Discussion culture

[Bantari]

You can prevent such ruination by granting those who start threads more power over them.

And in the same spirit, to fix the danger of power-hungry OPs removing each contrary post and poster - lets give the thread participants the right to ban the OP.
Ah, perfect world.

[Bill Spight]

The truth is I often enjoy the serendipity of the sharp turns a discussion can take. Derailments that take us on a long roller-coaster to who knows where can be exciting.

Moi aussi.

In the thread under discussion, if I were a moderator I would ban only Robert's second post, though would also assume that a largish number of subsequent posts, by him and others, would fall away simply because the stimulus for them has been removed. The resulting thread would be going in a direction I would never have envisaged, and parts could be described as off topic, but the important point for me would be that the thread is visibly moving, and every new point would be a bonus.

As I have indicated, I would be happy with that call by you.

It is because I see the problem as behavioural (some prefer to call it a problem of presentation or delivery) that I think the idea of a moderated main thread would fail. The disrupter would just create disruptive parallel threads.

You are a very smart man, John. I have observed just that sort of thing.

These would not be ignored.

Right again. IMX on Participate, when an argument started on one thread which the moderator deleted, it would often continue on a new thread started by one of the participants. This kind of thing caused some distress, but the level of heat we saw back then would violate the TOS of this community today.

There is also the problem that it creates more work for the OP. If the OP has already put in a lot of work, extra work is the last thing he wants. It could apply in a mainly academic forum, say, but not here.

I take it that you mean the work of monitoring posts in your own thread?

Banning might work, but is it not the case we already have a ban in place here and it is just being flouted? I'd like to know. But I have to say I feel uncomfortable with bans in general, and certainly strongly disapprove of those (?like the current one) based on anonymous complaints.

Moi aussi, as I think is clear.

On top of all that, there seems to be a law of the universe that states that all forums will have one and only one disruptive member. Get rid of one head and the snake just grows another.

I think that is true to some extent, but Boidhre and I have experienced some truly horrendous cases.

As for your feeling that my suggestion would not work, who knows? Aside from experience I am following the principle that things usually work out better when you have a lot of people making small decisions instead of a few people making big decisions.

[Bantari]

It is because I see the problem as behavioural (some prefer to call it a problem of presentation or delivery) that I think the idea of a moderated main thread would fail. The disrupter would just create disruptive parallel threads. These would not be ignored.

I don't see a problem with that. As long as your thread lives long and prosper, what do you care if a few hotheads are having a parallel argument about RJ's stuff? If, as you say - you would ban his second posts, and thus remove all the subsequent responses and responses to responses - this aim would have been accomplished.

I mean - obviously either there are forum users who see value (or fun) in arguing with RJ or there are no such users. If they are, why would you rob them of what they would like to talk/argue about? And if there are not - none of the parallel threads would go anywhere anyways, so no problem. In either case - *your* thread would be safe, moving forward, and seriously discussing an interesting topic without derailment.

And still - we all will have our voice heard and our argument made.

So - I really don't see your objection to this.
Personally, I think it would be a good idea, and a lot of the disruptions would be organically weeded out. It would also be a good 'training' tool... if you want to post in *my* thread, you need to behave with certain standards, can't just go on mouthing off at everything I say.

In any case, I don't think phpBB has this functionality, so its a moot point. Unless, as I suggest, people like RJ try to self-moderate.

[EdLee]

Hi Robert,

Whenever you post to this forum, I think you consider very deeply about the correctness of the technicalities (related to Go or otherwise).
Correct me if I am wrong about this.

I am curious -- when you post to this forum, how much do you consider about people's feelings:

• None at all -- Zero. People's feelings are completely irrelevant. All that matters is technical correctness.
• Very little -- Technical correctness is much more important than people's feelings.
• Somewhat -- Technical correctness is more important than people's feelings.
• Average/"normal" -- Technical correctness is equally important as people's feelings.
• Quite a bit -- People's feelings are more important than technical correctness.
• Very deeply -- Technical correctness is irrelevant. The most important thing is people's feelings.
• Other/Depends -- Please explain. For example: technical correctness is extremely important, but people's feelings are also relevant.

[Boidhre]

Whether to ban or not. Well, I've never viewed one user as being more important than the forum, so I've no problems removing a user if I think they are going to have a long term negative effect on the forum. I don't think people have a God-given right to be heard online. They have to earn that by civil interaction with other users and not being overly disruptive. I have seen one user drive away many good users who used to contribute a lot purely because of them posting and essentially ruining any of their threads.

You can prevent such ruination by granting those who start threads more power over them. See my suggestion above.

I don't think you shouldn't at least consider banning here.

Banning is an extreme measure.

You know, in family therapy there is a person who is called the Identified Patient (IP). This person acts crazy or "acts out", causing trouble for the rest of the family. Well, it usually turns out that a common sense approach of trying to fix that person or that person's behavior is not a good approach. Human relations are not as simple as they appear on the surface. Everyone's behavior is open to question.

Now, an online community such as ours is not a tight system like a family. But generally it is best to take the attitude that we are all in this together instead of focusing strongly on an identified person as the problem.

I'm specifically not drawing a direct line between here and forums and communities I've been an admin for, precisely for the reason you allude to. What I worked with were communities many times large than this one, i.e. orders of magnitude. Users, as a rule, would not have spoken to other users online, never mind know them personally. This is not the same situation as here where there is much more familiarity between the users (both a good and a bad thing) and admin actions have to be more delicate.

Edit: Sorry, I'm being unclear there. When you've a faceless mass of users you have to use the bullwhip a lot more because users who feel anonymous can often act a lot more rudely than they would where they were known. Since here, most people are known to at least some others, if only within their national community, there should be a lot better level of self-moderation amongst users.

[Boidhre]

Actually, screw this, I'm going to be blunt.


Looking at this from an admin point of view, this is a bloody mess and should have been dealt with six months ago at least. Robert is clearly disrupting threads, this is a problem. It's not intentional though. Equally we have people taking personal shots at him constantly. Mostly it seems because of the latter rather than any organised targeting. The second issue aggravates the first, which aggravates the second and we have a lovely feedback loop going on.

Two things need to happen:

1) Robert needs to realise that he can't continue the way he has been going because it's not in anyone's best interests. His theories are being derided and quite viciously attacked because, as far as I can see, he is being seen to try and push them into every thread. If Robert can't stop doing this, then you have a very serious problem. I would tentatively suggest that he be recommended not to bring up his personal theories or work in other people's threads. He should still be able to discuss it, just by doing it elsewhere it shouldn't grate on certain people as much as if Robert's theorising bothers them, they don't need to read his threads. He shouldn't be doing what he's currently doing and creating sister threads for current threads, because really that's not much better than disrupting from within the threads. There needs to be a firewall between them. This is draconian but I think it's necessary.

2) Many, many people need to be taken aside and instructed to stop goading him. It just makes what's annoying them worse and it's cluttering up threads left, right and centre and Robert will never be able to contribute well to the forum if this is going on. The admins need to take people aside and be polite about it. Everyone's backs are up, you just want to calm things down. If people keep goading him and he's no longer derailing threads, they should be warned and if they continue, banned for a short while. It shouldn't come to the ban.


Ideally you want Robert to be able to still discuss his theory without people getting annoyed at what they perceive as him using other people's discussions to popularise his theory. I think previous efforts were not well enough thought through as they only dealt with one side of the issue.


Just my thinking from ten years of having handled this kind of situation with many different individuals in many different contexts, feel free to ignore or whatever, I don't mind.

[RobertJasiek]

Boidhre, this amounts to censorship of go contents and the opposite of discussion culture. If person A has an opinion (whether a theory, a move comment or something else) and person B has a different opinion, then A's opinion is not right on the basis of prohibiting a comparison of A's and B's opinions.

[RBerenguel]

dis·cus·sion
/disˈkəSHən/
Noun

* The action or process of talking about something, typically in order to reach a decision or to exchange ideas.
* A conversation or debate about a certain topic.

Robert, since you like correct terms, I don't see in this definition a constant rebuttal of others statements, or a word-by-word correctness analysis of a sentence. And talking about definitions (taken from The Urban Dictionary, although I've seen it used in some psychology books as "conversation stealers")

Thunder stealer

A thunder stealer is a very annoying person who bursts in to your conversation and changes the topic to him/herself. Usually leaves you aggravated.

Bob: Hey guys LISTEN! You won't believe what happened today!
Jack: What?
Bob: Well i was walking down some alley when i got jumped by three guys with-
Thunder stealer: OH HEY JACK did you do yesterday's homework!?
Jack: Oh yeah, it was pretty easy
Thunder stealer: Hahaha, yeah. Hey can you show me something in the homework? It's on page 54...
Bob: Hey what about my story...

[Cassandra]

If person A has an opinion (whether a theory, a move comment or something else) and person B has a different opinion, then A's opinion is not right on the basis of prohibiting a comparison of A's and B's opinions.

Robert, you will have to accept several things that (as it seems to me) you shy away from realizing:

-- Your construct of ideas is a very special (and very "technical", and "formal") one, and is -- if ever -- shared by only a few people (= "the minority").
-- The (somewhat overlapping, somewhat "common") constructs of ideas of others (= "the majority") is NOT at all shared by you, at least, because it is not "precise" enough in your eyes.

-- It seems that you are unable to accept an "opinion" that reads like "In my construct of ideas, XYZ is a valid statement.", with "In my construct of ideas" mostly hidden, but included even unsaid.
-- Your argumentation does not follow a logical line inside the construct of ideas of others, like "You have said that ABC, DEF, and XYZ are valid statements. Have you ever noticed the contradiction between B, and E, under these circumstances, which makes Y incorrect ?"
-- Instead, you choose your construct of ideas as a basis, to "prove" that Y is mistaken. Or that "your" YY is much "better".

-- Your postings do not give the feeling that someone has expressed his "opinion", but they come over that someone has put absolute "facts" into writing.
-- It seems that the basis of your construct of ideas is something like "absolute truth" for you (but remember, not for others !!!), so it is a somewhat natural development over time with you that issues that are derived from this basis, are "absolut truth" = "facts", too.
-- It is very likely to me that your construct of ideas is self-contained, and logical in itself. But only (and this is the decisive issue !!!) in itself, i.e. only for you (and a very few other people).
-- It makes me very sad to see not only that you are unable to promote your ideas "in the language" / "inside the construct of ideas" of others (with the intention of not getting so much opposition), but that you are your worst enemy with the "marketing" of your ideas, choosing counterproductive means ("Come inside my world, it's the much better one !").

[RobertJasiek]

It is all fine and well to discuss less in general, to quote less, to correct fewer details and to discuss less especially in threads started by others, but

Cassandra, that you or others represent my intentions or actions (partially) wrongly does not mean that I want to correct everything or clarify everything said about me in this thread, because

viewtopic.php?p=150621#p150621

[HermanHiddema]

I think that the only way that this problem will be solved is if Robert learns to modify his behaviour. But I do not think that will happen, because Robert is averse to learning from others. His basic instinct, when being corrected, is to challenge the correction and to "prove" that his own opinion is correct, even on subjects where he is obviously unskilled. For example, his skill at the English language is obviously quite limited, yet he will not accept corrections from the likes of John Fairbairn, a native speaker and obvious expert, but will challenge the correction and start endless discussions.

This, BTW, is probably also his major weakness when it comes to go. He often complains that he is unable to find a teacher that can find his major weaknesses. I think that in fact many professional have probably pointed out weaknesses, but since Robert's instinctive response would be to challenge any such notion and since he would be quite willing to debate the point until the heat death of the universe, I think all of them give up at some point.

[Cassandra]

It is all fine and well to discuss less in general, to quote less, to correct fewer details and to discuss less especially in threads started by others, but

Cassandra, that you or others represent my intentions or actions (partially) wrongly does not mean that I want to correct everything or clarify everything said about me in this thread, because

viewtopic.php?p=150621#p150621

Robert, it's not about correction / clarification. Just because it's not about "attack / defense".

Did you notice daal's reply
viewtopic.php?p=150625#p150625
to your above-mentioned posting ?

With your first posting in this threat, you again created your "own world", surely meant as a basis for further discussion.
It would have been much better (and more "open" for discussion) to have your statement restricted to something like

-- Here is my view of the problem !
-- What are your suggestions for a potential solution ?

Nobody is really able to solve a problem that he is an integral component of. Therefore, suggestions of yours were the wrong part to begin with.

[hyperpape]

It is extremely self-serving to conflate people wanting to limit the form of your comments with suppression of your opinion.

I suppose I can think of someone on the forums who would like to censor you absolutely, but in general, no one is interested in suppressing your opinion, just your eagerness to dominate a thread with bad debating tactics.

[RobertJasiek]

hyperpape, I guess I understand much better now what can be perceived as bad debating tactics, and I can try to avoid accidentally creating an impression of wishing to dominate a thread created by another OP. It is, however, not easily possible to post a high percentage of messages in a thread started by myself, if I and others find the topic interesting and so exchange a lot of interesting contents.

Pretty much the same applies for everybody, except that not every OP uses the potential of posting a high percentage of messages in a thread started by himself, maybe because his knowledge is still small and he is just seeking answers or he wants to initiate a discussion of others. An OP with the intention of inputting knowledge is much more likely to post a high percentage of messages in a thread created by himself.

As much as it may be that I used bad debating tactics, I am also affected by other bad debating tactics by a few other users, especially one-line messages thrown in to provoke, making general false statements or stating an opposite opinion without offering any reason. Avoiding bad debating tactics is not just a good aim for me, but it is a good aim for everybody.

[Bill Spight]

There is a saying that there are 360 degrees in the martial arts. That is, no matter what approach or way you may have, someone somewhere has another approach that is the opposite. And just as good. (Well, maybe not just as good. )

Robert's approach to go is unique. To me it is like scaling a cliff face, slow and painstaking work, with critical attention to detail. That he has climbed as far as he has is a remarkable achievement in itself. And to top that off, he has been able to communicate his understandings to others in books that he writes in a second language.

I met Robert online in the 1990s on rec.games.go, where he was an expert on the Ing rules (another remarkable achievement, and a thankless task, to boot). His English was pitiful, and few people could or would wade through his formalizations. Yet he soldiered on bravely. Few can match Robert's devotion to go, or his devotion to the go community.

That last may surprise people, because Robert rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But he shares go knowledge that he has painstakingly acquired with others through his books. To be sure, there is ego involved. Few of us accomplish much without ego. But it is also a labor of love. As John Fairbairn has pointed out, no amateur writes go books to get rich.

My own approach to go is not diametrically opposed to Robert's, but like most of us, I guess, most of my skill at go was picked up without much conscious thought. Not so Robert, and if he can explain himself well enough, his painstakingly acquired knowledge can be valuable to others.

At the same time, the fact that his path has been so unique means that it does not mesh easily with other approaches. Therefore, I am not bothered by the idea of parallel threads, with one started by Robert to advance his own concepts and understandings. In fact, I welcome the idea. Robert gets to send his message, and others can read or debate it if they wish, without the need to take personal potshots.