Moderation Questions

You remember it wrong. People didn't leave until it was clear Mat was closing the forum and he closed it because of a couple rw'ers complaints.

I organized a bunch of people in forming the new forum and I have a very clear idea of what happened.

It was closed for like 2 or 3 days and then reopened with Well Named as mod.

True, but we didn't know that and had already organized for the closing. Here's a copy of the PM I sent to a bunch of people.

Yes, but blaming the people who complained on ATF is a bit disingenuous. That blow-up was years in the making, and it was because those old mods found themselves at the end of the path that Crossnerd has only just started walking down.

You, Mr. Microbet, are a shining beacon of sensibility and normalcy compared to the people who were in charge here, and then fled to run UP after being rebuked. The self-reflection and infighting at the start of UP was fascinating to watch. You could see the regular old left-wingers realizing in real time just how truly unhinged some of their radical brethren were. I danced my monkey dance for the crowd over there for a while and was ultimately banned the day RBG died because in a thread containing hundreds of posts accusing her of ruining America for the next 10 generations, I made the mistake of saying "Dudes, relax, the sun will still rise tomorrow. Maybe wait until she's cold first before lining up to piss on her grave? Jesus"

Many of those dudes are truly crazy with a capital C.

Thanks. Yeah, that is mostly correct - even perhaps entirely correct, but still, I don't think Mat closes the forum without the complaints (and it was one person in particular hounding him - I don't remember his handle) and if Mat wouldn't have threatened to and then closed the forum there never would have been enough people checking out the new place (a temporary thing - not UP) to get the site going.

UP was an interesting social experiment. Probably 85%+ of the regulars were and are definitely what I'd call ideologues. While Trump (the common enemy) was sill around it was still mostly rainbows and butterflies with the odd crack showing here and there, not long after he lost the election it all turned to infighting and ultimately groups of allies formed and it all ended with like 50%+ of the people leaving or getting banned.

I even inadvertently got invited to some massive group PM where one faction ("The captains" lol) was complaining about then ultimately plotting against the other main faction, I think because someone mistook me for someone who gave a ****. I never did figure out whether I was considered a "captain" by virtue of being on their PM or not. I think I also got accused of being part of the "UK Clique" or whatever they called it, with jal and a couple of other people whose names I forget. Fun times.

'Tis a silly place.

It's probably less than 50% and lots of people who 'left' still post there. It's has about 50% more traffic than both the splinter sites combined.

There are some ideological differences on average between groups, but the groups of allies were formed mostly because of moderation differences and not political orientation.

I don't keep too much track of these things, but wasn't there a whole thing were the real leftists(TM) (I'm thinking people like victor, jal, Sabo, possibly you, I'm sure others I've forgotten) were lamenting the lack of ideological purity in the others? I seem to remember a lot being made of Sabo's banning at some point as well. I don't even know where the captains fit on the spectrum of ideological purity. I think it was Keed who started that whole movement and invited me, presumably because we always got along in threads and both liked South park memes.

Some of this is right, some of it wrong. I'd spell it out, but I'm withholding the details because they'll be in my screenplay. You'll have to wait for the movie.

No, it's not like that. Like, I'm not going to name people, but some of the more conservative people on UP were also among that group. It wasn't about ideological purity unless you mean at the local level of how to operate the site and how to, or not to, ban people.

I'd definitely rely on microbet's narrative rather than mine, both my understanding of what was going on at the time and my subsequent memory of it are sketchy to say the least.

Yes, I do remember thre thread-zillas in the mod forum about how to run the site filling up with hundreds of new posts overnight while I was sleeping, and the endless polls about how decisions were going to be made, how mods were going to rotate, how many votes in a poll were needed to approve a new poll and how many rounds of such polls one would need to vote in a change of light bulb etc. etc. I always thought all that drama was pretty entertaining.

I know 2 or 3 people from UP in real life and I like a handful of people there but the general tribalism is pretty redic over there and it made sense why some of them started eating their own once they got the place that they wanted. It also just feels like a lot of people are now just saying things to receive a heart or to be better accepted by their peers which makes it a hell of a lot more difficult to actually discuss something that's polarizing. But they should be able to have w/e place they most prefer. I still post there today.

But it seemed like when covid hit, you had a shift with a lot of regulars where the conversation no longer evolved around restrictions or protocols but became a heavy-handed authoritarian opportunity of rage against people they didn't like. And it seemed right around that time and when they created a thread for people who died that they didn't like in order to bump and get a puff of dopamine from it started realizing that I wasn't super aligned with many of them there.

I keep myself contained to certain threads for everyone's benefit when I do post there because I just can't read some of that ****. But I do like quite a few there and have known some of them for a very long time and even before politcs.

I think the impact of COVID on the division in the country is pretty wildly un-talked about. It was pretty radicalizing for a lot of people.

Well I just checked and I'm still banned. If you need to encourage everyone to remember that they still have something in common, you can unban me and I'll maybe add it back to the rotation. Factorio: Space Age released, so no guarantees.

I have no power at UP. Should I start a new new site with open registration and no moderation?

Didn't UP start off as "community moderated" or something?

community owned too

the best part was they banned micro from the original website that he set up himself.

Not exactly at the very very beginning but soon after, depending on how that's defined.

Apparently not. I thought I moderated myself pretty well.

I would be a fantastic mod. The rules under Inso0 are pretty simple:

• 1. Very short leash on any jokes/insults a 4th grader would find funny
  
• 2. No furry stuff
  
• 3. Anything beyond 4 posts in a back-and-forth ad hominem insult war must be taken to PMs
  

That sucks. But hey, they can't be all bad, you got a golden parachute when you got booted!

It was more of an accelerant than a fire starter, but it definitely had an impact.

Wow what an *******. Also, what's brown and sticky? A stick. A furry stick, wink wink.

I'm not banned. I may have caught a 1 day once or twice and I did a protest self-ban in solidarity with JT I think for a month once (like I did here with you).

I don't get it, but I feel like this might violate rule #1.