[Winstonm]

Let me chime in on this troll discussion.

It seems to me that hard-core Trump supporters have an inability to discuss. Instead, they rely on regurgitation of talking points relayed by right-wing media. I have no problems with people holding a conservative viewpoint who use reason and legitimate data to support their positions. I do have problems with professional wrestling fans who crow wildly about their "victories" over arch rivals.

To think or even suggest that it was not McFredo but the Clinton campaign that colluded with the Russians and the FBI is so unrelated to reality as to be viewed as the processes of a diseased or totally biased and evil mind. All one need do is the tiniest bit of research to know that turning the accusation back against the accuser is a classic Roy Cohn/McFredo tactic.

Had I found out that Obama used those tactics to deflect outrageous behavior I would have voted against him and his ilk. That the McFredo supporters cannot bring themselves to even criticize his repeated attacks on the democratic norms of free speech and the rule of law is enough to make anything they say unworthy of legitimate consideration.

[kenberg]

 barmar, on 2018-February-12, 10:00, said:

If I get rid of the trolls, will there be any discussion at all?

I have been disappointed in the way the thread has gone lately but I am not suggesting that you banish anyone.
Long ago someone, I think it was Cherdano, suggested that everyone list a columnist that they might not agree with but generally found to be worth reading. As I recall I mentioned Robert Samuelson and Michael Gerson. I thought this was a good idea. Of course neither of these two are hard right. Samuelson often, too often for my comfort, mentions that all these old people are an economic hardship for the country. Actually, there is some truth to this but I think the solution might be pretty subtle. Gerson was a speech writer for GWB and is religious I did not vote for Bush and I walked away from religion some 60 years ago, but I still find Gerson's columns well worth reading.

I think we could use a bit of this approach. There are a lot of things I don't know and so I find the opinions of others are often useful.

Anyway, I am not for banning anyone. That's not the same as saying I don't find some posts over the top. Or under the floor, whatever.

[Winstonm]

Perhaps the solution is a moderator "ignore" button where the post does not display unless someone wants to view it?

[y66]

I don't understand why anyone would object to banning trolls except that it puts a burden on mods to use judgment or why people don't put trolls on ignore.

[Al_U_Card]

Isn't the purpose of the discourse to give you alternate perspectives such that their integration into your perception improves your understanding? If it is only to "correct" faulty impressions then determining whose impressions are "faulty" becomes the point and that explains a lot of the back and forth...

[MrAce]

I ♥ this bar!

We have 233 pages of "He is bad" "No he is good" "You are an idiot" "No I am not" "He is racists" "No he is not" copy- paste copy- paste materials from the net, cherry picked from biased sources of the view one is defending/supporting.
A lot of trolling.
A moderator who unfortunately says "if i get rid of trolls, will there be any discussion at all?"

And speaking of trolls, who can possibly blame this moderator for saying what he said? When we have people who called another "a troll" but looking at the amount of typing, replying, quoting and their engagement with so called trolls, the amount of time (this topic started in 2015 and there are others older but similar to this) they spend with their lovely trolls, one starts to ask himself 'which one is actually worse?' The trolls or those troll magnets? Once you call someone a troll, to me it means you are done with him, period. It means you decided that this person is not here to make an intelligent argument or discussion and looking for people to get under their skin! If you are not done with him/her after calling him/her a troll, then you either don't think they are a troll but said anyway, or you are also a troll who love this environment. Which one is it?

As you all know I do not write in this topic a lot but I follow it. And I find some really helpful/smart arguments which helps me to look at things from the shoe of others, or replies which I think is expressed the way i feel, with better words than I would and you can see this from my +1 likes now and then. But it is really frustrating to see the trolls and those who pretend like they complain about trolls when they actually love it!

[jjbrr]

 y66, on 2018-February-12, 18:12, said:

I don't understand why anyone would object to banning trolls except that it puts a burden on mods to use judgment or why people don't put trolls on ignore.

As has been said many times, the ignore feature doesn't actually ignore posts. It's an awful feature.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Mark Mazzetti, The Times’s Washington investigations editor, will be discussing the Russia inquiry in New York on Tuesday evening with fellow Times reporters Michael Schmidt and Scott Shane, and Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School. To join the conversation, tune in to the live stream below at 7 p.m.

https://www.nytimes....WT.nav=top-news

[MrAce]

 jjbrr, on 2018-February-12, 20:11, said:

As has been said many times, the ignore feature doesn't actually ignore posts. It's an awful feature.

Yeah! It's been said many times and we get it! There are some people who can not ignore someone in forums unless there is a properly working ignore button!
For some reason this tells me more about the person than the "ignore button"
How do you actually ignore someone in real life? Do you literally blindfold yourself so you won't see anything about him/her and close your ears so you won't hear anyone talking,replying to him/her? Because this is exactly what you are asking for the ignore button to perform in forums.

[Winstonm]

More Republican fallout due to McFredo. The story is here.

[kenberg]

 jjbrr, on 2018-February-12, 20:11, said:

As has been said many times, the ignore feature doesn't actually ignore posts. It's an awful feature.

I have recently downloaded update 5.73 into my 1939 brain. This comes with an ignore feature. Of course I still have to follow its recommendations. I sometimes do, but probably not as often as I should.

[jjbrr]

 MrAce, on 2018-February-12, 21:49, said:

Yeah! It's been said many times and we get it! There are some people who can not ignore someone in forums unless there is a properly working ignore button!
For some reason this tells me more about the person than the "ignore button"
How do you actually ignore someone in real life? Do you literally blindfold yourself so you won't see anything about him/her and close your ears so you won't hear anyone talking,replying to him/her? Because this is exactly what you are asking for the ignore button to perform in forums.

Stop, that's incredibly dishonest. If I'm having a conversation with a group of people and someone continues to spew nonsense and interrupt others, you're so clever as to suggest a blindfold? Nice troll.

[jjbrr]

Since I'm apparently the problem here, I've written a script that does what the ignore feature should do, imo. I might tweak further, but it's good enough.

Thanks for the inspiration.

[barmar]

More active moderation of this forum would require more resources than we're really willing to devote. Moderating the forums is a sideline activity for me and Diana, my main job is programming, hers is marketing. I ended up as the de facto moderator simply because I've been using the Internet for 4 decades, and I've had experience on a number of online forums (I even used some BBSes before the Internet). We don't have time to read everything, I spend at most an hour each day checking the forums. This is simply the reality of how the forums fits into BBO's operation.

I generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that makes me naive and a poor choice for moderator. When I see statements like "The problem with Trump supporters is....", I try to imagine that from the perspective of those supporters. To them, this is just as close-minded as we see their parrotting of Trump's accomplishments. "How many times do I have to point out how great the economy is before those libtards will realize that Trump is doing what we elected him to do?"

And calling Trump names like McFredo is certainly not a way to invite serious debate from his supporters. I'm tempted to quote Trump when he decided not to condemn the white supremacists -- both sides seem to have some guilty here.

I personally share many of these opinions of Trump supporters. I also feel similarly about climate change deniers and religious fundamentalists. But as a moderator I need to be somewhat impartial. If ldrews is a troll, then so is Fox News -- they're both saying pretty much the same things. Of course, the difference is that I can't do anything about Fox News. But he's hardly alone -- NPR sometimes goes out to do stories on Republican communities, they sound very much the same. Samantha Bee and Sarah Silverman both did segments on their shows where they spent time with Trump supporters -- not mocking them, trying to get to know them. They're just ordinary people who've drunk the Kool-Aid and bought into the red mind-set.

Trump can be very charismatic, his lies sound convincing. He's also convinced his base about "fake news", so when the mainstream media points out these blatant falsehoods, they're innoculated against this. This is an extremely tough time for political debate. I'm not sure that muzzling some of the posters is the way to improve it -- the muzzled will just see it as confirmation of their conspiracy theories.

Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm just trying to rationalize our minimalist approach to moderation.

[Winstonm]

 barmar, on 2018-February-13, 11:23, said:

More active moderation of this forum would require more resources than we're really willing to devote. Moderating the forums is a sideline activity for me and Diana, my main job is programming, hers is marketing. I ended up as the de facto moderator simply because I've been using the Internet for 4 decades, and I've had experience on a number of online forums (I even used some BBSes before the Internet). We don't have time to read everything, I spend at most an hour each day checking the forums. This is simply the reality of how the forums fits into BBO's operation.

I generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that makes me naive and a poor choice for moderator. When I see statements like "The problem with Trump supporters is....", I try to imagine that from the perspective of those supporters. To them, this is just as close-minded as we see their parrotting of Trump's accomplishments. "How many times do I have to point out how great the economy is before those libtards will realize that Trump is doing what we elected him to do?"

And calling Trump names like McFredo is certainly not a way to invite serious debate from his supporters. I'm tempted to quote Trump when he decided not to condemn the white supremacists -- both sides seem to have some guilty here.

I personally share many of these opinions of Trump supporters. I also feel similarly about climate change deniers and religious fundamentalists. But as a moderator I need to be somewhat impartial. If ldrews is a troll, then so is Fox News -- they're both saying pretty much the same things. Of course, the difference is that I can't do anything about Fox News. But he's hardly alone -- NPR sometimes goes out to do stories on Republican communities, they sound very much the same. Samantha Bee and Sarah Silverman both did segments on their shows where they spent time with Trump supporters -- not mocking them, trying to get to know them. They're just ordinary people who've drunk the Kool-Aid and bought into the red mind-set.

Trump can be very charismatic, his lies sound convincing. He's also convinced his base about "fake news", so when the mainstream media points out these blatant falsehoods, they're innoculated against this. This is an extremely tough time for political debate. I'm not sure that muzzling some of the posters is the way to improve it -- the muzzled will just see it as confirmation of their conspiracy theories.

Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm just trying to rationalize our minimalist approach to moderation.

I'm sorry, but after the way Obama was attacked (You lie! screamed out during his SOTU address, accused of not being legitimately American), it seems disingenuous to complain about calling this president by names he has surely earned: Fredo Corleone: "I'm really smart." Donald Trump: "I'm a smart person."
When one side supports personality instead of the rule of law and democracy there can be do legitimate debate.

[Winstonm]

Perhaps this would help discussions.

Quote

Most political stances can be understood in terms of an equilibrium. For instance, some people might believe that access to abortion in a conservative state is too restricted under the status quo, and favor relaxing the rules regulating abortion clinics. That is, they might favor shifting the equilibrium in a “pro-choice” direction.

But ask those same voters, "Should there be any limits on legal abortion?" and they might declare that the procedure should be banned in the last trimester of pregnancy unless the mother's health is threatened. Insofar as the abortion debate is framed around the equilibrium, they will align with the pro-choice movement; but insofar as it is framed around limits, they will align with the pro-life movement.

[MrAce]

 kenberg, on 2018-February-13, 07:18, said:

I have recently downloaded update 5.73 into my 1939 brain. This comes with an ignore feature. Of course I still have to follow its recommendations. I sometimes do, but probably not as often as I should.

[MrAce]

 jjbrr, on 2018-February-13, 09:20, said:

Since I'm apparently the problem here, I've written a script that does what the ignore feature should do, imo. I might tweak further, but it's good enough.

Thanks for the inspiration.

Joke aside, you are not the problem here at all, JJbrr. In fact your replies are the ones I follow mostly in this topic. All I try to say is that you are really wasting your time with the people you call troll and get in unnecessary exchange with them. And that you can actually ignore them w/o the ignore button and keep on doing the smart contribution to the topic that we are used to. All i see is that...as this topic came a long way, you started to sound more like one of them.

[Al_U_Card]

When the Dems get back the Presidency, will our Trump-bashers be vindicated? If he is re-elected, will they be "proved" wrong? When the globe stops "warming" (fewer adjustments perhaps?) Will the deniers be vindicated? If the next decade continues to warm the 0.3 deg. C already expected, is that proof of [CO2] as a climate driver?
Every coin has 2 sides, which you choose to bet on can't change the laws of probability but might affect your pocket-book. Remaining skeptical AND open-minded means respecting and even accepting the existence (if not validity) of opposing viewpoints. Being right does not mean that left does not exist...

[Winstonm]

And the hits just keep on coming:

Quote

Margaret Good won a special election for state representative in Florida’s 72nd district on Tuesday night, the Democratic party’s 36th legislative flip since President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year.

Meanwhile, the Doubter-in-chief keep doubting:


Trump still unconvinced Russia meddled in 2016 election
Jeremy Herb
By Sara Murray and Jeremy Herb, CNNUpdated 6:08 PM ET, Tue February 13, 2018

Quote

President Donald Trump still isn't buying that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Even as his intelligence chiefs unanimously told a Senate panel Tuesday that Russia meddled in 2016 and is planning to do so again in 2018, three sources familiar with the President's thinking say he remains unconvinced that Russia interfered in the presidential election.