[2016-06-11] Crackdown on rudeness

Also, please remember that BLF is not Reddit or Slashshot, and I don’t want it to turn into that either. So please do not use the Rude! button just because you don’t like or don’t agree with the post or the poster. It is intended exclusively for use on rude, lewd, or conflictive posts.

Very interesting, marsalla. Doesn’t surprise me either, given the way that society in general is turning. So I’m glad to see a lot of people here that are trying to buck the trend.

Regarding the button on the search results, thanks for letting me know, it should be fixed now.

About the quote button, yes, unfortunately it went MIA during the site upgrade, and I can’t figure out how to get it back. Sorry!

As for the possibility of a rude original post getting marked many times as rude and being removed, yes, it could happen, although I set higher limits for an original post. But this goes back to what I mentioned earlier about not responding in any way, shape, or form to inappropriate or rude content. Of course, everybody’s opinion of what’s rude and what’s not is different. But if enough people mark an OP as rude and it gets removed, it’s a pretty sure bet that the OP was out of line, and therefore any follow-up comments would also be promoting something that is bad for BLF.

I also tweaked the method of Rudeness points expiration:

Originally it would expire a rudeness point 24 hours after it was given. This would make it so that if the user created a rude post and then disappeared for more than 24 hours, (s)he could come back and potentially find a clean 0 rating for rudeness with no indication of how offensive it was.

So I changed it so that now, the overall rudeness score will tick down by 1 every day. This change has been reflected in the OP.

This ‘rude’ button is a nice antidote to rude posts by rude ‘members’ !

Kudos to our admin for being so patient and reasonable….let’s all hope they all get the message and not abuse the patience of SB.

:beer:

I just tried marking one of my old posts as rude, but got a “website has encountered an unexpected error message”, maybe it was just from the load of people trying it, but fyi.

However, the reason I was trying it was to see if there was a way to easily see which posts were marked rude and which ones I’ve marked rude so corrections can be made in case it was updated by the poster?

KuoH

It is also important to note that all of these labels like “rude” and “troll” are used to silence those who choose to dissent from majority opinion. So if you think differently, you must be rude or a troll.

Oops, sorry, looks like I broke it. :blush: Should be working now.

This would be a lot more difficult to implement on a technical level, but it’s definitely not a bad idea.

Now, ah, could the button appear on the ads as well?
I’d like to tag the whatchacallit MilitaryMonster700 ads….

I think I’m just joking, but these days with smart coders I can never tell in advance whether I’m joking or wishing in the presence of a wizard, and I’m often surprised by what can be made to work.

This is an important point. One of the major instigating factors of fights here is when people start throwing around insults and labels like that. So the original post in this thread tries to be very clear; if you feel somebody is out of line, be it “normal” rudeness or “trollish” rudeness, please refrain from calling them out, and don’t have any interaction whatsoever with the person. Instead, hit the Rude! button and contact me if it’s an extreme case or becoming a pattern and I don’t notice it.

But please also keep in mind this recent addition I made to the original post:

No smoke without fire. :wink:

You’re definitely not alone, I even notice some being unnecessarily rude to you and they’ll get the button when it’s justified.

It’s a good deterrent.

:laughing: Well actually yes, you are in the presence of the Google wizardry, which usually targets relevant ads, but occasionally gets them dead wrong. Sorry about that, those are ads that Google personalizes for you, and no two people get the exact same set of Google ads, and I don’t have any real control over what they serve up for you. With that being said, if you continue to see a really annoying or really inappropriate Google ad on this site please let me know and I can block that advertiser. The emphasis being on “really”, because I’d prefer not to be deluged with more administrative tasks.

Sorry that’s not possible at the moment. In retrospect I guess this is a fairly important feature for this system to work better. I’ll see what I can do.

I wonder if TK’s ‘killfile’ could also be implemented as a button.

Because I think there’s, for most of us, some sort of comment that (while not ‘rude’) hits a hot button.

And some folks do enjoy banging on their favorite buttons to see who gets upset, vs. who applauds.

“… this flashlight fries the craven illiberal hearts of lotus eaters……

That sort of thing. It means nothing but it incorporates a few buttons that might touch tender spots in someone who sees a buzzword.

Those are the sorts of posts where a “don’t want to see this ever again” button would be most helpful.

Yeah, I can edit the CSS in TK’s “after dark” to enable the feature now. I do. Works great.

But how many among us who see something that pisses us off react by immediately wanting to go copy and paste a bit of code so we don’t have to get pissed off?

Backing away is, you know, the right thing to do. It’s also the difficult thing to do.

I talk too much, and here I go again…

First, I hope this doesn’t make a lot of extra work for you as admin, people playing with something that is meant very seriously.

Second, I already see people playing with the button, raking up big numbers like it’s a matter of pride, when in fact, rule number one clearly states that rude behavior will get your membership revoked. So maybe I’m just thinking too literally but I saw the Rude! button as a 1-10 scale of how close you are to getting banned. Going to 12 or 20 or 50 just seems like someone asking to no longer be a member on BLF, according to Rule #1.

And lastly, how do you establish this difference, between playful running up of the numbers only to watch them fall over ensuing days versus real actual rude comments made that should have someone ejected from the forum? If the “ticks” count down daily, then it’s easy for anyone to intentionally be rude and get away with it on a regular basis.

I was a member of Photography on the Net (POTN) for years, they used to use this type of system and it became so problematic they did away with it.

I have seen members here blatantly break rules, in ways that should have banned them according to the rules, and yet they are still here. Thankfully, TK gave some options and I am using those options where BLF protocol has failed.

Seems like this is going to be more work for you SB as opposed to less work. It would appear that there are going to multiple cases of members being ostracized for their dissenting views in any given thread. Hence, you will likely have to go back and analyze the true nature of the individuals “rude” total as opposed to simply banning them. My dissenting opinion here alone would likely get high “rude” totals in a GB setting for example, as there always seems to be two opposing factions in each GB.

I understand that users are playing with the button right now, because it’s new. Once I make sure the bugs are worked out of the system I’ll tell users to only use it seriously, and I’ll probably eliminate the ability to “rude” one’s own posts.

Sometimes the user has actually been banned, I just don’t make a public announcement so as to not give more glory to users that are trying to get attention by being rude. And sometimes I simply don’t notice rude behavior and/or major violations of the rules. So I would appreciate a PM in cases where you feel somebody is showing a pattern of major rudeness.

We’ll see how it works. Of course everybody has a right to express their opinions and even dissenting views, which is the whole purpose of a forum. But the problem is that a few people are being extremely rude while expressing their disagreement. I do want to reiterate yet again that the Rude! button is not meant for disagreeing with an opinion, but rather for flagging posts that are inappropriate.

I have my own opinions as to what constitutes rudeness, but if a significant number of people agree with me by marking a given post as Rude!, and if the poster is a repeat offender, I will ban them, just as I’ve always done. I’ve always had to look into scattered cases of trolling and extreme rudeness, so nothing changes there for me. Now I just have more opinions to take into account when making the decision, and not all of them necessarily have to flood my PM inbox with complaints about an individual.

I love this forum very nice and kind people here :+1:

Judgement was called for in the past and is still called for. The rude button is merely a tool to help people become more aware of how they are perceived by others including those who have declined to respond to the rude posts in the past. Hopefully with the benefit of reducing rude responses by those who do respond. There have been a number of insults tossed off in a variety of threads where the poster took for granted it was ok to do so and though they were not trolling were most definitely rude. “Aggression unchallenged is aggression unleashed” Phaedrus(15BC-50AD) so thank you SB for providing an acceptable form of challenge. This shouldn’t be viewed as some license to go on witch hunts though. Undoubtedly, some will take offense at having their behavior challenged viewing it as a challenge to their freedom as it’s a rare bird that can accept criticism and take it to heart with humility. Most seem to snooze after a wake up call.

I agree with Will34.