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Old 02-14-2012, 09:03 AM   #32
chillzATL
Location: ATL
Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 847
United_States
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Re: Integrity in our Aikido Community

I respect the ideal that Marc is putting forth in this thread, I really do, but I gave up looking for integrity in online discussion decades ago. I learned to engage the people that comport themselves in a way that I enjoy and ignore the ones who don't. It's really that simple, ignore them, don't respond, tune them out. Do you engage every person on the street that you hear saying something foolish or something that you don't agree with? No, of course not. Then why feel the need to do it here? You just shake your head, tune them out and continue having your discussion with those who converse in a manner you're comfortable with, agree or disagree. It's crazy I know, and difficult for us humans for some reason, but it works and it really makes places like this everything they can be.

some other points:

Some people simply do not have the ability to engage in discussion where they will be disagreed with, where there is general disagreement or where there are simple differences in opinion. A lot of the people that say they stopped coming here for this or that reason simply aren't being honest with themselves.

I find this forum in general, the moderation, discussion and the people to be among the top 1% of forums I've participated in and I've participated in hundreds in the last 25 years. I'm not sure some of you know what it's like "out there". Civil discussion is a rarity, yet IMO 99% of the discussion here remains civil. The few episodes in recent times where it started veering out of that territory could have easily been remedied by people ignoring the persons posts, but they couldn't. WHEN IN DOUBT, IGNORE. We even have technical ways to have the site do it for us, but few seem to use it and instead get frustrated with what others are saying.

again, when in doubt, ignore.

barring that, make suggestions to Jun for technical things he can implement to make the site better. Anything that eliminates some of the human judgment will always be better than the ones that depend on it. I've emailed him several times with suggestions and he's always read and responded to them. One of the more recent trends on message boards that I like is the ability to upvote and downvote individual posts. After a post hits a certain downvote threshold, it becomes hidden unless specifically unhidden by each user and if it gets downvoted further it will disappear completely. This is a pretty hands off method of moderation that allows the mob to police itself without the mob mentality changing the tone of the discussion. There are lots of creative things out there like this that could probably be implemented here if requested enough.
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