Raising the level?

February 12, 2008 11:30 AM

Can we work harder at having mature and respectful discussions? Do we need to do so?

There are intelligent members of this site. There are intelligent discussions to be had (and usually come from quality posts). But it seems that intelligent and respectful discussion is pretty much non-existent on anything other than benign topics anymore. Anything that comes close to controversy or disagreement seems to trigger visceral and personal responses, wholly ignoring the request at the bottom of the page to address ideas and not members. Or, topics derail into redundant disputes. The intelligent and respectful treatment of the issues seem to disappear.

I'm not going to sit here and speak of a Golden Age of Metafilter or request that this place become some wholly stuffy and snobby website (or suggest that I have been completely pure or that anyone should be 100% signal). But I do seem to recall a time where actual intelligent discussion occurred and was not a rare thing. Maybe I'm misremembering that. Sure, there was always snark, but the signal to noise ratio was such that I can recall the ability to have an intelligent discussion. I don't get that impression anymore.

While I am certain there are exceptions to the rule, it seems far more common to me that discussions occur only at the most superficial and repetitive levels of noise. Noise begets noise, and the signal becomes even more faint. Often, the actual substance of the links seem irrelevant to the default arguments that occur within (default in both substance and tone and members contributing).

I wonder if the visible favorites is the cause? Far too often people seem to try to be the most snarky, the most shrill, the most dramatic, the most hyperbolic, or the most abrasive as possible. I wonder if that is because people are hunting for favorites. I don't know. But I do know it is occurs too often and is not good for the site as it leads to derails, noise, and redundant bickering. It easier to go for the noise, and it is easy to go fall back into the same discussion. No one--including me--is going to be 100% signal, but this is about whether there is an issue and whether it can be addressed.

I'm willing to accept that my perception is inaccurate, and that's why I ask the question.

But if others agree that the level of discussion here could be improved, what can we do about it? I don't think the flagging system does much to address this issue. I know that the little comment right below the comment box does nothing. So what can be done, if anything, about it?

posted by dios to etiquette/policy at 11:30 AM (317 comments total)

I fully expect the responses that I should lead by example to change it instead of make this post, and I respectfully submit that my individual action cannot change it. And whenever I try to do participate in a thread where a discussion occurs, I am quickly discouraged by the nature of the discussion. I have been thinking about this awhile, and started thinking more about it after cortex asked this question which I didn't bother answering given the trajectory of the thread and the reaction I could foresee. In other words, I allowed that topic to be drowned out. And then when I tried to talk about something today, the noxious personal insults and superficial reactions began which led me to withdrawing from the discussion. I didn't include this in this specific post because I didn't want to make it a callout of anything in particular and more wanted to address the broader topic. I don't want this thread to be about me (and I hope the irony would not go unnoticed if people make this about me and not the substance of the post). I just mention it because I'm not sure that individual contribution is sufficient to answer this question even though people love to answer any issue about etiquette by saying "you first." That is not always an effective answer.
posted by dios at 11:30 AM on February 12

It's funny, but I was just thinking something similar. I started reading the comments in the Telecom post today and was reminded why I rarely read the comments and almost never post any myself. AskMe is outstanding, even on most controversial items, but I'm staying more and more away from even reading the Blue.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:34 AM on February 12 [7 favorites]

.
posted by davejay at 11:39 AM on February 12

dios!
posted by Stynxno at 11:40 AM on February 12

This is why I read MetaFilter via rss mostly these days.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:44 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]

Wow, that Guantanamo thread is pretty toxic. It sure would be nice to see a higher level of discourse than that.
posted by pombe at 11:48 AM on February 12

I was all set to throw out the "its just a web site - get over it" defense but I do see your point. If anything, I've seen MetaFilter turning into a more stuffy, intelligent place. Some of it I like, some of it bores me and yes, I've double-clutched on a few of my contributions however I seem to recall having felt this way since day one.

I don't know how much can be done with regard to hot button topics or posts that bring out the worst in us as a whole but I do know that your request/reaction is one that I've seen before. I'm not sure how answerable it is but I guess it doesn't hurt to debate it from time to time.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:50 AM on February 12

I would agree on the general suggestion and disagree that one person can't make a difference. People respond to smart, curious questions and bits of info, so let it rip.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:50 AM on February 12

While it's very admirable to be looking and lamenting for mature and respectable discussion, the last place you should be looking for it is on an open internet community message board like Metafilter. I'm not suggesting that we're incapable of it, but I do think that the medium, as well as community pressures, favor more hit-and-run witticisms and flame-wars. I'm sure you can find pockets and alcoves of intellectualism and reasoned responses, this just isn't the place to look. It's also not really fair to come along and say, "I don't like the way this place is. Let's change it." It is what it is. If you don't like it, then maybe you need to find what you're looking for elsewhere.
posted by Dave Faris at 11:50 AM on February 12

You're preaching to the choir, brother. For my part, I'm not always lengthy and I'm not always serious, but the topics do not always warrant close textual analysis and soul-searching. Lightheartendness is always welcome to me, even verging on flippancy in serious rooms. With regard to fraught topics eliciting less than illuminating discussion, well, I think the social aspect of the site plays an unfortunate role in that. I, at least, am hesitant to repeat myself, lest I be apprehended as a one-note didact. But, hey, I'll sign your pledge if I can have a wristband or something.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:52 AM on February 12

Blame it on society's acceptance and encouragement of masturbation.
posted by Burhanistan at 11:53 AM on February 12

I don't think favorites is the problem, I think it's more likely to be a volume issue, as in volume of users and volume of conversation: there are simply too many users speaking too loudly about too many things for the quality of conversation you're talking about to easily filter up through the noise on a consistant basis. The conversations are still there, but it's a big party and the excited buzz all around can make it hard to focus on the things you find the most value in. Given that, I don't think raising or maintaining the level is ever a battle that can be won, it's simply a constant but worthwhile chore to be shared by everyone.
posted by False Dichotomy at 11:55 AM on February 12

Yeah, that remove from activity link in the recent activity pages has come in handy a whole lot.

For all the good the mods do, I think there needs to be a slight priority shift in moderation, here. I've mentioned it before. I think acting like an asshole gets tolerated a lot here, but telling someone they're being an asshole gets deleted with a little [hey let's keep the discussion civil, huh guys?] note. The last time I really talked about it EB (may he rest in peace) called it the knife with a smile effect. So long as you act like a total snot about something without yelling or calling names, it's fine. The problem is that this infuriates other people enough to act rashly or to get really heated during the discussion.

Is this the only reason for it? Obviously not. But since we're on the topic I'd thought I'd bring it up.
posted by shmegegge at 11:55 AM on February 12 [6 favorites]

"You first" is an acceptable response, but only if it includes or implies "me too".

Metafilter to me was at it's best when it was fairly apolitical, when it was really a site dedicated to discussing the best of the web. The conversations which branched out from the posted links were what made Metafilter great, even if some did end up in train wrecks. There are still an awful lot of great links posted here but the political threads attract the comments. This is a shame because none of the political links are the best of the web and almost none of the comments within are actual conversations. This isn't just a problem with Metafilter, I don't know of any web site which doesn't devolve into a bile match between factions unless it was designed as a circle jerk for one point of view.
posted by substrate at 11:57 AM on February 12

I have been one to complain about people calling each other names - I hate it, honestly. But I don't even flag something when someone tells someone they are acting LIKE a jerk or an asshole or whatever. Or anything that describes behavior. Anything where someone says, "You ARE an asshole" or things of that nature rile me. Although sometimes it's so ridiculous what people will levy at you that it's fun - I got a kick out of jonmc telling me I have a Savior Complex yesterday. =) And I think The Snarky is a part of the culture of the site in that vein.

I agree that it's often TOO snarky and too much is tolerated. But it's a pretty hard thing to police, I would reckon. I don't think the discourse has changed much here since favorites, for what it's worth.
posted by agregoli at 12:02 PM on February 12

This isn't just a problem with Metafilter, I don't know of any web site which doesn't devolve into a bile match between factions unless it was designed as a circle jerk for one point of view.

But isn't it possible that MetaFilter could be significantly better than all those sites if it's done right? As an example, AskMe is 1000 times better than something like Yahoo Answers, partially because of the strict rules about what can be posted and what kind of answers are allowed on AskMe. I'm not sure that some set of rules could be formulated to raise the level of discourse on the blue, but it's theoretically possible.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:05 PM on February 12

Getting rid of a publicly viewable favorites system might help. One cannot help but get the sense that most of the commenters, in the longer threads at least, are just in there to show off and hear themselves speak, so to type.

Also, I think that the definition of "noise" needs to be extended to encompass posts that are just people giving their opinions without providing anything new to the discussion. One example of this would be those execrable punctuation posts in the obit threads, but I would go so far as to say that this describes a majority of the posts in, say, the Gitmo thread and others like it.

Also a lot of peoples' joke comments, particularly the tired in-joke ones, just aren't funny. There should be more MeTa call outs to shame the perennially unfunny into posting fewer jokes.

And all ad hominem attacks outside of MeTa should result in temporary bans. (Um, this would not apply to posts made before this rule was passed, of course.)

All of these somewhat practical suggestions would have the effect of making the discussions here more like discussions and less like a, less obviously misogynistic, version of Fark for people who claim to read books. This I believe.
posted by 1 at 12:08 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

Incidentally, 1, what was your old alias?
posted by Dave Faris at 12:10 PM on February 12

This is not meant to minimize the request for a change in tone, but whenever people opine about MetaFilter's good old more respectful / less political /smarter /higher quality days I recommend that they take a wander through any month, at random, from the archives. The site has changed some, but the decline narrative doesn't really apply. In many ways, it was ever thus.

I do think these conversations are part of its self-correction mechanism, so I don't mean to quash discourse. And I agree with KevinSkomskold - in my view, it's a more civil and more intellectual site than it used to be. But lately, when I've found a thread getting to me, it's because of the arguing against people rather than ideas.
posted by Miko at 12:12 PM on February 12

This is the only account I've ever had here, Dave. For realsies.
posted by 1 at 12:14 PM on February 12

There are still an awful lot of great links posted here but the political threads attract the comments.

That's exactly what I was thinking. This thread, for example is just a recent political news post and already has 84 comments.
posted by jmd82 at 12:17 PM on February 12

A week (month? year??) without political (or news????) posts could be an interesting experiment. They don't seem to add much to the site as a place to find neat links, nor do they generally lead to interesting discussions that can't be better had somewhere else.

I need to take a cold shower.
posted by 1 at 12:24 PM on February 12

Just stop reading and participating in threads about politics or religion. You'll avoid 90% of the vitriol and get 90% of the good posts.
posted by brain_drain at 12:25 PM on February 12 [6 favorites]

Can we have an "unreasonable" flag?
posted by rush at 12:27 PM on February 12

Part of the problem, Dios, is that the current culture of Metafilter begs for the wittiest bonmots and rapier turns of rhetoric that it's members can cook up. Going back through my own posting history, I've noticed that my responses on AskMe are much more substantial than on MeFi. Part of the reason is that I know anything I put on the Blue is much more likely to garner a snark than a substantial response in return. This snark leads to more snark and usually outright hostility (I'm guilty of caustic repartee as well). But, I still keep coming back to MeFi, even after long breaks, because every once in a while I really learn something I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else and, as a whole, I like the personalities here. Perhaps we need an International MeFi Conference where we can all get together and hug?
posted by mrmojoflying at 12:28 PM on February 12

Yes, we need to do so, but no, we can't. We have discussions where "fuck them and fuck you", a comment that it is completely inappropriate for the Blue, gets favorited 11 times, but the flag is ignored.

I could find example after example after example. Way it boils down, we like to be assholes and the mods like to encourage it. I can buy the conceit that the mods don't see every flag or that they prefer to use a light touch, but only to some extent.
posted by ten pounds of inedita at 12:28 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Getting rid of a publicly viewable favorites system might help. One cannot help but get the sense that most of the commenters, in the longer threads at least, are just in there to show off and hear themselves speak, so to type.

What?

I take it you're viewing favourites as a reward/backpatting system. If that's the case, how would removing the 'reward' and/or 'pats on the back' stop people from venting their spleens if they're only doing it to show off and/or hear themselves speak? You're positing a completely internal motivation for misbehaviour, and suggesting the removal of an external factor.

If you see favourites as a contributing reward system, removing them won't stop the misbehaviour. Instead of just clicking +, those who wish to socially reward jerkiness will find a way around it. Perhaps 30 "Ha! Good one!" comments instead of [30 favorites].
posted by CKmtl at 12:34 PM on February 12

I understand dios point of view and sentiment here, but I can't help but think that the problem in many cases is not the discussion, but the topic. In particular, the political posts get ugly precisely because no one ever wants to agree on one item with people they disagree with. "I hate Bush, therefore nothing Bush does can ever be right." etc.

I attribute this more to Bush-fatigue than anything else. Any political post is going to be premised in right-wing action, because that is who is in power now. But I wonder how these political threads will unfold if Obama wins, and what will happen when people who are more conservative make posts that invite criticism of that administration's policies.

Furthermore, and I don't really understand why this is, but dios tends to attract the haters more than anyone else I've seen on this site. I think a lot of people see the name dios and become prejudiced against the comment before reading it.

It might be an interesting experiment to get a second username and start commenting, and see how the reception to comments posted by that username.
posted by Pastabagel at 12:36 PM on February 12

Someone is trying to clean up the Wild West. Well, it ain't done with pretty words, boy. It's done with blazing guns of blue steel and a firing will to hang them high.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:37 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]

Way it boils down, we like to be assholes and the mods like to encourage it.

We like to encourage it? I'm pretty sure that every time I've spoken on the subject of assholery in and administrative capacity, I've been clear that I hate that shit, and that's something I'm comfortable speaking for Matt and Jess on as well. We don't like the assholery and the noise and the jabs that a lot of contentious threads bring out.

But there's that vs. the community itself, the people who spend time here and have strongly varying beliefs about just about everything you can think of. If we don't nuke every concievably jerky comment that gets posted, if things that push the line of permissability sometimes live through, it's because we're trying to strike a balance between not wanting people to be absolute jerks and not wanting people to feel like they're being hemmed in and prevented from saying what they want to say. There's a lot more going on than some weird "They Either Nuke It Or They Like It" bright line of preference on our parts.
posted by cortex at 12:37 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

It's just contrarian wolfdog nature, but that "Everyone needs a hug" note long ago started making me think "hug this" every time I see it.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:42 PM on February 12

*hugs Wolfdog contrarily*
posted by cortex at 12:42 PM on February 12

For me, I've been more and more annoyed by how quickly threads have filled with annoying comments, whether they're jokey, completely unrelated to the post, or just plain pointless. I've reacted by trying to quell my own desires to post snarky comments in threads, but I'm not sure there's much else I could do (and I'll admit I haven't always succeeded).
posted by drezdn at 12:43 PM on February 12 [5 favorites]

Well, I think that the "Ha! Good one!" comments should be deleted as noise, etc. I think that for many (particularly annoying) people, the favorites system serves as a reward system. These, I would guess, tend to be the people who post the lame jokes. I mean, I think we can all agree that there are a lot of comments that seem to be there just to get added and, (less controversially), a lot of people clearly use the favorites tag to give kudos.

I think the people who tend to type their punctuation into the obituary threads and make one line posts about how (but not why) personally inspirational the magic of Barack Obama is to them are doing so with a different set of equally tedious motivations.

You're right about my first paragraph being logically incoherent. I hope this clears that up.

There definitely are other message boards with higher signal-to-noise ratios, which I'm sure a lot of us also participate in. What have y'all seen there that contributes to that culture?
posted by 1 at 12:45 PM on February 12

Intelligent discussion happens here, and it happens at the same rate it always has, sky-is-falling scare-mongering aside.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:45 PM on February 12

I wonder if the visible favorites is the cause? Far too often people seem to try to be the most snarky, the most shrill, the most dramatic, the most hyperbolic, or the most abrasive as possible.

I've long felt this was a big influence, and some of the ugly or attention-whorish things that rise to the top here leave a very bad taste in my mouth. (Especially the snarky comment that's pretty near the de rigueur opener for every front page post now; it's becoming the MeFi version of FIRST! and it often derails a good conversation before it can even start.) Yet favorites have lead me to some really great comments that I'd otherwise miss. I don't think the genie's going back in that particular bottle, at any rate.

I don't mean this in a sanctimonious way, but whether we disagree on the nature of the problem -- or even if it's a problem at all -- only you can decide exactly what kind of person you want to be when you're here, and what you want to support and contribute. There's really no other way. Lots of good members have left, and when they give a reason that's not time management or something, it usually boils down to the lack of civility/signal to noise ratios. So we're either kinder to each other and more substantive or we're not. It can't happen by administrative mandate. It can only happen because we want it to.
posted by melissa may at 12:45 PM on February 12

I think there's a mistake people make when talking about the mods. That mistake is to assume that if something didn't get deleted, then that means the mods love that sort of thing, or at least that particular comment or post. This is a really faulty assumption. As I understand it, there are a ton of things the mods hate seeing that manage to survive their scrutiny in the spirit of only moderating the site instead of micromanaging it.
posted by shmegegge at 12:51 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]

Well, I think that the "Ha! Good one!" comments should be deleted as noise, etc. I think that for many (particularly annoying) people, the favorites system serves as a reward system. These, I would guess, tend to be the people who post the lame jokes.

I think you're awfully prescriptive for someone who joined two weeks ago, 1. For realsies!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:54 PM on February 12

While I would dearly love to see the level of discourse raised on the blue, I'm not sure that we can do much other than try to raise the better our own comments. Reading through the Guantanamo thread*, I don't think that favourites are a particular problem: a few comments have a few favourites, but I can't see that those particular comments are the worst comments in the thread by any stretch. Heavier-handed moderation could help in some cases, but I can't really see more than one or two particular comments that could be considered deletable in this thread and I don't think that those had any particularly significant effect on the thread. Finally, and I'm letting my own bias in here of course, it is pretty hard to believe that we can have a thread about Guantanamo that isn't going to result in some legitimately outraged comments.

*dios, I know that this thread isn't particularly about the Guantanamo thread, but it is still a useful example.
posted by ssg at 12:56 PM on February 12

It reminds me of IRC about 6-8 years ago.

The Internet was becoming commodity, and you didn't have to be a geek to get on and use it. People were learning about this chat thing, and they wanted to use it. The user counts jumped, and jumped big. All the people who were there in the 90s were bitching about how IRC was being ruined by AOL, mIRC, etc, letting Joe User become part of the landscape. The problem is that the "people" (intelligence, personality, etc) the community liked found IRC long before Joe User did. Therefore, all the new users were the problem. As more and more Joe Users found out about IRC and started participating, all the old timers retreated to small niche areas.... but not before complaining to high heaven about how IRC was being ruined.

Or, another way to put it: What False Dichotomy said.
posted by jeversol at 12:56 PM on February 12

"Favorites" should be renamed to be "Bookmarks".
posted by painquale at 12:56 PM on February 12 [5 favorites]

(I agree with painquale - bookmarks is a better word for it - it's a placemarker, not a high-five, and some people clearly take it that way).
posted by agregoli at 12:59 PM on February 12

I certainly haven't seen any pronounced increase/decrease of the level of discourse here, but I, for the most part, stay away from news/political/religion posts. They are usually a train wreck and are almost never 'the best of the web'.

I honestly don't think the favorites mechanism has anything to do with the level of discourse either.

I think the best bet is to stay away from threads like the gitmo prisoners, then you'll have the perception of a higher level of discourse in the blue.
posted by nightwood at 1:00 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

"Favorites" should be renamed to be "Bookmarks".

I agree.
posted by ericb at 1:01 PM on February 12

it's a placemarker, not a high-five,

It's actually both. Neither one nor the other has ever been called the official and only use for the system. I seem to remember mathowie once saying that it wasn't ever intended to only be one or the other, in fact. I might be misremembering that, though.
posted by shmegegge at 1:02 PM on February 12

Perhaps we should be able to filter out favourited posts. Favourites are a nice ego-stroke, but I do think that they're ultimately destructive.

On the other hand, seeing who favourited which comment is often useful when building the mental kill file.

It would be an interesting experiment for dios to start a second account. I'd even spring for it if he's interested.
posted by bonehead at 1:05 PM on February 12

only you can decide exactly what kind of person you want to be when you're here, and what you want to support and contribute

Quoted for truth.

I fully expect the responses that I should lead by example to change it instead of make this post, and I respectfully submit that my individual action cannot change it.

Someone I knew many years ago had this to say about that: "See, the thing is, each of us has our own little corner of the world, and it touches the bits of the world that other people have. So what I'm trying to do is make my little corner the best place it can be, and that'll rub off a bit on your corner. And yours will rub off on someone else's."

She really did live her entire life that way, and she did have a positive effect on everyone she came into contact with. Make of that what you will.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 1:07 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

I think jokes are fine, actually, the tiresome thing is that some people will immediately lash out at people who disagree with them and launch ad hominem attacks, rather than present cogent arguments. That is tedious stuff and it kills just about every thread that is vaguely political or has anything to do with circumcising fat people or any of our other red zone topics.
posted by Mister_A at 1:08 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

There definitely are other message boards with higher signal-to-noise ratios, which I'm sure a lot of us also participate in. What have y'all seen there that contributes to that culture?

Having a very strong topical orientation and being very limited geography- and membership-wise (e.g., Lawrence, Kansas area homebrewers) so that most, if not all, members have met and regularly interact with each other face to face seems to reduce a lot of the jackassery. Still, there's a lot of vituperation and noise in forums that are limited solely by topic (i.e., homebrewing), where members' opinions of each other are informed only by comments.

I honestly think that having meetups is one of the things that helps promote the cabal civility here, and having more and larger of them would make it even better.
posted by cog_nate at 1:09 PM on February 12

Charles Krauthammer one time said that the thing you needed to know to understand political discourse in the US is that conservatives think that liberals are stupid, and liberals think that conservatives are evil.

The reason that distinction matters is that it seems to be impossible for most lefties in this country to disagree with someone without also hating them. And given that the dominant political view here is distinctly left-wing, that's what you're seeing here.
Certainly I feel plenty of hate any time I get involved in any thread that's even slightly controversial, which is why I mostly steer clear of them.

Political discussions on Metafilter are not really discussions. They're a left-wing bonding exercise, where everyone voices the same opinion and seeks peer approval and reinforcement for their opinions. There's great emotional comfort to be found in an echo chamber. That's why dissenting opinions are greeted with vitriol; they spoil the mood.

Of course, pouncing on the occasional dissenting voice and excoriating the speaker is also a form of bonding.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:14 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

It also sucks. Noone likes to be the one voice of dissent with 15 plus people attacking them.
posted by garlic at 1:18 PM on February 12

MetaFilter: a lot of peoples' joke comments, particularly the tired in-joke ones, just aren't funny.
posted by grouse at 1:18 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

There definitely are other message boards with higher signal-to-noise ratios - 1

The absolute best way I've seen to keep noise down on message boards is to curtail sign-ups, and brandish the banhammer. I don't know that our benevolent leader would view that as a strong business plan.

I'm a little hesitant to wax nostalgic about when things were "so good," but if I squint my mind just right, I can conjure up memories of a time when discussions were so full of excellent signal that the noise seemed light. Ironically (or not), it was right before I joined. I think registering was broken for a while there, I'm not particularly sure.

Funny (to me) story - I didn't understand why I couldn't register, so I had this crazy theory that registration was closed most of the time, and that if you were patient, visited every day, and read the site for a long time without being able to post, one day that magical register button would appear. And when it did, most of the folks who signed up that day would be worthy. The people who lucked out that day, without paying their lurking dues, would either fall in line, or were smoked out rapidly. I actually thought that was how this worked.

I hope that gives you a chuckle.
posted by rush at 1:19 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

it seems to be impossible for most lefties in this country to disagree with someone without also hating them.

yay! this thread is going to rock!
posted by shmegegge at 1:21 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

some people clearly take it that way

Some people clearly give it that way.
posted by Dave Faris at 1:22 PM on February 12

Charles Krauthammer one time said that the thing you needed to know to understand political discourse in the US is that conservatives think that liberals are stupid, and liberals think that conservatives are evil.

Charles Krauthammer is wrong, though I too am pleased to imagine that others think I am diabolical, so I totally get where he's coming from. The truth is, most lefties think that conservatives are evil and stupid.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:22 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Of course, pouncing on the occasional dissenting voice and excoriating the speaker is also a form of bonding.

Let's be fair, that was not what happened in the thread being called out.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:24 PM on February 12

If you kicked everyone off the site who ever has made a questionable comment or post, there wouldn't be a site anymore.

Sadly, it's the nature of the Internet. And if you pay your five bucks to post on Metafilter, as long as you provide some sort of signal, your noise is largely forgivable.

Go read the talkbacks on Aint it Cool News for five minutes, then come back here and tell me that we aren't of a higher calibur.
posted by sjuhawk31 at 1:25 PM on February 12

Let me summarize:

People Agree with My political Opinions = Level of Discourse Good.

People Disagree with My political Opinions = Level of Discourse BAAAD.
posted by tkchrist at 1:26 PM on February 12 [5 favorites]

I was really hoping the Gitmo thread could discuss some of the details of the case, but it was soon apparent that thread would be dominated by dios-hating (left-wing bonding, as SCDB says) and that did disappoint me. [dios, I think you should get a new account with a new handle and leave the baggage of "dios" behind.] I don't usually post in political threads and I regret doing so today. I think I will give myself a timeout.
posted by mattbucher at 1:27 PM on February 12

"There definitely are other message boards with higher signal-to-noise ratios."

But do any of them have community-driven content? Off the top of my head, in terms of fairly large communities, the Making Light boards seem to be less snarky, but they're arranged around the postings -- and sensibilities -- of the Nielsen Haydens.

I'm certainly not saying things can never be improved ever around here, but I look at the Diggs, Farks, and even Slashdots of the world, and I'm continually surprised this place is as interesting and civil as it is. I'd really be interested to hear of someplace that handles it better than Metafilter. Feel free to mail me if you want to avoid Blog Holy Wars.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 1:29 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

TKChrist, I think the real point is this:

People who speak to the issues == level of discourse Good
People who viciously attack other participants on a personal level == level of discourse Bad
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:29 PM on February 12

tkchrist, maybe that's true of den Beste, but it's not true of dios and hasn't been for a long time now.
posted by Burger-Eating Invasion Monkey at 1:32 PM on February 12

(Especially the snarky comment that's pretty near the de rigueur opener for every front page post now; it's becoming the MeFi version of FIRST! and it often derails a good conversation before it can even start.)

The first few comments of a thread set the mood for how the entire thread is going to go, IMO. Which is why when commenting near the beginning of a thread, I try to set the bar high, and I encourage others to do so, as well (particularly when I'm the OP).

Political discussions on Metafilter are not really discussions. They're a left-wing bonding exercise, where everyone voices the same opinion and seeks peer approval and reinforcement for their opinions. There's great emotional comfort to be found in an echo chamber. That's why dissenting opinions are greeted with vitriol; they spoil the mood.

I agree.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:32 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]

SCDB, I'm surprised you'd treat "The Left" as a monolith when you know full well both left and right are differentiated many different ways. There's a libertarian streak here that informs many people's views on both sides, for instance. I'd call myself a liberal, but I certainly don't think dios is evil, and although I disagree with him, his comments have given me many things to think about. Other avowedly conservative posters have irked me, but so have liberals, and I for one am not looking to run you out of town.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 1:35 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

MeFi users tend to be quite taken with their own odors; the political threads are generally too noisy to be valuable for this reason. (When was the last time a comment numbered > 100 racked up many favorites?) But then that's just a specific instance of a broad Internet phenomenon, which is that with (1) frictionless, free posting, (2) no material investment in the community, (3) a large population with nothing to talk about but its small differences, often merely stylistic, and (4) no release valve for the confrontational energies that build up in heated threads, along with (5) massive disingenuousness about people's reasons for showing up in the first place, conversations tend to go off the rails with increasing frequency and force.

When I was in high school and college, I was big into rec.music.phish, the Phish-related Usenet newsgroup. (That was back when 'Phish' was a band and not a verb.) The newsgroup was of value only in predictable and limited ways: when talking about the band's musical influences (which kept the young kids out of threads), arranging tape trades (narrow focus), aggregating opinions on what were good shows to seek out (wisdom of crowds of idiots, and all that), hashing out music-theoretic questions (narrow focus, increased training), and for sharing reviews of recent shows and albums. And in the last case, most reviews were in fact worthless; you knew to stick to the posts of ten or twelve decent writers. At the end of the day, as swell as it felt to be part of a thousands-strong community, you had to accept that once you got past reportage, few Phishheads had much new to say.

Indeed by the time I stopped reading the phish.net most of the old guard was only reading one of the user-edited email digests that made the whole thing bearable - one of the busiest Usenet newsgroups around, and for long stretches you could have ignored all but five or six posts a week.

MeFi reminds me of the phish.net in a number of ways. It's not new enough for most users to be conscientious about the 'community' aspects of the site, no matter its utopian intentions; if you don't hop into a thread quickly you're likely to miss the 'good bits' of a given discussion, though the format encourages you to feel like you're participating on equal ground with everyone else; the tendency to snark unreflectively far too often wins out over the desire to make a structured argument. Ultimately, most people on MeFi have nothing to say about most threads; but the site doesn't exist without comments. So blather fills the silence. Getting a decent conversation off the ground takes luck: the right participants have to care early on.

Matt's decision to charge $5 for entry was a good one for a bunch of reasons, not least because it keeps one-off commenters out. But that only gets you so far. Virtual communities without embodied analogues tend toward weightlessness, i.e. meaninglessness - death knell for a site nominally devoted to Talking About Great Things. If we're just here to type at one another - which is much, much truer of the Blue than the Green, and absolutely true of the Grey - with no rules other than 'Don't be a cunt' and 'Don't link to your own blog,' then why is it surprising that the conversations aren't particularly deep? The focus is broad or nonexistent, the userbase consists of anyone who can pay five bucks, the culture encourages trivial topics, and snark is rewarded with approbation because people tend to have a much harder time evaluating the correctness/value of intellectual arguments.

In other words, we get what we work for, and while I sympathize with dios on this one, by virtue of its narrow focus and apparently more heavy-handed policing, AskMe is really the only portion of the site with great value. (I don't read the Music pages, they seem cool too!)

Not sure whether this was valuable or not but it helps me to get some feelings out - and I believe I've just explained that that's the only important thing. Get off my lawn.
posted by waxbanks at 1:36 PM on February 12 [8 favorites]

(Especially the snarky comment that's pretty near the de rigueur opener for every front page post now; it's becoming the MeFi version of FIRST! and it often derails a good conversation before it can even start.)

The first few comments of a thread set the mood for how the entire thread is going to go, IMO. Which is why when commenting near the beginning of a thread, I try to set the bar high, and I encourage others to do so, as well (particularly when I'm the OP).


It's called articulating the dialectic. While I'm certainly no master rhetorician or debater, I've tried to note that on a number of occasions both seriously and jokingly. It's something fundamental to the discussion of the links in the post, and perhaps something should be done to make posters more aware that usually occurs willy-nilly in the hopes that the bar doesn't get set too low from the get go.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:37 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

I disagree with what people are saying in this thread. I think there are some solid discussions about politics around here. For example, I was glad to get to go back and forth with koeselitz and others in this thread.

We are, unfortunately, living in a politically charged era. Are there really that many places that are better for this kind of discussion than MeFi?

I agree with dios that the hit-and-run style of commenting can go way overboard, and that that thread was pretty lousy. I agree with the suggestion that "favorites" be renamed. dios and Blazecock Pileon, who are to my right and left politically, and who once were at the center of an endless series of controversies, are two of the best participants at this site. So, we can all always do better. Peer pressure probably works best, and threads like this are not a bad thing.
posted by ibmcginty at 1:37 PM on February 12

People Agree with My political Opinions = Level of Discourse Good.
People Disagree with My political Opinions = Level of Discourse BAAAD.

Bullshit. Circle-jerking easily can and do lead to bad levels of discourse. And it is not differences in opinion that lead to bad discourse- it is how people disagree and respond to those disagreements.
posted by jmd82 at 1:37 PM on February 12

I'm certainly far more interested in views on the issues, and usually particularly in articulate disagreement. I have plenty of access to intelligent agreement, since intelligent persons agree with me.
posted by Abiezer at 1:38 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]

And all ad hominem attacks outside of MeTa should result in temporary bans.

I could get behind this, you mouthy fuckin' noob.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:38 PM on February 12 [10 favorites]

In HTML there is no sarcasm tag, jmd82. There is no sarcasm tag.
posted by tkchrist at 1:40 PM on February 12

I'm watching Andy Griffith on TVLand. It's the episode where a bunch of gypsies camp out in Mayberry. One of the gypsies is played by Jamie Farr, who is actually Lebanese. But he's not wearing a dress.

(also, I've never used favoriting as anything other than applause. I assume those who favorite me are doing the same. YMMV.)
posted by jonmc at 1:41 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Abiezer I agree with you. So there goes that theory.
posted by tkchrist at 1:42 PM on February 12

I would like to vote for a lowering of discourse, personally.
posted by empath at 1:44 PM on February 12

well you would cuz you are teh dumbbass!111
posted by jonmc at 1:46 PM on February 12

SCDB, I'm surprised you'd treat "The Left" as a monolith when you know full well both left and right are differentiated many different ways.

In this case what I'm talking about is the prevailing MeFi hive mind as it deals with political discussions. Of course there is wide variety; I myself have written about the problems of trying to categorize political positions on a one-dimensional scale. (In part to explain why I consider myself to be both "conservative" and "liberal"; it's because they're not opposites.)

The prevailing MeFi zeitgeist behaves as I said. (I have the scars to prove it.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:46 PM on February 12

(I'm a giver)
posted by jonmc at 1:47 PM on February 12

Why are the favo(U)rite numbers so public anyway??? Couldn't the same pats on the back and bookmarking be achieved without them being so easily visible? The serendipity melissamay rightly enjoys could still be had by simply clicking through to our own or someone else's profile page. We don't have to lose the numbers - let's just put them one step away from immediate view.

The dissenters to this idea will probably be those who like to scan through threads, stopping to read comments with lots of faves. That's just a lazy habit (I know, I do it at times) and wouldn't be a great loss I don't think. The popular tabs might end up being even more useful in terms of distilling out the good stuff in such circumstances.

This is the only way I can see (other than the bleeding obvious: behave better you bastards!) to reduce the enthusiasm for zingers which, as everybody knows, engenders crappy opening comments that often steers the tone of the ensuing discussion.
posted by peacay at 1:49 PM on February 12

There's a libertarian streak here that informs many people's views on both sides, for instance.

Heh. Copyright and the Drug War. What else?
posted by Kwantsar at 1:49 PM on February 12

There are far fewer intelligent posts these days, at least proportionately. Miguel and matteo and others used to make fantastic, unashamedly-elitist posts about music, art and literature (trawl the archives for them if, like me, you're a Johnny-come-lately and missed them). I don't think the discussion ever quite reached the standard of the posts, but it was certainly a lot better than it is now. Of course nowadays there are intelligent posts here and there, but they generally just accumulate favourites and 'great post!' comments rather than any real discussion.
posted by Burger-Eating Invasion Monkey at 1:53 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Anything related to Sex between consenting adults.
posted by garlic at 1:53 PM on February 12

serendipity melissamay

This sounds vaguely like a character in a romance novel set in 19th century England.

as for 'zingers,' I like zingers. There's a lot of funny people here at Mefi, I say let them ply their trade.

To me, what were looking at here is not political conflict, but personality conflict. Some people (at least in their MeFi incarnations) take everything very seriously, others deal with almost everything via humor. So there's going to be conflict and misunderstanding. In a community of 60k+ people, it'd be incredibly surprising if there weren't. and who says we all have to like eachother, anyway. It's a 'community', not a club.
posted by jonmc at 1:55 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

There's two types of discussions you get the most out of, I think. Debating with people with diametrically opposed views can be very fruitful, but works best if there is an shared assumption of good will. I'm a very extreme leftist, even by European standards (!), but I've never doubted that there are people who hold conservative views for reasons other than naked self-interest. You're just very few and far between :p
I do think it's fine to reject out of hand or roundly abuse those advocating patently offensive and dangerous views. I'm also aware that's a subjective judgement and only engage in this in what I deem to be appropriate contexts. It's not something that comes up much on Metafilter as the kind of views I have in mind get deleted here for the most part anyway.
Otherwise, it's talking tactical nuances with people you already share a purpose with, and I'd expect less of that on a large public forum like Metafilter.
tkchrist, you are too modest and kind, and I'm too smug.
posted by Abiezer at 1:55 PM on February 12

fantastic, unashamedly-elitist

One of these things is not like the other. Frankly, I find at least one of these people to be kind of a fucking tool (and I'm sure that the feeling is mutual). If this is the standard you guys are longing for, I'm sorry, but we're all better off.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:56 PM on February 12

Miguel doesn't care what you think of him.
posted by Dave Faris at 2:00 PM on February 12

Ha! I don't know...

(Oh, DANG)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:00 PM on February 12

Politics and religion (and sexism) threads are disasters because there are huge numbers of very passionate people on either side who have a personal stake in the discussion.

No matter what policies are enacted be they social or technological, that will continue to be a fundamental impediment to any real discussion taking place. It simply takes too much effort to wade through three dozen subtly-different yet disagreeable posts and respond in detail so simplified, generalized "the Left, the Right" posts become the only way to respond. So the threads disintegrate into the usual namecalling and tired old arguments every single time.
posted by Skorgu at 2:01 PM on February 12

let them ply their trade

Agreed. But let's not them have such a highfiving metric visual to egg them on is all I say. Let it happen organically. Free range humour.
posted by peacay at 2:01 PM on February 12

[dios, I think you should get a new account with a new handle and leave the baggage of "dios" behind.]

What, "Tex" Connor and his Wily Roundup Boys wasn't good enough for ya ?
posted by y2karl at 2:01 PM on February 12

I find at least one of these people to be kind of a fucking tool

he used to be much cooler, I swear.
posted by shmegegge at 2:02 PM on February 12

Anyway, I generally don't see the problem. (Could that mean...I'm part of the problem???) I am for small site government, and I don't see a thing in dire need of fixing besides. Dios, I'm sorry if people were mean to you. You seem okay.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:03 PM on February 12

I don't think the flagging system does much to address this issue. I know that the little comment right below the comment box does nothing.

How do you know that these things do nothing? How do you know that people don't notice little comment below the comment box and say to themselves, "Huh. I could just type out this tirade and then not hit post."

We're all pretty sure of how the squeaky wheels and those with a certain level of name recognition feel about certain issues, but there are thousands of less "famous" users on this site who don't jump into every shitstorm with the bon mots, and look at the occasional favorited comment as just a nice thing.
posted by desuetude at 2:04 PM on February 12

We're better off without posts like this? Nonsense!
posted by Burger-Eating Invasion Monkey at 2:04 PM on February 12

SCDB, you may not realize this, but you are not raising the discourse by asserting that "liberals think conservative leaders are evil". You're making a blanket statement that includes me, and although I know myself to be a liberal, I have never called any conservative evil in these pages, nor have I ever gone into ad hominem attack mode. Not to pat myself on the back, just to point out that this generalization is in effect an attack against a whole group of people.

That being said, I wish the person who had placed the ad-hom attack against dios in the Gitmo thread had just left it out. That one sentence managed to negate the very good argument that had been made just previous to it.
posted by lleachie at 2:05 PM on February 12

Oh shit, I just realized I should've been day trading this whole time....
posted by Burhanistan at 2:08 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Getting rid of a publicly viewable favorites system might help. One cannot help but get the sense that most of the commenters, in the longer threads at least, are just in there to show off and hear themselves speak, so to type.

Also, I think that the definition of "noise" needs to be extended to encompass posts that are just people giving their opinions without providing anything new to the discussion. One example of this would be those execrable punctuation posts in the obit threads, but I would go so far as to say that this describes a majority of the posts in, say, the Gitmo thread and others like it.

Also a lot of peoples' joke comments, particularly the tired in-joke ones, just aren't funny. There should be more MeTa call outs to shame the perennially unfunny into posting fewer jokes.

And all ad hominem attacks outside of MeTa should result in temporary bans. (Um, this would not apply to posts made before this rule was passed, of course.)

All of these somewhat practical suggestions would have the effect of making the discussions here more like discussions and less like a, less obviously misogynistic, version of Fark for people who claim to read books. This I believe.

I'll sign off on this too. Changing it from 'favorites' to 'bookmarks' is not enough. If you want to prevent a pandering to the lowest common denominator make the favorites invisible. Too much snark makes it less likely for any dissenting opinion to be presented in depth. If you want in depth discussions then the snark has to be the exception, when it's the rule you just have people scrolling through looking for the funny. That's fine too, but if we want something different then following up on a couple of these suggestions might alter the trend.

-----

There's a libertarian streak here that informs many people's views on both sides, for instance.

You're identifying outspoken social liberals with libertarian. There aren't that many fiscal conservatives on this site. You can't swing a dead cat in here without clocking some IRS-loving Statist.
posted by BigSky at 2:08 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Of course nowadays there are intelligent posts here and there, but they generally just accumulate favourites and 'great post!' comments rather than any real discussion.

For some admitted-newcomer perspective, here's a metatalk thread from a few years ago specifically acknowledging the problem of few comments in dense, fascinating posts. The contrast being that at the time there were no favorites, and the post is to some extent asking for the [this is good] subfunction of favorites. And it's Miguel asking.

(And a much more recent thread advancing, once again, the 'comments = quality' supposition. I'm sure there are more threads in the past, if someone is willing to go look.)

There's been no decline in responsiveness to good threads. There's been a general uptick in comments over time, but if I remember the last numbers I looked at it's not as aggressive a curve as you might think. Contentious threads were and are likely to become big and messy; sometimes, they also contain some pretty damn good discussion subthreads when interested folks press on with the conversation and hollerin' bedamned. Not-so-contentious threads were and are likely to be a crapshoot for volume, but generally have pretty good discussions based on the accessibility of the topic and the chance intersection between that and the passions and interests of the mefites who come across the thread.

This is not an apologia or a claim that noise isn't a problem worth continuing to think about, but there really is a strong whiff of Golden Age here that doesn't really jibe with my memory of basically the exact same complaints or assertions from two or five years ago.
posted by cortex at 2:08 PM on February 12

Agreed. But let's not them have such a highfiving metric visual to egg them on is all I say.

I dunno, favoriting to me is kind of a benchmark for me as a writer. If a comment is favorite a lot, especially by people who usually dislike or diagree with me, I just assume I said something fantastic, although it's usually for throwaway one-liners rather than something I sweated over and thought long about, oddly.
posted by jonmc at 2:09 PM on February 12

I'm finding myself really liking the idea of moving the initial count of favorites from the front page to a click-through. Keep the Popular Favorites views and tabs and all that stuff, but don't display the total count in the threads or on the front page. The data will remain, and interested folks can find out what they've missed, but the piling on should slow a lot, and also, the snowballing effect where people favorite something just because they can see that it's been marked already, that would just stop altogether. A high number of favorites would mean more, I think, if they worked that way.

Would such a change be so big as to warrant a lot more discussion, or could it be implemented more or less right away, as an experiment?

And how long has that (HTML help) thing been beside the comment boxes, anyway?
posted by cgc373 at 2:09 PM on February 12

Being able to laugh a bit about even the most serious topic is important.
posted by maxwelton at 2:12 PM on February 12

Crap. My comment above should have read, in total:

100!

I fail at MetaTalk.
posted by cgc373 at 2:18 PM on February 12

Just stop reading and participating in threads about politics or religion. You'll avoid 90% of the vitriol and get 90% of the good posts.

I've come to disagree with this after trying it. The problem is those cesspools fill up and then spill over. If we let it go on anywhere, some people will begin to think it's ok throughout and some people will sign up specifically for the flame-wars. That's when dios is right that one person can't do a thing. One noisy person seems to be louder than any number of silent people or some reason.
posted by yerfatma at 2:18 PM on February 12

favoriting to me is kind of a benchmark for me

It still would be in my perfect Mefi world - it's just that you'd have to look at your profile page to see the backpatting.
posted by peacay at 2:18 PM on February 12

Listen to peacay!
posted by cgc373 at 2:19 PM on February 12

SCDB, you may not realize this, but you are not raising the discourse by asserting that "liberals think conservative leaders are evil". You're making a blanket statement that includes me...

Nearly all pithy statements of that kind involve generalizations, and all generalizations are subject to exceptions. What do you want, an epigram or something the length and detail of a legal contract?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:21 PM on February 12

cortex, I'm not sure that's what this thread is about, really. It's more about nasty arguments than lack of comments or responsiveness to good threads. At first, I thought you were trying to give an idea for where favorites came from, but then I kind of lost your point I think.
posted by shmegegge at 2:24 PM on February 12

What do you want, an epigram or something the length and detail of a legal contract?

Thus the problem.
posted by aramaic at 2:25 PM on February 12

People write inflammatory comments because they want attention. It works really well.

My suggestion: implement an "ignore this" button, to be presented along with the current favoriting/flagging interface. When clicked, the text would change from "ignore this" to "you are ignoring this comment".

This would provide some positive feedback for making the choice to not encourage trollish comments. There could even be a "Comments ignored: x" thing on the user page (visible only to the user), to provide a long-term incentive.
posted by teleskiving at 2:26 PM on February 12

Thanks for the MeTa links, cortex. I think my complaint about lack of discussion in current, intelligent (for want of a more descriptive word) posts is very much secondary to my opinion that there are, proportionately, just far fewer of them than there used to be.
posted by Burger-Eating Invasion Monkey at 2:26 PM on February 12

What do you want, an epigram or something the length and detail of a legal contract?

I think she, and a lot of us, want you to realize that making sweeping generalizations about a particular political group and blaming the site's problems on that group lowers the level of discourse Liberals are not the source of the site's problems (neither are conservatives, obviously) and statements like yours more likely are.
posted by shmegegge at 2:27 PM on February 12

So this means no more joking around...just serious stuff.
posted by doctorschlock at 2:29 PM on February 12

The prevailing MeFi zeitgeist behaves as I said. (I have the scars to prove it.)

And how do you behave, Steven C. Angel?

It could be that I'm just gun-shy from having gone through something very similar at a different community board in 2004. Here's the scene:

- Board skews to one side. Political discussions tend toward that side, occasionally veering to echo chamber.

- ...Which isn't critical, since political discussions are fairly infrequent... until the presidential primaries start to heat up.

- A minority of users lean to the opposite political side. They make it a personal mission to provide the dissenting opinion. Sometimes they do it civilly. Sometimes, they don't. The number of "don't" times seem to increase proportionally with the increased number of politics discussions.

- Fingers get pointed: "This guy over here, he's really acting like an asshole. Why is that okay?"

- Minority Opinion Guy goes, "Hey! Not fair, I'm being ganged up on! The REAL PROBLEM here is that you majority-opinion folks are INTOLERANT. It's not how I'm personally acting, it's that you CAN'T HANDLE THE DISCOURSE. You can't stand anyone challenging your world-view so you're taking it out on me personally."

- ...Which has exactly the intended effect. The majority opinion hates intolerance, hates to be perceived as a bully, so they grumble quietly to themselves and try to act better.

- And the mods are faced with a problem: allow the board to become an echo chamber? Or demand that Minority Opinion Guy has to play by the same set of rules as everyone else, knowing that they risk their token minorities walking?

- ...all of which adds up to give Minority Opinion Guy a big fat carte blanche to continue to ratchet up the assholery. Ad hominem attacks as far as the eye can see, flamebaiting, bizarre arguments devoid of logic or merit. And when anyone dares challenge him -- on his behavior, not the crux of his position -- it's "AGAIN, ALL YOU MAJORITY PEOPLE OPPRESSING ME. I am OPPRESSED. This is a hotbed of intellectual INTOLERANCE."

Sound at all familiar?

Show me just one political conservative waving the "MeFites are so intolerant, the discourse has become so tragic here" flag that doesn't also have a history of bad behavior, and I'll listen to that person. But so far, I'm just not seeing it.

And if the "Conservatives are unfairly treated here!" didn't ring hollow with me, the classic pre-emptive strikes of "Let's not talk about the player, let's only talk about the game, mmkay?" and "This MeTa is NOT about the fiery thread I was just in (where I was treated with 'noxious insults'), it's merely about the general good of the board" just make it that much harder for me to believe that there's any sincerity involved here.
posted by pineapple at 2:31 PM on February 12 [8 favorites]

What if mod flagging (not plebe flagging!) had some sort of magic power it currently lacks? x-comments-flagged-as-noise-in-y-days turns into an automatic, quiet timeout, no insane public breakdown or MeTa callout necessary. That way we could have a decent, cumulative-effect middle ground between deleting comments and just rolling our eyes at them. Chilling effects!
posted by soma lkzx at 2:32 PM on February 12

You're identifying outspoken social liberals with libertarian.

Fair enough. I've seen contrasting definitions of what "left-libertarian" signifies, but I'm not as equipped to answer the question as others might be. I can see dios' point, though. (I don't want to derail here.) I wouldn't mind heavier moderation across the board, but as for less Statist (Modist?) solutions, I like cgc373's idea.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 2:33 PM on February 12

So, Cortex, why not just make favorites simply operate as bookmarks for the bookmarker (invisible to others on profiles), but make the total ## of favorites for a thread appear (anonymously) on the main page? That way people could tell whether a thread was well-received without favorites simply being a popularity contest.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 2:34 PM on February 12

Yes. We need more unashamedly elitist posts that don't have religious, political, or controversial content. And also we need to shame and humiliate anybody that makes jokes or snarks in these posts.

Yay! That is a perfect formula sure to make a more inclusive and civil community for sure!
posted by tkchrist at 2:37 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]

it's so very "postmodern", things get defined as absolute when they are relative and the emotion follows. SCDB feels ganged up upon but points to glib phrases and generalizations to justify his feelings which provoke further angst in others that don't feel his compartmentalization is fair or accurate.

I'd be surprised if anyone here, on either side, is innocent. Name calling whether it is "echo chamber" or "fascist" do nothing to address the issues and further the topic. I don't think either Dios or SCDB are polarizing figures just because they are more conservative then the majority, they certainly have poked the nest a number of times, but likewise it is not fair to rail against them when they are not doing so.

Things should be phrased carefully and responsible. The "absolute" positions should be reserved for extreme cases and we should address people's opinions and not their inherant worth.

Now, will this happen... yeah, I doubt it, there is little reason to expect personal responsibility in a community as voluntary as this.
posted by edgeways at 2:42 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

In HTML there is no sarcasm tag, jmd82. There is no sarcasm tag.

Bullshit. I take back everything I said- it's statements like that which bring down the level of discourse.
posted by jmd82 at 2:43 PM on February 12

cortex, I'm not sure that's what this thread is about, really.

My comment was intended very much as an aside to BEIM's own comment, so I'm right there with you.

Thanks for the MeTa links, cortex. I think my complaint about lack of discussion in current, intelligent (for want of a more descriptive word) posts is very much secondary to my opinion that there are, proportionately, just far fewer of them than there used to be.

I still don't really agree. It feels like people have pretty much been saying this every year since 2000; and a read through the archives from 2000 (or, in my experience, any random month and year in the site history) will show that the mix has been more or less even over time. But it's hard to prove that sort of thing; I'd be interested in an analysis that took a solid stab at it, whatever the results, because as it is it stands as a he-said-she-said sort of thing.

I'm finding myself really liking the idea of moving the initial count of favorites from the front page to a click-through. Keep the Popular Favorites views and tabs and all that stuff, but don't display the total count in the threads or on the front page.

It's actually an idea that's come up a few times; personally (and I'm speaking only for myself, not Matt or Jess), I like the idea; I don't see any real harm in it. Though I'd quibble on showing post favorite counts: I don't think there's any real issue of "popularity contest" feedback loops or discourse-shaping there compared with what (might) be going on with comment favorites.

x-comments-flagged-as-noise-in-y-days turns into an automatic, quiet timeout, no insane public breakdown or MeTa callout necessary.

Eesh. Automated threshold tools aren't a great way to deal with people; we're continually tweaking and expanding our admin toolset, looking for ways to make it easier to keep track of stuff (both good and bad), but autobans or anything like them don't seem like the answer.
posted by cortex at 2:43 PM on February 12

And how do you behave, Steven C. Angel?

How do I behave? I always try to stay at the level of issues, unless it's a thread which is clearly jokey. I don't resort to tu quoque, for instance.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:49 PM on February 12

SCDB and pineapple: I usually intentionally stay out of threads I post because I do not want to make this about me and feel I stated my case in the post itself. But I cannot resist requesting that both of you are completely missing the point of my thread. Rather, you are retreating to the exact redundant arguments that I am referencing my posts. I'm not saying either of you are correct; what I am suggesting is that the discussion you want to have is perhaps best suited for elsewhere. Because all you are doing is proving my point for me: you ignoring the substantive issue that is topical here and having an argument you want to have that is worn out, combative, and--as I said in my post--superficial and repetitive noise in the context of this thread. So please, don't make this a political issue because I intentionally did not.

And the irony award could also go to y2karl for posting this thread a petty and flat-out-wrong sockpuppet allegation. Or was that intentional irony? I can't even tell anymore.

That being said, I will slap my wrists for violating my personal policy and go back to allowing this discussion to proceed having stated my peace.
posted by dios at 2:51 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

Yeah, cortex, the FPP favorite count doesn't feel as weird when it's self-reinforcing as the comment favorites. True dat.
posted by cgc373 at 2:57 PM on February 12

stated my peace
The peace of dios that passeth all understanding.
(Sorry, it was just sitting there. I return you to your scheduled elevated discourse.)
posted by Abiezer at 2:57 PM on February 12

Bullshit. I take back everything I said- it's statements like that which bring down the level of discourse.

Yelling "bullshit" at the start of every post also raises the level discourse significantly.
posted by tkchrist at 2:58 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Is there any empirical evidence that "the types of comments that lower the level of discourse" - as if we'd even be able to come to a consensus on what that meant - are actually being favorited at a high enough rate relative to other comments to even warrant claims of correlation, let alone causation? I just don't see it, personally. Certainly snarks and pileons were de riguer long before favorites came along, and if anything, I suspect that favoriting a zinger might actually provide a passive-aggressive release that cuts down on additional negative comments in thread. But, of course, I can't prove my supposition, either. Point being - maybe we shouldn't be so quick to always look for hard-wired solutions to issues we're only guessing at the causes of. My 2 cents.
posted by False Dichotomy at 2:59 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Yelling "bullshit" at the start of every post also raises the level discourse significantly.

unless of course, one is posting about 'Cotton Eyed Joe.'
posted by jonmc at 2:59 PM on February 12

unless of course, one is posting about 'Cotton Eyed Joe.'

I don't get it.
posted by tkchrist at 3:02 PM on February 12

I agree with the people that say this is the best we can do, given a wide focus. The tone of discussion in Ask MetaFilter is just way, way better than it is in regular-type MetaFilter, and yet it involves most of the same people. The main difference? Narrow focus.
posted by ignignokt at 3:04 PM on February 12

I was really hoping the Gitmo thread could discuss some of the details of the case...

The GITMO thread seems to be progressing well enough to me.
posted by ericb at 3:04 PM on February 12

I always try to stay at the level of issues

Ah. Well there is your problem Steve. Rise above, bro.

Be more like me and attempt to transcend the level of the issue. Like, become sublimed. Like me.

Mmmmm. Floating up here in Zen repose on a snow white cloud of undifferentiated nothingness contemplating the...




Oh YEAH! Well fuck you too!
posted by tkchrist at 3:06 PM on February 12

Show me just one political conservative waving the "MeFites are so intolerant, the discourse has become so tragic here" flag that doesn't also have a history of bad behavior, and I'll listen to that person. But so far, I'm just not seeing it.

Do I qualify? I doubt I'd use the phrase 'so tragic', but I think the level of discourse is often pretty low. And it's not just political threads, so I'm not sure why the political pedigree matters.
posted by BigSky at 3:06 PM on February 12

unless of course, one is posting about 'Cotton Eyed Joe.'

I don't get it.

here(most concise explanation I could find, I have no idea what the rest of the blogs content is)
posted by jonmc at 3:07 PM on February 12

The GITMO thread seems to be progressing well enough to me.

Yeah. Me too. One of the better threads on the topic, actually.
posted by tkchrist at 3:07 PM on February 12

One noisy person seems to be louder than any number of silent people or some reason.

Umm...
posted by timeistight at 3:14 PM on February 12

What does Cotton-eyed Joe have to do with Cotton-mouthed Joe? Are they siblings?
posted by Dave Faris at 3:14 PM on February 12

While I am certain there are exceptions to the rule, it seems far more common to me that discussions occur only at the most superficial and repetitive levels of noise. Noise begets noise, and the signal becomes even more faint. Often, the actual substance of the links seem irrelevant to the default arguments that occur within (default in both substance and tone and members contributing).

Just stop reading and participating in threads about politics or religion. You'll avoid 90% of the vitriol and get 90% of the good posts.

I'm routinely disappointed by the level of discussion in science and science policy threads here, especially the ones on environmental science. This one ended my illusion that MeFi discussions here can currently handle that kind of topic. Don't get me wrong, it's much better here than the rest of the web, but that's not a real standard to aim for, either. But I don't hold the admins responsible for this-- they moderate to keep certain things out, not to bring certain things in. The community does the bringing.

I decided I would stick around to see if maybe there will at some point be a critical mass of people who will 1) read such articles and 2) bring something to the discussion besides their own particular flavor of half-baked speculation. I like that I can talk about other things here too, but science threads here fill me with a quiet kind of despair.

And I'm not saying people who have a science background necessarily make better contributions to such threads-- on the contrary, that was a 60 Minutes article, it was pretty accessible, and a great example of communicating complex science clearly to a more general audience. That is so very rare to see. But people weren't even reading it. Instead they were just voicing their opinions on forest fires and global warming. As facts though, not as opinions on the facts, and no one who disagreed was bringing in other facts. Or they were just accusing 60 Minutes of sensationalism without a second glance. I'm not a fan of 60 Minutes either, but that was just the surface. The link was a really good article and video 60 Minutes produced. And the thread here was just the latest iteration of OMG DOOMED vs. OMG SENSATIONALIST comments until the thread got less active later.

I'd be the last person to say "we should take this all very seriously." But I do agree that the noise is drowning out the signal almost entirely in some kinds of threads, and that sometimes it begins to feel like no one participating gives a shit about anything except being the funniest smartass. I love funny smartassery, but sometimes the actual content of a post is being dismissed so much and so quickly in the name of cool that there's no real discussion left. It becomes just a bunch of posturing and an echo chamber for a really superficial understanding of things. It starts to read like CNN headlines: no substance, just quick, attention-grabbing comments. Normally I would have found a comment like Stan Chin's amusing-- I've made similar ones-- if the post was some exaggerated claim. But this one wasn't. And it was treated the same by most people anyway. I could have made a post of my own to an article that was total crap and gotten the exact same reaction.

potch's comments in that thread were an interesting shift from quick dismissal to a second look and more considered reaction to what the thread was really about. I would like to see more Mefites take a longer look at the content of the post before jumping into the thread. And I don't mean agree with the content of the post, I mean discuss the content of the article for what it is and not what it's assumed to be.
posted by Tehanu at 3:18 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

I think that in group behavioral agreements and interventions, "Tu quoques" are a bit more relevant than in other discussions.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:20 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Especially in Canada.
posted by False Dichotomy at 3:21 PM on February 12

What about a "snark" label in addition to favorites? Short of a mod ban fest, the only way the discourse can be changed is through self policing. I don't think a snark counter should do anything other than sit in your profile. If you look at someone's comment and it has a [+30 favorites], and a [+12 snarkfilter], you'll be less likely to take them seriously.

People snark and fret about grammar because they DO care about what people think and what people think about them; albeit in different ways. If everyone is so worried that favorites encourage bad behavior, why not use some light negative reinforcement as well. feel its fine to be snarky every once in a while, as long as you're not "that guy".
By clicking on someone's profile with dozens of comment's labeled as chatfilter/snark you'll be less likely to take them seriously. It sure works for ebay profiles. I know many people who live and die based upon their %favorable ratings.
posted by JimmyJames at 3:22 PM on February 12

I'm routinely disappointed by the level of discussion in science and science policy threads here, especially the ones on environmental science.

Why? Not everybody is a scientist. Sometimes it would behoove posters to remember that this is a general interest forum and that not all users posses the same knowledge or education, particularly in more esoteric fields.
posted by jonmc at 3:22 PM on February 12

Bullshit. I take back everything I said- it's statements like that which bring down the level of discourse.
Yelling "bullshit" at the start of every post also raises the level discourse significantly.

I was attempting to respond to my own failing at recognizing sarcasm with my version of sarcasm, and failed miserably again. I never have been able to do it anyways.
posted by jmd82 at 3:23 PM on February 12

teleskiving : [An "ignore this" button] would provide some positive feedback for making the choice to not encourage trollish comments. There could even be a "Comments ignored: x" thing on the user page (visible only to the user), to provide a long-term incentive.

On whose page, the person whose comment has been ignored?

In the case of troll-minded people, that would only serve to encourage them. "I've managed to annoy people this many times, awesome!"; like notches on their asshole belts. It would be a purpose-built function for the same thing that the anti-favorite people are complaining about: socially rewarding jerkiness.

People can already ignore inflammatory comments on their own (although it's not always easy to) and give themselves a hug for doing so. While an ignore button might cut down on the vitriol, it could also cut down on the level-headed cogent replies to dumbass comments. Why bother shrugging off the insults and responding to the person when you can just [ignore this]?
posted by CKmtl at 3:23 PM on February 12

asshole belts.

Ouch. wouldn't asshole suspenders be more comfortable?
posted by jonmc at