Zone1 Top down control or individual liberty?

Zone1 style content moderation or individual content moderation via the "ignore" function?


  • Total voters
    20
  • Poll closed .
Am I understanding that those racism threads were censored and closed because they were posted in racism? Racism threads belong in the racism area. C'mon flac. What are you trying to do here?

TItle of the forum is Race and Race RELATIONS -- not racism. And it's purpose is largely not to determine WHO is racist because THAT WORD is plum worn out by politics. It's been hacked and pureed into a meaningless term by the tribal wars. You cannot AVOID "political" definitions of racist when discussing political leaders. It becomes ALL POLITICS. THousands of examples like when Larry Elder ran in the Cali governor recall and got called a "white supremacist" by several on the left. Or when Trump referred to the Wuhan Flu or China virus and STILL that's considered to THIS DAY as an example of "Trump being racist". EVEN THO, AFTER Trump was gone, Fauci was still caught referring to the original covid virus as "the Wuhan strain" of Covid.

Those threads were HEADING there and actually ARRIVED there if you read them. Were NOT Race or Race Relations topics.
 
bet you a bucket of moonglow posts it was the trolls mad. :)

and yea, it would most certainly divide things up and conversations would get pretty one sided into echo chambers.

as a poster, it's easy to deal with trolls "if we were mods" - ban them. problem solved.

Yeah, I imagine it was an insult to the noble art of trolling. :dev3: Trolls of all colors and shapes are easily triggered by threats to their environment. But the feeling was AT THAT TIME -- there were still enough folks who WOULD appreciate a troll free enviro for a change that folks WOULD INVITE members "of the other side" INTO those threads to have "less noise, more debate".

Wouldn't work now.

If members WANT troll on troll violence, they can post stuff in the fabulous Taunting forums, which essentially (ALMOST) bans moderation from interfering with their important missions. :wink:

You might note, that we LOSE about 1/2 of the NEW members that post an Introduction thread by the END of those threads. I think they get a whiff of a war zone and bug out. So MAYBE -- a few MORE forums that aren't troll on troll conflict, might KEEP some of those. USMB membership is solidly "wingers". And the "Big Middle" independents are more important to determining elections in the past several cycles. (personal observation of course).
 
I've been thinking about this Zone1 stuff and why it gets on my nerves.
I'm definitely not for top-down control in any form of governance when personal liberty can accomplish the same outcome.
Bear with me here, and I'll get to my poll question.
The ownership or moderation team here (as is their right) has come up with their solution to the incessant bickering and verbal food-fighting here by using a top-down approach of applying Zone1 designations to select categories.
I would assume this is because some do not care for the aforementioned conflicts.
But why not just use the ignore feature on an individual basis? That way, those who do not want to see the conflicts will be sheltered via a personally defined censorship of other members. That, to me, is the individual liberty solution, much like "change the channel if you don't like the content".
The Zone1 solution is a top-down, "we decide for everyone what is acceptable" approach.
There is no right or wrong answer, just personal opinion.
Hopefully no moderators take this as an attack. I'm just curious to see where we all stand regarding such things.
7 day poll, so vote if you care to have your opinion on record.
So here is my poll question:
As a member of USMB, would you rather have the top-down control so everyone is constrained by the blanket rules, or the more individualistic route of customizing your experience via eliminating content you don't want to see via the ignore function?
Zone 1 allows LibTards to lie politely and complain when you call out their lies.
 
No -- it was done to AVOID CENSORSHIP. We had long, somewhat heated discussions about long lists of words to ban from race/religion. Religion forum issue was that EVERY THREAD ended on Page 2 in a God/no god standoff and NO topics got honored.

They were USELESS -- might as well be in the Taunting forums where there ARE NO TOPICS and our motto "there's nothing there worth protecting" -- so moderation is very light there. THEY are still available.

But trying to FIX the USELESSNESS of the discussion in Race/Religion by CENSORING was shelved in favor of HONEST discussion. And if there's a shake-out of folks who DO NOT WANT to make that effort -- that's OK. Perhaps we'll get MORE people that come to USMB for discussion and not for personal conflict.

Why would anyone volunteer to moderate a discussion board that doesn't believe moderation is necessary? THe "old days" of USMB back 20 years ago -- the contention and viciousness extended to and ESPECIALLY in the mod room. Nobody wants to work with rogue mods with unlimited power to express THEIR OWN biases. And that's UNAVOIDABLE if the rules dont STRIP moderators of those arbitrary, subjective decisions.

I came here after being tossed from a board (temp banned) for civilly arguing with "the established members". JUST for my different POV and principles that rubbed them the wrong way. All the power in the hands of RINOs and DINOs making SUBJECTIVE AND ARBITRARY decisions IS CENSORSHIP and a SAFE PLACE. This place is not.

Thank you.

It very much seems like I had alluded to earlier, it akin to placing certain areas of the forum under a, "no shirt, no shoes," to participate in certain areas,

. . . and certain members, don't like acting like they are in church, or as they would at a civic social function.

Animals. The lot of them.

:rolleyes:
 
it would be cool if i could simply post a thread and exclude people from it. most of the trolls i've seen have goals in 2 parts.

annoy someone else. ignore them and it does help, yes.
then
derail threads.

since everyone won't ignore the same people, it really doesn't matter if you see these dooshbuckets or not. others will, respond, and kill a thread.

i don't envy the mods. not at all. you and i CAN ignore people. they can't. for this reason alone i'd never be a mod. the other reason is i doubt they'd want me to be one. :)

but many are here to scream at the other side, so the forum reflects 2 things really. the rules and how they are carried out; then how we carry ourselves with each other.
IM2 did that and created his own echo chamber where only six or seven people who agreed with him were allowed to post. It quickly died a natural death because it was even boring to them when they agreed with everything each other said.
 
it would be cool if i could simply post a thread and exclude people from it. most of the trolls i've seen have goals in 2 parts.

annoy someone else. ignore them and it does help, yes.
then
derail threads.

since everyone won't ignore the same people, it really doesn't matter if you see these dooshbuckets or not. others will, respond, and kill a thread.

i don't envy the mods. not at all. you and i CAN ignore people. they can't. for this reason alone i'd never be a mod. the other reason is i doubt they'd want me to be one. :)

but many are here to scream at the other side, so the forum reflects 2 things really. the rules and how they are carried out; then how we carry ourselves with each other.
I've been a mod twice before. It can be a PITA, for sure.
 
IM2 did that and created his own echo chamber where only six or seven people who agreed with him were allowed to post. It quickly died a natural death because it was even boring to them when they agreed with everything each other said
yea but then i won't have to see it.

maybe put on a personal block of up to 5 posters where you just dont see anything from them and they don't see anything from you.

wonder who the most 5 blocked would be. i'd likely screw that up and come in 6th.
 
I've been a mod twice before. It can be a PITA, for sure.
i couldn't do it. everyone is right and you're 100% wrong cause you don't... um...

do whatever it is they demand at the time. flacaltenn has had to put up with me on a few rants and always listened but been fair in what he couldn't do.

just because a mod doesn't do what you demand they do doesn't mean they're not doing their job or all they can.
 
TItle of the forum is Race and Race RELATIONS -- not racism. And it's purpose is largely not to determine WHO is racist because THAT WORD is plum worn out by politics. It's been hacked and pureed into a meaningless term by the tribal wars. You cannot AVOID "political" definitions of racist when discussing political leaders. It becomes ALL POLITICS. THousands of examples like when Larry Elder ran in the Cali governor recall and got called a "white supremacist" by several on the left. Or when Trump referred to the Wuhan Flu or China virus and STILL that's considered to THIS DAY as an example of "Trump being racist". EVEN THO, AFTER Trump was gone, Fauci was still caught referring to the original covid virus as "the Wuhan strain" of Covid.

Those threads were HEADING there and actually ARRIVED there if you read them. Were NOT Race or Race Relations topics.
You can't make this kind of craziness up. All things race, race relations, and racism go in whatever subsection has any variant of the word race in it. Everybody knows this. We only have one race subforum, so you can't miss.
 
Zone 1 allows LibTards to lie politely and complain when you call out their lies.
Truth be told, as members here, our currency is our posts.
If we don't spend said currency in Zone1, it will die of neglect.
I'm all for letting the market decide such things.
I'm also glad this thread has generated some thought and discussion, although the number of people who have actually voted seems low. Interesting food for thought, that.
 
You might note, that we LOSE about 1/2 of the NEW members that post an Introduction thread by the END of those threads.
I don't know if this is good or bad. :eusa_think:

On the one hand, damn shame.

On the other, no use pretending we are a site or a forum culture other than what we are.


:dunno:

I had posted this observation before, in a couple threads, and it seems to be that "mission statement" that Natural Citizen is looking for. SO, this does seem to be a particularly important issue for this forum. . . i.e. censorship, and the pride this forum on has providing spaces, to have the most open dialog between different interest groups.

The Forum motto, as far as I can tell, since its inception, has been;

,o2 a-2.jpg
In 2022 and from 2003?
,o4 a-2.jpg


That's a pretty consistent message over nineteen years. . . the value of the voice of the membership. Admittedly, the culture has definitely drifted to the left.

But, that might just be a result of the nation going left as well too. Some of those thread sub-forum titles? :auiqs.jpg:

,o4 a-2.jpg
 
TItle of the forum is Race and Race RELATIONS -- not racism.
Here's the title that shows up for me:

Screenshot_20220706-144815_DuckDuckGo.jpg


That sure looks like where we post racism threads.

It would be educational to the community to post where the Trump evidence of racism thread went wrong. Maybe quote it so I can see what you are talking about.
 
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The ownership or moderation team here (as is their right) has come up with their solution to the incessant bickering and verbal food-fighting here by using a top-down approach of applying Zone1 designations to select categories.

But, AFAIK, groups like Race and Religion always HAVE been Z1 categories for a long time! All that is new here is the green Z1 flag and the recently renewed focus on this zone as an effort to increase the "value" of these forums! The question is: what value to who?

Zone 1 is no big deal, all they are asking for is a place where people really discuss the topic in depth and detail civilly rather than resorting to (often childish) bickering and fighting. The problems with this though are many:

ZONE 1 as it stands depends on finding the RIGHT PEOPLE to fit into the vehicle they have made, and historically here, most people interested in hashing a racial issue are the most polarized of all intent on hammering out a series of accusations of blame to people undeserving of it who just don't want to hear it again, so right at the onset, a perfect recipe for violating the prescription for Z1 before it even gets started.

What do people always say? Avoid politics and religion at family gatherings! Well, race relations is even more incendiary as, while one group feels the matter is pretty settled and just want to move on, the other group feels it can NEVER be settled, is nowhere near settled, and want nothing but to reignite it and drag it out indefinitely for ongoing social and political leverage.

Worse, Z1 rules offer no mechanism by which people willing or able to abide by said rules as the OP can be singled out, so invariably, most of the threads fail quickly at some level regardless.

Add to that insufficient moderation to make the forum work. You essentially need almost constant 24 hour hands-on moderation in such a set-up! You see, rules for moderation are TWO-FOLD: half of the rules here are to protect the forum of things of interest to the owners and mods, but the OTHER HALF of the rules are here for the protection of the members! But as currently situated, such moderation is admittedly up to SIX HOURS AWAY!

That is in effect, NO moderation to the member using it, as reflected in many complaints by many I've seen here.

Now I ask you, if a crime is being committed and you call the police, and they show up six hours later after the fact long after the crime has been committed and you are now long gone and don't see it and are never told, so that you don't even know the police ever arrived much less apprehended the thief and prosecuted him, from YOUR POV, it is as if nothing ever happened! A crime was committed, you call the police and that is all you know. To the victim, that is no better than if the robber got away scott free because the damage is long done, none of it benefits the victim nor remedies the situation--- at best, it may only prevent further REPEATS of the same thing from the same people happening for a while, so again, moderator interests are served while doing nothing for the actual victim or member.

Add to that the fact that by reporting such things to mods, you are in effect doing their job and making it possible for them to be so absent. "Just let us know if anything happens there on the forum we were supposed to be moderating!" They will be along in a few hours to see what you are jabbering about. :smoke:

You see, the intentions are right but the vehicle or vessel as designed to carry civil discussions is just highly FLAWED without the proper moderation to make it work and KEEP it working, partly because Zone 2 and Zone 3 allow for such flagrant abuses that few people make the transition well to Z1, especially without proper moderation and especially as for the most part, one zone here looks like any other, unless you enter the thread from the right direction or go looking to see what zone they are in. Many here have no idea where the "zones" even are. At heart of the problem are far too few mods here to cover 70 forums when really, no more than 35 at best are really needed.

Add to that the complexity of the rules, up to 1900 words and growing is always a bad sign; who but a mod is willing or interested in trying to keep up with that? The better a forum is managed, the simpler the rules become. A 1900 word rule book is a cry in the dark for help much like politicians with no idea the cause of gun crime looking for more gun laws with 20,000 already on the books. I don't say any of this lightly, but as a person with both professional experience in the matter and some going back 23 years. A moderator must be a diplomat and a people-handler/counselor and not just a policeman if he is to ever make his job easier for both him and the membership, because truly effective moderation results in the parties being moderated both understanding and agreeing in why you are doing what you did and understanding it to be FAIR so that everything moves forward with a sense of JUSTICE not further injustice--- most forums have heavy-handed mods who just thump people with a hammer at will like a bug.

The other problem is in the people looking to START such threads. In five years, I've found only a handful of people here I can have an actual civil discussion with here because, lets face it, places like this attract mostly mudslingers and partisans, not captains of the debate team. I've tried starting a number of civil threads on legitimate topics over the years but the interest is seldom there. Look at ANY thread here that is very active and long-lived and all you will see is bomb-throwing from two distant disparate sides with often, NO bearing on the original OP. But that is just HUMAN NATURE. Up to a mod to pull it back on track.

For a thing like Z1 to work the way intended to have "value," you need close moderation of the threads with the mindset of being a mentor to the members keeping them on the straight and narrow guiding them and keeping them in line if they stray a little, not just a policeman to slap the cuffs on the violator hours after the fact to boot them off the page once they have really strayed far and wide. But that is a very tall order for a mod without training and skill and most cannot do that. Far easier to simply assign violations and enforce rules.

As such, Zone One will continue to largely fail as it is simply a prefab vessel looking for non-existent people who can somehow remake themselves to properly fit into the boat as intended with no mind toward the reality of who will ACTUALLY BE USING IT. And the proof in all that is right before our eyes in that theoretically, Z1 should be what everyone wants! Polite and civil REAL DISCUSSION of social matters and debate without flaming, trolling or baiting, without insults or put-downs, yet look instead--- all it has actually created is constant problems and complaints!

Because the fatal flaw in all of this is that for Z1 to WORK, you need two parties who as a ground rule at least, operate from a position of RESPECT for each other who might disagree with them while still having a WILLINGNESS to legitimately talk about and consider the other's position, all with no effective real time moderation. It is a very flawed concept, it will never work as desired, especially as the parties involved in running it usually seem unwilling to even listen to or consider even sage advice thinking they know better or have all the answers when they obviously don't, but the intentions and goal are still worth pursuing, because the real goal of any discussion board should be to actually DISCUSS.

But it SHOULD work and I hope this place finds a way of making it work, because far from an indictment, while this is the only social media I frequent, I have looked around and not found a better forum better moderated, so while we should all appreciate that, we should never stop trying to improve it and fix the things most needing fixed to KEEP this place working, but perhaps one of the chief causes of most of the failures here is in trying to be everything to everyone with 70 forums and 3 zones. Perhaps this place needs to better focus on just doing fewer things BETTER. And by that, read: EASIER for all.
 
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Redundant subforums will fix everything. One racism forum where everybody posts honestly, and then a Z1 racism forum where you have to beat around the bush to say what you want to say and admins go around deleting your posts and threads. Members post in the one they feel more comfortable with. This way flacaltenn can have a nice place for nice utopian discussion, and we could still have a place to discuss politics using standard political discourse.
That's a brilliant idea! Redundant subforums.

One set of forums where members can express themselves honestly. Then, the second set - the Z1 forums, where everyone has to walk on eggshells and be politically correct...or get spanked for expressing their true feelings.

Perfect. That should immediately make things easier, and better, for everyone.

The powers that be should give you a great big reward for solving their "problem" for them.
 
We're a discussion focused on "TOPIC CONTROL" not "CONTENT CONTROL". So in Zone 2 -- you got TOPICAL CONTENT in your posts? No Prob. But in Zone1 there can be MASSIVE conflict on relevant topical issues -- just not member on member violence.

That doesn't even make sense and sounds like so much circular baloney, Flacc. Without CONTENT control, you cannot have topical control or it becomes meaningless, further, without content control, it is impossible to have nor maintain civil discussion free of flaming, trolling, baiting, insults and putdowns--- the very goal of Z1!
 
That's a brilliant idea! Redundant subforums.

One set of forums where members can express themselves honestly. Then, the second set - the Z1 forums, where everyone has to walk on eggshells and be politically correct...or get spanked for expressing their true feelings.

Perfect. That should immediately make things easier, and better, for everyone.

The powers that be should give you a great big reward for solving their "problem" for them.
If we just started out with a single test of this concept of a redundant racism forum with one missing the safe zone warning, we could see how things unfold and what the community REALLY wants. Only the fittest would survive.
 
IMO, the culture here, has changed since the zone rules have been put in place, and, maybe in some ways, not necessarily for the better, but, in someways, I do think, it has changed, in some beneficial ways.

A civil discussion like the one the entire forum is having now, on this very thread, about policy changes . . . could that have been possibly in those "pre-zone," days? Years ago? Or would it have broken down to insults by page two?

What about the coffee shop thread? Or other non-political threads? IMO? I never thought the policy has been enforced or monitored tightly enough on the CDZ.

It seems to me, this whole controversy started coming to a head, when the religion thread, and the race thread were given PC/safe zone protection.

IMO? That was a mistake. Neither topic deserve a safe space. There should be no sacred cows at USMB.

Was this done, to make moderation more simple, and to just lighten the work load?

:eusa_think:


BRAVO. One person GETS IT. At least part of it.
 
That's a brilliant idea! Redundant subforums.

One set of forums where members can express themselves honestly. Then, the second set - the Z1 forums, where everyone has to walk on eggshells and be politically correct...or get spanked for expressing their true feelings.

Perfect. That should immediately make things easier, and better, for everyone.

The powers that be should give you a great big reward for solving their "problem" for them.
I stopped saying z1 and started calling it what it is, which is a safe zone. Yep, universities and corporations beat flac to this safe zone concept by a couple years. Safe zones are not new to snowflakes.
 

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