A confessional thread

CFordUNC said:
Yeah, I think the only thing that should be truly worthy of a bannable offense is the threatening of another poster, doxxing of another poster like what happened a few times on IC, stuff like that. Beyond that, it sounds like the ‘super ignore’ feature works really well for those who choose to use it. I’m of the mindset that anyone here to troll is much more “punished” by people ignoring them or not responding to them than they are being banned.
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I agree with this...
 
farce© said:
This bothers me. So three posters reported his post. You should leave it there. Choosing to donate to the cause makes no difference (I hope) and you shouldn’t give the impression that impacts your decision making. I hope we don’t have separate classes of posters.
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We don't have separate classes of posters but yes, having financially supported the site, we are inclined to consider it with a little more thought. Moderating is difficult because you have numerous competing views about how a forum should be run. Even if no donor had reported his posts, I still would have done what I did at the time so the donor part didn't tip the scales. But, the community relies on donations and if donors are unhappy, that's not good.

Your point is taken however and we will ensure that everyone is treated equally.
 
We’ve derailed the original topic, and I apologize for continuing that with my response here.

I wasn’t a Moderator at IC, so I can offer no insight from that perspective.

My personal approach to moderating this board has been to try to gently nudge people to better behavior or urge folks who are offended to use the many excellent “ignore” features to deprive posters they find offensive of oxygen of attention. I think a lot of actual trolls want to be banned as a badge and a rallying call to bring more trolls over here to disrupt things.

I’ve used some light editing at times to try to suggest a standard of behavior but also keep this a breathing, hospitable space for wide-ranging adult conversations.

I have put a lot of time into trying to nurture this board as a civil community, but I’m not the board mom.

Ultimately, either we thrive as a community by each of us doing our part to maintain a reasonable standard or civility, or we forego self-discipline and collapse into ugly discourse.

So I come down on the side of reserving banning for cases more clear-cut or repetitive failure to respond to polite requests to maintain a level of basic decency in our discourse.
 
CFordUNC said:
Yeah, I think the only thing that should be truly worthy of a bannable offense is the threatening of another poster, doxxing of another poster like what happened a few times on IC, stuff like that. Beyond that, it sounds like the ‘super ignore’ feature works really well for those who choose to use it. I’m of the mindset that anyone here to troll is much more “punished” by people ignoring them or not responding to them than they are being banned.
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I am unbanning Sandinista and what you said is more or less where things stand.

Doxxing is a 100% unforgivable act. That's a line in the sand that you cannot cross. People use forums for different reasons and one of those reasons can be a little bit of escapism or role playing or whatever. People act differently on a forum than they may in real life and that's fine. 10 or 15 years ago, on Phog.net, KUs 247 site, a user was doxxed for making a rather harmless comment about some small towns in Kansas being "crap holes" and a poster that held a grudge against that original poster for a long time, doxxed him and he was fired from his job. That, among other reasons, is why doxxing is a firm red line.

Threats and all of that, I mean at that point, come on. What are we doing here? We're going to allow users to threaten physical harm and what not? So, that's out too.

Users that troll and call names and use bad language? Well, I can tell you what the greater forum community would say and that's unequivocally to ban the user. Trolls/bad faith posters bring the level of discourse down, the experience is bad for others that want no part of it, they leave, the board suffers and on and on.

But, you guys are tight knit, we have super ignore, and everyone is aware so, I will unban Sandinista. This is a learning experience for all, for us forum moderators, and we're a new community so mistakes and bumps will happen along the way. Hopefully this smooths things out and we've all grown as forum posters from this.
 
stankeylegjones said:
Super said that to sandi?
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For the record, my comment to Sandi was based on Sandi's harassment of another poster. He was, for some reason, trying to dig up an old argument from 2009, in which he had threatened that poster. I have no idea exactly what it was about, but Sandi kept posting about how Bigs wasn't "fit for his duty" as a public school teacher. He took aim at that poster's "station in life," and then threatened to unearth archived posts from IC in 2009 to relitigate some long-ago forgotten grudge of his.

Calling him an asshole, while truthful, was also a way of distracting him from his incredibly bizarre vendetta against that other poster. It apparently worked, as he began to train his vitriol to me. To be honest, though, I never saw his response to me until it was posted on this thread.

The exchange in question is here:

Rock

Off-Topic Thread 'What's the history behind the Zigga Zoomba Lounge?'

I know (I think) that the ZZ part is from a school fight song. Was the first ZZL on IC? Any lore you guys can fill me in on.

I have an idea related to this all but want to understand ZZL further...

Thanks!
  • Like
 
Rock said:
I am unbanning Sandinista and what you said is more or less where things stand.

But, you guys are tight knit, we have super ignore, and everyone is aware so, I will unban Sandinista. This is a learning experience for all, for us forum moderators, and we're a new community so mistakes and bumps will happen along the way. Hopefully this smooths things out and we've all grown as forum posters from this.
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A mistake, in my view.

Also Croatoan = Sandi. And I suspect both are OCS
 
nycfan said:
We’ve derailed the original topic, and I apologize for continuing that with my response here.
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The thread wasn't going anywhere in the first place. Derailing a stalled train is, in a way, an act of mercy. I do think it served some purpose, in bringing entertainment to a slow day. Alas. I also thought I wrote the narrative pretty well.
 
Rock said:
We don't have separate classes of posters but yes, having financially supported the site, we are inclined to consider it with a little more thought. Moderating is difficult because you have numerous competing views about how a forum should be run. Even if no donor had reported his posts, I still would have done what I did at the time so the donor part didn't tip the scales. But, the community relies on donations and if donors are unhappy, that's not good.

Your point is taken however and we will ensure that everyone is treated equally.
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Rock, it has to be difficult moderating all of the type a personalities around here.

Thank you for taking that on and listening to the opinions.
 
I just don't get how somebody would have more than one posting account and using different usernames, esp. if the persona's of each account is more or less the same. Or even if they weren't more or less the same. Seems like it would be exhausting to keep up with...
 
nycfan said:
So I come down on the side of reserving banning for cases more clear-cut or repetitive failure to respond to polite requests to maintain a level of basic decency in our discourse.
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I thought Sandinista's entire reason for existence was to fail to respond to polite requests or maintain a level of basic decency. I've interpreted that alias to be performance art, a verbal equivalent to the GG Allin shows where that "artist" used to hurl his feces at the audience.

Anyway, if that's the standard, I'm pretty sure Sandi long ago crossed the line.
 
superrific said:
The thread wasn't going anywhere in the first place. Derailing a stalled train is, in a way, an act of mercy. I do think it served some purpose, in bringing entertainment to a slow day. Alas. I also thought I wrote the narrative pretty well.
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Try rewriting a paragraph of it in the voice of a favorite writer of yours. For instance, I deeply admire the prose of Cormac McCarthy even though I don’t always love his themes — not copy that writer’s style but imagine how he or she might have phrased the same things as a way of approaching your own ideas from a new perspective . The idea is then to apply that thought experiment to expand your prose from narrative accuracy to include emotional engagement and engaging imagery.
 
hedge said:
I just don't get how somebody would have more than one posting account and using different usernames, esp. if the persona's of each account is more or less the same. Or even if they weren't more or less the same. Seems like it would be exhausting to keep up with...
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varying degrees of mental illness and too much free time.

and you don't understand it because you're a normal person who just wants to enjoy banter and sharing info and ideas and good faith debate.

the multiple alias people get off on trolling and starting fights and ragebaiting and denigrating/insulting people who are mostly complete strangers.
 
nycfan said:
Try rewriting a paragraph of it in the voice of a favorite writer of yours. For instance, I deeply admire the prose of Cormac McCarthy even though I don’t always love his themes — not copy that writer’s style but imagine how he or she might have phrased the same things as a way of approaching your own ideas from a new perspective . The idea is then to apply that thought experiment to expand your prose from narrative accuracy to include emotional engagement and engaging imagery.
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With all due respect, I think this is the exact opposite of how I should proceed. The fact is that I'm not Cormac McCarthy and trying to imitate him would just lead to bad covers, so to speak. Plus, my favorite writers, like Thomas Pynchon or William Faulkner, are not easily imitated.

I think it's better to take inspiration from others, and go with a stripped down style sort of like Hemingway (without trying to imitate him).
 
Sandi is Sandi. More than anyone else, IMO, he caused the split of ZZL. He is a caricature. His schitk is tiresome and lame. But he isn't OCS. He thinks super is Gr1111, who used to post on ZZL
 
You linked to a thread that shows the opposite of what you claim.

I didn't bring up an argument from 15 years ago. Bigs did. He also got many of the details wrong so I merely corrected them, and mentioned that I have the entirety of the zzl archives on a hard drive as proof.

It's all right there in your thread link if you'd actually read it.
 
superrific said:
With all due respect, I think this is the exact opposite of how I should proceed. The fact is that I'm not Cormac McCarthy and trying to imitate him would just lead to bad covers, so to speak. Plus, my favorite writers, like Thomas Pynchon or William Faulkner, are not easily imitated.

I think it's better to take inspiration from others, and go with a stripped down style sort of like Hemingway (without trying to imitate him).
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I’m not saying imitate them in you personal writing. I am saying think about how they might have written a short passage as a way of examining your own approach — something encouraged by writers teaching UNC’s creative writing program when I was a student that I always found a useful way of expanding how I thought about writing.

But writing is always an individual journey and certainly I leave it to you to proceed as you believe is best.
 
Rock said:
I am unbanning Sandinista and what you said is more or less where things stand.

Doxxing is a 100% unforgivable act. That's a line in the sand that you cannot cross. People use forums for different reasons and one of those reasons can be a little bit of escapism or role playing or whatever. People act differently on a forum than they may in real life and that's fine. 10 or 15 years ago, on Phog.net, KUs 247 site, a user was doxxed for making a rather harmless comment about some small towns in Kansas being "crap holes" and a poster that held a grudge against that original poster for a long time, doxxed him and he was fired from his job. That, among other reasons, is why doxxing is a firm red line.

Threats and all of that, I mean at that point, come on. What are we doing here? We're going to allow users to threaten physical harm and what not? So, that's out too.

Users that troll and call names and use bad language? Well, I can tell you what the greater forum community would say and that's unequivocally to ban the user. Trolls/bad faith posters bring the level of discourse down, the experience is bad for others that want no part of it, they leave, the board suffers and on and on.

But, you guys are tight knit, we have super ignore, and everyone is aware so, I will unban Sandinista. This is a learning experience for all, for us forum moderators, and we're a new community so mistakes and bumps will happen along the way. Hopefully this smooths things out and we've all grown as forum posters from this.
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You see many here say far worse to the few conservative posters on a daily basis and that never results in a discussion of whether or not to ban them.
 
nycfan said:
Try rewriting a paragraph of it in the voice of a favorite writer of yours. For instance, I deeply admire the prose of Cormac McCarthy even though I don’t always love his themes — not copy that writer’s style but imagine how he or she might have phrased the same things as a way of approaching your own ideas from a new perspective . The idea is then to apply that thought experiment to expand your prose from narrative accuracy to include emotional engagement and engaging imagery.
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I can't recall who it was but some well-known writer (before he became a well-known writer) said that he would type out pages and pages (maybe even whole books) of writers he admired just so he could see what it felt like to type out sentences and paragraphs exactly like those of writers he admired. Interesting strategy...
 
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