Serious discussion sub-forum

[phyllo]

It may very well become necessary to burst some people's bubbles with a message like this, those complaining about the lack of contant mod attention, but as an objection to attempting it, I can't see it as valid.

I think that it's worth attempting.

[d63]

Christ! You guys sound like you're trying to write the constitution.

You sure you want to do this, pav?

Look, the moderators have lives. They simply haven't got the time for the kind of complexity you guys are bringing into it.

How about we simply make it a single string consisting of (as Pav suggested) of statements at 500 word minimum written in basic APA style with a strict ban on 2nd person statements (use of the pronoun "you"). You would be perfectly free to comment on any mini-essay posted before. Once again, you would submit through PM. Beyond that, you allow the thread to move to any subject it does organically -and believe me, it will.

Beyond that, I'm quite sure the moderator can take care of the rest.

[phyllo]

Christ! You guys sound like you're trying to write the constitution.

It's not as simple as writing the constitution, it's about creating 'the best intellectual forum on the net'.

Be serious, dude.

[d63]

Christ! You guys sound like you're trying to write the constitution.

It's not as simple as writing the constitution, it's about creating 'the best intellectual forum on the net'.

Be serious, dude.

Yes, phyllo, but your entertaining a form of bad faith in thinking that you will find the perfect system that will just click along like a well oiled machine.

And I've noticed that Pav, the one that offered to moderate, hasn't been putting in much input throughout much of this.

Are you forgetting that Pav has a life? I mean, be serious, dude.

[d63]

This seems especially nonsensical given that we have no way of knowing that this idea will work any better than the board already is.

[d63]

Phyllo, you act like you're going to force this being the greatest board in the world, much like Seattle was was the coolest city in the world back in the early 90's or that the 60's and 70's were as cool as they were. But greatness emerges spontaneously. Just take a look at any music festival's attempt to top Woodstock. It's always a matter of the right elements just falling into place at the right time.

And as far as I'm concerned, ILP is a matter of the right elements falling into place at the right time.

It may not last forever. But it will always, to me, be the next step in the evolution of message boards.

[d63]

While walking, with my dogs, to get my usual second beer, I got some time to actually think about this and have arrived at my contribution to this brainstorming session:

How about, after we manage to consolidate all these different ideas about how this should run, we enlist Carleas' skills to extract a small monthly fee from anyone that wants to submit to the string. That way the poor soul who is committed to the 8 to 16 hrs. a day it would require to moderate it all would be able to eat and keep a roof over their head.

I mean as Phyllo points out: we have to be serious about this.

[d63]

I mean there are 6426 members on this board.


246 on a maximum day.


Do you really think something like this, what you are asking for, would come for free?

[d63]

That is unless this particular thread can find a corporate sponsor.


And how philosophical would that be?


I mean with an ad or product placement peppered all over it?



The cool thing about Mac: it stands against Windows.

Mac must be the rebel OS.

Really?

[d63]

Anyway:



love ya, man!


gotta fade like a ghost:



do-do-do

do-do-do


do




.....

[phyllo]

I don't if it will work better than the current forum or better than the past failed moderated forums. I don't even know if it is significantly different from the past failed forums.

It won't take a lot of extra effort to do a short test run. Pav has shown an interest and a few members as well. Will that translate into success? We can't know until it happens.

[d63]

First of all: happy 4th fellow americans.


Second: I apologize for coming off as mocking the other day. If anything, it was about the the wheels turning too much, not about the quality of your intellect.

It was about the human condition which made it kind of comical and endearing to me, especially given that I have, a thousand times, managed to walk myself into the same quagmire. You start out with a simple idea, then start considering all the contingencies. Then you come up with rules to take care of those contingencies which only creates more possible contingencies.

Anyway, I apologize. I did not mean to debase you for what you were doing.

[PavlovianModel146]

7.) No Repetitiveness

8.) No Unsubstantiated Statements of Personal Opinion

9.) No Ad Hom Attacks Against Any Entity, Present or Otherwise

You seem to have just excluded most major works of philosophy, here

I failed to consider that.

It would work for SS, though.

[PavlovianModel146]

Why is it that none of the moderators are regular posters?

.....6,594.....

[d63]

What is SS, Pav?

[d63]

I don't if it will work better than the current forum or better than the past failed moderated forums. I don't even know if it is significantly different from the past failed forums.

It won't take a lot of extra effort to do a short test run. Pav has shown an interest and a few members as well. Will that translate into success? We can't know until it happens.

Exactly, my friend.


Phyllo, you know I would never set out to insult you, right?

[PavlovianModel146]

....6,595....

I apologize if I fail to address everyone, there is much to go through.

1.) I would not be amenable to reading every single post ahead of time to decide whether or not I am going to approve the post. The fact that I would be the Moderator of this, "Serious Forum," does nothing to mitigate the fact that I am often away for up to 48 hours at a time, typically inclusive to all day Sunday. It would not be fair to the posters in this Forum, or anyone who would want to read the threads, to experience a delay of up to two full days in just getting responses.

Furthermore, the responsibility that the posters in this Forum are taking is to endeavor to make ILP a greater place for academic discussion. I respect and encourage that, but along with taking that responsibility comes the added responsibility of making sure that one's posts are in line with the much stricter rules. I am not going to do that for people ahead of time. Posters will simply have to read the Rules and post within the Rules if they feel they understand them. I may consider affording one, "Free Pass," in a Free Pass thread for a minor violation of the stricter Rules provided it is not simultaneously a violation of the broader Rules of ILP. Excluding this one Free Pass, however, a Member in violation of the stricter Rules would be subject to broader Warnings/Bans.

Finally, it would not be fair for me to be the sole arbiter of what may or may not be posted. I believe that everyone should have an equal opportunity to have the posts see the light of day prior to the posts being Moderated. The appeals process of disapproved posts would be endless. I would only ban for blatant infractions of Rules. I would do the best that I could to Moderate content to the extent of topicality and lack of personal attacks, but mostly this is a Forum focused on Form and Literary Aesthetics. It is about Style as much, if not slightly more, than it is about substance. The goal is that with style substance will follow, this remains to be seen.

There is absolutely no doubt that I am not a pillar of wisdom in all subjects, and probably not in any subject except Economy Hotel Management, for that matter. It is because that is the case that I am an unworthy judge of substance, excepting blatant infractions of Rules, so I would not attempt to declare a post insubstantial in terms of not being fit for the Forum.

2.) I would not be willing to give control to the OP'ers, because as Carleas pointed out, this would incentivize posting new threads as opposed to commenting on existing threads. If anyone wants full control over their own threads, then that person may start their own Philosophy (or otherwise) website or blog. I'm not here to enforce other peoples' Rules, I'm here to enforce ILP's Rules and the special Rules of the new Forum.

I also absolutely DO NOT have time to read every post in every thread in the context of looking for Rules violations that may only be violations in that one specific thread! There's simply no way I would have time for that.

3.) Thank you for your detailed comments, D63.

I do not imagine that the Moderation of this Forum would require any great amount of additional work. If it became unmanageable for me, I would either give up that Forum or Social Sciences, but I do think the Rules would largely be followed to a, "T." The question is simply one of attractiveness to the Members.

4.) I agree with D63's suggestion of simply disallowing the use of Second-Person speaking.

5.) I appreciate the compliments as always, Carleas.

6.) I'm going to put some thought into revising my set of Rules and will have something on that tomorrow. I don't like, "Substantial additional content," because it then becomes about my subjective determination of what is substantial. I suppose we could do something with graphics/charts to the extent that any new addition of a topical graphic/chart would clear a person of a Warnable offense, and otherwise, go with the word count minimum.

7.) Mod Ego-Boosting...

That's funny. I no longer think that I am as fair, even-minded, level-headed, intelligent, academically respected or well-liked as I was prior to becoming a Mod, so that's some ego boost!!!

8.) I am not going to Edit other peoples' posts. The post will either remain in thread, be moved to, "Free Pass," or moved to Hall of Shame. The original post will be tabbed, and readers may untab the post if they like.

[PavlovianModel146]

What is SS, Pav?

Social Sciences

[phyllo]

Phyllo, you know I would never set out to insult you, right?

I'm not insulted.

We're brainstorming some ideas. All input is acceptable.

[PavlovianModel146]

I'm going to try to update those Rules tonight. I did it last night, but must have exceeded the log in time. I would say that I copy my posts 99/100 times, the reason I must have failed to do so this time is because it was such a long post...figures.

[d63]

Thanks for clearing me up on the SS issue, Pav.

That said, I realized something else you might want to consider. I fully agree with your decision to put in a 500 word minimum. It was a good idea. But I would also add a 1500 word maximum to make things easier on you -that is with you're own exclusion of quotes. Not only will this make it easier on you, but it will also force the poster to consider such compositional issues as compression and concision in the expression of their ideas.

I applaud your adoption of my point concerning second person perspective. Even though one can make it neutral through such expressions as "you can't embed your conclusion in a premise then act as if the conclusion has any validity", that can easily be bypassed by saying "one can't embed their conclusion in the premise then act as if the conclusion has validity." There is just no need for it and it would be more efficient and easier to generally ban the term.

That all said, I do have a proposal that I'm only offering as a suggestion:

Make it one linear string in which you do act as editor in the capacity you describe above -with the rules you established (even though I still need you to explain the APA style of citing quotes). In other words, think of it in terms of an ILP magazine with a series of articles and, as Typist rightly put it, letters to the editor. That way, the posters can put forth their own finished products or respond to previous articles as they choose while maintaining the standard you guys are trying to achieve here.

As I understand it, even from Typist, the main point here is to go for a more finished product rather the drive-by style we usually go for here.

Also, I would request that you leave the 2 day editing option on them. Sometimes, I can't truly see the flaws until I've actually posted a piece -just something about the format. Plus that, it might eliminate the need for those small follow-up posts you talk about allowing -what should be footnotes.

However, this would only work if you have some way of keeping the submitter from going over the maximum word count after. It does leave a potential for cheating -in fact, to the point that I would understand if you denied my request.

[Carleas]

Not knowing precisely what Pav will propose for rules, this forum already has my stamp of approval, because there's a willing mod and a fairly high level of interest, and I trust whatever Pav has in mind will be well suited to the task. It might also produce better site-wide rules to have a 'policy laboratory' like this.

For rules, I'd suggest we keep them simple to make the most of moderator input. A few solid propositions that I think would go a long way:
-Minimum word count ~500
-Limitations on the amount of quotations allowed
-Posts formatted as a series of multi-sentence paragraphs (as opposed to posts like this one, which is a bunch of shitty on-sentence lines)
-Sources
-No use of second person pronouns
-Inclusive default, but with the possibility of revoking access by problem posters. This limit the moderating load.

That last one is iffy, sometimes it's useful to address an individual, and sometimes second person pronouns are used to refer to a hypothetical individual (e.g. "Suppose you want to make a heavily moderated forum..."). But it might be worth the sacrifice, because while it's overbroad, it's easy to administer and would eliminate much ad hom.

[ScavengingVulture]

We need more serious exceptional people full of themselves to present us all their solutions and ideals to save the world with by the end of barrels and standing armies.

We need a serious forum for these much smarter super saviours and messiahs.

Surely they have all the answers to everything.

[Drusus]

For rules, I'd suggest we keep them simple to make the most of moderator input. A few solid propositions that I think would go a long way:
-Minimum word count ~500
-Limitations on the amount of quotations allowed
-Posts formatted as a series of multi-sentence paragraphs (as opposed to posts like this one, which is a bunch of shitty on-sentence lines)
-Sources
-No use of second person pronouns
-Inclusive default, but with the possibility of revoking access by problem posters. This limit the moderating load.

That last one is iffy, sometimes it's useful to address an individual, and sometimes second person pronouns are used to refer to a hypothetical individual (e.g. "Suppose you want to make a heavily moderated forum..."). But it might be worth the sacrifice, because while it's overbroad, it's easy to administer and would eliminate much ad hom.

Length of post has nothing to do with quality, why quantity over quality? One can perfectly express sound science through laconic ways, therefore word count is irrelevant.

What we should focus on is sound logic and reasoning, anything else can largely be considerd irrelevant. Many on various fora does indeed have a vast knowledge, but when it comes to the minute details in their posts, they often fails miserably and only produce fairytale nonsens.

Einstein is famous for saying: "If you can't explain your physics to a barmaid it is probably not very good physics." Meaning it shouldn't be long, boring and complex, one should be able to put things in layman terms.

It would be unreasonable to demand high lignual skills, beautiful formatting of txt, etc, specially considering people may suffer from dyslexia.

The choise of moderator should be very careful, as most mods doesn't have the mental aptitude and will misjudge matters, specially Faust and Only_Humean, they utterly fail at very basic logical and rational matters.

[Typist]

Drusus, here's an idea that might work for you. Start a thread on some subject that interests you. If somebody posts something that you feel is of insufficient quality, use your forum account control panel to put that poster on Ignore. All their posts will now vanish from all threads, as seen from your browser.

If your own posts engage other thoughtful readers, you'll have what you want.

If your posts don't engage other thoughtful readers, you'll have no one to talk to, and your thread will become a blog, at least as seen by you.