Discipline around low effort posts or poorly sourced posts

Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
hijiki said:
Indeed that a forums that is focused on Sinodefense is going to attract Pro-China users and that they will want to express that.

The sticky point about that is the nature of specific examples of Pro-China voicing. The sort of posts that are bluntly just like "you're opinion does not matter" or "Japan's opinion does not matter".. things like that break done intellectual and potential for enlightening discussion. Of course being saying that, depending on the topic at hand "you're opinion does not matter" may actually be valid. It goes case by case on that judgement. I would submit that in the Taiwan thread a flat out "Japan's opinion does not matter" is not logically valid.

What makes it difficult is that actaul PRC policy itself is very controversial and so Pro-China users will make whatever argument, logical or not, to stamp down on opposition. Again, its very slippery slope here because of the case by case reality of it. An overhead principle/guideline of forum moderation is not nimble enough to navigate through the case by case nature of each topic and each post by each poster that brings with themselfves an air of position. Literally even the meaning of the same exact statement but said by diferrnt posters can bring out different meaning behind the literally same exact sentence even.

If a principle of other forum boards have their established bias with still all variety of threads available, then yeah, I think SDF very well will go the same way that the asia and china defense section at PDF ended up turning into. The static will wash out quality and the custom and behavior molded for the purpose of preserving that quality.
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At a certain level of impasse on certain geopolitically sensitive topics what you describe is inevitably going to be the endgame.

That is why when I'm on other forums I almost always do not even engage on topics that I know I hold different political opinions on, especially if I know it is something that the majority of the userbase holds very strong opinions on.

At a certain level it isn't even about etiquette but also common sense and a good use of my time.


If this forum were as much of an echo chamber as some other national forums, frankly there are some members who would have long been instant banned just a couple of posts into their stay, without being given the leniency that they were.
This isn't to say that we should compare SDF "downwards" to other forums or lesser quality, but at the same time it does mean that I don't think depriving SDF of having a space for its pro-China userbase that other specific military forums have for their pro-US, pro-UK, pro-India, pro-Japan, pro-Korean, pro-Pakistan to discuss non-military matters as well.
 
K

KYli

Brigadier
hijiki said:
The non-military threads get sucked into the matter because if moderators are being burdened with the non-miltary stuff, then their ability to moderate the military threads still takes a time cut. So the mods get overloaded anyway unless they are able to recruit a bigger body of mods.
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We certainly would have more mods. For non-military threads, like Bltizo said mods can operate as hand off approach. Most members are respectful and civilized when they engage in discussions in non-military threads. A few bad apples can be deal with swiftly.

On the other hand, Bltizo wants to improve the quality of the posts of the military discussions and make the forum more professional which require much more commitment, technical, and delicate.
 
hijiki

hijiki

Junior Member
Registered Member
Bltizo said:
At a certain level of impasse on certain geopolitically sensitive topics what you describe is inevitably going to be the endgame.

That is why when I'm on other forums I almost always do not even engage on topics that I know I hold different political opinions on, especially if I know it is something that the majority of the userbase holds very strong opinions on.

At a certain level it isn't even about etiquette but also common sense and a good use of my time.


If this forum were as much of an echo chamber as some other national forums, frankly there are some members who would have long been instant banned just a couple of posts into their stay, without being given the leniency that they were.
This isn't to say that we should compare SDF "downwards" to other forums or lesser quality, but at the same time it does mean that I don't think depriving SDF of having a space for its pro-China userbase that other specific military forums have for their pro-US, pro-UK, pro-India, pro-Japan, pro-Korean, pro-Pakistan to discuss non-military matters as well.
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The funny thing about the posture of being Pro-whatever is that it in effect automatically reduces the credibility of the poster. Posters and forums that strive to not fall into the base level human trap of triblism do garner greater esteem from those that tend to have high esteem themselves already for reasons of quality and merit. It is why I myself stay clear way of falling too much into a Pro-Japan posture. Crexibility is lost among outsider parties. And indirectly, the loss of onjective view to triblism is still an enrironment not beneficial for any camp really.

Well anyway, I said way more than I'm entitiled to here.

Thank you for no immidiate ban stick!

:)
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
hijiki said:
The funny thing about the posture of being Pro-whatever is that it in effect automatically reduces the credibility of the poster. Posters and forums that strive to not fall into the base level human trap of triblism do garner greater esteem from those that tend to have high esteem themselves already for reasons of quality and merit. It is why I myself stay clear way of falling too much into a Pro-Japan posture. Crexibility is lost among outsider parties. And indirectly, the loss of onjective view to triblism is still an enrironment not beneficial for any camp really.

Well anyway, I said way more than I'm entitiled to here.

Thank you for no immidiate ban stick!

:)
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As I said, this forum has wider latitude for individuals of different view points than some other forums, and I myself think it benefits this forum to have opinions that may differ so long as the discussions are civil, not to mention this forum doesn't have any rules that prohibits opinions of differing geopolitical stances (nor do I think this forum should have such rules).

But at the same time this forum is also one of many forums whose user base is of a particular background or geopolitical persuasion, and it most definitely is not a forum with a "neutral" geopolitical stance in its userbase nor even its name.



I myself try to avoid getting into the details of the excessively politically heated discussions here and I certainly avoid engaging in such discussions on other forums or communities no matter which bias they hold -- and every "military forum of a particular nation/group/entity" does have such a bias mind you -- but I also think it is the cost of entry and the cost of existence for such types of forums, and is a right for any such type of forum to have.
Furthermore, if I go onto a forum that is predominantly US focused or India focused there are obviously certain things I won't discuss and bother posting about out of respect and understanding of their own geopolitical persuasions and interests, regardless of how much I might disagree with it.

But maybe that's just me.
 
Mr T

Mr T

Senior Member
ougoah said:
As much as there have been spikes in Chinese chauvinism, it still doesn't compare to western chauvinism or even begin to approach how bad the Indian forums are.
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Without getting into a finger pointing exercise, I lurk on other defence forums including the main Defence Forum site, and I find generally they're polite and not prone to regular chest-thumping. I don't think that it would be unreasonable for SDF to aspire to be like those sites.
 
PiSigma

PiSigma

"the engineer"
Mr T said:
Without getting into a finger pointing exercise, I lurk on other defence forums including the main Defence Forum site, and I find generally they're polite and not prone to regular chest-thumping. I don't think that it would be unreasonable for SDF to aspire to be like those sites.
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Are you sure you are reading the same site as the rest of us? It is not chest-thumpinf if it's aligned with your political views?

@hikiji you are not banned because you didn't break any rules, mods are not tyrants here.

A suggestion is to have main mods (current mods and maybe by78) maintain the main military threads more rigorously. Then have several mods with less power to moderate the lesser threads/members club. We had this modding system in like 10 years ago.
 
Mr T

Mr T

Senior Member
PiSigma said:
Are you sure you are reading the same site as the rest of us? It is not chest-thumpinf if it's aligned with your political views?
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What chest-thumping and rude behaviour to other users can you see on DF today? Perhaps you could give some examples, because having a quick flick through today's new posts I'm generally seeing comments with news articles and no flame wars.

I'm not saying SDF is the only forum that can ever have bad behaviour. I'm saying that people seem to get along more on forums like that.

I'm also not going to pass comment on Pakistani or Indian defence forums as I don't go there.
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
KYli said:
Certain members only interest in banning not military topics. It is obvious that they aren't interested in how to improve this forum but to eliminate any discussion that they deem pro-China. However, I would like to remind certain members that the purpose of this thread is to discuss how to restrict off topic and meaningless discussion in the military threads.
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This is why I still think the best way to improve moderation is to separate the technical discussions from the potentially political content. This way, there is no need to make judgment calls. If a post is potentially provocative and is not technical in nature, and is in a strictly technical forum, then it will be moderated.

Now, while I don't frequent the technical discussions, I think the original thread topic of enforcing source quality is pretty difficult to implement. By its very nature, it would be contentious. If some members deem it truly necessary, then I would suggest restricting posting in those forums to a select number of members, like what we already do with the "Professional Discussions" forum (which btw sees virtually zero activity). I suspect this is not something many posters would really want to see.
 
LawLeadsToPeace

LawLeadsToPeace

Senior Member
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Registered Member
Mr T said:
What chest-thumping and rude behaviour to other users can you see on DF today? Perhaps you could give some examples, because having a quick flick through today's new posts I'm generally seeing comments with news articles and no flame wars.

I'm not saying SDF is the only forum that can ever have bad behaviour. I'm saying that people seem to get along more on forums like that.

I'm also not going to pass comment on Pakistani or Indian defence forums as I don't go there.
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Pretty simple actually. I just went through DF just to see what's up, went to the "Japan, Koreas, China and Taiwan regional issues" thread, and immediately noticed one thing everybody has in common: F**k China. Unfortunately, I am not able to access the search mechanism like the one SDF to search through the posts to bring out past examples of this mentality. Regardless, although they do disagree with each other on technical stuff like missiles, ships and future military projects and do not post as much nationalistic rhetoric thanks to the lack of threads to do so, they do have a consensus on China that you agree with. In that regard, it is an echo chamber that is covered in glitter.
 
Mr T

Mr T

Senior Member
LawLeadsToPeace said:
Pretty simple actually. I just went through DF just to see what's up, went to the "Japan, Koreas, China and Taiwan regional issues" thread, and immediately noticed one thing everybody has in common: F**k China.
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That's not chest-thumping though, is it? Chest-thumping is another way of describing chauvinism - an aggressive belief in your nation's superiority. (That's what the comment I was replying to mentioned.) Simply criticising China's foreign policy/defence posture isn't the same.

do not post as much nationalistic rhetoric thanks to the lack of threads to do so
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Threads are created by users, not the staff. There's nothing to stop people on DF setting up threads or hijacking them for nationalistic discussions. The absence of such threads on DF suggests users have no interest in them.

In that regard, it is an echo chamber that is covered in glitter.
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Whether SDF is an echo chamber is a completely different question as to whether it could aim to be less chauvinistic. If SDF and DF are echo-chambers that's unfortunate, but that's largely down to who chooses to post there. Webby and the respect mod teams don't ban people from SDF or DF because they support or criticise China on military affairs.

EDIT: I should also add that I specifically referenced "other defence forums" and DF, not just DF. E.g. UK-focused forums where people are able to discuss issues without resorting to chauvinism.
 
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