Rule Clarification

[iamsmu]

Linking to youtube is not be a copyright issue. Linking in general is not a copyright issue. Reprinting an article from a web site might be, if the copyright owner cares and is big enough to do something about it. Whether or not this site is viewed as a business is essentially irrelevant.

This site's existing rule prohibits any inclusion of copyrighted material. Under that rule, as written, two lines from a song are a violation. I'm suggesting an exemption to that rule, which would allow two lines.

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding sci-hub. Perhaps it was before my time.

But the site automatically embeds Youtube videos if you link to them. Same with images.

Sci-hub is brilliant and oh so contemporary!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

http://sci-hub.tw/

[Hamburgerfan]

I don't really like the new rules, for two main reasons.

First, I've seen several posts that I thought crossed a line by being shitty and mean spirited but would not have broken any of these new rules. I would have preferred a more general "don't be a jerk" rule. Most of us non-australians know what that means.

Second, this:

• Moderator decisions and actions are not open to public discussion. Contact a moderator or an administrator privately to discuss these issues. Disrespect will not be tolerated.

is a bad idea I think. While I recognize that the mods are giving up their time and effort for free, I'd prefer more consistency and transparency.

[Hamburgerfan]

What is forum gaslighting?

[mgil]

What is forum gaslighting?

Simply put, gaslighting in the proceedinga of an online forum. The general term could be applied, and it wasn’t meant as a precise term in the context in which it was written, i.e. “...some sort of...”.

[tersh]

Is "tranny" now a slur? It was a perfectly acceptable label just recently. RuPaul has a song called "Tranny Chaser". . . "Shemale" seems to have fallen out of favor. RuPaul used to have a segment on Drag Race called "You Got Shemail". But this label suddenly became offensive too. I can't keep up with all this nonsense.

Uh, tranny was never perfectly acceptable. RuPaul has decided that it occupies the same space as the N-word, but the vast majority of trans people, and a large swath of the LGTB+ community in general, disagree. Because people care much less about offending trans people and crossdressers than they do black people, "polite" society continued to use the term even though it's a straight out slur.

RuPaul has gotten substantial criticism for his continued use of the term, but he's a very aggressive, entitled person, and has basically told everyone to go fuck themselves.

ETA: Here's a good test: If you would hesitate to use the word as a positive descriptor about a third party in conversation with someone you wanted to respect you, it's probably not "perfectly acceptable".

[tersh]

Firstly, thanks for replies. I might regret starting this thread a bit, but I guess someone was going to eventually.

Right - telling someone to kill themselves is not good. To be fair though, if anyone is actually having those mental health issues, they should seek out professional help.

Sure. They should. But the majority of the denizens of this community, being men, are the least likely people on Earth to seek assistance from a professional. The ability to freely and openly turn to your community is vital. It's already been demonstrated to be important a couple times on this site in the brief time it's existed. And often, turning to your mates is the first step to getting medical/professional help.

I realize I'm being fussy about language here, but as someone who has had a pretty bad time with this sort of thing on occasion, I think this is genuinely important.

I don't really like the new rules, for two main reasons.

First, I've seen several posts that I thought crossed a line by being shitty and mean spirited but would not have broken any of these new rules. I would have preferred a more general "don't be a jerk" rule. Most of us non-australians know what that means.

There is this, yes. It's always difficult to prevent people from being "polite" assholes. My preference is for essentially zero moderation of this stuff, and only actually removing actively racist/bigoted/threatening content. I'd rather we worked to create a culture of being nice and supportive of each other than try to enforce one by deleting things when people's tempers get the better of them.

In other words, I'd rather see "Hey, this post isn't cool, this isn't the kind of community we want to have, consider this something of a warning" from mods, giving people the opportunity to learn a bit from their mistakes, make apologies, and maintain enforcement of community standards that way. Obviously that doesn't work on the Shugs of the world, but there's not much you can do about them.

Speaking of: @Nikipedia, could you not be passive-aggressive about shit in this particular thread? It doesn't do anything to move the conversation forward, and is just going to be irritating to the party being obliquely referred to... which if you want the rules and process of moderation to change, seems kind of counterproductive. kthxbye

All that said, I understand the spirit of, and intention behind, the rules. It's important to be able to clearly point out to folks how they have transgressed, and so on (there's actually scientific research on community management of common pool resources that I think applies pretty well here). Which is why I wanted to talk about making them clearer and more precise.

[tersh]

I am not being passive aggressive, I am being direct. I don't think too many people ultimately care about the rules, tersh. I very much doubt anyone is going to compare their posts against them before hitting "send". And from what we have been seeing the past couple of weeks, nothing that was announced has been enforced. Despite claiming the contrary. But since the rules were updated, they have of course grabbed people's attention. We were confused, intrigued, name it however you want. I asked, you asked, others asked. Remember the same thing happening back in Egypt? People then did as asked and reported offensive content. But were threatened to have their accounts terminated for it.

Questioning and criticizing has sadly been unproductive when we thought we were taking the higher road by speaking to individuals in private. Since posts are being removed without notice and without them having violated the rules (previous or updated), openly addressing it is the only alternative to quitting the forum like some members sadly seem to have done.

I don't think invoking "some people" is direct.

I am reminded a bit of some discussions about the policia, however.

Mods, while still human people, should generally be expected to have a cooler head and a higher threshold of patience than the average forum member, and should be held to that standard by the community, and internally by the admins. Accountability runs in both directions in strong communities.

Don't get me wrong, I recognize the hard work that has been put into this place by the admin team, and all of it was unexpected and has resulted in something great. But growing pains are inevitable, and if the goal is to establish a robust, healthy, positive and supportive community around strength training (as opposed to a site that is in service of a brand), then this stuff needs to get sorted out.

And I'm confident it will, though it'll take some time, and it's impossible to make everyone happy.

[d0uevenlift]

Here's the deal.

We started this forum as a group of passionate barbell trainees who lead busy lives outside of managing this place. We started it with money out of our own pockets, then with donations from a number of generous forum members. Because we don't have the time or resources to make sure everything here is fair, reasonable, or even legal, we have to create these blanket rules.

These rules hardly affect the majority of folks that post here. In essence, these rules can be summed up as "Don't be a jerk," which was in our original set of rules.

Use common sense and don't over analyze the rules and try to come up with scenarios that may or may not happen and whether it would constitute breaking the rules. It's also pointless to say, "If this is the new rule then I can already think of some people who should have been banned." I think you can see the flawed logic in that, and these rules aren't meant to retroactively punish anyone.

As far as posting copyrighted material, stay within the laws on that one. If you want to see this forum shut down by someone else who is claiming copyright infringement against us, it's everyone's loss.

The one thing to remember here is that this is community driven. Some of you are still burning from what happened on the Starting Strength forums, but guess what? We aren't Starting Strength, thank god. We don't have a business to protect and we aren't going to censor people who disagree with us or others on this forum.

The last thing I'll say, and I don't care if this rubs some the wrong way, is that I'm not going to take any shit about the new rules. 99% of the people here don't break them, and as long as you aren't doxxing anyone or doing anything illegal and you're being a generally decent person, that's fine. But I won't have any illegal activity here since this domain, the host, etc. all points back to me. We have a great community of contributors and we'd hate to lose any members, but if you disagree with the rules you're also free to not post here.

[KyleSchuant]

view any other successful forum that's relatively free of drama and conflict.

There are none. And I should know, I'm a moderator on the largest fitness forum in the world, bodybuilding.com.

In any group of 3 or more people, there will be politics. In over 100 people there are factions. And each faction attempts to use and abuse the rules to advance their agenda. Over 10,000 people and it's just chaos, nobody can even remember who's in what faction, you're just bailing water from a sinking ship.

You've not really thought these rules through, Cody. And I say "Cody" deliberately, it's plain this stuff hasn't come from the other mods. For example, if you're banned you're supposed to send a PM to a mod if you want to question it. But when you're banned you can't send PMs. So would you be expected to make another account to send a PM to question your first account's ban? But that's making multis, which is also a bannable offence. And so...? And the rules are full of such things. You're so busy making rules you're not even thinking about them.

There are useful things you can do but they won't be done because this forum is just at the cusp of the faction-forming phase. Forget about making rules, do something productive like teaching someone to squat.

[chromoly]

And I say "Cody" deliberately, it's plain this stuff hasn't come from the other mods.

Now you're just making assumptions.

[tersh]

Here's the deal.

We started this forum as a group of passionate barbell trainees who lead busy lives outside of managing this place. We started it with money out of our own pockets, then with donations from a number of generous forum members. Because we don't have the time or resources to make sure everything here is fair, reasonable, or even legal, we have to create these blanket rules.

Exactly. That's why I'm suggesting the rules be as precise and unambiguous as possible. The intention there is not just for the benefit of the people who post, but also for the mods. Right now we don't (I assume) have issues with people being jerks and trying to get other people banned.

But that's probably going to happen down the road, and having clear rules reduces the chances that someone will flag a bunch of posts and then complain that nothing is being done, or the like.

As Kyle points out, when you have systems and enough people, the system will get gamed for reasons both personal and political.
Getting a bit in front of that is useful.

Being a mod can be hassle, and a bunch of work, and it's generally not work that is particularly appreciated.
I'd like for you guys to have to do as little as possible when stuff gets messy, for all the reasons you cite.

[d0uevenlift]

I appreciate the concern, @tersh because I definitely don't want for things to get messy. However, I don't want to set up a system that anticipates that happening. I want to think of the rules more as a guideline, rather than a "just in case someone tries something funny" sort of deal. It doesn't matter how detailed and exhaustive the rules are, if someone really wanted to they'd always find loopholes. Take a look at lawyers.

Mods aren't the police here just to enforce the rules, they're also here to, well, moderate--which means some things will be left to their discretion. I'm fine with that. I'm sure everyone understands that no one has the time or energy to examine every potential infraction on a case by case basis and deliberate over it before taking a course of action.

[d0uevenlift]

view any other successful forum that's relatively free of drama and conflict.

There are none. And I should know, I'm a moderator on the largest fitness forum in the world, bodybuilding.com.

In any group of 3 or more people, there will be politics. In over 100 people there are factions. And each faction attempts to use and abuse the rules to advance their agenda. Over 10,000 people and it's just chaos, nobody can even remember who's in what faction, you're just bailing water from a sinking ship.

You've not really thought these rules through, Cody. And I say "Cody" deliberately, it's plain this stuff hasn't come from the other mods. For example, if you're banned you're supposed to send a PM to a mod if you want to question it. But when you're banned you can't send PMs. So would you be expected to make another account to send a PM to question your first account's ban? But that's making multis, which is also a bannable offence. And so...? And the rules are full of such things. You're so busy making rules you're not even thinking about them.

There are useful things you can do but they won't be done because this forum is just at the cusp of the faction-forming phase. Forget about making rules, do something productive like teaching someone to squat.

All of us mods/co-founders looked at the rules before giving the go-ahead to post.

You're making a lot of assumptions and anticipating the worst--don't let that be a self-fulfilling prophecy for you.

[KyleSchuant]

You mean to say that several of you were involved in writing the rules and they still had that silly contradiction, among many other issues?

Bodybuilding.com has 48 million unique visitors each month. I've got some useful insights from helping to moderate that. For example, you speak of anticipating the worst: Do you imagine this site will suddenly be invaded by a hundred stormfront refugees? If not, then what problem is "no racist slurs" a solution for? Who's done that here? If this weren't explicitly stated, would that mean a risk of people suddenly acquiring Racism Tourette's? "Oh but now they've said we shouldn't..."

What constitutes a "sexist slur"? One guy started a "happy international women's day" thread, and someone else shitposted in it by posting beauty queens, which was an obvious "fuck you" to the women celebrating the day. Does that count as a "sexist slur"? If not, why not? I see why you can't be bothered going into it all, but then why have the rules?

Or for Tersh: if carefully-written rules minimise adjudication, then what do our law courts spend all their time doing? On the contrary, the more detailed the rules, the easier it is for someone to fall afoul of them, which means more reports to The Authorities, so that more detailed rules mean more work for mods as people form factions and try to game the system to eject people who disagree with them by provoking them to outbursts of profanity and "slurs", or by a "I'm not touching you" game of skirting around the rules while being a complete arsehole, etc; cf StartingStrength.com.

Again: if banning must be appealed by PM, but banned people can't PM anyone, then...? You guys really haven't thought all this stuff through.

You don't stop a pot from boiling over by putting a lid on it.

[chrisd]

What is forum gaslighting?

Somewhat impractical.

'Gaslighting' is a form of emotional and psychological abuse where the perpetrator attempts to make the victim doubt their judgement in regard to the perpetrator's behaviour. Hiding possessions to make the victim think that their memory is at fault is a typical example. Once the victim thinks they can't trust their own memory, the perpetrator can excuse their own wrongdoing by blaming the victim's memory.

On a forum, the only way to do this would be to remove posts or other records which support the victim's case. Once the post is removed, any future reference to it may be played down, e.g:

"Well you may want people here to think that I called you a @£$£@$ @££@, but actually I thought that your sister's son had taken holy orders which would make you vicar's aunt".

So really, only people with moderator privileges could do this.

[unruhschuh]

And one of the mods has in fact done this. I am with Chris, how is this going to be addressed?

Who?

[JonA]

All of us mods/co-founders looked at the rules before giving the go-ahead to post.

Who are the moderators anyway? Are you a moderator? It might be helpful to put that in the title of the user, so the casual user knows who they are. If some random user told me to tone it down, how will I know if he's moderating or just another user being a know-it-all prick?

Is this list accurate?: memberlist.php?mode=team

[Chebass88]

A few thoughts.

1. The level of shit-posting in the "upstairs" sections was sufficient for at least one member to cease posting recently. Given this, we wanted to make it clear that shit-posting upstairs is not accepted. All moderators had input on the recent rules update. We had some solid discussion about language and intent, and several modifications were made prior to posting.

2. Re. the judgement of other mods: I trust the other mods regarding forum actions (post deletion, modification, movement, user warning, user ban, etc.). In a separate moderator-only chat, these posts have been identified, and justification for actions provided. Thus far, we have not seen any inappropriate behavior by a moderator. If there is an issue, please bring it up directly via PM with that moderator or another.

3. Additional offensive posts - identify them via the report function. They will be dealt with as best as possible. I'll be direct: @Nikipedia - I haven't seen these offensive posts you refer to. If you are called a "cunt" or a "retard", let us know, and those posts will be addressed.

4. Comparisons to StSt forum moderation. We aren't StSt. I won't justify StSt moderator behavior, as I'm not responsible for it. Personally, I found the StSt forum to be something I no longer wanted to be associated with, and I left. How moderators on that forum decide to play games is up to them. I have not generated any content for StSt since September 2017.

5. Re. banning & sending PMs. Good observation.

[quark]

view any other successful forum that's relatively free of drama and conflict.

There are none. And I should know, I'm a moderator on the largest fitness forum in the world, bodybuilding.com.

https://www.bogleheads.org/ may be an example of a large forum that's relatively free of drama and conflict. It lists about 70,000 members (obviously not all active), is very high traffic and is heavily moderated to close (or sometimes erase) threads that are likely to degenerate into conflict and drama. People have strong disagreements on substance, but are polite about it.

I don't believe we want to go that far into heavy moderation, but such places exist.

"Don't be a jerk" (well, a bit more detail) is better than a large number of technical rules. I continue to believe that ultimately the choice is between trusting the forum owners or finding a place more in line with one's preferences. Explaining disagreements is fine. Pushing arguments beyond the point they are likely to persuade is just being argumentative. Publicly critiquing individual moderation decision is just asking for conflict.

[Wilhelm]

@Nikipedia I'm not sure if this is mostly what is meant, (RE: shitposting upstairs) but i have often deleted my own posts when i was just joking off a topic in the main forums.
It's fun to shitpost, but it's also off topic to do so in a regular topic.

I have no idea who all the mods are. lol
Seems a constant relevation.