Serious community failure - forum reporting

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#24

Iā€™ve been thinking for a long time over such situations (I am not sure I mentioned Game Theory). I remember in private chat with you, I mentioned enlightenment.
The only way to improve something is to educate the people. The wrong assumption (especially in the West after WWII) is that with rules, we can have conditions to improve as society when in the same time we invest less and less in education (especially the quality).
So my solution (and I do not know if it works) would be not to find another algorithm that will undoubtedly fail, but to have people who are experts in argumentation and can educate (off forum) participants in such disputes, thus reducing the quantity and increasing the quality. In normal life we have the judge. Unfortunately this is also not good enough.
Can AI help? Some years ago there were attempts to formalize speech and meaning i.e. Prolog, but it turned out it is also not working as expected. Why? There are many reasons, but at least one of them is crucial - the soul ā€¦ or something we can not exactly explain if you wish. To make it short it is ā€œyouā€ - everything you experienced, thought etc. makes you think in specific way and take specific decision.

Conclusion: Trough education and examples, we can set up some rules that qualify a post and there should be discussion around why someone flagged the post or not and if it should be hidden or not. Community can vote and a judge can decide in case of further discussion.

We can elaborate on this if someone is interested. I do not think it is appropriate to go into details here

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#25

improve individuals. Because society is the product of individuals, then improving society.

Unfortunately education takes time and education without the sense of responsibility does not go towards the right goal. Moreover, education cannot do anything against malicious actors.

On the other side, without education and social respectability, we will get back to the dark ages. Therefore, it worth to spend few words about social responsibility.

  • ubuntu, I am what I am because you are what you are

or said in other words

  • the individual is the product of the society and the society is the product of the individual.

Finally, it is a good time to talk about ā€œcommunityā€, another abused word to identify a group of people that have nothing in common apart a specific interest - which is not even specific and it is not even in common - because those are using SFOS have completely different needs and expectations.

In this sense the ā€œcommunityā€ is more similar to those have the same god, e.g. Thor, while the rest of the world pray at Zeus or Mitra.

the short comings of the democracy are well known and by the way, nazist party was elected.

However, if you are fascinated by these topic, I suggest a good book:

IMHO, it should be a book that every European civilized citizen should read, at least one time in their life. I strongly disagree with those who are believing that we need a book (just one) as key reference for interpreting everything else. A lot of people in USA, believe that the book is the Bible. A lot of people in Italy, believe that the book is the Vangelo. Forced to choose one book among all the others, like Galileo Galilei was forced to speak against his own belief, I would chose the book above linked as the book for being the key reference. This just to give you an idea about the huge leap forward Popper offered us in writing that book.

Conclusion

These two post, contains everything this ā€œcommunityā€ needs to know for the immediate in order to deal with this forum properly.

Everything else is just out of the budget {time, money, skills} and it could be just theories or opinions with no hope to have a practical or positive outcome.

#26

I am not a fan of ā€œOpen Societyā€ it is like another manifest and we know what Soros is doing with it, besides it is part of a bigger chess game.
Without being too philosophical we could agree on some basic rules that everybody accepts.

Here I agree with your conclusion. Lets try

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#27

Karl Popper born 1904 and the ā€œopen society and its enemiesā€ book has been published for the first time in 1945. George Soros born in 1930 and did not managed to escape Hungary before 1947. Therefore, it is impossible that George Soros influenced that book in any way.

However, we might think that a billionaire which gives away a lot of money

As of October 2023, he had a net worth of US$6.7 billion,[9][10] having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations,[11] of which $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. Forbes called Soros the ā€œmost generous giverā€ (in terms of percentage of net worth)

can be a master of the puppets, at 93 years old? Instead of, are others people receiving that money doing something else than it were supposed they do? Please, grow up!

Soros was from a Jewish family, survived to the nazist repression and escaped from soviet invasion. Two things would not surprise anyone: 1. that at the age of 93 years is donating a large part of it fortune and 2. the destination of his donations. In fact, the destination could have been just two: 1. help Israel to settle down in Palestine or 2. fundraising the idea described by Karl Popper because it is the ultimate and most evolute way to avoid nazism and soviet communism happen again. Are you surprised about #2? I am not, at all.

A charity - whatever charity - always attract interests and people who wants to manage the power. I know because in 10 years of LUG Genova, I saw a lot of that and we were a very small and minimally founded charity. Imagine a charity that received billions and is going to receive much more billions, what kind of center of interest is. Huge center of interests.

Fortunately, here there is not a fucking cent - therefore, please - keep your feet on the ground. I wish to underline, that actually you are striving to manage the moderation of this forum and in the same time - I, the major troll of this forum - I am helping you while you are trying to convince me that Soros had an affair with Popper about Open Society. Pleaseā€¦ :wink:

You all got lost between the bedroom and the bathroom, he escaped from nazists and soviets before being 18 years old! It is not a plot, it is the HUGE gap between being smart and being not. :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

#28

I think weā€™re being flooded by [redacted], ever since March '22 or so, for obvious reasons.

I put some people on ignore now, feels nicer. But I donā€™t like the outlook of where this is going.

As for active moderation, Iā€™d be more than happy to help out.

4 Likes
#29

Which is the reason because they sent me to help you all - I joined the forum on 24th May 2023, on 26th arrived the Xperia 10 mark 2 and in the meantime Jolla Oy asked for re-organisation deposited on 21st June 2023 - but after a while (about 10 weeks), I joined the trolls because they are on the right side of the history. I am sorry for Jolla. However, I had a great time, indeed! :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

Coincidences do not exist but timings. :wink:

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#30

I didnā€™t mean I assume them to be part of same mechanism, but rather there to be strong inverse correlation between their usage on same post within this community. I donā€™t read all posts on these forums, but I donā€™t recall ever seeing mass flagged post with more than few likes on it.

#31

Except you got it wrong with Soros, I am a big fan of you. Whatā€™s wrong with Soros I can tell you in private the next time we come to Italy :slight_smile:

And take it easy - I think Jolla is going the path ā€œGo woke, go broke!ā€
I hope not, but it smells like this.

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#32

oh no no ā€¦ you were around before March 22 ā€¦ you just did not know what you are ā€¦ itā€™s good that you identified yourself with something. As of me and the rest, we were around also before March 22, but you did not know what you are, so there was no issue. I suggest you have a look at what happened with you after this date. With me happened exactly nothing. I donā€™t see the world much differently than before. What I am surprised of, is people like you ā€¦ who think they can judge over others. Flag posts and pretend to know the truth.

Can we please stop once and for all mixing up politics into our relations?!

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#35

Thereā€™s really no accommodating a person that maliciously creates a sock puppet account and tries to lock a community meeting topic by spewing as much nonsense as possible. Heā€™s aware of his actions and acted purposefully, sadly too stupid to realise staff topics are immune to auto-locking from flags, but the mask is off now

#37
  • You cannot see a post being ā€œmass flaggedā€, because:
    • The flag count is not visible anywhere.
    • After the third flag in the same flag-category (the number can be lower, that depends on some other factors) one cannot flag that post any more: Consequently posts in Discourse can never be ā€œmass flaggedā€.
    • For some categories of flagging, the author of a post is provided with a single chance to alter the post: After that it takes less than three flaggings if the same flag-category to irreversibly ā€œhideā€ the post, which ultimately becomes auto-deleted after a couple of weeks.
  • While there sure is a inverse correlation between likes and flags, there are ā€œhidden"ā†’"deletedā€ posts which had more than ā€œa fewā€ likes (i.e., ā‰„ 6). Though I presume opinions what exactly constitutes a ā€œstrong (inverse) correlationā€ and ā€œa fewā€ differ greatly.
  • All this is irrelevant, because Discourseā€™s flagging mechanisms do not at all take likes into account and there is no active forum moderation. Actually one principal reason for Jolla to choose a Discourse instance hosted by Discourse Inc. (precisely: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.) is likely the promise of ā€œcommunity self-moderationā€ and Jolla has even refrained from asking Discourse Inc. to adjust any default settings of the Discourse instance they pay for. Consequently, solely metrics evaluated by Discourseā€™s automatic mechanisms in their default settings matter.
5 Likes
#38

The reason for this is based on some different cases but almost similar:

  1. nazist party was elected, therefore the likes is not an absolute metric of good
  2. in a KKK forum a racist post will receive a lot of likes possibly few flags or none
  3. loving friends cannot be a metric to prevent that they being flagged

It is bare clear that the forum is not the only communication channel here. There are also IRC meetings - another wasteful of time, under my point of view - in which people build a false sense of friendship creating their own narrative.

How good is our Thor god? How bad are its enemies?
We share/agree about the answers, then we are friends!

Thatā€™s a kindergarten not a community! :rofl:

Solution?

All of this was pretty clear also in the ancient Greek in which people (citizens, not all) are used to meet under three circumstances:

  1. for doing business (market place);
  2. to have fun together (theater, music, alcool and orgies);
  3. to decide with democracy (those who do, decide).

You might consider the #3 the most important but it was the least important. Democratic decisions were often related to war (no negotiation) or peace (negotiation ok). Also in this case who were going in war are going to decide, all the others were not allowed to interfere in that decision.

Therefore: who do business decide how to do business, who partecipate to the orgy decide how to deal with other participates, who write the code decide what code write or not.

What are you looking for?

Here there is no business, there is no orgies and no one is producing code (or decent code).

Why the hell you are so focused in democracy and a supposed civil-way for opinion exchange? To talk about is pink color a trend? Or better to go with a lime green?

In fact, what are you secretly looking for is a way/tool to win an argument.
A tool that seems decent and civil but let you win also when you are totally wrong and messy.

I am sorry, never worked in that way and this is the reason because we never stop to do war in one way or another.

Panem et circensis

Moreover, the old way in which some people met in a place and kill each others with swords were the best way to settle down an issue (war) and also the less destructive one. That place took the name of Circus and the fighters gladiators, nowadays football players.

Panem et Circensis. When the bread is missing, the circus does not work either! :wink:

Therefore, unless you are going to put a lot of bread on the table, there is no any need of a tool to distribute it or to help us to decide how to distribute it.

Are you going to put a lot of bread on the table or not? :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

#39

hmm, this is all getting pretty off track, in my opinion. a global perfect solution for moderation is out of scope.

the problem iā€™m discussing is quite narrow; i want to remove the disincentive for flagging, which is an objectively bad thing. threads should not be closed based on flags on posts, because it makes folks worry about flagging, which is dangerous.

#41

This topic is temporarily closed for at least 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.

#42

This topic was automatically opened after 4 hours.

#44

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Screenshot_2023-10-25_23-58-20
Screenshot_2023-10-25_23-58-201280Ɨ720 93 KB

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#45

Talking about wasting peopleā€™s time, in your first thread on this forum you were quite vehement in your opposition to Jollaā€™s use of Google as their default search engine.
I note with interest in the screenshots you provide here that you have Chrome installed on the device you used to browse the internet, and that the first tab contains a Google search.

15 Likes
#48

Every user is free to mute another user if someones posts annoys him. That should be enough ā€˜protectionā€™.
On the other hand, the present system gives trolls and saboteurs the opportunity to seriously disturb the communication between users here.
Admin, please tune the parameters of the forum software!

3 Likes
#49

It is dangerous that people are pushed to think that they can flag or ban what they do not like. Flagging an awful (hate speech, racism, sexism, etc.) or unlawful content makes sense. Otherwise not. What about spam and OT? Considering how people are using the OT and spam flags in this forum, I would say that they are abusing that tool.

Let me explain with an example: proposing an alternative is not spamming. Proposing viagra, is spamming. The OT is even a blurrer definition. Writing about gardening flowers is clearly OT but it is completely harmless. The OT flag should compressed the post and put a label on it. This will suggest other people that they can safely skip it and they would not lose any relevant information about the topic (e.g. how to fix the GPS in XA2).

IMHO, this @Seven.of.nine answer is enough. However, there is something better that we can do about improving the forum users experience.

Another way to make a thread useful and at the same time let people express themselves is to promoting the posts which are technically useful. In such a way, we do not have to check and read 50 posts about fixing GPS in XA2 because the little-N most relevant posts are linked at the top of the thread.

As you can imagine, promoting useful content solves many problems. Moreover, it does not interfere with the speech freedom, and bring much more value. Stackoverflow, promotes the answers which people find useful. Just because this promotion, everything else is not even read by the most of the people which are only interested in the subject.

This approach also drops enormously the need of moderation, its effort and just those contents that are dangerous, awful, unlawful, real spam or scan win the flag or the ban. Promoting the useful contributes is much fairer and works way better than going around to flag or ban.

I am going to close this post with a suggestion:

  • Asking yourself the right question is half of the work done

The right question is NOT which flag or ban policy is better.
The right question is how to promote the useful contents.

  • The best at the top.

Can you see the value of this perspective change? :wink:

#51

the only thing i see, for certain, is that closing threads because of flagged posts is harmful.

while the right approach to forum moderation is tricky and complicated, no member of this community deserves to read vulgar, hate-filled comments about their religion on a MOBILE OS FORUM. handling clear, objective hate speech it is an extremely low bar to clear, and obviously outweighs all concerns about ā€˜positive contributionsā€™, and has nothing whatsoever to do with ā€˜attitudeā€™. deciding what is and isnt hate speech CAN be hard, but it sure is NOT hard in this case.

so, that being the case, lets keep this thread focused on JUST this one easy to solve, clear cut, unambiguous problem. auto-closing threads is bad:

  1. it gives trolls the last word. folks who view a thread will see the hidden post as the last (and thus most prominent) post, and decide that this is a community filled with hate
  2. it DISCOURAGES users from flagging posts, which can cause hate speech to linger unhidden for longer than necessary and be read by more members of the community who will be hurt by it
  3. it hardly ever (never?) actually stops flamewars
  4. its so damn annoying to try and get work done or help someone, and actually be stopped because of a troll

@flypig is this one specific change, removing auto-hiding threads, possible? p.s.: thanks for raising the topic of moderation at the meeting i could not attend

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