Something I have noticed...

and more and more it has bothered me. Ever since I have joined I can recall other posters joining, dominating discussions in a manner not suitable for ILP, and being eventually banned. Thankfully.

I am not questioning the bannings, but I do wonder why it is, seemingly, every few months there is another IronDog, or JennyHeart, etc.

How much time is given to these people to clean up their acts? Since the most memorable cases are memorable because they all fell in a blaze of glory, obvious, I think, to some what the outcome would be.

And now I sound like Yoda.

Anyway my question is this: is there some means of facilitating the removal of cases like Jenny? Maybe speed up the deadline you give them to act according to the rules (assuming they have a deadline). Lessen the number of warnings they receive? Flag them for other mods to watch for their posts?

I just wonder if more can be done in this regard.

You are suggesting increasing the rate and therefore the frequency with which we impose bannings?

GCT,

You have touched on both the strength and weakness of ILP. One of the reasons people continue to sign up for membership is the relative openess of the site compared to most others. Moderation is as light as we dare, and as you point out, sometimes seems too light. We interfere with members as little as possible, until it is obvious from repeated warnings, that they aren’t going to play nice.

We’re working on it. The fine line between being too open and not open enough is a tough one to get right the first time out. Just a little more patience. The latest round of complaints has us looking at ways to be more responsive as well as ways to head off bannings if at all possible.

I’ve got this, Gate - nobody here wants to ban. Everyone here would rather work with a member as much as possible first. This process is not public, for the most part, and shouldn’t be. We try to facilitate good discussion and a civil atmosphere, or at least some resonable facsimile thereof. We don’t try to facilitate bannings - we try our best to avoid them.

But everyone is listened to. Contrary to the opinions of some, it’s not the effect of the members on staff that makes the difference, it’s the effect of members on other members that makes the difference. Some rules violations, and the intentions behind them, are blatant, and a banning occurs before most members even know of the presence of the banned poster - outright flamers and spammers, for instance. Others are less blatant.

To make it entirely black and white would result in the banning of a member who is just having a bad day, a bad week, or is off their meds. No one on staff wants that. We have to make judgement calls. And sometimes we have to agonise over our decisions.

I can tell you brother, I am not one who makes a habit of agonising over decisions. I have fired people - real money, real job, real life. In the short time I’ve been on staff, I have agonised over a decision. I expect to agonise again. I think that’s the least that members can expect. And I am by no means the only agoniser here. My guess is that, when it comes to banning, the members would rather the staff agonise more often than not.

I could be wrong.

Before I was on staff, I could name six people “I would ban”. Now that I would actually be part of the decision, I have changed my mind - because, although it is not in my power to actually ban, I can start a discussion about that. It could happen in a case or two. Again, contrary to the opinions of some, you take banning a lot more seriously when you can have some actual effect, even potentially.

For the record, I fully supported the recent banning decisions. I don’t apoligise for it, nor is this post intended in any way as a hedge on that decision. I am convinced of the rightness of it. That doesn’t mean it was fun. It wasn’t. I don’t ever want it to be fun, or easy, or black and white. I hope it never gets that way.

Wow. And you have been on staff… how long?

Also, was I on the list?

You are the most rigid philosopher ILP has ever seen, Gate, and this makes you fit for a politician. I shall now demonstrate a proper democratic systems of ethics useful for ILP at this point, and considering the issue you mentioned above.

The civilians at ILP retain the right to organize sub-groups which would eliminate the socialization of unsatisfactory members. Okay…perhaps an analogy would work.

The right to own a business and discriminate, or “kick someone out of your bar,” is the equivalent to a sub-group of philosphers within a community which is run by a law system that permits the general public interests.

In other words, Ben lets em in…we PM each other and discriminate against the undersirables.

Impossible of course, because I will have no part in gossip and conspiracy against another individual. I, like yourself, the punisher, approach my enemies directly…sometimes even waiting until they are successful before I attack.

(stole that one from Fritz too)

So you see, GCT, unless you want to reduce your good honor down to one of those who talk about people in PM’s with other people when they are not there to defend themselves…you have your place as a warrior and a politican, and I will allow you to keep your guns.

The decision is yours.

Better to riot and revolutionize the streets of ILP than close the gates to those who should be punished.

That is my gate control theory. I think it will work.

There is no banning. You just come back with a different name. I was banned and I came back as Marge. I can’t remember why people get so passionate about the goings on here. It’s an unhealthy level when you start getting so angry. GCT…you wanted me to leave because of my heavy breathing? I think you read I was fixating on Dunamis (in mundane bable where it belonged) and you felt jealous and rejected, this stirred up childhood emotions and you turned on me permanently. Your recent list about the people was hurtful and just because it’s accurate doesn’t make it relevant. You are one of the smartest, best posters, always were, always will be - you have talent, but you’re the biggest fucking baby on the planet. In answer to your OP, no, I don’t think there’s a way to speed up banning, except for you NOT READING a members post if it gets your panties in a bunch.

Correction - we let you come back as Marge. Do not think for a moment we didn’t know.

Jesus, Gamer. No one composes the way you do. Call yourself Tootsie or anything you like, but we know who the hell you are.

There’s no keeping out a determined member and you all know it. You can log on from a friend’s computer, or Kinkos. But my real point is, when did GCT become such an asshole? I have never seen such a simpering, quivering wimp. An ultra-sensitive, high-strung, classic only-child syndrome. It’s sad, because he’s so smart and talented but without the Paxil he’s just going to chew himself to a nub and annoy everyone. GCT, if your thought or sentence begins with something like “I just don’t understand why everyone has to be so…” then you’re probably a big baby who needs Jesus. So make the leap. Accept Christ. Because otherwise you will be hard pressed to find a reason to put up with the shit in the world.

Yeah everybody “knew” after the person admits to it.

Ah, but server admins know everything first.

In the case of Marge and Rage I wanted Ben to see the matching IP, for what good is a performance without the chance of an audience? Marge was a gift to Xander and Rage was for Adlerian. What Ben didn’t know about are the other two personae, because they were gifts of a more subtle nature, and obw, you strike me as the kind of fellow who wouldn’t notice it if you and I were one and the same. Dunamis can buy a new computer – he’s due for a new one anyway, who isn’t. Or he can log on at Brad’s house. He seems like a guy who knows someone named Brad. I’m not suggesting anything homoerotic. Dunamis logs on as “Sally” or something. The good news is if he wants to stay for any duration he’ll need to modify his voice, which means he will have to drop the cybernetic school marm meets post-buddhist priest from a Bill & Ted movie routine that he clings to like a Leibnizian monad. It would be nice if banning could be made more real, then maybe we’d all be more careful.

The main challenge facing Ben, obw, and anyone who cares about this sight is to address the apathy that sets in after a year or two…after we cover all the philosophical problems with focused discourse and candid abandon, a new kind of process for 21st century…how we can continue when a constant stream of newcomers remind us how similar we all are, how our “breakthrough” moments are as common as flecks of toilet paper chortling out to sea. We need separate forums for each graduating class. The journey needs to happen together and the infusion of newbies holds it back. I would have loved to continue philosophizing with the original gang, but it spins out of control when someone named dan joins, sounding like the unititiated early detrop, spouting overconfident platitudes about everything, and I’m out.

I’d have agreed with that a while ago - But the trouble is that after one has, as you say, ‘answered all the questions’ (or rather I think, finally learned to trust the answers they already had rather than constantly hope for others to validate them) one eventually specializes to the extent that there is no-one left to talk to.

ILP’s Like a tree - You climb the trunk with all the other noobs, you pick a bough, you grab a branch, crawl out on a limb, tip-toe along a twig, and finally cling with a single finger to the merest of buds. A slender hold that will bear no-one elses’ weight until you nourish that proto-idea into a great big robust theory.

Which requires solitude, peace, and an absence of “nay-sayers”, “sort-of-sayers”, and “yeah-I-agree-but-what-about-this-sayers” - An absence of the meatheads round here in short…

It also gets to a point here when we begin to miss not any form of ‘Good-old-ILP’ but simply ourselves as we were in those early days: Curious, impassioned, virginal [size=75](and stoopid)[/size].

We take all this - And, as LiquidAngel might say - Project.

Forums like this can lend only the confidence to express yourself in a philosophic manner, rather than the actual means to do it. To want any more is sloth.

Sure, but the apathy isn’t the fault of ILP. The apathy resides in your “class”. There were two forums set up specifically to address the problem, with restrictive membership privileges to ensure that there would be nothing but “elevated” philosophical discussion, both were ignored. I caught all kinds of flack when I pointed out that these forums were available to those who complained about the state of a particular forum. It took me awhile, but I finally saw that “serious” philosophical discussion was always the responsibility of someone else. No one could be bothered to make the effort to build the heavily moderated philosophy forum into a clubhouse for serious discussion or to organize a formal debate in the chamber.

Soooo, ILP must be about something else. I think most of the folks want to ask questions, bounce ideas off one another, but nothing too serious or too involved. It may be an internet thing. I haven’t figured it out yet, but the “free lunch and boogie” scenario seems to be the operative mode. I’ve said before that ILP is like sifting tons of dirt looking for that tiny fleck of gold that pops up occasionally. I think it’s a good description.

I think you may have to whip out the Marge duds once again…

Well Gamer, I suppose your characterizations are valid, well, as far as the motives you ascribe to me are valid. I could tell you what I believe my motives are, or we could rely on your Oprah-esque pop psychology narrative. Personally, having read enough of Psyque’s posts, I don’t really care for a return to that style of argument. All sizzle, no steak.

What if I were to tell you that I actually have a shrine in my abode so as to facilitate worship of the Truth. And that, at one time, in the distant past, I would print up some of the material here and burn it on that shrine, as an offering to that terrible God.

But you know Truth, of course you do, you have admitted that you try to avoid it on a constant basis. The Truth is a petty and hungry God. It was not sated by the material here. And no matter what I might offer, how many pages upon pages of sublime beauty I might set ablaze, the Truth always wanted more.

Not that I go unrewarded by this entire process. Firstly, depending upon the poster, some offerings would release the most fragrant aroma… a blend of lilacs, pine-sol, and gunpowder. But sometimes, all that would remain was the smell of bullshit.

You know that smell don’t you? The odor of evacuated bovine bowels. Since it originates, in its final form, from within the self, its is, in some way, a representation of the self. This subjective substance could sometimes be imbued with bits of corn… kernels of truth if I might be permitted an atrocious pun. But even this did not change the fact that is was, is, and always will be… bullshit.

Now of course, you being intimately familiar with the Truth, or at least, the avoidance thereof, you know full well that bullshit is anathema to Truth.

So, as the bullshit at this site grew, the angrier the Truth became. This continued on for quite some time, until, finally, the Truth manifest itself to me in a vision. You will be happy to know that the Truth appears exactly like Winona Ryder clutching a stolen eight hundred dollar hand bag. The large, dark, liquid eyes, the innocent smile, the elfin ears, yep… Winona Ryder.

Winona, pardon, I mean the Truth, stared at me in quiet contemplation before speaking aloud in the voice of Universal Certainty. You know what Universal Certainty is, don’t you Gamer? It is that tone you attempt to mimic when you want to feign sincerity.

Anyway, the Truth spoke, and her words reverberated throughout my soul.

No, I will not relay the message to you. It would be pointless to do so, because the message is spoken in words only discernable to the individual that the Truth addresses. Suffice it to say the message contained an abundance of adverbs… which was upsetting, as one would expect the Truth to be heard in more concrete terms.

Regardless, I do not question the Truth, I exist now only as an extension of its will. As such, my mission here is simple, to eliminate the bullshit that clutters these forums and help restore content that actually is interested in the Truth.

Now, I admit my bias here, as part o my faith, I believe that bullshit is bad, and Truth is good. I understand that some here might not feel this way, and honestly,. this is the best explanation as for not only the content of their posts, but also the personas they adopt whilst posting here.

You understand personas don’t you, Gamer? Are you not also intimate with inherently false personas? You probably know that creating a lie and pretending something that is not the Truth only can serve in furtherance of more Bullshit. I say this because every post you have made here always was written with a self referent, and when that self is a staged, phony creation crafted to inact particular responses, well… whew… I smell more bullshit.

But this is not to say that you and I operate at cross purposes. I suppose I could ignore your bullshit, pretend that it doesn’t exist, and carry on about my business.

But then, dearest Gamer, I too would be lying. If I were to pretend to be someone who didn’t care about Truth, and didn’t mind bullshit, I would not be myself. I would be… you.

Perhaps this expalins why so many narcissistic creatures here were drawn to Dunamis. What prize is greater than turning the object of admiration into one’s self. All the better to fuck one’s self with… on a steaming pile of bullshit no less. After all, it isn’t homosexual sex if it is just masturbation.

Me, I go to porn sites to masturbate. I have never found anything erotic about text, feces, or myself. I suppose that if I could fuck anyone, it would be Winona Ryder… and that’s the truth.

But enough about the seedy side of ILP.

I never mentioned Dunamis for the simple fact that by posting here, implicit in that act, he agreed to abide by the rules. Violation of these rules results in a just punishment.

So, before we go spreading anymore bullshit about, know that this has nothing to do with Dunamis, except that his bannishment presented an opportunity to raise an issue I felt was, and still is, unsettled and that, furthermore, is quite central to my being here.

Truth… and Bullshit.

To me, this is all very black and white. There remain those who seek the Truth here, in whatever voice it speaks to them, and there are those who only desire to parcel out bullshit.

Those interested in truth should stay, and the bullshit artists should go. That is my mission.

And my standards are exact, though I admit my methods are vulgar. And in this I encourage my own bannishment if, for no other reason, perhaps my sacrifice will at last placate the Truth.

Now, you can feel free to blame all of this on my wacky childhood, space aliens, or whatever. But know that within this post is, as best as I can render it, the Truth as I understand it… at least in regards to myself and ILP. Yes, Truth comes with qualifiers, as always there exists a specific context in which the Truth operates. In this case, I am replying to a self admitted bullshitter left askance by a simple request for the Truth.

Gamer, when you’ve done your CCNA, come back and talk to me about computers.

Gater, we have some range and we can discuss philosophy or truth or whatever it is you mean, and also we can get bored and silly and start playing with language, the blur between philosophy and poetry, and try to coax out “truth” from people by pushing certain buttons. We can be ironic like Kierkegaard or farcical like Voltaire. We can point out bullshit like Sokal and we can write mondo cyberpoetry about philosophy like Burroughs. I have always obeyed the sanctity of the Philosophy section and let the other sections be my playground for freeform discourse. At a point I stoppd posting in Philosophy altogether, and I semi-lamented that, but I had to go with it…but no sooner did you denounce me. I have a truth shrine, too, in all this infighting we are brothers. I hope we find our way back. Sincerely, Gamer

Tab and Jt, nice posts.

I didn’t say to create a heavily moderated thread of higher minds. I said to create a private thread of people who were in the same “Breakfast Club.” A constant by which we may judge our growth – NOT NECESSARIL Y PHILOSOPHICAL GROWTH. This can be simulated here, albeit sloppily, but it would be a boon to have a thread for posters who reached their pinnacle in 2004, perhaps, defining pinnacle as the height of stimulation, that free feeling that it’s been cracked wide open and it’s all on the table. My pinnacle occured in ‘04, and for some reason, I forget the reason, I needed to align Dunamis’ and my thinking, and I failed. I actually believed if I could get us on the same page, make him a little more human, ILP would be saved, and without that, it would die or change in a way I couldn’t stomach. Sounds ludicrous and egoistic now, but then again, I was much smarter two thousand posts ago. MUCH smarter. Maybe I was right.