As a practical matter, Discourse has a watched words features that allows me to set up rules for posts which have specific words in them. Here are the actions that can be automatically applied for a post with a specific watched word:
Block:
Prevent posts containing these words from being posted. The user will see an error message when they try to submit their post.
Censor:
Allow posts containing these words, but replace them with characters that hide the censored words.
Require Approval:
Posts containing these words will require approval by staff before they can be seen.:
Flag:
Allow posts containing these words, but flag them as inappropriate so moderators can review them.
Link:
Replace words in posts with links.
Replace:
Replace words in posts with other words.
Tag:
Automatically tag topics based on first post.
Silence:
First posts of users containing these words will require approval by staff before they can be seen and the user will be automatically silenced.
I’m open to a discussion of words that we find problematic or otherwise want to steer usage of, and the appropriate rules to apply to them, but I don’t want to create a Scunthorpe Problem.
I think we are very much focusing on the wrong thing here.
This site is dying. It’s a rare day that there are more than 10 or 20 comments posted, and a rare WEEK when a single new topic posts. There are maybe three or four people here who continue to post on a more-or-less daily basis. Over the past couple of years, many, many more than that have gone silent or left the site. Engagement is at an all-time low. You may recall, a couple of years ago I brought my brother over here, hoping to add some new blood to the site. It didn’t work. I asked him why he never comes here anymore. His answer was “it’s boring and there’s nothing new.”
Yet here we are, discussing censoring someone’s comment because they used a word that is in wide, popular use. Why? Simply because someone claims to be insulted by it? “Moron” “idiot” and “feeble-minded” (Eugenicist Henry Goddard’s words, from the early 1900s) have not been used in their original meaning and context since even before Goddard died. No one has used them in their original, formal, mental health meanings since before I was born, and I am old. The fact that we would even consider censoring one of the few people here who still bother to post because one reader doesn’t like the obscure original meaning of a word that has evolved into common usage is, forgive my French, fucking nuts.
Obviously, I do not want the site to degenerate into name-calling or insults, but that isn’t happening-- and if it does, there are perfectly fine mechanisms for dealing with it: flagging and human moderation. Indeed, this entire subject has become an issue only because someone used a perfectly fine word that someone else objected to. Not as as an insult against anyone here, but simply to call out a public figure who has done something breathtakingly stupid.
I had high hopes for this site when we started. We had such plans for it. None of them have come to fruition. Our fearless leader has mentioned several times that they are concerned about the level of engagement, but that is the end of it. Engagement by the owners and mods is so low as to be nonexistent. Say what you will about the management over at BB, they are engaged.
I still use BB and participate there. There are people there I like who I don’t see anywhere else. Yet it annoys me that they use Discourse’s automated moderation features to do stupid things like block out the word “moist” because the weirdo in charge doesn’t like it. Whatever. They are attacked by spammers, scammers, and trolls multiple times a day. They have thousands of posts a day and no mere human can stay on top of them, so auto-moderation is somewhat forgivable. But to even consider doing that here is just lazy, given the low number of posts and the already almost-nonexistent participation.
I have done my best to participate here and try to keep the site alive. If it’s going to die, maybe it’s time to let it go. If the owners and mods want to try and make the system run itself without participation, just give up and end it already.
I’ve described this site to others as our “Lounge away from ‘home’,” and I think it still fits. It was created as an escape hatch from the BBS back during the Regularpocalypse days… and I think it still more-or-less serves that purpose. It’s a place by and for our Mutant community, away from the annoyances of the BBS.
I know we had bigger dreams for the site when it was created… but, as always, real life gets in the way. I know I haven’t been spending as much time here as I used to, even before my recent technical difficulties. But I’ve also been less active on the main BBS. Before I hit reply, I ask myself, “is this really interesting, or amusing, or useful enough to be worth posting?” And more often than not, I can only say “no” and hit Delete instead. >shrug< I’m working on that.
I’ve also noticed the slowing-down of this site, but I’m not sure it’s time to give it up just yet. Twitter’s self-immolation is going to affect quite a few platforms, and I know some over at TOS are worrying about the BBS getting swamped with trolls and malicious actors. We may need this “escape hatch” more than ever within the next few months…
TL;DR, back to topic: I like how we all can take part in this discussion of rules and language, and decide as a community how we’re going to go forward. I don’t think we’re at the point of needing to auto-mod words just yet, unless that would make things easier for our Mod team (and I suspect that needing to approve posts would create a lot more work for them instead.)
I’m not sure whether you are more optimistic or pessimistic than I am, but I doubt that Elon’s takeover is going to make very much of a difference over at Twitter. Those of us who are going to leave probably already have. Personally, I no longer use it, but I haven’t deleted my account there. The obvious problem is that people like the format and medium, and there’s nothing to replace it with.
I agree the meaning of the word “moron” has changed, like a lot of words do. When I got flagged the other day, I got a little angry; then depressed. (Usually that’s what happens when I get angry). So I decided to just lurk for awhile. I have considering leaving.
My understanding of the phrase “politically correct” was originally used by some liberals to refer to things they thought off the scale of being sensitive to something or other. Then conservatives stole the word and used it to disparage all liberals.
In the case of Blazing Saddles, probably the most inflammatory word used was the n word. However, it was used as satire, in a movie where stupid (ignorant, uneducated, rude, whatever) white people were mocked effectively. The black sheriff was the hero.
I feel that in successful humor, there is a wider range of “acceptable” than in regular day-to-day speech. John Cleese another writer/comedian I respect has spoken about this. But the humor has to be really good to support it. In this case it did. In fact, I think Blazing Saddles is one of the funniest movies out there, despite the language used.
There are a lot of good people here; fewer than before alas. But as (I assume) friends, I think we could be a little more forgiving, and worry less about trying to make things perfect. I doubt anyone here uses inflammatory words to anyone’s face as a deliberate insult. So maybe we could keep the flagging to a minimum.
I am not a great communicator, so I’ve just kept my mouth shut until now, but it was my post about a Mencken quote that used the word in question before @kxkvi’s post, so maybe I started this.
In a living language, word meanings & usage change over time.
Words that are commonly known to have been born of hatred should never be used, but most words have obscure origins, or origins that most people do not know about, and most people can not be expected to research the origin of every word that they might possibly use.
We must be sensitive, but it is counterproductive to be TOO sensitive. Sometimes we just have to let things slide, and move on, unless we want to spend our days alone, staring out the window and cursing at the world.
Maybe in the future people will have a text monitor program running in the background which alerts the user to questionable words, but we don’t have that, nor can the average person be expected to look up the history of ever word they say or type.
People here are nice and I wouldn’t expect to see anyone insult another member in such a way, nor do I think that would be generally accepted. That’s not what we’re talking about, though. There was no disrespect involved.
And quotes and cultural references are quite another thing. To edit them to more acceptable terminology would be counter-productive. For instance, if you changed the punchline of that Blazing Saddles joke to some currently appropriate and acceptable euphemism for the archaic medical meaning instead of a pejorative, that would actually make it offensive (or at least definitely much more offensive). And the same for the quote above.
So I’ll second @RatMan that we shouldn’t be looking to censor people over posts like this. The moderation we have is fine, and would handle if someone were to degenerate into name-calling and insults.
If I talk about some of my disabilities elsewhere, inclusding on BoingBoing, I would get hostility and harassment, such as people asking why I was allowed to leave my apartment, or saying I should kill myself, or should be killed, or sending months of private messages of photos or videos of attacking dogs.
How do you keep this space from degenerating into so many other internet spaces?
Please don’t leave. I don’t speak for anyone else, but I can tell you that personally, I value your posts here and enjoy engaging with you. I would miss you if you left.
You are right to feel angry about being singled out for your post. I feel that it was a mistake in moderation to even bring it up. In my view, it should have been ignored as the troll or red herring that it was.
I am 99% sure I know who flagged your post-- they have mentioned this same concern before, and equally incorrectly. I find myself incapable of engaging with that person, and therefore I have blocked them on every site that we mutually use. That is a failing on my part, but not one that I feel I need to fix.
As for feeling depressed, please don’t. Perhaps one of the best definitions of depression that I know of is “anger directed inward.” But remember, this is not on you-- it is on the person who originally flagged your post, and perhaps on the moderator who decided that it needed to be acknowledged and discussed instead of ignored.
I’m not a moderator here, so take what I say with a grain (or block!) of salt. Moderating a public discussion site is hard, and they do the best they can. But sometimes they get it wrong, and this is one of those times. Whatever. Stuff happens and we move on. No disrespect intended, and I am overall happy with the moderation here. Sometimes we bend over backwards to accommodate viewpoints that should not be accommodated, but it is what it is.
I am not politically correct. I never have been and I never will be. And anywhere that insists that I must be, is a place I will never post at again.
I started to dig into the data to see how true or false this is, but it merits more labor than I can handle at the moment. There is much to discuss on this topic, and I would like to have that discussion, just somewhere else.
I’m struggling to find a way to interpret this as anything other than criticism, but I’ll try to respond as honestly as I can. First, a clarification: There is exactly one owner of this site (myself) in the sense of someone who pays the bills and keeps the site running (relatively) smoothly. There are also exactly two admins/moderators with elevated privileges on the BBS, @ChickieD and @tinoesroho. I do not have requirements or agreements with them on their level or participation. They are volunteers, and I absolutely appreciate how generous they are with their time. I also appreciate how generous everyone else is who chooses to participate here, yourself included. I cannot speculate too deeply as to the reasons for changes in other members’ participation, but I can share some of my own challenges. I was just another user on BB, but here whenever I post something it has the additional weight of representing the site as well. Sometimes this extra weight leads to self-censorship, because I don’t want to potentially alienate an already limited audience. Other issues are probably less interesting. Sometimes I’ll post something that I think is genuinely interesting, only for it to be more or less ignored. It’s not anyone’s fault, but it can definitely be discouraging. I’m sure I’ve done much the same to others. Another aspect that I think would be irresponsible to ignore in this comparison is that BB is a profit seeking entity, and the management and authors there are presumably being paid to interact with the audience. While being paid to do something doesn’t necessarily increase a desire to do it, it does at least make it easier to allocate time for it.
Thank you for joining, and thank you for continuing to participate. Genuinely. I don’t want to see anyone leave, but I will also have no plans to continue running a site with no users. I wouldn’t characterize my post up-thread as advocating for the “system running itself without participation,” but I apologize if it appeared that way. I was trying to contribute to the conversation by detailing some of the options that are available in lieu of involving moderators every time certain words are used.
Thank you. That more or less fits the original goals I had. I think it could be more than that, but wanting things does not make it so.
I know for me it certainly feels like there is a lot more life to get in the way than there used to be. I know I appreciate your contributions here, and I’m sure others do too.
My general thinking was to automatically add spoiler tags around certain words so that they wouldn’t be as immediately troublesome. Maybe it would actually have the opposite effect by drawing attention to them. Having a conversation about it at least lets us share our thoughts. Also, I think it bears mentioning that this group is overall extremely well behaved. There are so few flags in general that it is legitimately stressful to me to see the red dot show up at the top of the page.
The phrase politically correct first appeared in the 1930s, when was used to describe dogmatic adherence to ideology in authoritarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.[5] Early usage of the term politically correct by leftists in the 1970s and 1980s was as self-critical satire;[8] usage was ironic, rather than a name for a serious political movement.[13][14][15] It was considered an in-joke among leftists used to satirise those who were too rigid in their adherence to political orthodoxy.[16] The modern pejorative usage of the term emerged from conservative criticism of the New Left in the late 20th century, with many describing it as a form of censorship.[17]
There’s actually a really fantastic essay about Blazing Saddles by Lindsay Ellis, but it appears to be exclusive to Nebula. It’s one of many good reasons to subscribe, but I think you might be able to watch a single video for free. One of the key discussion points is that of course you couldn’t make the exact movie Blazing Saddles today because at least part of the value of it is that it is in conversation with other media of the time. She specifically points to Jojo Rabbit as an example of a modern movie that pushes boundaries in similar ways. I think this is similar to arguments for removing the confederate battle flag from various state flags or removing monuments celebrating historical figures/events that are more problematic in modern times. We shouldn’t seek to erase or rewrite history, but we should try to place those things in their appropriate context.
It’s worth reiterating that there are extremely few posts flagged here, which can have the unfortunate side effect of making those rare events have outsized effect. I think we can also, separately, have a discussion about the language we use and how it can affect others. For me, I have made it a personal goal to remove the words crazy and gypped from my vocabulary as much as possible. The first because of the ways that it has been used to other an historically marginalized and stigmatized group, and the second because of its origins relative to a marginalized ethnic group. I can appreciate how it is difficult to change habit like that, and I can also appreciate how jarring it can feel when someone casually uses a word that you have decided not to.
It’s slightly more nuanced, though, in situations where you know origin and the problematic meaning of a word and continue using it. It takes effort, and just trying to communicate in the first place takes effort. I think it’s reasonable not to ascribe malice without further evidence, though.
I generally agree with this, although there does exist an edge case where someone uses a quotation in order to use a taboo word indirectly in order to skirt around a community rule. I don’t think I’ve seen an example of this here, but that is another aspect to how difficult it can be to make clear and useful community guidelines.
Carefully, and together. Having this conversation (relatively) out in the open is, I think, evidence that there are people who genuinely care about this place, and by extension the people here(or is it the other way around?)
There were flags issued on two posts. Those flags were reviewed by a moderator and their determination was to ignore those flags and let the posts stand as-is. I’m failing to see how that moderation decision differs from the arguments you’re making above. Separately, this conversation was resumed in order to explore the complexities around how we choose to use language. As far as I can tell, no one was punished.
I think this deserves emphasis. Pretty much all of us came from TOS, as well as other internet spaces with their own rules, so we’ve learned how to manage our own behavior… which means it’s not a sign of “slacking” that the moderators don’t have to do much here. And I like that. It’s nice to have one place on the Web where people can say their peace and even have disagreements without it turning into major drama every few days. It’s nice to have a refuge that’s troll-free, as much as anywhere on the Internet can be. But on the few occasions when conflicts do arise, our mod team reacts quickly and with consideration for all parties, and is transparent in a way I’ve rarely seen in all my decades online. This is a good thing, and I sincerely appreciate it.
I don’t have well-formed thoughts these days about much. Maybe I haven’t been able to formulate thoughts well in a while. In live face to face conversations, I often freeze mid-sentence to find a word. Sometimes the ribbon of idea slips through my fingers and is gone in the wind of qualia. Whatever the cause - if the dork who proclaimed Google Is Make Us Forgetful was right or if Weed Broke My Brain, I’ve arrived at the worst fste for a thought remixer: being slow. Sometimes just processing a sentence someone speaks can take ten seconds. It’s not great.
One thing’s nice, though: I’m no longer angry.
Can’t be angry. Anger be expensive. In these times, where one in seven american residents say they have zero friends, where the times are hard, I can’t afford to be angry, even if I wanted to be.
I gotta be kind, because people are all I have.
Let kindness be our guiding principle, words our healing tincture.
Mr. Lomax thanks you.
But he also says your posts are thoughtful too.
We have a thread called “Um . . . what . . . aka, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read;” however, I would guess “dumb” is probably as offensive as “moron.” I guess my answer would be sort of the same – the word usage has changed (to one degree or another), and people here are just as unlikely to use it as an insult (though I understand people can be sensitive to a word used in an innocent (so to speak) manner.
I mean, no one (as far as I can tell) has been interpreting that to mean “a person who can’t speak”, or someone mentally disabled (in a known way, or in a way that does not create harm or danger to others).
Context really needs to be a strong determining factor. Dictionary definitions or etymology can help sometimes, but current, present-day usage and the actual target and meaning in the sentence in question has to be important. Otherwise you can end up in situations where you can’t label anything as “bigoted” because actual bigots will get upset at how they don’t actually subscribe to that very specific way of thinking…
A commonly used term these days used to be significantly dangerous to be labeled as such. Now no one thinks about what it used to mean to be called a ‘bastard’. I think many of these words are the same: so far removed from their original meaning as to be context-less at this point.
