Your thoughts on current and future changes to make Metafilter more woman friendly

November 23, 2007 8:19 PM

Recently, as in the past day or so, the flag for "offensive" was changed to "offensive/sexism/racism". This was done at the request of several female members who believe Metafilter has become or has been hostile to women and who wished to have some means of highlighting these instances. Several other changes are being considered, such as an addition to the FAQ/guidelines, although nothing concrete has been hammered out. If you would like to add suggestions or have constructive criticism, please do so in this thread. If you you would like to read the full story of how this came to be, check out this previous Metatalk thread. It's a bit long, but worth reading for a full understanding of how this issue came about.
posted by Brandon Blatcher to etiquette/policy at 8:19 PM (1005 comments total)

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!
posted by Skorgu at 8:31 PM on November 23, 2007

It's a little more complicated than that, but that's the gist. The big thread spawned a lot of interesting discussion including feedback from many women that they feel that the atmosphere here can be hostile or alienating to them. We'd like that not to be the case, as moderators, keeping in mind that this is a site with a lot of people, men and women, and a long (proud?) tradition of snark and ass-grabbery.

I see this personally from time to time but not in a major way (since I'm mostly on Ask and here) so it was helpful to get a lot of feedback from people in that thread. We figured the first step to being able to actually work on this issue is to have admins be AWARE of it, hence the flag change. We'd like this to be a bit of a wake-up call that some of the more egregious racist/sexist stuff that crops up in MeFi (even stuff that's supposed to be at least partly ironic or jokey) is getting in the way of people feeling like this is a community where everyone's contributions are valued.

We're not planning, for the moment, to do anything major, but we're data collecting and letting people know what's up. We'd like to get some language into the guidelines and faq that maybe expands on what "don't be an ass" means so that women don't have to trudge through a swamp of "I'd hit it" and violent Ann Coulter rape fantasies to contribute in MeFi.

Feedback is encouraged especially the non-ironic kind.
posted by jessamyn at 8:35 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Could we get a luddite tag?
posted by b1tr0t at 8:43 PM on November 23, 2007

less ironically - I don't see the point of mixing sexism/racism in with the general offensive tag. Either leave it at offensive, or add in a bunch of subcategories.

also: wendell
posted by b1tr0t at 8:45 PM on November 23, 2007

This reminds me of how people often refer to "drug and alcohol abuse" as if alcohol weren't a drug.

On preview, what b1tr0t said.
posted by dhammond at 8:47 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Also note that the sexism thread killed off 3 members. That's got a be a record.
posted by puke & cry at 8:51 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Or 2 maybe. I'm not sure what vronsky was on about.
posted by puke & cry at 8:51 PM on November 23, 2007

If a primary point is to collect data, then having a catchall offensive/sexism/racism category won't be particularly helpful. For example, you won't be able to answer the question, "how many racist/sexist flags have appeared in the past month?" because you can't differentiate posts flagged as generally offensive vs. posts flagged as racist/sexist.
posted by googly at 8:52 PM on November 23, 2007 [5 favorites]

To add a bit of paraphrase/recap re: "what? isn't that covered under 'Offensive'?"...

Several people said they are reluctant to use the 'Offensive' tag for sexist / makes-me-uncomfortable-as-a-woman stuff, as they considered it to be more of a "hey, someone's being a blatant asshole" flag. The low-level, simmering sexist vibe of some comments didn't strike them as severe enough to merit the 'Offensive' tag being used.
posted by CKmtl at 8:55 PM on November 23, 2007

Also, I think the sexism/racism flag is totally unnecessary. both of those fall under offensive content so I don't see the point. Also, what googly said.
posted by puke & cry at 8:55 PM on November 23, 2007

In general it's more important to be clear than parsimonious when working with UI. For instance, if you're designing a medical form, sure you can pat yourself on the back for just having a checkbox for a family history of "drug abuse," but if someone doesn't check it because daddy just drank a quart of Wild Turkey a day and never smoked the marijuana, the form isn't doing its job.

If this does the job it's designed for, I'm all for it.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 8:56 PM on November 23, 2007 [11 favorites]

I don't see the point of mixing sexism/racism in with the general offensive tag.

The point of mixing the sexism/racism monikers in with the general offensive tag IMHO is to make it clear that MeFi does actually consider sexist BS as meriting a flag. And not a subset of offensive, either - top level offensive.

Which I for one am all over. Because often enough, reading MeFi and watching all of the BS-of-that-flavour that goes by unchallenged and uncommented upon, you would not necessarily know that. Having it in the flag list makes it clear.

I finally flagged for the first time because prior to reading The Thread That Never Ends today, I thought that sort of crap was OK with The MeFi Powers That Be, even though it isn't OK with me. I sort of considered it the price one pays to play with the boys on MeFi. I am happy to no longer have to pay for that ticket. I already forked over my $5, thanks very much.

I'm not sure it is the most elegant phraseology one could possibly come up with, but I don't have a better suggestion right now. That it is there is, right now, more important to me than how it is stated.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:58 PM on November 23, 2007 [21 favorites]

Dammit. s/tag/flag/. That particular brainfart or typo is too easy to fall into.
posted by CKmtl at 8:59 PM on November 23, 2007

To import an idea that was batted around in the other thread, a "Site Etiquette" page would be a worthwhile addition. This page would include some general guidelines for participation on the site, e.g., avoid personal attacks, be sensitive to sexism/racism/other identity issues, explore the site before you let your guns blaze, etc. It should be short and sweet and easily cited with a link. The idea wouldn't be to create a rulebook (i.e. "you have been found guilty of violating section 2.4.3(a) of the Guidelines"), but rather an official statement that makes clear certain types of conduct are beyond the pale.

Of course, it should still allow plenty of room for general crudeness and tomfoolery.
posted by brain_drain at 9:01 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

If you you would like to read the full story of how this came to be, check out this previous Metatalk thread.

You might have to read this one, too. To be truly hardcore, read them simultaneously using time stamps as a guide.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:04 PM on November 23, 2007 [3 favorites]

Hmm. Mine still says only "offensive comment".

Safari 3.0.4 on leopard if that helps.
posted by Stynxno at 9:10 PM on November 23, 2007

My only problem with "offensive/sexism/racism" is: "offensive" is an adjective. "Sexism" and "racism" are nouns. "Offensive/sexist/racist" would be better.
posted by bugbread at 9:10 PM on November 23, 2007 [16 favorites]

wait. it works. i just had to do a hard refresh.
posted by Stynxno at 9:11 PM on November 23, 2007

Stynxno writes "Hmm. Mine still says only 'offensive comment'."

Matt indicated you might have to do a hard reload of the page to see it (so that the javascript part is also reloaded). Dunno how to do that on Safari.
posted by bugbread at 9:11 PM on November 23, 2007

Whoops. Timing.
posted by bugbread at 9:11 PM on November 23, 2007

"Hard" refresh. Heh.
posted by 31d1 at 9:16 PM on November 23, 2007

Flagged.
posted by dhammond at 9:20 PM on November 23, 2007

Well this is good. It'll give everyone who doesn't find racism or sexism offensive a whole new way to flag all those inoffensive posts they're running across.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:22 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

My only problem with "offensive/sexism/racism" is: "offensive" is an adjective. "Sexism" and "racism" are nouns. "Offensive/sexist/racist" would be better.
posted by bugbread

Nah, not really.

The implied subject / verb is "This comment is..."

So, all three work.

"This comment is offensive."
"This comment is sexist."
"This comment is racist."

But I have to say... What's wrong with being sexy?
posted by The Deej at 9:23 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wha?
posted by chinston at 9:25 PM on November 23, 2007

It wasn't just women who requested it, either.
posted by tristeza at 9:27 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

No wonder q left.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:32 PM on November 23, 2007

? I'd be pretty surprised if that were true.
posted by taz at 9:35 PM on November 23, 2007

(At least) three separate flags would give better information.
posted by timeistight at 9:37 PM on November 23, 2007

You know, I posted an Ask Mefi thread asking people for non-offensive terms for fat men that can't be used to describe muscularity, for use in a personal ad. I promptly got called a "flabby" "Buffalo-Butt-Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-Eating Motherfucker".

It's not like the whole thread was full of those comments. But they were there, and even in small number, they deeply and significantly offend me.

So, Matt, Jessamyn, Cortex, I think we need a new noun added to that list. "Offensive/racist/sexist/fat nonacceptance."

Because Mefi is really not very accepting of fat people. It's a total thinzone, and I want moderated protection from those who would offend me by their nasty, non-fat-accepting ways. I cannot simply read their comments and write them off as rude assholes or as people whose value systems are both opposed to mine and offensive to my beliefs; I demand that their non-fat-accepting posts be removed from my field of view. They simply don't have a right to offend my sensibilities; Mefi must be a safe forum for me where I can participate without fear of having my character assaulted — indeed, where I must have official, institutional, moderated, built-in protection against people who would offend my sensibilities with their uncaring attitudes and words.

Obviously, I mean none of the above. Metafilter has a character to its populace, and part of that character is that people say what they mean, and other people challenge what they mean, and the clash inspires people to write well-crafted snark.

If I write a shitty FPP, I'm going to get 20 people immediately telling me in full, graphic, and nasty detail precisely how much of a shitty FPP it is. That's one of the many things that make Metafilter a unique community on the Internet, and I wouldn't want protection from it. I'm highly disappointed that this idea has garnered such utterly enthusiastic traction behind it. I guess Mefi couldn't hold off the P.C. police forever.
posted by WCityMike at 9:48 PM on November 23, 2007 [23 favorites]

Flagged as sexist. The system works!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:50 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

I approve of this. It makes it clear that it's everyone's job to call people on their shit, not just the admins'.
posted by SassHat at 9:53 PM on November 23, 2007

I'm highly disappointed that this idea has garnered such utterly enthusiastic traction behind it. I guess Mefi couldn't hold off the P.C. police forever.

WCityMike, it's possible to be snarky and tell people their post is shitty without invoking racist or sexist undertones.
posted by mathowie at 9:54 PM on November 23, 2007 [5 favorites]

> WCityMike, it's possible to be snarky and tell people their post is shitty without invoking racist or sexist undertones.

I'm not defending racism nor sexism. I'm stating that if people write racist or sexist comments, call them out. God, I hate sounding Republican, but one of the key values that makes Mefi the place it is is that people are really not that careful with what they say, nor are they especially sensitive of other people's feelings. That actually gives it a sort of pleasant brusqueness and honesty.

The more we indicate to people that they need to watch what they say lest they offend other members' sensibilities, the more this place is going to be less than it is.
posted by WCityMike at 9:58 PM on November 23, 2007

I guess talking about values doesn't necessarily sound Republican.

Oh, shit. offensive/sexist/racist/fat nonacceptance/offensive to Republicans flag. Sorry 'bout that.
posted by WCityMike at 10:00 PM on November 23, 2007

I'm stating that if people write racist or sexist comments, call them out.

That's what the flag is for.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:01 PM on November 23, 2007

> That's what the flag is for.

The flag is for moderator removal of the comments. By "calling them out," I meant, "I'm callin' you out, pardner," i.e., MetaTalk or disagreement in the thread proper.
posted by WCityMike at 10:05 PM on November 23, 2007

Don't forget cat-declawist
posted by b1tr0t at 10:08 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is the problem with a new thread.

People are not going to even skim the other thread - which is long and fruitful and contained pretty amazing examples of people reaching for mutual understanding - and are instead going to leap to loud conclusions about how the horrible, awful politically correct nannies have found MetaFilter at last, and I personally am just fresh out of patient explanations of why it is offensive to ladies to say that so-and-so female political figure deserves to get raped to death, and why it is exhausting and unhelpful to be the only person in that kind of thread commenting against the flow of traffic.
posted by thehmsbeagle at 10:08 PM on November 23, 2007 [17 favorites]

> I personally am just fresh out of patient explanations of why it is offensive to ladies to say that so-and-so female political figure deserves to get raped to death, and why it is exhausting and unhelpful to be the only person in that kind of thread commenting against the flow of traffic.

I'm sorry it's tiring to defend your point. I should probably just give in to save you that hassle.

And, of course, threads where one person says it's not okay to rape someone to death, and everyone else disagrees — they are so frequent and common here that perhaps you're completely correct.
posted by WCityMike at 10:11 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

The more we indicate to people that they need to watch what they say lest they offend other members' sensibilities, the more this place is going to be less than it is.

Yeah, because god knows I've got a baker's dozen ass rape jokes just rarin' to go and oh no! what is this? the PC police?! Oh no, my creativity is being shunned! MeFi just won't be the same without my jokes how I would violently act towards Ann Coulter if given the chance!

WCityMike, we're not covering the place in nerf and asking you to say only nice things to one another from here on out, just asking people to dial back the worst stuff that we're bigger than and can do without (like calling famous women bitches, cunts, etc automatically in any thread about them).

It's not a slippery slope problem, it's bringing up the level of discourse slightly by saying a few things at the bottom are no longer tolerated.
posted by mathowie at 10:12 PM on November 23, 2007 [32 favorites]

I'll be interested to see how use of the flag plays out. I don't think we'll feel it right away, but I bet over a few months, most of us will be pleased by the result.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:13 PM on November 23, 2007 [3 favorites]

The Deej writes "So, all three work.

"'This comment is offensive.'
"'This comment is sexist.'
"'This comment is racist.'"

I think you read my comment backwards. With the current flag, it's:

"This comment is offensive."
"This comment is sexism."
"This comment is racism."

I'm recommending them to be changed to "sexist" and "racist" respectively, which would result in:

"This comment is offensive."
"This comment is sexist."
"This comment is racist."
posted by bugbread at 10:15 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Actually, WCityMike, pretty much nobody who participated in that thread and approves of the flag addition wanted admins to start deleting comments. I would say "nobody" but maybe one or two slipped by me. The resounding consensus response, repeated over and over, was that top-down radical moderation (deleting, banning) was not wanted at all, except in the most extreme cases (something that already exists - no change there).
posted by taz at 10:18 PM on November 23, 2007

I'm sorry it's tiring to defend your point. I should probably just give in to save you that hassle.

I think you're missing the point. The premise was hashed out over about 1500 comments distributed between a few threads. It was decided there.
posted by 517 at 10:19 PM on November 23, 2007 [3 favorites]

> It's not a slippery slope problem, it's bringing up the level of discourse slightly by saying a few things at the bottom are no longer tolerated.

Matt, no one on a slippery slope actually recognizes they're on a slippery slope. Incremental steps always appear to be innocuous and simple common sense, until you look around one day and compare where you are to where you used to be.
posted by WCityMike at 10:20 PM on November 23, 2007

> I think you're missing the point. The premise was hashed out over about 1500 comments distributed between a few threads. It was decided there.

You know, there's this weird few words between the TITLE tags for this pge. "Your thoughts on ... " But I'm sorry — the premise has already been decided and the argument is over. I see. Matt, could you: s/your thoughts/Announcement Regarding/g? Thanks.
posted by WCityMike at 10:21 PM on November 23, 2007

> I'll be interested to see how use of the flag plays out. I don't think we'll feel it right away, but I bet over a few months, most of us will be pleased by the result.

I'm sure you will. Were someone to weed out for me every comment I found offensive from Mefi, I too would be pleased by the result.
posted by WCityMike at 10:22 PM on November 23, 2007

I personally am just fresh out of patient explanations of why it is offensive to ladies to say that so-and-so female political figure deserves to get raped to death

I personally am just fresh out of patient explanations of why it is a bad idea to give a cultural monster a free pass for Its rhetoric.

That doesn't mean Coulter needs to get "raped to death", as careful reading of the original thread shows, but it does mean that one should be careful about extreme, often absurd measures imposed by others (not necessarily on Metafilter, but across the general human condition) to limit one's response to Its horrific behavior.

That's not to say this flagging scheme is necessarily extreme or absurd. But I don't think that monster's behavior applies to this discussion. Or if it does, then a discussion about the utility of being forced to be polite — accommodating, even — in the face of abject, craven evil might perhaps be worthwhile.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:24 PM on November 23, 2007

bugbread, it can also be interpreted as "this comment is offensive/this comment is an example of sexism/this comment is an example of racism". We could change it to be more grammatically correct as implied by the flag, but people in the previous thread really wanted to see the word "sexism" over "sexist" to put it in the minds of members viewing the site that that kind of behavior wasn't tolerated.
posted by mathowie at 10:25 PM on November 23, 2007

Calling it a night and got to travel tomorrow, so have fun stormin' the castle!
posted by WCityMike at 10:26 PM on November 23, 2007

I never got to comment in that other thread, because before I was patient enough to read it all, it was kinda too late.

I am thankful for the additions to the tagging jargon. I would have preferred if there was a separate tag "sexist/racist" because those types of comments outnumber any other offensive type of comments I have seen in Metafilter. We could count, I suppose. It is a good way for a lot of people who want to express their disagreement to do so without having it lumped up with some other, obscure type of offense.

However and given that the flagging system is hidden from the crowd, it's basically between the mods and the flagger, I do not want it to become an easy way out: those offended feel they have protested, those who commit the offence don't get to hear about it and a pseudo-peace is established. I have not liked MetaTalk most days, but I do like it and justify its purpose in my mind when shit like this gets called out here. Many a times it's someone's bad joke, bad day or bad phrasing, but other times it isn't. In short, I would not like to see the new flags substitute protestations, with full, readable by everyone, thoughtful words which in the end carry more weight and set a definitive precedent.
posted by carmina at 10:26 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

You know, there's this weird few words between the TITLE tags for this pge. "Your thoughts on ... " But I'm sorry — the premise has already been decided and the argument is over. I see. Matt, could you: s/your thoughts/Announcement Regarding/g?

The premise was decided, which is what you seem to be going after.

This thread is about the implementation of some sort of solution.
posted by 517 at 10:27 PM on November 23, 2007

WCityMike, what are you so afraid of? Go and read the linked threads- nobody (well, very few) are asking for extreme measures. Part of what the flag is for is to help the admins get a better sense of what is upsetting people. Not to mention that the flag was already there, under a different name. This is really just encouraging people to use it with a promise from the mods that they're paying attention.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:27 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

I wish we could have a 'stupid' flag too. I'd use the hell out of that motherfucker, I tells ya.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:29 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Matt, no one on a slippery slope actually recognizes they're on a slippery slope.

Please. I've been running the site for over 8 years, introducing incremental (and major) changes all along the way and every time we ask the membership to dial something back, the slippery slope arguments come out and I was directly addressing that. If you want to go down a list of changes to the site over the last five years that were met with slippery slope arguments, you could pick any of them: adding flagging, moderating ask mefi heavier than other sections, adding more than 1 moderator, etc. None of them caused the slippery slopes that were predicted as I suspect this won't either.

Matt, could you: s/your thoughts/Announcement Regarding/g? Thanks.

This was the state of my thoughts on the matter regarding this. Jessamyn said a lot of stuff as well, I'd suggest maybe cruising through the last 100 or so comments to get a feeling for where we're going with this.
posted by mathowie at 10:31 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Also, I think the sexism/racism flag is totally unnecessary. both of those fall under offensive content so I don't see the point.

Wondering how many female MetaFilter users would agree with this comment.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:35 PM on November 23, 2007

Or racial MetaFilter users.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:35 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

I have nothing to add other than to say that this seems to be stupid. Which flag should I use?

This was never *really* a problem before. That is not to say that problems of these types didn't exist it is just to say that we didn't allow every offended individual to be a poor wronged snowflake by giving them a unique label. This will serve only to divide us.

To say that something is racist is to say it is offensive.
To say that something is sexist is to say it is offensive.
To say that something is offensive is to say that it offended me.
The need to splinter this and make martyr sub-groups of the offended will only result in a victim mentality of which 'victim group' do you most relate to?

This seems like such a knee-jerk over-reaction.

Good luck.
posted by geekyguy at 10:38 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

WCityMike,

The TITLE field is short. And this isn't an announcement, it is a request for thoughts / advice. A specific subset of thoughts and advice, which wouldn't fit in the title. Substituting "announcement regarding" for "thoughts on" would make the title more innaccurate, not less. I think the title is fine as-is, because the post itself says:

"If you would like to add suggestions or have constructive criticism, please do so in this thread."

Note that "suggestions" here is meant as "suggestions on new measures to implement", so "don't implement any" doesn't really fit. Also, constructive criticism refers to criticism intended to improve the measures. "Don't implement them", while perhaps valid and useful, isn't really a criticism which leads to improved measures. So, yeah, this thread is for suggestions on what/how to implement measures. It isn't an announcement thread. It isn't a thread for suggesting "don't do it", because that ship appears to have passed.

mathowie writes "bugbread...people in the previous thread really wanted to see the word 'sexism' over 'sexist' to put it in the minds of members viewing the site that that kind of behavior wasn't tolerated."

Ah, ok, that's groovy. I read through that thread in bits and starts, but missed that part.
posted by bugbread at 10:40 PM on November 23, 2007

I just want to add that we're sort of raising a bit of awareness with this in the guidelines, faq, and/or wiki, in addition to the flagging, with the hopes and goal of making the site more welcoming to women by weeding out the hostile jokes and other stuff that can be problematic. I didn't think it was a huge problem before but it comes up often enough (and in the monster-sized thread it's clear is a bigger problem than I thought) that it's worth doing something about and hopefully resulting in a better environment.

For people like WCityMike that see a problem with this, imagine you hang out with five guys once a week or so. You get together, watch football, drink some beers, go out to dinner, and shoot the shit. This goes on for many years as you all grow up together. Eventually someone says hey, I just learned my brother is gay and I'd like it if we could cut out the occasional fag joke and stop calling lame stuff is "totally gay". Your friends can call that a slippery slope or the attack of the PC police or they can understand where you're coming from and refrain from it in the future. It's a clumsy analogy but similar to what we're doing here.
posted by mathowie at 10:41 PM on November 23, 2007 [29 favorites]

The Deej writes "So, all three work.

"'This comment is offensive.'
"'This comment is sexist.'
"'This comment is racist.'"

I think you read my comment backwards. With the current flag, it's:

"This comment is offensive."
"This comment is sexism."
"This comment is racism."

I'm recommending them to be changed to "sexist" and "racist" respectively, which would result in:

"This comment is offensive."
"This comment is sexist."
"This comment is racist."
posted by bugbread

Backwards I read your comment, because confused am I.

Or, you know, Yoda-like.
posted by The Deej at 10:42 PM on November 23, 2007

geekyguy writes "I have nothing to add other than to say that this seems to be stupid. Which flag should I use?"

Er...the flag is "offensive/sexism/racism". So if you see something which is racist and yet not offensive, you should pick the "offensive/sexism/racism" flag. If it's both racist and offensive, you should pick the "offensive/sexism/racism". Hits the trifecta? Use the "offensive/sexism/racism" flag. Other variations and iterations? Same flag.

It's pretty easy to choose which flag, because they're all one flag.
posted by bugbread at 10:45 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Those other 2 threads are too fucking long to read for anyone with any sense. Also, I'm going to be flagging every comment as offensive/sexism/racism just so you can figure out whether the comment is offensive, sexist, or racist. You've got a 1 out of 3 chance so good luck!
posted by puke & cry at 10:45 PM on November 23, 2007

This comment is:

confusing.
posted by The Deej at 10:46 PM on November 23, 2007

This will serve only to divide us.

If you read the linked thread (and anyone who wants to be taken seriously by me might want to), you'll see that those who participated in the linked thread came from all perspectives on this issue, and still managed to bond and come together to stand behind Matt on this decision. There was nothing knee jerk about it.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:47 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

The need to splinter this and make martyr sub-groups of the offended
Um, all three are part of a SINGLE flagging category that isn't even being ADDED to the choices. Apparently you consider it a terrible thing to acknowledge in a place that is not even immediately visible that specifically "sexism" and "racsim" are NOT OK...

It looks like the "knee-jerk over-reaction" is yours, geekguy ... with emphasis on the jerk.

And 'slippery slope', WCityMike??? The most obvious slippery slopes I've seen on the Web are those in which a forum trying to be inclusive and tolerant gets taken over by the loudest, stinkiest, most obnoxious asses. This is a courageous step AWAY from that slippery slope.
posted by wendell at 10:48 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Q: Is there a problem with sexist stuff around here? I'm not sexist although I sometime make crude jokes.

A: First, try not to let the term "sexism" make you feel defensive. It's not that the flag is saying "this commenter is a terrible bigoted human being".

In this application, I think it's a term of convenience, an shorthand for a cluster of things that make women feel like this is a place where they're implicitly not part of the group. Rape jokes, knee-jerk "I'd hit it" (seriously or in irony), that kind of thing. See the long thread for a lot of good explanation of just how that stuff comes across.

And people reported in that thread that when they would step forward to say "hey, the rape stuff isn't funny", they would get piled on. A number of people said they would be more comfortable if there were a way to note egregious stuff without having to endure the pile-on. (Because if the likely response is a pile-on, then they would just leave the thread rather than try to explain why the sexist/misogynist stuff is scary/deeply disturbing/shitty/out-of-line/much worse than the commenter probably intended. And the idea is, this is why women end up spending less time on the blue -- since it's just SO much of that stuff, and each instance seems to call for a response, and one only has so much energy.)


Q: Why include the word "sexism" at all? Isn't it redundant?

A: The point was to make it explicit that sexist stuff is flaggable. Two purposes:

1. To encourage commenters to think over their comment for an extra split second, and ask themselves if their joke would come across as friendly and ironic, or come across as pointedly we're-all-dudes-here no-girls-allowed locker room talk (or even something worse).

2. To allow action by people who are bothered, without requiring that they steel themselves for a full on internet battle. Many people said -- and I agree -- that just "offensive content" seemed like a much higher bar. I don't think I've flagged anything as offensive, or maybe only once or twice. Even though there are plenty of instances of "have you seen her tits" or whatever that I would flag as sexist if I had the sense that that stuff was not tacitly approved.


Q: Why not make it a separate flag? Why bundle it in with "offensive"?

A: The worry was that this would lead to adding separate flags for a lot of different kinds of objectionable stuff (if racist is included, why not homophobic? etc). So, making explicit some of the stuff under "offensive" was a compromise.


Q: What's this about an etiquette section of the FAQ?

A: Again two purposes, just like the sexism flag. To make it clear that locker-room sexism isn't what Mefi is about (take it to Fark), and to make it easier for people who want to call out obnoxious stuff in-thread. Having a FAQ guideline would simplify the process of saying "lay off the choke-on-my-cock talk, please", since one could just link to the guideline and not have to defend against a huge derail/shitstorm of "you humorless bitch, we're only kidding".
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:49 PM on November 23, 2007 [19 favorites]

Without reading the thread in question I'll let that stand as the very reason that this looks like a knee-jerk reaction.

You are talking about one thread.
posted by geekyguy at 10:50 PM on November 23, 2007

is getting in the way of people feeling like this is a community where everyone's contributions are valued

Not everyone's contributions are valued.

It would be unfortunate if our culture were to change such that everyone's contributions were to be respected and valued equally. That way madness lies. Homeopathy and creationism would be treated as "scientific" and "factual" and worthy of respect.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:53 PM on November 23, 2007 [3 favorites]

Without reading the thread in question...

"I refuse to learn anything about this issue, but here's my two cents!" Seriously, geekyguy, you sound ridiculous.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:53 PM on November 23, 2007 [10 favorites]

Sorry geekyguy, your opinion doesn't mean shit unless you read EVERY COMMENT in both of those pointless fucking sexism threads. Call us when you're enlightened by your experience.
posted by puke & cry at 10:53 PM on November 23, 2007

Some Boyzoners are so afraid of anything that challenges their ability to wave their members around the site. I'm actually encouraged at how small the turnout of the "OMG they're taking away my 'I'd hit its'" crowd is here...

And the misunderstanding that this is somehow trying to quantify the amount of sexism/racism/etc. is truly comical.
posted by wendell at 10:55 PM on November 23, 2007

You don't have to read every comment to get the gist. For starters, you can skip much of EB's flameout, and by doing that alone, the length of thread is probably cut in half.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:55 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Nice start with the name calling, wendell.

The most obvious slippery slopes I've seen on the Web are those in which a forum trying to be inclusive and tolerant gets taken over by the loudest, stinkiest, most obnoxious asses. This is a courageous step AWAY from that slippery slope.

So you are saying the participants in one thread represent the entire population of Metafilter? It seems that the loudest, etc, etc, etc are getting their way.

I hope that this isn't something that is being done to protect from potential lawsuits. 'Cause that would only add to the suck.
posted by geekyguy at 10:55 PM on November 23, 2007

I may have missed this being mentioned in the other thread but will this new policy result in sexist-bigoted-fattist shitheads and provocateurs of that ilk actually being shown the door? I'm all for engendering a more welcome environment for folks who may otherwise become disenfranchised from the community, but all the new flags and constitutional amendments are just ones and zeroes on a screen if there isn't any sort of enforcement.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:55 PM on November 23, 2007

"with the hopes and goal of making the site more welcoming to women"
Ah! so the MetaDating subsite is going to happen.
posted by tellurian at 11:00 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Puke & cry, I don't know everybody very well who is going to get heated about this, but I do know you pretty well, and I really think that if you did read it, you wouldn't be so angry... and would probably even be agreeing. Just my feeling.
posted by taz at 11:01 PM on November 23, 2007

Can we get a "Defensive/Sexy/Racy" flag too?
posted by blue_beetle at 11:04 PM on November 23, 2007 [4 favorites]

Thanks, mods.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:07 PM on November 23, 2007

heh, I'm not angry, taz. I just think that the addition of the sexism flag was pointless. I read every comment in both of those threads, unfortunately. Like I said, they're too long to read for anyone with any sense. I just see the entire episode as so blown out of proportion that it's comical. Matt has on his little badge to stamp out sexism, whatever. I'm sure nothing notable will come of it.
posted by puke & cry at 11:08 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh thank you. I sometimes notice the borderline racist stuff but refrain from saying anything because, as some mentioned, I don't want a pile-on. Sometimes even just a misuse of words gets me into a whole heap of trouble. This is great, thanks.
posted by divabat at 11:12 PM on November 23, 2007

I'm sure nothing notable will come of it.

puke & cry, maybe you could work on reassuring geekyguy that he's in no danger of being personally castrated here.
posted by wendell at 11:15 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

WCityMike, this is radically out of proportion with the kinds of changes that are being discussed. (As others have pointed out above, mathowie with particular clarity.) Nobody is saying "no more jokes", nobody is even saying "no more snarky mean jokes". Nobody is saying "no more honesty" or "don't tell people that you think they're full of shit" etc, either.

We already have plenty of norms around here, which are not oppressive but instead serve to lift Mefi from the steaming swamp of l33t dudez on the rest of the internets. (Use complete sentences, normal capitalization and punctuation, be clever if you can, etc) Saying "let's tone it down with the rape jokes" is part of that same sensibility. It's not part of the PC Police who are Coming to Get All Freethinkers. If you look at the other thread, you will find pretty much everyone agreeing that we like funny, we are here because we mostly like the wit and the level of discussion, we don't want Mefi to get Nerfed or boring.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:15 PM on November 23, 2007

Personally I think some people are jumping the gun on what this flag is going to do to Metafilter. Jessamyn has stressed that they are "data collecting letting people know what's up." She has not said that there will be persecution of sexist/racist commenters and all offenders will be burned off the cardinal directions of Metafilter.

I sense that perhaps the community is trying to figure out if it's a problem. That includes the mods, and should include the rest of us. I know I find myself wincing over some comments that denigrate women, even if ironic. This is a tricky media that we a communicating over. We can't see who other people are on this internets of ours, and sometimes that leads to behavior that is not inappropriate regardless of whether or not the commenter is in fact sexist/racist in reality.

I personally am going to question myself when I read comments that are overtly racist/sexist and pass them over without a word. And I'm going to question the comments I make myself. I can be against racism/sexism and still be one myself. I'm not saying that Metafilter is about personal cultivation. However, it certainly has room to allow people to be. It certainly encourages people to grow a thick skin. But that skin shouldn't grow thick because of racial or gender offense intentional or no.

We want this place to be amenable to all regardless of inherent gender/race. That is different from having to be amenable to people who's personality is assholish.

But we can't knock it until we see what's up. And as to the question of figuring out if a comment is offensive/racist/sexist: Our mods can read comments for themselves, right? They have eyes, right? Or did I miss something?
posted by Mister Cheese at 11:19 PM on November 23, 2007 [3 favorites]

Those other 2 threads are too fucking long to read for anyone with any sense. Also, I'm going to be flagging every comment as offensive/sexism/racism just so you can figure out whether the comment is offensive, sexist, or racist. You've got a 1 out of 3 chance so good luck!

To the person wot you are parodying, I shall just add the short, chilling fact that the moderators are all powerful and they log every-fucking-thing *insert googly eyes and woo-wooing here*.
posted by h00py at 11:20 PM on November 23, 2007

Alvy: mods can speak to "enforcement" but I think the discussion in the other thread was trending (as of yesterday - I haven't caught up fully) toward deletion of a comment only in the case of the worst and emptiest stuff, but with maybe a MeMail with a "give it a rest with the cunt stuff" nudge from a mod if a user seemed to be getting a lot of those flags over a period of time.

I think the principal action would still be by "whoa, not cool" callouts in thread, but with a FAQ guideline that could be linked to decrease the chance that the thread would derail.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:22 PM on November 23, 2007

I guess I shouldn't make snarky comments about this because it makes it seem like I hold an opinion that I don't. What I'm saying is that there's no need to add anything to offensive tag. If some asshole makes a sexist comment and if offends you, flag it as offensive. There's no need to add anything to the offensive tag.

Now if you'll excuse me, one of my cats just puked. Twice. Thank god for brown carpet.
posted by puke & cry at 11:23 PM on November 23, 2007 [3 favorites]

I wish we could have a 'stupid' flag too. I'd use the hell out of that motherfucker, I tells ya. -- posted by stavrosthewonderchicken

And that feedback should be presented to the user as well. A "x" for each flag, in the page header section. The more x's, the more people despise you.

Naturally there would be those who would interpret it as some sort of progress indicator. Like rats pushing the pleasure-centre shock bar, they'd rapidly spiral out of control.

It would all end in a ripping self-destructive blowout of sublime beauty, a true Thing Of Wonder. And the survivors can sit back and enjoy the results of evolution in action. It'll be utopian. Or vanilla pudding.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:23 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

geekyguy: It's not one thread. If anything, it's two metatalk threads, two deleted threads on the blue, and a slew of memails and other external communications which were discussed inthread. The two meta threads comprise the bulk of it, but are also combined at 1600+ comments right now. Over the course of this, we had a large number of female members of mefi speak up about their experiences here and the common thread of feeling alienated from participation on the blue by the culture of casual sexist remarks.

We had several longtime members dissent from the prevailing sentiment, consider the arguments some more, and then come around to a greater awareness. See: loquacious, It's Raining Florence Henderson, and dios. klangklangston is another notable dissenter in those threads, and he doesn't have a handy turning point comment like the three above, and he also is fairly vocal about points of contention throughout the whole thread, but still comes to support the reccomendations of the thread.

We had two of the mods, jessamyn and cortex, follow the threads in full, both contributing and adding to the consensus, who also served to keep matt informed of what was going on. When the time came that thread had a general consensus on what could be done, and that it should be done, matt came in to give his preliminary take.

We had, as noted in the previous thread, several members disable their own accounts, for various reasons. In EB's case, two accounts were disabled over the course of the discussion.

So I really hope you can see why this was more than just a thread.

puke & cry: that's a straw man argument and you know it. No one is saying that. It's possible for a comment to be clearly uninformed and not require becoming informed to be an outrageous and unreasonable commitment to knowing everything. Even in the case of being uninformed, a little awareness of your own ignorance goes a long way.
posted by Arturus at 11:29 PM on November 23, 2007 [13 favorites]

If you would like to add suggestions or have constructive criticism, please do so in this thread.

I don't know how much work this would be, but if a comment of mine is deleted for racist/sexist/offensive content, I'd really appreciate a MeFi mail message about it. Just some automated note to let me know, since I don't return obsessively to every comment I make to see how it's being received. I wouldn't want to know so I could complain about it, but so I could take the deletion (and more to the point, the flagging that must have made it happen) into account in the future.
posted by dreamsign at 11:29 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

That last bit addressed at p&k refers to here. Fast moving thread.
posted by Arturus at 11:35 PM on November 23, 2007

geekyguy: Was this a response to my comment? Not sure I get the point, if so. The thread in question is long and a lot of ideas were hashed out. I was summarizing with extreme brevity. That thread is, by the last several hundred comments, extremely careful and non-knee-jerk in its discussion. If you mean that even thinking about this issue at all is knee-jerk, well, that doesn't seem true. If you mean that this action is being taken without a thorough vote by everyone on Mefi, that's true. But of course, here we are in a thread where you can give input. The other thread is still open too.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:37 PM on November 23, 2007

If not a full solution, this seems like an excellent step to address the longstanding boyzone issue. Thank you mods, and especially, thank you to the participants in those long threads. I suspect there will be an improvement in atmosphere, which may take weeks or months to unfold. Then, if EB and vronsky and jennydiski would come back then it would be unqualified goodness.


Speaking of long threads, is there some issue with metafilter that long threads rarely seem to load completely, and/or, are very slow? I mean, even a thousand comment thread shouldn't be that large. Anyone else have this experience of threadus interruptus?
posted by Rumple at 11:38 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

What I'm saying is that there's no need to add anything to offensive tag. If some asshole makes a sexist comment and if offends you, flag it as offensive. There's no need to add anything to the offensive tag.

The reason why it was necessary to add to the offensive tag is that many people, in the big threads and here if you'll look upthread a bit, expressed that they didn't know that sexism that wasn't on the level of "christ, what an asshole" was a flaggable offense, or that the moderators would understand the meaning if, to use the much discussed example, an "It'd hit it" post was to be flagged as offensive. It was needed to add something to the flag because the flag was not being understood correctly and this was happening in a manner which was to the detriment of female engagement with meatfilter.
posted by Arturus at 11:39 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Arturus: First off, I'm pretty sure you're misusing the "straw man" thing. I had to look it up to be sure but I don't think that has anything to do with my objective comments. Second, you make it sound like the offensive/sexism/racism flag is meant to be a corrective measure that will stop the commenter from making another sexist/racist comment. I don't know if you really believe that or not but damn, come on.
posted by puke & cry at 11:39 PM on November 23, 2007

er, metafilter.

Meatfilter is somewhere else entirely.
posted by Arturus at 11:40 PM on November 23, 2007

That was a response to this comment. damn fast moving thread.

btw, i cleaned the puke up. No one could even tell that carpet was ever puked on.
posted by puke & cry at 11:41 PM on November 23, 2007

puke & cry: your comment above was indeed a straw man argument -- that is, you were making a caricature of your opponent's position that was much stronger than they intended it, and by pretending this caricature was their actual argument, you pretended that it was an easily defeated argument. The metaphor is: You made a straw man (a scarecrow) out of their position, and then tried to score points in a jousting competition against it, rather than against live armed opponents.

(You pretended people were saying "read every single comment or else your opinion is worthless", when really all they needed to hold was "give a reasonable skim to at least the last part of that thread before complaining that we haven't considered the issue, or speculating about what solutions have been proposed.")
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:54 PM on November 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

A lot of snark is basically straw-man-making. I'm not against it as a comic tool. But it's just false to say it wasn't a straw-man.
/logic teacher
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:57 PM on November 23, 2007

puke & cry: I might be. The intention was more that you were using a sarcastic exaggeration of the position being staked out by TPS which seemed to fail to capture any actual detail of the position being staked out. Not really a straw man, in that you didn't mean it seriously, but eh.

And no, I don't think that this flag is corrective measure in and of itself. But it is a consciousness raising measure, not for people making blatantly sexist/racist comments, but rather for the community at large, and most importantly for female members trying to feel out the posting environment here.

This doesn't stand alone, either. The recommendations, or at least my take on them, that we arrived at towards the end of that thread are broadly the following:

• Alter the offensive flag, as an easy change towards consciousness raising

• Create an etiquette guidelines page, to broadly and not-terrible-specifically spell out what sorts of things are or aren't okay. This is intended to give a bit of backing when calling out sexist comments inthread. A common theme was that many posters were willing to call out sexism as they saw it, but were unwilling to engage in the lengthy debate which would then be created as a result. This is to try and help that, by giving a little institutional but non-restrictive backup.

• For the people involved in that thread to make an effort to call out sexism more often, and to encourage others to do so, and just in general raise awareness and get this going from a real grassroots perspective, which is the basis for the way metafilter culture works.

• For the moderators to be aware of this as an ongoing issue, to take an eye to this and, where possible, encourage more of the last point. We have a feedback loop on metafilter between the users and the moderators, and both sides are responsible for setting the tone here. It's not one or the other.

So yeah, I think that there's the potential for a really good thing to happen here. Do I think any of these are magic bullets? No, of course not. Do I think these are some real, constructive things, with the possibility, taken collectively, to create greater female involvement and comfort and make metafilter a bit more awesome? Absolutely.
posted by Arturus at 12:00 AM on November 24, 2007 [2 favorites]

Right. As usual, Jessamyn has been a voice of relative calm in the middle of a major shitstorm. If reading 1500 messages sounds like a bit much, you can probably get a good primer by reading the following comments she made.

one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
posted by tkolar at 12:03 AM on November 24, 2007 [3 favorites]

To add in my two cents. This is a good change. I sometimes whine about how I feel MetaFilter's evolving but this is an unalloyed *good thing.* Racism and sexism should be actively fought against on a community level. It's not enough to abstain from it.

[this is good]
posted by Kattullus at 12:08 AM on November 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

KokuRyu writes '"Also, I think the sexism/racism flag is totally unnecessary. both of those fall under offensive content so I don't see the point."

'Wondering how many female MetaFilter users would agree with this comment.'

I thought I would mention that I am a female user and I agree with it. If it's sexist but not offensive then it's in the same category of Irishmen jokes - not a big deal. However I don't care enough to say it should/shouldn't have been done, if other people like it then clearly they have different mental categories to me. I also don't really find mefi that much of a boyzone, although I am aware that this just means I have been brainwashed into accepting domination of the patriarchy blah blah, and I am perfectly prepared to accept that things that don't bother me do bother other women. The only thing that bothers me about the whole load of crap in the last few weeks is the number of people prepared to speak for me (as a female), coupled with the sense I have often gotten that 'I'm a girl and this doesn't bother me' is not seen as an acceptable response to most of it by other women.
posted by jacalata at 12:12 AM on November 24, 2007 [6 favorites]

A bit from one of jessamyn's comments that does a better job of explaining why the flag was changed than I did:

What mathowie and I have been talking about is changing the offensive flag to be some variety of offensive/sexist/racist. I know it seems like a small deal but I think it serves two purposes

1. indicates that sexist sort of behavior is at some level against the guidelines and a flaggable offense (like people seem to know that about rascist stuff, most of them, but it doesn't hurt to add it as well)

2. indicate to people offended by people's sexist comments that a) they have an option b) they shoudl let us know c) the culture here isn't just for them to quietly slink off feeling "well maybe this place isn't for me"


and a bit from a later comment, speaking the the role of the community and general optimism:

The whole part about it being a community website is really that while we can make some changes, they need to be reinforced through community action, MeTa threads, and people sort of learning the new ropes. Unless we want a big purge, I really see these incremental changes as a solid move forward and a base to build on.
posted by Arturus at 12:14 AM on November 24, 2007

LobsterMitten: Ah yes, I can see that. I was trying to be as over-the-top as possible with my comments there. I tend to get a little carried away with that kind of thing. :D They don't actually represent my opinion. My response was mainly due to the response that geekyguy and or WCityMike got that if you don't like this you're an idiot sexist or a neanderthal that just doesn't get it.
posted by puke & cry at 12:17 AM on November 24, 2007

jacalata: about "I'm a girl and this doesn't bother me". I think there has been some bad timing, and maybe some accidental less than ideal rhetorical framing, when that was offered in the other discussion. I think it came off as sounding like "it doesn't bother me, so you other ladies should just toughen up" -- which seemed like an attempt to drown out the people who were saying "we feel drowned out", which naturally garnered a disapproving response.

But yeah - it's important in this debate not to say things like "all women at Mefi think X" or "this bothers all women". Plenty of men are bothered by the sexist stuff, and plenty of women aren't. My guess is that women are disproportionately bothered by it, and that it serves to drive away some who otherwise would stay and snark and generally fit in. Obviously we don't have hard numbers on any of this.

My sense is that there is some totally impulsive throw-away stuff, which people of good will toss off, not realizing how it will come across -- especially once they see a one-liner like "I'd hit it" or whatever as a prominent thing all over the site. That strikes me as lame-assery, rather than really offensive -- but it sets a general frathouse tone that puts (at least some) women off in a "maybe this isn't my kind of party" way. That specific frathousy stuff seems to me something that we could decrease a little with no loss of funniness or cleverness or honesty, mainly by community action. We could change that tone just by, you know, making and demanding smarter jokes.

The worse stuff is the casual rape jokes, which really bother at least the people who said as much in the other thread. This stuff is not all that common, but some threads devolve into real carnivals of it, and that sucks. That makes it a genuinely hostile environment for women, it seems to me, even if there are a sizeable number of women who are fine with it -- I think it gives people the wrong idea about what kind of party this is. This seems to me like a place for moderators to say something or delete the worst stuff.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:32 AM on November 24, 2007 [3 favorites]

My response was mainly due to the response that geekyguy and or WCityMike got that if you don't like this you're an idiot sexist or a neanderthal that just doesn't get it.

Yeah, the other thread was pretty much a marathon session and everyone is tired and a little punchy.

There's a whole crapload of context that anyone posting in this thread is walking right into the middle of. It might have been better to wait to have this discussion until after the major stakeholders had some time to relax.
posted by tkolar at 12:33 AM on November 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

From Jessamyns first comment: "do your part to make the place seem less like a frat house."

Sometimes a thread with a guys lockerroom atmosphere can be great fun.

There are a lot of threads that don't appeal to me or that I find irritating. I try to stay out of those and let those who enjoy them their fun.
I'd imagine that this place could be diverse. That there can be threads in which the gender studies crowd has their fun, which I stay out of since to me most gender studies is the furthering of gender politics wrapped in a cloak of science, and also lockerroom threads, etc. etc.

I didn't see a definition of sexism in this thread. Without one flagging would just amount to "I don't like your comment". Which is rather useless.

Basically I think this is a step in mefi getting more bland and boring.
posted by jouke at 12:35 AM on November 24, 2007

puke & cry: Yeah, I could see what you were going for. I do think that geekyguy and WCityMike were reacting to a small initial change (and a request for comment) in an over the top, characteristically MeTa, way -- "help help, I'm bein' oppressed" when the actions being contemplated are quite mild. I hate the phrase "the PC police" because, man, there are people who are honestly to-the-bone go-back-to-Africa racists or women-shouldn't-get-an-education sexists, and it's a good thing that they can't just mouth off openly without getting shocked stares of disapproval. We aren't missing out on some great revolutionary blast of cleansing honesty, by their view being socially disapproved of.

But of course, it's a hell of a long thread to have to catch up on. So, hopefully we've laid out a bit of the rationale in here now, and maybe as people come in here they will take a minute to catch up via comments here and tkolar's links to the other thread.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:40 AM on November 24, 2007

jouke: There's not a definition of "derail" either, but that isn't a problem. These are fuzzy categories, flag as you see fit. A comment would need to get a bunch of flags in order to get looked at by a moderator, who would then make a decision using their own mind about whether any action on their part was warranted.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:44 AM on November 24, 2007

For those who are opposed to this:

What do you think are the concrete negative results from changing the "offensive" flag to "offensive/sexism/racism"?

I understand that it may be considered illogical, since the two latter options are a subset of the former. But illogic is not a negative result, it's a thing that often causes negative results, and that's why it's usually best avoided. Illogic usually results in one of two negative results: confusion, or contradictory results.

I don't think a person would be confused by "offensive/sexism/racism".
I don't see how there would be contradictions caused by this.

So I'm not seeing any negatives to this.

"It will result in MeFi being bland" has been offered, so regarding that, I guess, my question is: "How?" To my understanding, if "sexism" and "racism" were already part of "offensive", there hasn't been any sweeping change that would result in the blandizing of MeFi. Same with the slippery slope: two things were already against the rules. How does writing them out in a different manner result in a slippery slope? The best hypothesis I can come up with would be "one day, we'll end up with a ginormous tag which includes every possible iteration of offensiveness", but my experience with Matt shows that he probably won't actually make a 20-line-long tag. I can also see a few MeTas being made about people complaining that "anti-overweight-ism" or "antisemitism" or whathaveyou not being represented in the tag, but that's not a slippery slope, that's just "people complaining in MeTa", which is a constant.

If there are any other negatives, I'd like to know what they are as well.
posted by bugbread at 12:48 AM on November 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

I don't think I'm too far from agreeance with you, LobsterMitten.

But I still think the addition to the offensive tag is pointless.
posted by puke & cry at 12:50 AM on November 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

At first, I was honestly apprehensive about this, simply because I don't like feeling like part of some fragile "victim" class - I'm not a delicate flower that requires protection from them nasty mens. I personally have never felt like Metafilter was a sausage party, but then, maybe I've been hanging around the wrong side of the internet too long.
After giving it some thought, I believe this is a perfectly reasonable solution to what is clearly a pervasive problem - it's subtle enough not to have a chilling effect, and asks nothing, really, that isn't expected of us in our daily civilized discourse. The moderators seem to have a good eye for the difference between a cheeky good time and crossing the line and doing a dance in the end zone AMIRITE? I'm a huge fan of free speech, but if there is a signifigant portion of the community that really doesn't feel that they are free to speak, then we don't really have that, do we?
Besides, we KNOW you'd hit that, and frankly, ew.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:54 AM on November 24, 2007 [14 favorites]

The only problem I have with the new tag is that someone may read it as "offensive (i.e., racism, sexism)" as opposed to "offensive (e.g., racism, sexism)." Other than that, no problem.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:06 AM on November 24, 2007

Also note that my snarky comment didn't have anything to do with teeps. We posted comments with the same timestamp, it was just a happy coincidence that they were next to either other.
posted by puke & cry at 1:09 AM on November 24, 2007

What do you think are the concrete negative results from changing the "offensive" flag to "offensive/sexism/racism"?

As pointed out above, fostering bad grammar. Otherwise, none. Good idea.
posted by dreamsign at 1:11 AM on November 24, 2007

next to each other. That's what happens when you use the post button instead of the preview button.
posted by puke & cry at 1:11 AM on November 24, 2007

Louche mustachio, I don't know that it's fair to characterize the women who've shared their thoughts on this as a delicate flowers that require protection from nasty mens. I know many of them personally, and have been pleased to find a lot more really bright, strong, thoughtful people in these recent threads, and they're hardly shrinking violets or fainting belles. In fact, speaking up despite the certain knowledge that is how they will be characterized sort of attests to their strength, to me, anyway.

(I'm sure you didn't really mean to frame it that way, but when you say I'm not bothered because I'm not like this, it sort of suggests that those who are bothered are like "this".)
posted by taz at 1:20 AM on November 24, 2007 [4 favorites]

Personally, and for myself, as a woman and all, I sometimes like to join in with the jocularity, and sometimes it's revolting because I like that.

But if I see a lamearse comment that belongs on fark or alt.men, I flag it as offensive. The fact that it's now offensive/sexist/racist doesn't really change things at all.

I should think that would be something that everyone on here does because otherwise we would be awash with lols (in amongst the bright and wonderful comments).
posted by h00py at 1:26 AM on November 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

awash in, sigh.
posted by h00py at 1:28 AM on November 24, 2007

h00py writes "But if I see a lamearse comment that belongs on fark or alt.men, I flag it as offensive. The fact that it's now offensive/sexist/racist doesn't really change things at all."

The flag change helps for folks like me, though, as I always took "offensive" to mean "just way fucking out there indefensibly bad". If I could imagine a lengthy debate on MeTa with various people attacking and defending it, I wouldn't have flagged it. If I could imagine everyone at MeFi saying "No, that comment is just fucking wrong", I would have flagged it.

So, for me, at least, this change (or, rather, the background discussion of what the flag was for) changes things for me regarding how I use the flag (I think until now I've only used it like, twice, ever).
posted by bugbread at 1:36 AM on November 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

challenges their ability to wave their members around the site

Hey, hold on one second! I signed up for not saying "cunt", nobody told me I couldn't talk about my (quite large) penis anymore. How is that boyzone? This is information I am sharing primarily for the benefit of the gals (although the homosexual men are free to be impressed as well).
posted by Meatbomb at 2:05 AM on November 24, 2007

Naw, taz, I didn't mean it like that. I was actually kind of surprised at the number of women who I consider to be quite strong and outspoken that said that they frequently felt they couldn't say something when they felt a comment was really out of line, because they didn't feel like dealing with the pile-on. I was commenting on my own initial, knee-jerk reaction to the change. Clealy, if some of the women who are the most poweful voices on Metafilter feel like they are being silenced or left out, something is wrong, and this seems like a reasonable solution that will let everyone have a voice.
posted by louche mustachio at 2:43 AM on November 24, 2007

LobsterMitten: I understand that that 'drowning out complaints' aspect was part of the problem, but I still don't know how to frame it without sounding dismissive or including so many disclaimers that I can't be bothered having the conversation. Any tips? Or, am I right when I think that it's usually not worth contributing (and therefore stayed out of those two threads)?

I think that for some reason there has been a lot of 'generation whoeverthefuck' talk around recently (partly related to the election over here) and I have gotten so sick of people assuming that they 'speak for' groups I am part of that I've started calling it out occasionally.
posted by jacalata at 2:43 AM on November 24, 2007

Flex them flaggin' fingers, folks. We got ourselves a Dov Charney post.
posted by maryh at 2:47 AM on November 24, 2007

Way ahead of you. Like, twice.

Wait, flex my fingers for WHAT????
posted by louche mustachio at 2:48 AM on November 24, 2007

Validation and a sense of relief. Cos lame is lame and we should all flag it, it's the metafilter way!
posted by h00py at 2:54 AM on November 24, 2007