Meta-discussion and meta-posts
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 4:22 am
Meta-discussion is discussion about discussion, like this topic will be. I've been thinking lately that this forum, and the sandbox still has a problem handling such discussions and my post guidelines, while mitigating the problem, haven't been fully effective in promoting higher quality discussion. As I see it there's two problems that these two boards, and the rest of the board to a lesser extent, is that meta-discussion interrupts conversations such as when the staff call people out for rule breaking in a post, people calling each other out, and references to other threads. The other problem which is unrelated, is just the inherit quality of posts being poor because they're bad posts and not necessarily meta. There's two solutions to curbing the problem and I think each should be put into place and they are as follows:
1. Instead of making a post to get back on topic, that a user was violating a rule, and directing users to the PM system edit the message with a citation.
For starters I was guilty of this while I was a mod here. Second, for a while staff members would edit the message with a citation as to the problem with it. This was directly requested to cease, since it is no concern of the general community what discipline users receive. I agree with the sentiment, and it makes sense. The problem is, however, users respond to staff posts about their behavior and thus creates an off-topic reply chain. The other problem is that verbal warnings do not help the very sentiment of not citing posts, since they are public and even more visible than the text in the edit box. Third, using PM is far better way of handling disputes yet it should happen before a moderator gets involved. I don't believe mods should be wasting their time by directing people to PM after seeing posts (which are publicly visible) that already should have been in a PM. I do believe mods should delete the posts if it's early in the chain, and PM the users involve and tell them to finish the conversation privately, or ban after a long chain (which shouldn't happen under my post guidelines) with a message to use the PM feature next time. Lastly, users will speculate about the staff's disciplinary actions no matter what. While a good reason for not citing posts, is to not give fuel to the fire by letting users see warnings, and make topics complaining; it does not solve the problem of speculation. People shouldn't, and that's only narrowly enforceable here since the best that can be done is directly prohibiting such speculation on this forum, and publicly announcing that people should not care. Instead, a space specifically for such discussion in a (sub)forum with reasonable rules to prevent the flame wars and drama that used to occur in this forum prior to my guidelines. This helps to prevent people from going on other platforms and spouting SMBX drama, when it can be contained in a (sub)forum with said reasonable rules. The rule set is basically already done since my guidelines work well, and my idea still sitting in the staff forum about requiring polls for topics that deal with these issues to keep things objective could be put into place.
2. Allowing users to change their names via UCP
This will help with call outs to a degree. The logic behind this, is that if people can change their names enough it will be harder for people to keep track and be unable to prejudge users and act towards them in a certain way. People treat each other differently around here, and that's expected in any non-anonymous community.The problem is, is that people will react negatively in a thread because a certain user created it or posted in it. This becomes meta-discussion because the negative response's subject is based on the user posting and not the user's post. It can be said that the staff should just be expected to take care of this, but the problem is that never really happens. For one, meta-discussion is not against the rules on any of the forums so there's no reason to look for these posts. Also, if a post is negative but doesn't break rules it will just fly under the radar to the staff, because there's no reason to report the post or for the staff to notice and take any action while browsing on their own. By no means is the strategy of constant name changes a final solution to the problem, and I'm open to other suggestions - besides just telling people to judge posts and not users and leaving it at that - but it helps slow down the problem so that it is more difficult for people to react as they do now to other members. People tend to react more politely to new users who come, and post in the introductions thread. While I would chalk this up to just common courtesy, it does raise the question as to whether or not this common courtesy could be extended if people were less familiar with people they don't associate with and make it harder to hold biases. Also, ranks, post counts, avatars, and signatures will obviously give away that a user isn't new however I already support removing ranks, post counts, and signatures to some extent but avatars and signatures can be updated just as easily in the UCP as names would be. This doesn't apply to staff members though since name colors are put into place (which an be changed ;)) so they will have to still deal with the issue of negativity based on the user accompanied with post and not just the post.
1. Instead of making a post to get back on topic, that a user was violating a rule, and directing users to the PM system edit the message with a citation.
For starters I was guilty of this while I was a mod here. Second, for a while staff members would edit the message with a citation as to the problem with it. This was directly requested to cease, since it is no concern of the general community what discipline users receive. I agree with the sentiment, and it makes sense. The problem is, however, users respond to staff posts about their behavior and thus creates an off-topic reply chain. The other problem is that verbal warnings do not help the very sentiment of not citing posts, since they are public and even more visible than the text in the edit box. Third, using PM is far better way of handling disputes yet it should happen before a moderator gets involved. I don't believe mods should be wasting their time by directing people to PM after seeing posts (which are publicly visible) that already should have been in a PM. I do believe mods should delete the posts if it's early in the chain, and PM the users involve and tell them to finish the conversation privately, or ban after a long chain (which shouldn't happen under my post guidelines) with a message to use the PM feature next time. Lastly, users will speculate about the staff's disciplinary actions no matter what. While a good reason for not citing posts, is to not give fuel to the fire by letting users see warnings, and make topics complaining; it does not solve the problem of speculation. People shouldn't, and that's only narrowly enforceable here since the best that can be done is directly prohibiting such speculation on this forum, and publicly announcing that people should not care. Instead, a space specifically for such discussion in a (sub)forum with reasonable rules to prevent the flame wars and drama that used to occur in this forum prior to my guidelines. This helps to prevent people from going on other platforms and spouting SMBX drama, when it can be contained in a (sub)forum with said reasonable rules. The rule set is basically already done since my guidelines work well, and my idea still sitting in the staff forum about requiring polls for topics that deal with these issues to keep things objective could be put into place.
2. Allowing users to change their names via UCP
This will help with call outs to a degree. The logic behind this, is that if people can change their names enough it will be harder for people to keep track and be unable to prejudge users and act towards them in a certain way. People treat each other differently around here, and that's expected in any non-anonymous community.The problem is, is that people will react negatively in a thread because a certain user created it or posted in it. This becomes meta-discussion because the negative response's subject is based on the user posting and not the user's post. It can be said that the staff should just be expected to take care of this, but the problem is that never really happens. For one, meta-discussion is not against the rules on any of the forums so there's no reason to look for these posts. Also, if a post is negative but doesn't break rules it will just fly under the radar to the staff, because there's no reason to report the post or for the staff to notice and take any action while browsing on their own. By no means is the strategy of constant name changes a final solution to the problem, and I'm open to other suggestions - besides just telling people to judge posts and not users and leaving it at that - but it helps slow down the problem so that it is more difficult for people to react as they do now to other members. People tend to react more politely to new users who come, and post in the introductions thread. While I would chalk this up to just common courtesy, it does raise the question as to whether or not this common courtesy could be extended if people were less familiar with people they don't associate with and make it harder to hold biases. Also, ranks, post counts, avatars, and signatures will obviously give away that a user isn't new however I already support removing ranks, post counts, and signatures to some extent but avatars and signatures can be updated just as easily in the UCP as names would be. This doesn't apply to staff members though since name colors are put into place (which an be changed ;)) so they will have to still deal with the issue of negativity based on the user accompanied with post and not just the post.