I'm kind of disgusted with you people right now

[Türkisblau]

It's like some people have never been on the internet before, or don't normally interact with other living humans.  It's the only two options that make any sense.  The fact that they have no idea the things they do are wrong is quite disturbing.  Most of them are just following the herd, but sheesh, what a disgusting funking herd to follow.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. An apparently very minor incursion onto some forum making vague references and you're freaking out. Have you ever been on the internet before? Atlas is actually very unique amongst online communities.

No it's not.  This incident proved that.

Actually in a funny sort of way I think the posts improved the quality on that awful, awful forum.

Yeah, as the above post from PFAdmin shows, they obviously have an awful forum

on preview I see the douchebag guard is already making fun.  Classy like always guys!

Have you gone on there yet? It is a true cesspool.

[dead0man]

Have you gone on there yet? It is a true cesspool.

It's not about them...

[Foucaulf]

Won't comment on the intricate ethics of invading an internet forum in the Year 2015, but the logistics on this thing was quite bad. You could've at least used an IRC channel.

Gustaf's quote was on point:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

And I like Turkisblau, but he should know that plenty of people use "Political Forum" seriously, more than the number of Atlas posters many times over. The problem is that they're the wrong types of people.

[tik 🪀✨]

It's like some people have never been on the internet before, or don't normally interact with other living humans.  It's the only two options that make any sense.  The fact that they have no idea the things they do are wrong is quite disturbing.  Most of them are just following the herd, but sheesh, what a disgusting funking herd to follow.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. An apparently very minor incursion onto some forum making vague references and you're freaking out. Have you ever been on the internet before? Atlas is actually very unique amongst online communities.

No it's not.  This incident proved that.

Actually in a funny sort of way I think the posts improved the quality on that awful, awful forum.

Yeah, as the above post from PFAdmin shows, they obviously have an awful forum

on preview I see the douchebag guard is already making fun.  Classy like always guys!

If only that person's maturity reflected the experience of using that forum.

Anyway, they obviously don't think we did any harm besides waste their time. Speaking of which..

[Panda Express]

dead0man, why don't you move to Political Forum? I'm serious. You'd fit in a lot better. All you do here is whine.

PF is full of whiny, middle-aged/old people who have never left their hometown, much like you. You'd be happier there.

[PFAdmin]

For those of you who are concerned that this reflects poorly on your board as a whole, please don't feel badly. You've got a very good board here, and I have a lot of respect for this place. A few people got carrried away, and while I'm not going to pretend to thrilled about it (I definitely had better things to do today, and so did the mods who helped me clean out the troll accounts) I don't exactly put it in the same category as "Climb Mount Niitaka." Everybody went home alive.

Y'all handle it internally however you see fit, but the official position of Political Forum is that as far as we're concerned it was yesterday, and doesn't have any bearing on tomorrow. We feel that you have an exceptional board here, that what's done is done, and we're moving on. Best wishes to all of you... that is, as long as this doesn't happen again, eh?

Clean the crap out of your forum and maybe people will seriously use it.

Well, I spent almost the entire day doing exactly that. About 50 troll accounts, at last count.

Or was that not what you were referring to?

OK, witticisms aside, two things - first of all, different boards have different styles, different dynamics. Part of the mission of PF is that it's a place where you can discuss just about anything you want to discuss, no matter how many times it makes me personally vomit on my monitor, as long as you frame your discussion within certain civil guidelines and refrain from personal attacks, racial/ethnic/religious/homophobic slurs, and a few other things. It's a place where you are allowed be a racist, for example (no matter how disgusting that is,) and even openly acknowledge it - as long as you do not attack people of other races.

Yes, it's a very fine line, and no, we don't  always do a perfect job of moderating that, but when you're trying to find the balance point between complete freedom of expression and not insulting other posters,  you don't get to make many easy calls. They're all tough. But freedom of expression is fundamental to our mission, so we have to live with a lot of things that make me wish I could resign my membership in the human race and sign up with the raccoons.  

But that's the platform we exist to provide, and people who don't want to read those threads at all are certainly welcome not to. God knows I don't unless I have to moderate them.

Second, give us a little more time. I took over a year ago, and it's been an uphill climb. A lot of changes  needed to be made, and they weren't exactly uniformly welcome. More changes are in the works, and they're not going to be universally popular either. But when you have a lot of people who've spent years getting accustomed to posting in a certain  manner, it takes time to either change their styles or move them along. You don't rebuild a website of that size overnight.

You may never like it, and that's fine. To each their own. There will always be subject matter there that literally revolts me, but I'll defend to the death the right of those people to hold and discuss those opinions. They're going to be doing it in a hell of a lot more civil manner than they may wish to, but they'll be allowed to discuss it there. All I can say is that compared to a year  ago, it's the equivalent of a quaker meeting, and that a year from now, it's going to have come even further. If you have any specific suggestions on what repels you about it, I'm all ears. Feel free to PM me; I'm seriously interested in outside perspectives on what aspects of our rebuild are working and which ones are falling short.

[Panda Express]

You've got a very good board here..... Best wishes to all of you... that is, as long as this doesn't happen again, eh?

"You've got a nice board here. Shame if something happened to it"

[PFAdmin]

Oh, and the other thread is closed, so I can't post this there, but for those of you who are blaming this Bushie guy for spilling the beans - cut him some slack. As far as i know, he still doesn't even realize what happened. We noticed you starting to accumulate your accounts on about the 6th, and we just observed and made note of the commonalities in posting patterns. It led us here within a half day, and the rest was easy. So whatever it is y'all are so mad at him for, don't add that to the list. I'm not sure he even knows it happened at all.

[Flake]

Oh yes, some of the things on that website, and the rampant homophobia/racism is pretty strange. Y'all need to control some of those awful people.

[Mechaman]

Oh yes, some of the things on that website, and the rampant homophobia/racism is pretty strange. Y'all need to control some of those awful people.

Yes I mean seriously what the fuck man?  Homophobia is just freaking gay, alright?

[Flake]

Oh yes, some of the things on that website, and the rampant homophobia/racism is pretty strange. Y'all need to control some of those awful people.

Yes I mean seriously what the fuck man?  Homophobia is just freaking gay, alright?

[The Mikado]

PFAdmin, most of us find this incident embarrassing and regret making trouble for your site. Thank you for being so gracious even while some of our members insult your site to your face.

I find it utterly absurd that two of our moderators joined in in this juvenile display.

[Simfan34]

Yeah, I think I owe the PF people an apology. It was really quite embarrassing behavior on our part, myself included. I hope you can forgive our getting carried away like that so immaturely.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Oh, and the other thread is closed, so I can't post this there, but for those of you who are blaming this Bushie guy for spilling the beans - cut him some slack. As far as i know, he still doesn't even realize what happened. We noticed you starting to accumulate your accounts on about the 6th, and we just observed and made note of the commonalities in posting patterns. It led us here within a half day, and the rest was easy. So whatever it is y'all are so mad at him for, don't add that to the list. I'm not sure he even knows it happened at all.

Ah, we never expected you had access to the google technology.

[PFAdmin]

Oh yes, some of the things on that website, and the rampant homophobia/racism is pretty strange. Y'all need to control some of those awful people.

We've got an infraction system that isn't perfect, but it's point-based, and ultimately leads to permanent bans for that sort of behavior. Certain number of points leads to a temp ban, certain  number of points (or certain number of temp bans) lead to permaban. I'm not going to get into the subject of whether there are certain types of infractions that I actually enjoy issuing, but let's just say that there are times i don't particularly mind being the hangman.

But anyway, I couldn't agree more - although again, you should have seen it a year ago. Check it again in a few months. Our infraction system is based on the philosophy that people are capable of change, and that we are willing to give them a chance to do so. If they prove incapable or unwilling, then the system weeds them out.

My philosophy regarding moderation is that we are not there primarily to punish a "bad" poster, but to help them learn what is expected of them in this particular environment. It's our job to make the expectations clear, their job to learn them and follow them. If they don't, then we're not the right forum for them. The number of those posters is not dropping as fast as I would like, but the system works the same for everyone, and the number is dropping. And that is the direction it is going to continue to go.

[PFAdmin]

PFAdmin, most of us find this incident embarrassing and regret making trouble for your site. Thank you for being so gracious even while some of our members insult your site to your face.

Well thank you, but in all honesty, I don't think they're pointing out anything I don't see myself. Yeah, it hurts a bit, but you can't take that personally in  my job. You don't learn anything of value from the people who like you; it's your critics who teach you your most important lessons. I learned that playing hockey when I was about 3 feet tall - you don't get better playing teams that are worse than you; it's the better teams that make you look more deeply inside yourself and work harder.

Just about every single thing they're saying I should change is right at the top of the list of things I have been changing since I got there, and am doubling down on even as we speak. I see it quite similarly to them, although their perspective is handicapped by the fact that they're seeing it in the context of a snapshot of what it is now, today - not compared to what it was. I have the luxury of seeing how far we've come; that's harder to do when you're relatively new to the site.

I understand their criticisms and complaints, and will only defend our site against them to a limited degree. We're  not done making changes, and we know it.  I don't mean to whine or make excuses, but the current staff has worked their asses off and stayed true to the vision for over a year, and it's been very difficult. There are things I could have done differently, done better - opportunites to have provided better leadership, but made the wrong decisions. A hundred things I can look back on and wish I'd handled better at the time. But we are getting where we want to be, and soon will be ready to take some more steps that we've been planning for some time.

[Bacon King]

PFAdmin, I would like to personally apologize for our forum's juvenile behavior (especially the ones who are continuing to childishly insult you and your forum even though you had the courtesy to open up this dialogue with us)

[Joe Republic]

Yeah, I'm actually impressed you would come here and engage with us civilly, when you had absolutely no reason to do so.  And remain so when people continued to be rude to you.

In short, sorry we were dicks.  It seemed a lot funnier at the time, I guess?


Also note; you're welcome to keep 'OklahomaDemocrat', but note that he is a walking disaster that will bring the same soul-sucking ruin to you that he brought us.

[Panda Express]

pfadmin, how foolish of you to waltz right into enemy territory! you are now our prisoner of war LOL

[Lief 🗽]

Lol who gives a Sh.it??? It's just an Internet forum?? Folks acting like we killed someone or some shiit

[Simfan34]

Having a good time tonight, eh, Lief?

[PFAdmin]

I would also point out that policing a forum as big as that isn't going to be like here- here we have a few "big time posters" who dominate mod attention. There, that's almost impossible, I would guess.

Yeah; again, I hate to make excuses, but the bigger the ship, the longer it takes to change course. About 80-90% of our problems are caused by 5-10% of the users, and that directly translates into time  - time that the staff could be spending making other improvements. That's tough to change without summarily banning people, and that's a place I just don't want to go (insert snide comments here about today's mass bannings; I lobbed it right out over the plate).

But, we're getting there. There are several ways to elevate a discussion; one way is to make and enforce rules, but the best way is to attract members who want to have an elevated discussion. Trouble is, until you've given the rules a chance to weed out the problem posters, it's really difficul to attract the very kind of people you most want posting on your board. Looking back over the posts in this thread, you can see that very phenomenon perfectly articulated. I couldn't have made the point more clearly if I'd been writing a script. "I'm a good poster, but I won't use your website because you don't have enough other good posters." These people have a damned good point, and that's exactly the hill up which we've been trying to roll our rock.

Again, all I can say is, it takes time. More than I'd like, but you can only ask so much of your staff, and we have some damned good ones who just can't work any harder than they already do. We are getting there, we will get there, but it won't happen this week.

That was one of the truly disappointing and ironic things about this episode. This very site is packed full of people who are exactly what we would love to have joining our site, but they chose to join it in order to trash it instead of build it. I'm honestly not rubbing that in or trying to make anyone feel badly; I really am OK with it. It's completely in the past. But it killed me to have to ban so many posters who ordinarily I'd have given body parts to attract to the site. I learned 20 years ago, when i first got started with online communities, that its all about critical mass - it's very difficult to get that large, solid core group in place, but once you do... others will come. That's the current against which we are presently swimming upstream.

[PFAdmin]

Yeah, I think I owe the PF people an apology. It was really quite embarrassing behavior on our part, myself included. I hope you can forgive our getting carried away like that so immaturely.

Honestly, it's OK. Really. Please don't feel badly. We've all done things we wish we hadn't; none of us is ever defined by our worst moments. If it makes you feel any better, I've done similar things to sports boards in my younger days. And I won't pretend i didn't enjoy nthe helll out of it at the time. Stuff happens, and we move on. It's all good, but thanks so much for your sincere gesture. It's appreciated and respected.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I'd also like to apologize for what I did after you took the bold step of coming here to address what happened. Anyone who knows me can vouch that I am a pretty straight-laced guy. I just sort of jumped at the opportunity to do something a little devious in a new and different community.

[PFAdmin]

Yeah, I'm actually impressed you would come here and engage with us civilly, when you had absolutely no reason to do so.  And remain so when people continued to be rude to you.

In short, sorry we were dicks.  It seemed a lot funnier at the time, I guess?

I should tell you about the time I kept sneaking up and throwing bottle caps at the back of a Chicago cop's head on Navy Pier during Blues Fest. Then I felt his partner's hand on my shoulder. He asked me, "So. Do you think that's funny?"

Well, what was I gonna say? "No?" Heck, I was already hosed, so what's the point of lying? I just said, "Well... yeah!" He wasn't expecting that, and wound up letting me go.

Honestly, though, it's all good. I don't think anyone's being rude. I mean, here's a stranger from another board, a board they don't like, posting about an incident they'd probably rather not be discussing at all. They didn't exactly invite me here. I knew I was going to draw some fire.

To me, the bottom line is, I can look at y'all two ways - as a bunch of good people, some of whom did one solitary thing they wish they hadn't; or a bunch of people who are dicks because they did one solitary thing they wish they hadn't. The latter would be totally irrational and unfair, not to mention unproductive. The former is objective and reasonable, and opens the possibility of making new friends. If those are ny two options, it's literally a no-brainer which one comes most naturally.