Self Moderation of the On-Topic Forum

It’s been noted in the past that some posters are able to behave fine when discussing less heavy topics then tend to come up in OTC, but on the heavy stuff they just can’t help themselves.

That’s why the OTC specific ban was created, if my memory is right.

ideally what I would want is

1)On topic is only viewable to users who are logged in

2)You can't post there if you're really new

Yeah, politics threads in particular seem to be the places where otherwise well-behaved tropers start going wild. Politics, especially American politics, seems to do that to people.

Is there a statistic about the difference in users' behavior between political and non-political threads?

Granted, I don't have one either, just anecdotal observations, but I personally noted that tropers who get easily angry do it in every thread they participate in.

If it is indeed the other way around, and the tropers just get heated in OTC, then what will the "new member OTC ban" accomplish?

By that logic, the troper may behave well in, say...the video game forums, but once they post in OTC, his behavior may change anyway.

.............

Also, this will still mean that mods will have to review the requests of new tropers who want to post in OTC or explain to them why they can't.

Which will be the same like edit banned, except that they will have to respond to each case immediately, instead of making it in batches.

............

Finally it will create an atmosphere of "eliitism" where only certain tropers are allowed to post in certain areas, and others are forbidden from participating through no fault of their own

Or so it seems to me.

Edited by jawal on Dec 8th 2023 at 10:42:54 AM

Those sounds like good ideas to me. Limiting the visibility to only users will prevent people from making accounts JUST to start arguments in those threads, although im not sure how exactly we would limit the thread for newer users. Would it be like, if you created your account within the past few weeks you cant post just in OTC yet?

Edited by kory on Dec 8th 2023 at 1:48:23 AM

> Would it be like, if you created your account within the past few weeks you cant post just in OTC yet?

Ideally a few days,not sure about 'a week' unless they're already been a pain elsewhere

Unless there's some counter in the codebase for number of posts too. That would be the normal mechanism, wouldn't it? Time registered AND some metric of contribution?

Ya we could do a check for number of posts or some other account metric.

We have a setup to put a control on an account that just prevents them posting in OTC, so if that was automatically applied to new accounts it’d prevent new members from posting in OTC until they earn the privilege.

But as pointed out, that would create a burden on the mod team around processing requests for OTC posting rights, I also don’t know if it could lead to confusion as to who has been specifically banned from OTC and who has just not yet earned/asked for the right to post in OTC.

For automatically granting such rights I don’t know if it’s possible to do a combined post count, account age and post spread check?

Edited by Silasw on Dec 8th 2023 at 10:00:36 AM

I like that idea.

New users can't post external links and some other restriction I'm blanking on, so I'm for utlizing this designation to prevent knee-jerk reactiory account making. Preferably post-based instead of time-based.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 8th 2023 at 1:05:03 PM

I do think the default OTC ban and people having to apply to get permission to join is a good idea. We don't get too many posters who join specifically to push an agenda or troll, but they do pop up from time to time and a number of people end up getting thumped for responding to troll bait.

Out of interest with all the thumps for the US politics thread, is there a percentage breakdown of what the reasons were?

According to the mod team the vast majority of the offenders in OTC are long time members who also have lots of posts. So restricting newer users or hiding it won’t help the current problem apparently.

Disclaimer: Not a mod, have some experience moderating elsewhere.

The problem I've seen is not new people coming in and saying "I know it's a hot take but I'm just sayin' what we're all thinkin'". That's pretty rare here, easily given a quick bounce and doesn't take a lot of emotional labor from the mods. Likewise, when a pro-Trumper came into US Politics, we'd usually discuss with them in good faith, the mods would let them have a little rope, and then they'd get banned when they stopped being amusing revealed that they were arguing in bad faith.

No, what's gotten the mods thumping lately is the civility level among several long-time OTC-ers dropping, for a variety of reasons that aren't really on-topic, which is requiring more moderation - and a lot of such users aren't really getting the memo when they catch thumps. That isn't something that you can fix with either more rules or gatekeeping who should be allowed in OTC at all - it requires moderators to play traffic cop if you want to keep the traditional civility level of OTC, where many of the offenders consider civility toward their targets to be a flaw, not a virtue. And these are generally productive and useful contributors except when they take up arms. Hence, the effort in maintaining civility is a lot greater.

Edited by Ramidel on Dec 9th 2023 at 8:56:56 AM

I agree, we should all understand that civility is non-negotiable and is a requirement to participate, not a suggestion.

If even veteran tropers can slip, then it's a problem.

The main ways to prevent inappropriate posts are 1. assigning someone to watchgdog threads even if they're not a mod 2. limiting the ability to post in high-traffic threads to specifc condition

But now there's a Who Watches the Watchmen?, as we need to either trust those OTC veterans or pick even more of them to check each other.

Another thing mentioned that I like is remaking threads to be very specific, ex. splitting US Politics to US active politicians in public media, and US foreign policies in Middle East to restrict which topics are on-topic.

The problem isn’t off topic thumps though. It’s mostly users fighting eachother about anything related to US politics. So it’s the subject that’s the problem in general. We would then have 2 threads with fights breaking out.

We aren’t going to recruit anyone for one singular thread that’s causing so many issues because that also wouldn’t help even if things are reported faster, a mod still has to go in there. Since we locked the thread we’ve had basically no issues inside OTC. Like I said before, OTC overall isnt the issue, It’s mainly this specific thread. So we will use slow mode to attempt to calm it down and if the mods still have to go in that thread on a weekly basis it will just be permanently locked like the Israel Palestine one because not even our veteran users can be trusted discussing this subject apparently. TV Tropes is a place for TV tropes, not intense political debate. There’s many other websites to discuss politics more in-depth.

Edited by kory on Dec 10th 2023 at 12:04:11 PM

The Middle East's war is already a banned topic, so making a specific thread about U.S. politics in the Middle East will serve no point.

..................

This is already happening with hollers, though, any troper can report bad behavior in the forums for the mods to review.

Unless if you mean giving a normal troper the ability to thump, but this is will be the same as making new mods.

.................

My idea was that since the last two incidents in the U.S. thread, were about grave dancing, maybe you can add a rule to the U.S. thread restricting any discussion of a recently deceased public figure until a set amount of time has passed.

Edited by jawal on Dec 10th 2023 at 9:08:41 PM

Seems overly broad when we have a rule about grave dancing. All you're doing is just expanding the scope of the rule to stifle legitimate conversation points and miss the main point which is that grave dancing is not allowed. And if people are violating that real enough to get mods to shut the thread down then I don't see how expanding the ban to get more people thumped is meant to resolve the issue.

Well, when some controversial figure dies / get attacked, and people start discussing his legacy, they may intentionally let out a comment that can be understood as grave dancing without noticing or provoke another user to respond with a grave dancing comment.

If you restrict the conversation about the recently deceased person for a week (for example), you will avoid those unintentional cases, at worst you may get one person bringin it up, other tropers warning him, and the problem dies before starting.

After a week, people may hopefully have discussed it in another place, and are, as such, less emotional about the issue.

..........

But I may be wrong.

Edited by jawal on Dec 10th 2023 at 9:34:14 PM

Could we get some clarification from the mods on the unlock from for the General US Politics page. My current reading of Kory's comments is that the admins and mods won't even consider re-opening the thread until slow mode functionality is implemented?

I agree that this is also a civility problem, and the US pol thread is particularly vulnerable to it due to political tribalism and an us-versus-them mentality. This comes with a lot of bad faith assumption about anyone who questions the desired Democrat opinion on any topic.

That particular thread seems to tend to bring out the worst in American tropers, to be honest.

I should note that Democratic Party is big tent, so Democrat opinion can mean a lot of things.

Yes, but the idea that not everyone outside that big tent is a big evil monster tends to set off a lot of people in that tent.

Frankly, unless you give an actual example, that is simply too vague to be of any use. Again, it is a big tent. Generally speaking, it is a centre-to-left-wing tent (according to US definition of that), at least to my impression. So outside we have right-to-far-right, which is not what you mean, I think. Then we have left-to-far-left, which seems to be tolerated here.

Edited by Risa123 on Dec 10th 2023 at 11:34:00 AM