since9
Campaign Veteran
Despite calls from experienced message forum mods and admins throughout the Internet community for more than two decades, we still see threads being closed because of the actions of one or two unsavory individuals.
Take this thread, for example, wherein Grapeshot remarked, "...there is someone amongst us that cannot follow the polite rules of civil discourse and who with regularity employees misdirection, red herrings, and false flags, then celebrates non-existent victory - his point would seem to be to provoke rather than an exchange of ideas. I have very little patience for such.
Two pages of painfully sorry, same old beating of the dead horse. Locking it."
This post isn't a cheap shot against Grapeshot. In fact, a large number of mods handle squabbles by closing the thread. Instead of punishing the one or two offending members, locking the thread punishes all members of the thread.
As a mod/admin of multiple forums for 27 years, I'm well aware it's an easy fix, and have used it myself on occasion. It is not, however, the correct solution.
Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In fact, collective punishment is so great an offense to society that it "is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions."
Here's why it doesn't work:
1.) The offenders, often driven by some level of narcissistic personality disorder, are rarely affected. They just happily skip to another thread or forum and carry on in the same disruptive manner.
2.) The majority of participants who were busy carrying on decent, civil conversations find themselves slammed in the face with the message forum equivalent of a 2x4.
No, seriously. That's exactly how it feels when you're a polite participant in a viable thread and a mod or admin unceremoniously pulls the rug.
The end result is there's little or no punishment for the offenders, and significant punishment for the rule-abiding denizens of your forums.
Put another way, it's exactly like a local government outlawing open carry for all 65,000 citizens because one knucklehead who was OC-ing decided to brandish one afternoon.
I seriously thought this forum had matured beyond that, especially given the nature of what we're trying to accomplish.
The far more appropriate solution is to punish the few rabble-rousers and leave the rest free to carry on their decent, polite conversations. Give the offenders three days off to consider the error of their ways. If they haven't gotten it by then, give them a week. Then a month. Then forever.
By all means, don't suffer fools. But whatever you do, please don't make those who're abiding by the rules suffer because of the fools who break them.
Thanks.
Take this thread, for example, wherein Grapeshot remarked, "...there is someone amongst us that cannot follow the polite rules of civil discourse and who with regularity employees misdirection, red herrings, and false flags, then celebrates non-existent victory - his point would seem to be to provoke rather than an exchange of ideas. I have very little patience for such.
Two pages of painfully sorry, same old beating of the dead horse. Locking it."
This post isn't a cheap shot against Grapeshot. In fact, a large number of mods handle squabbles by closing the thread. Instead of punishing the one or two offending members, locking the thread punishes all members of the thread.
As a mod/admin of multiple forums for 27 years, I'm well aware it's an easy fix, and have used it myself on occasion. It is not, however, the correct solution.
Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In fact, collective punishment is so great an offense to society that it "is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions."
Here's why it doesn't work:
1.) The offenders, often driven by some level of narcissistic personality disorder, are rarely affected. They just happily skip to another thread or forum and carry on in the same disruptive manner.
2.) The majority of participants who were busy carrying on decent, civil conversations find themselves slammed in the face with the message forum equivalent of a 2x4.
No, seriously. That's exactly how it feels when you're a polite participant in a viable thread and a mod or admin unceremoniously pulls the rug.
The end result is there's little or no punishment for the offenders, and significant punishment for the rule-abiding denizens of your forums.
Put another way, it's exactly like a local government outlawing open carry for all 65,000 citizens because one knucklehead who was OC-ing decided to brandish one afternoon.
I seriously thought this forum had matured beyond that, especially given the nature of what we're trying to accomplish.
The far more appropriate solution is to punish the few rabble-rousers and leave the rest free to carry on their decent, polite conversations. Give the offenders three days off to consider the error of their ways. If they haven't gotten it by then, give them a week. Then a month. Then forever.
By all means, don't suffer fools. But whatever you do, please don't make those who're abiding by the rules suffer because of the fools who break them.
Thanks.
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