Politics, Religion, and Social Issues Forum Changes (Jan 2021)

[MisterSavage]

I could not have enabled this more quickly. Thank you for doing this.

 

[ipponrg]

Moreover, from what I have seen on this site, for all of the complaints about the toxicity (relative or absolute) of PRSI, to my mind, nothing on this entire forum can compare - for sheer venom and pure, undiluted, toxicity - to the iPhone section, especially around the time of a fresh product launch.

The garbage that happens in tech threads is much easier to deal with than politics, religion, or social issues. There is a reason in companies that these topics are heavily discouraged around the water cooler

 

[ericgtr12]

The garbage that happens in tech threads is much easier to deal with than politics, religion, or social issues. There is a reason in companies that these topics are heavily discouraged around the water cooler

^This. There are people that I've worked with for years and we have no idea of each others politics, it's better that way. MR has the power to control this type of discussion by simply not allowing it and closing off replies to more controversial news topics, many other sites do this with success, there's no reason it can't be the case here.

 

[yaxomoxay]

The garbage that happens in tech threads is much easier to deal with than politics, religion, or social issues. There is a reason in companies that these topics are heavily discouraged around the water cooler

I want to point out - probably just for philosophical reasons - that the issue is not within the topics but it's due to how people decide to discuss such topics. At any rate, yes, the consequence is what you say.

 

[redcaptrickster]

volunteer staff

Well, that explains a lot of head-scratching from me.

 

[JayMysterio]

That depends on who gets their feathers ruffled over what you say. There's no balance there, which is what makes it pointless as a discussion forum. It's the same 20 people stroking each other's egos.

Interestingly enough, it's always ANOTHER 20 people saying that about 20 OTHER people & their egos.

Which is where I feel the logjam occurs.

The analogy of 'moving goal posts' is used in PRSI, I think the problem is that often one group is playing a game on an open field with other groups, but not with the same rules. Which is what helped lead to all of this. People are on field playing the game the way they wish, while others are on the SAME field playing the game as they wish often thinking they are playing by the rules of those who own the field established. It's when those two opposing groups clash on the same field, the crap hits the fan. The refs / mods are called in, and their calls are always ( at times for very good reason ) hated by one or both sides, resulting in chaos.

It's then THAT chaos that gets complained about, and here we are...

 

[redcaptrickster]

There is a reason in companies that these topics are heavily discouraged around the water cooler

As it should be. People at work are annoying enough out-of-the-box. I don't need their political opinions slathered on top of that.

 

[redcaptrickster]

It’s obviously not necessary but I like this add-on to make it instant: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/user-promotion-on-profile-update.5846/

Nice!

Another trick I use to hide those pesky "Show ignored content" links for people I'm ignoring is to add a custom CSS to my browser. In the CSS file, put this:

.showIgnoredLink {
    visibility: hidden;
}

Voilà! They're gone. You can do this with other blocks you don't want to see. Just inspect the element, get the class name, and add it to your custom CSS.

 

[iOS Geek]

That depends on who gets their feathers ruffled over what you say. There's no balance there, which is what makes it pointless as a discussion forum. It's the same 20 people stroking each other's egos.

Exactly why I finally opted to ignore that forum. Haven't missed it at all. Opposing opinions seem like a major sin over there and it was guaranteed that you'd be ripped apart for it. Insults, baseless assumptions that were often incorrect, simply because even though my political affiliation lined up with them...my opinions the parties and their issues...didn't always. When it comes to political parties, I'm an "equal opportunity hater/criticizer". I won't hesitate to criticize the party that I'm not affiliated with. When I did that...certain members on that thread were all for it. But the second I started calling out my own party's mistakes (and therefore the party of many members on that thread)...boy did I catch a world of **** for it...from the same members who were in favor of my criticisms of the opposition. I am a firm believer of calling out the other guy's problems while ignoring your own. Ignoring problems is how they become BIG problems. On that forum...ignoring and deflecting seems to be the name of the game.

I thoroughly enjoyed the COVID and vaccination threads...had some nice discussions on those and since I work in healthcare, I really enjoyed discussing and hearing the opinions of people who were looking at this situation from outside the healthcare realm. I like hearing other viewpoints/perspectives. Talking to people outside of healthcare was very enjoyable. Heck, I learned a ton talking to people on those threads who DO work in healthcare...but have been in the field much longer than me. Their years of experience was shown loud and clear and I loved it! Overall though, ignoring the forum as a whole was for the best.

 

[SuperMatt]

In all honesty, this comment is a bit dismissive and condescending. I offer my time, energy and talents as best I can to make MacRumors the best it can be. Telling the staff to leave or ask for money is rather insulting in all honesty.

Yes, we choose to spend our time helping this site, but that doesn't mean we should let a particularly toxic forum that has nothing to do with Apple products continue as it has. Just my opinion

I'll not debate this, I provided my opinion and I'll move on to other things here at MR.

It is my opinion that the forum became toxic due to the system of moderation. It became clear that racism, disinformation, and hate speech would not be moderated. Such posts were regularly reported by multiple people and the mods refused to act. Then, forum members attempted to handle it themselves by calling it out. At which point the mods often suspended and/or banned those calling offensive posts out for insulting or attacking the offenders.

Whether it was fear of being seen as biased against certain viewpoints, or a failure to grasp the racism and hate speech, or something else, I do not know. But when the black Vice President is depicted as a monkey, or all Chinese people are accused of eating live bats, multiple reports come in, and the mods say “no moderation action necessary,” it’s a bit rich that the mods complain about how toxic the environment is.

If one doesn’t take out their trash, one shouldn't complain about the smell.

 

[icanhazmac]

It became clear that racism, disinformation, and hate speech would not be moderated.

Correction: It became clear that racism, disinformation and hate speech would not be moderated to the level that @SuperMatt wants.

Such posts were regularly reported by multiple people and the mods refused to act.

Correction: Posts were reported but the mods refused to act in the manner that @SuperMatt wants.

Then, forum members attempted to handle it themselves by calling it out. At which point the mods often suspended and/or banned those calling offensive posts out for insulting or attacking the offenders.

Correction: When @SuperMatt (or others) didn't get what he/they wanted he/they proceeded to insult or attack other MR members and in turn were moderated themselves.

Prior to blocking PRSI I saw this a bunch of times, a small group of very vocal SJW types take exception to something someone posts and when they can't get the post moderated or the other member canceled/suspended they start calling the other members or mods nazis, fascists, racists, etc. and then find themselves banned. Nothing makes me smile more than the PC police themselves getting banned.

Whether it was fear of being seen as biased against certain viewpoints, or a failure to grasp the racism and hate speech, or something else, I do not know.

Perhaps, just perhaps your bar of acceptance for certain topics is at a different level than most. It is my understanding that challenges to moderation go to the moderation "team", if multiple people determine that the action YOU want is not warranted then maybe it is your viewpoints that are unreasonable.

 

[SuperMatt]

Correction: It became clear that racism, disinformation and hate speech would not be moderated to the level that @SuperMatt wants.



Correction: Posts were reported but the mods refused to act in the manner that @SuperMatt wants.



Correction: When @SuperMatt (or others) didn't get what he/they wanted he/they proceeded to insult or attack other MR members and in turn were moderated themselves.

Prior to blocking PRSI I saw this a bunch of times, a small group of very vocal SJW types take exception to something someone posts and when they can't get the post moderated or the other member canceled/suspended they start calling the other members or mods nazis, fascists, racists, etc. and then find themselves banned. Nothing makes me smile more than the PC police themselves getting banned.



Perhaps, just perhaps your bar of acceptance for certain topics is at a different level that most. It is my understanding that challenges to moderation go to the moderation "team", if multiple people determine that the action YOU want is not warranted then maybe it is your viewpoints that are unreasonable.

I find it quite interesting that you failed to quote my examples of the types of content left up by the moderators. Without those examples, it becomes quite easy to dismiss complaints as being unreasonable. Leaving out that context makes one’s attack completely baseless.

If you have a good argument why those 2 examples are NOT racist, I would certainly love to hear it. You might not read PRSI, but if you did, you might discover that those examples are far from outliers.

If one wishes to correct another’s post, one might wish to include full context instead of misconstruing their statements in hopes of attacking them baselessly.

 

[svanstrom]

a small group of very vocal SJW types

In my experience the ones that cries out about SJWs do have a tendency to be white middle aged men feeling that they are the victims when they can't, in very generalised ways, either attack or make fun of people gendered or racified differently than them.

They're the ones that go "I can't be [that] because I work with someone that is [this]", or in one way or another manage to say "there are some good ones".

Pretty sure a lot of the ones climbing a certain building a couple of days ago spend a lot of their time being upset about SJWs.

 

[icanhazmac]

I find it quite interesting that you failed to quote my examples of the types of content left up by the moderators.

Fair point but I chose not to comment on a post that I cannot read in its entire context, this is no fault of yours as I believe it is against the rules to reference specific posts and label them.

My point in responding to your post if I have seen a ton of posts/members moderated for different reasons so it does happen! I have also seen a ton of calls for a post/member to be moderated/canceled that I felt was ridiculous and as it turned out the mod(s) felt the same.

 

[arn]

Ok. We’re diving off topic here, again. There are disagreements with the moderation.

We are listening to feedback and limiting access to prsi.