I say.  I'm trying to persuade people, not command them.

And seeing how you brought up the "Fuck off" incident, I'll address that now - yes, I think you would have been entirely within your rights to ban me for the rest of the day to get me to knock that shit off.

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
I literally have no idea what any of what you said has anything to do with what I said. If a particular inclination were to be set up as a rule, it would be another thing users agree to abide by. Anything else would, of course, still be irrelevant.

Unless you're actually suggesting that your personal opinions should be made into rules? In which case, no.

Of course the community should agree with potential new rules.  The whole point of making a discussion thread about an issue is to get the community talking about that issue.  I didn't spell it out in the OP because I figured I wouldn't need to, but I suppose I was wrong.  As I said, and I have no idea how you missed this point, I'm NOT arguing that everyone should just do what I say.  I'm trying to persuade people, not command them.

Great, in that case can you stop reporting posts that don't actually break the rules? Thanks.

Saddam Hussein

You'll have to be more specific than that, and that's irrelevant to this thread.  Reported for off-topic posting.

*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
On a personal level, I don't disagree with flatearther43's ban. On a moderation level, eh, I dunno. I wouldn't have done it, but I also understand many of the complaints here. I know CN is FES' trash can, but I'm pretty confident most users who use it enjoy is as more than that, as more of an "anything goes" place. For sure, there should be some discussion before anything like that happens, but I wouldn't be against adding a rule or adding some more defining to CN's purpose.

I literally have no idea what any of what you said has anything to do with what I said. If a particular inclination were to be set up as a rule, it would be another thing users agree to abide by. Anything else would, of course, still be irrelevant.

Unless you're actually suggesting that your personal opinions should be made into rules? In which case, no.

I don't think that's a fair assessment of Saddam's post. I believe his point is that all rules are based on personal inclinations. Adding another rule to reflect the community's overall inclination would be just as neutral as any other rule.

I don't think anyone here expressing their opinions is saying "my personal preference should be a rule because it's mine personally", they're just expressing their opinions and allowing us to see where the community, as a whole, stands on this. Whether or not we make a judgment on that is up to us, obviously, but I don't think there's any problem in people expressing their thoughts on this.
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

*

Offline juner

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 10174
    • View Profile
Let's keep mind that a concern was raised about the behavior. A discussion was initiated. Literally no one but me responded (not including the person the topic was about). Granted, the thread was only a little over a day old, but given the amount of replies this thread has had in the last 24 hours, there is no reason that the discussion could not have started sooner. It is like everyone is complacent until they are jarred into action of giving an opinion.

*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
I understand, I didn't mean to imply anything. I wasn't around for the initial incident so I'm going off of what I saw of flatearther's posts and what I've read about everything. :]
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
You'll have to be more specific than that, and that's irrelevant to this thread.  Reported for off-topic posting.

It's very relevant to your point about not wanting to command people. If that's the case, why are so many of your reports a variation of "I find this annoying"? If you actually expect us to act on your personal inclinations, then you're not actually persuading people to change anything, you just want things to be done your way.

You're also missing my point entirely. Rules are completely fine because users are expected to abide by them, but they aren't expected to abide by any other inclinations, and it's unfair to them that they're punished for not abiding by non-rules. Yet many people in this thread seem to take no issue with that, suggesting that Junker's ban was justified simply because it fits into their own personal ideas of how CN should be. They're not saying "at this time fe43's ban seems unreasonable because he didn't break any rules, but I would like rules to be changed to so-and-so", they're saying that acting outside the rules is fine as long as it fits into their own personal inclinations. I'm just saying that I would not like the forum to be run with that mindset.

*

Offline Jura-Glenlivet

  • *
  • Posts: 1537
  • Life is meaningless & everything dies.
    • View Profile

Okay, fine.

I don't want morons to be banned for being morons, what  I would like is to go to a post and not have to scroll and scroll because the afore said wants to make it difficult and if you do a count back of opinion it is the many against two in favour of Junkers action for this reason.
If this can be done by changes to font size allowance etc, great.
Just to be clear, you are all terrific, but everything you say is exactly what a moron would say.

*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
I think discussing it in terms of "was Junker right in banning flatearther?" is the wrong way to look at it. It happened already and isn't super important IMO. If we have a discussion about it, it should be between the mods/admins I think, but since I doubt any action is going to be taken over it I honestly don't think it's of immediate importance.

What we should focus on discussing is the future of all this. What should come of it in terms of rules, or further definition of the fora. We'd all rather this place didn't become a rule-laden dystopia, but I don't think adding a clause or adding some detail will kill anyone. So I think we should focus on discussing that rather than (un)justifying past actions based on our personal opinions rather than the rules.
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

*

Offline Lord Dave

  • *
  • Posts: 7653
  • Grumpy old man.
    • View Profile
As SexWarrior has mentioned, the ignore function would solve all the problems instantly.


If you don't want to scroll, put him in ignore.


Done.
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
Does anyone have any views at all about my suggestion to resolve this problem through technical means, rather than with more restrictive rules? I genuinely can't see a downside, but everyone other than Parsifal (with whom I discussed this in person) seems to be completely ignoring that idea.
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
Does anyone have any views at all about my suggestion to resolve this problem through technical means, rather than with more restrictive rules? I genuinely can't see a downside, but everyone other than Parsifal (with whom I discussed this in person) seems to be completely ignoring that idea.

Sorry, was too busy replying to everyone else. I'm mostly fine with that idea, but what would it mean for people who want to occasionally post something in 99pt font in a non-spamming way?

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
On the Notion of Responding to Blanko


Sorry, was too busy replying to everyone else. I'm mostly fine with that idea, but what would it mean for people who want to occasionally post something in 99pt font in a non-spamming way?
They'd probably be pretty upset. That said, I can't really think of a reason anyone would need something bigger than 30pt or 3em for a non-spam post. It pretty much already carries the message of "this font is supposed to be large", and is probably more than good enough for headers. Can you (or anyone else) think of a legitimate use for larger fonts?

Now, if someone wanted to spam extremely long posts in 30pt, it would still be pretty annoying. However, it would be much more manageable and probably much less rewarding to the spammer (which could be a benefit in and of itself). For comparison, consider these two CN threads:

A 20,000-character* post in font size 30pt
A 20,000-character* post in font size 99pt
- you may want to avoid viewing these threads if you've experienced inexplicable browser crashes with large fonts before
* - some characters were consumed by the [size] tag

If there are people out there who do actually think they're going to want to see larger fonts, we can always make this a togglable option (though I would be in favour of enabling it by default). That way, those who leave it on would have their font sizes capped at 30pt, while the adventurous could still enjoy whatever it is they do. Or we could take it a step further and let people set up their own caps (again, probably with a sensible default in place for those who won't bother digging around in options).

(n.b. I'm not married to 30pt/3em, I just picked something roughly sensible for the sake of the discussion)
« Last Edit: October 23, 2015, 08:27:07 AM by SexWarrior »
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume

*

Offline rooster

  • *
  • Posts: 4139
    • View Profile
Does anyone have any views at all about my suggestion to resolve this problem through technical means, rather than with more restrictive rules? I genuinely can't see a downside, but everyone other than Parsifal (with whom I discussed this in person) seems to be completely ignoring that idea.
Well you know I like the idea.

Saddam Hussein

As SexWarrior has mentioned, the ignore function would solve all the problems instantly.


If you don't want to scroll, put him in ignore.


Done.

But that doesn't help when people quote him.

Does anyone have any views at all about my suggestion to resolve this problem through technical means, rather than with more restrictive rules? I genuinely can't see a downside, but everyone other than Parsifal (with whom I discussed this in person) seems to be completely ignoring that idea.

I think that's a good idea.

*

Offline juner

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 10174
    • View Profile
As long as it is configurable, it sounds good to me. Otherwise, putting a technical limitation is arguably more restrictive than having a general rule not to abuse a certain feature.

Does anyone have any views at all about my suggestion to resolve this problem through technical means, rather than with more restrictive rules? I genuinely can't see a downside, but everyone other than Parsifal (with whom I discussed this in person) seems to be completely ignoring that idea.

A technical solution sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

For my part, I care much more about the max character length than the font size.  My only complaint was that scrolling through all that text to see the other posts was a pain in the ass.  Huge fonts can do that, too, for sure, so maybe both.

Also: ignoring spamming users was mentioned, and that also seems like a reasonable solution with one caveat: can a feature be added to ignore users only in certain subforums?  Does that exist already?  I've never used that feature so I'm not sure.  Sometimes I might want to ignore Saddam if he's filling CN with fuck-offs, yet still see his posts in A&E so I can tell him how wrong he is about True Detective and Fargo.

Final thought: if the community does want to go the route of a rule, my opinion is that any rule against spamming CN should have a super high threshold to be triggered.  Something to the effect that the point is just to keep someone from spamming 1) every single thread in CN 2) with spam that makes the threads functionally inaccessible/unreadable/whatever 3) for several days or something.  And maybe the additional condition that they seriously don't seem like they're going to get bored and stop.  I realize that's all very subjective; but, I'm definitely in favor of Complete Nonsense being complete nonsense.
I have visited from prestigious research institutions of the highest caliber, to which only our administrator holds with confidence.