Please be more honest and quicker to deal with bad stuff

Please be more honest and quicker to deal with bad stuff

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Discussion

Zod

Original Poster:

35,295 posts

257 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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It was not just one poster that alerted you to the utterly disgraceful stuff being posted in the Calais thread. I'm glad you've acted, but you should have acted at least 24 hours earlier.

trashbat

6,005 posts

152 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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Is it really about response times?

I don't care how quickly they respond. I care what they do in the long term. Today a few people crossed some line, but the views behind those specific words have been implicitly allowed and even rewarded for a whole lot longer, so by this point it's just the product of the place. That's in part up to moderators to defeat but also a job for all the other posters too. You don't allow these people to have any voice in your community if it really runs so counter to the mainstream view.

Noone will give a solitary miniature fk about this, and rightly so, but I'm done. I'm deeply embarrassed to be here, to be part of this, so I'm not going to be any more.

The best way I can put it is this. If you told someone you didn't really know, in your office or whatever, that you posted on PH, and they Googled it, and they read ten posts at random, not yours but a random PHer's, how would it affect their opinion of you?

If you tried to assemble a person out of the prevailing content on here, it'd lack most of the qualities required to make a workable human being. I actually defended this place and its poor reputation to people when I started reading the forums here, four years ago. I can't any more. If you want to be part of some satirical portrait of rich white men's contempt for anyone 'beneath' them, knock yourselves out. Me, I will miss bits of PH, but not nearly enough.

Sorry for using your thread for this but the opportunities to comment are limited.

rouge59

332 posts

126 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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I read the thread but didn't comment on it as I had no wish to even converse on an Internet forum with people who espoused vile views like that.

It was sickening to see that some who share the same nationality as me don't have a shred of basic humanity or empathy in their bodies.

smn159

12,448 posts

216 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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rouge59 said:
I read the thread but didn't comment on it as I had no wish to even converse on an Internet forum with people who espoused vile views like that.

It was sickening to see that some who share the same nationality as me don't have a shred of basic humanity or empathy in their bodies.
Same here. In fact I ignored all threads that I was following in the NP&E section a few weeks back; The whole section seems to be full of right wing idiots trying to outdo each other with a checklist of identikit nutcase views on any given topic. It really is an embarrassment, which is a pity as I enjoy the other sections of PH.


LeePH

47 posts

124 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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Thanks for the feedback. Yes we should have acted faster on this iissue.

There are an incredible 39m posts in the community from PHers and I am sure you will agree the vast majority are informative, useful and banter positive, abiding to posting rules.

Please be assured we are on it and your feedback has been fully and seriously noted.

Lee PH

CorbynFTW

12,230 posts

193 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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If its any consolation guys, see my other thread in feedback - I got a mail saying my racist post had been deleted.


I never posted in the thread!!

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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A mod asked - I think in the forum fantasists thread - whether a particular poster would be willing to moderate NPE.

I replied jokingly that I would, with a picture of a Gatling gun.

I'm now thinking that recent events suggest that style of moderation is what is genuinely needed in NPE in the short term.

Silver

4,372 posts

225 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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Lee, I reported that thread myself on Thursday, highlighting some of the worst posts on there. On Friday it was all still there, and I cannot have been the first person to report it.

PH moderators and management tell people to use the report button but when we do, and for posts which are blatantly against the PH posting rules, nothing is done and there is never any feedback. We might as well shout into a black hole. There is no transparency and no consistency.

I genuinely don't understand why it has taken this long for PH management to notice, but there has been a nasty undercurrent here which has gone unchecked for a couple of years and has just increased because some people have perceived that racism, misogyny and homophobia are tolerated as 'banter' and 'free speech'. It's terrible for PH/Haymarket as a brand, and terrible for rational users.

It would be good if you took something away from what happened today and actually put it into action.

Dog Star

16,079 posts

167 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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As the originator of the Calais thread I'm a bit horrified at what it turned into - I originally posted it just in response to a video of events at Calais a good while ago; it all looks very tame compared with what we are seeing now, such a short time after.

I'll freely admit that I'm, er, somewhat right of centre, but some of the stuff on there was getting a bit mental - and I have to say that I feel that mods could have stepped in weeks ago and laid the law down: there's no reason this should have descended to the levels it has. There's a place for reasoned and indeed robust debate but sometimes a referee is needed.

As to the idiot running the Wordpress blog: I daresay most people just ignored his doctored quotes as the ramblings of some troll or idiot - not to mention that the stuff he was quoting reads in a very stilted fashion nowadays.

So sorry I started it because of what happened, but I'm not sorry in another way because I think the ferocity of views expressed are maybe an indication of what we have ahead of us in the real world. Who knows? frown

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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Silver said:
I genuinely don't understand why it has taken this long for PH management to notice, but there has been a nasty undercurrent here which has gone unchecked for a couple of years and has just increased because some people have perceived that racism, misogyny and homophobia are tolerated as 'banter' and 'free speech'. It's terrible for PH/Haymarket as a brand, and terrible for rational users.

.
Precisely. To repeat what I said in the now locked Hitler thread in this forum:


As I see it, NPE is like a flame to a host of moths who are happy to espouse extreme right wing views. Because there are quite a few of them, those views get endorsed, repeated, cheered on and generally end up being part of the furniture of NPE. This means that the extremist posters feel "at home" in NPE, and NPE thereby loses any self-moderation that should come with sensible voice shouting down the extremist nonsense.

Unfortunately the solution I see to this is much heavier and proactive moderation of NPE that shuts down extremist voices rapidly until the "balance" of the forum returns to something more centrist. The extremists will find somewhere else to peddle their views, somewhere that they will get more sympathy and their views will get more traction. Then, one hopes, over time the forum will return to a self moderating model.

Silver

4,372 posts

225 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
Dog Star said:
As the originator of the Calais thread I'm a bit horrified at what it turned into - I originally posted it just in response to a video of events at Calais a good while ago; it all looks very tame compared with what we are seeing now, such a short time after.

I'll freely admit that I'm, er, somewhat right of centre, but some of the stuff on there was getting a bit mental - and I have to say that I feel that mods could have stepped in weeks ago and laid the law down: there's no reason this should have descended to the levels it has. There's a place for reasoned and indeed robust debate but sometimes a referee is needed.

As to the idiot running the Wordpress blog: I daresay most people just ignored his doctored quotes as the ramblings of some troll or idiot - not to mention that the stuff he was quoting reads in a very stilted fashion nowadays.

So sorry I started it because of what happened, but I'm not sorry in another way because I think the ferocity of views expressed are maybe an indication of what we have ahead of us in the real world. Who knows? frown
No, you shouldn't be sorry because it's a valid topic. No-one is saying we cannot discuss immigration or the refugee crisis, but unfortunately, it's a subject which brings out the worst in some people who then feel able to use PH as a platform for abhorrent views. It's fine to disagree and have a debate, it's not fine to hide behind the internet and spout a load of racist bks because you can't mount a coherent argument.

I have a modicum of sympathy regarding moderation because having done it, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't, but there was no excuse for PH letting the thread get as bad as it did and ignoring reports. PH has some pretty clear guidelines about what is and isn't acceptable to post. It's a shame they don't enforce them.

LeePH

47 posts

124 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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Chaps
Agree with your comments and thanks for them.
Whatever the global 'trend' is for example on social networks we all want PH to have respect at tis core. On it and action coming.
Lee PH

Zod

Original Poster:

35,295 posts

257 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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Thanks for the constructive response, PH. The last thing I want is to shut down debate here, but there are some who abuse the freedom of debate.

kitz

328 posts

176 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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Speech is either free or not ....take your pick ...
If you are offended tough ..get over it .
Defeat ignorance with reason .

Stu R

21,410 posts

214 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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kitz said:
Speech is either free or not ....take your pick ...
If you are offended tough ..get over it .
Defeat ignorance with reason .
Freedom of speech does not mean you can say what you like, wherever you like.

Defeat ignorance with education.

eharding

13,600 posts

283 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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Stu R said:
kitz said:
Speech is either free or not ....take your pick ...
If you are offended tough ..get over it .
Defeat ignorance with reason .
Freedom of speech does not mean you can say what you like, wherever you like.

Defeat ignorance with education.
More precisely, whilst the sort of boot-boy storm-trooper wannabees we've seen of late in action on the thread in question - and more generally in NP&E for a while - *are* perfectly at liberty to stand on Hyde Park Corner and rant themselves hoarse with as much reprehensible bile as they can muster - as much freedom of speech as they can handle, with full and immediate feedback from whoever is in earshot, and if they cross the line into full-on hatred-inspired incitement then they are clearly on hand to accept the personal consequences - the same rights to free expression are not implicit for those who choose to use a third-party's platform - PH in this case - to anonymously spew forth a particular agenda.

The Calais Migrant thread was a particularly nasty example of a very small, but very vocal and vociferous - and deeply unsavoury - element of PH exploring the boundaries of how far they could go without moderation being applied. As per Zod's opening post, and for whatever reason, that was allowed to go on for far too long.


Axionknight

8,505 posts

134 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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I've been banned from the second one, in so far as I can see all I did wrong was make an off the cuff comment about towns in the North of England, apart from that I tried to discuss the idea of a war by proxy and its failings.

The total racist loon bags can carry on for a few days unhindered though.

Moderation team is a total shower, IMO, stick your website up your 'arris.

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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Judging PH on NP&E is like judging the bbc news site on the contents of the have your say nutters.

It would be nice if it could be made usable for everyone rather than the complete zoo it is now.

rb5er

11,657 posts

171 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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I didnt see the thread. But you lot sound like a namby pamby bunch of lefties.

kitz

328 posts

176 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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Religious faith by definition is not based on reason
would you prohibit its promotion ..?
I would regard crying fire in a crowded theatre as assault rather than free speech .