A wave goodbye

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#2571708 22-Sep-2020 08:18

It's a sad indictment on modern society that it's very easy to hide behind an anonymous identity on social media where you can lob personal attacks from a perceived position of safety.

Thankfully, most contributors on GZ avoid this type of behaviour, plus the mods do a good job.

MikeB4 was an active contributor to the GZ community, it would be good to see him back in the future.

Eva888

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#2571857 22-Sep-2020 10:49

Handle9:
Eva888:

One-upmanship is cheap. 'Do you know who I am?' types with a degree in a certain subject thinking it gives them the right to belittle and crush a poster who questions, or has a differing world view than theirs only highlights their own inferiority.

Is what you are doing here any better? You are very obviously being critical of one person but in a very passive aggressive way.

If you are going to be critical of someones behaviour at least have the decency to do it openly.

I have read comments towards others within the forum that are mean and hurtful. I don’t keep a list of the offenders (plural) therefore my post was general.

There are many people struggling with personal issues and their own demons. Words can tip someone over the edge and I could not think of a worse outcome than to be that person. Therefore when engaging with strangers I try to remember this and use a gentle rather than aggressive approach.

freitasm

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#2571888 22-Sep-2020 11:37

We have about 0.8% of replies hidden - about 21,000 over the years. This is out of a total of 2,600,000 replies to thousands of topics.

These are either spam (very low), duplicate replies (very low) or other FUG breaches (the vast majority). This gives you folks the volume we deal with every day here.

We look at posts in light of the FUG, other interactions in the community, the topic, etc. For example, one would expect people discussing in the Politics sub-forum would have an idea of the heated debate those topics can generate. We apply temporary and permanent ban on that sub-forum on a much larger scale than other sub-forums. It's also why the Politics discussions don't show up in the frontpage.

In most cases the breach has to be serious enough to justify a ban - calling people names is obviously up there.

There is one user that I have to contact in private every few weeks and months to request to tone down - there's no FUG breach involved, just very short and to the point replies. If you meet this person in real life you will see that's how they talk and there's no intention of being disruptive - but some newcomers might feel intimidated by that. Other people say what they are thinking. There's another user who gives very detailed explanations and it seems to trigger some people because of that. Everyone is different - all hundred thousand or so of you.

Again it's a fine balance and we try to accommodate a rather large community with thousands of interactions every day, hundreds of thousands every week, millions every month.

I can't comment on MikeB4's specific case but if he ever asks to reactivate his account I would have no problems with that.

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freitasm

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#2571894 22-Sep-2020 11:42

I would also like to bring to your attention to this topic I posted back in January 2020: "Privacy Policy change 29 January 2020: Perspective API usage"

All Geekzone posts currently go through the Perspective API for automated scoring. If it receives a score above a certain threshold all moderators receive an email notification linking to that post, so anyone can act as soon as possible. Posts with threats receive the highest scores - we have not had those in a long time. Posts with swearing towards other members receive a lower score but still higher than normal.

I've implemented this automated scoring because our moderators are all volunteers and no one can read all replies in all topics, every day. I try using as many tools as possible to make everyone's lifes better.

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neb

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#2571953 22-Sep-2020 12:56

freitasm:
There is one user that I have to contact in private every few weeks and months to request to tone down - there's no FUG breach involved, just very short and to the point replies. If you meet this person in real life you will see that's how they talk and there's no intention of being disruptive - but some newcomers might feel intimidated by that.

For people who fall into this pattern, look up "mindful speech", an unfortunately vaguely-defined term derived from the Buddhist concept of "Right Speech", being aware of the impact of your words on others. As Borges put it, "Don't talk unless you can improve the silence". A lot of the writeups on it are rather woolly, but one of the better ones might be this one.

Edited to add: Another one of the better ones here.

MikeAqua

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#2571967 22-Sep-2020 13:07

freitasm:

Posts with swearing towards other members receive a lower score but still higher than normal.

I thought swearing was automatically picked up. I'm sure I got a 'bad word' posting error for something very low end (not directed at any person) a while back.

Mike

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freitasm

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#2572006 22-Sep-2020 13:45

Hi folks. MikeB4 has commented privately and asked me to post this:

"The decision to leave Geekzone had nothing to do with the staff of Geekzone. The decision to leave was a result of a post about me that I felt was impugning of my life's work and it was long history of similar posts. This time it had an impact on me more than most and as I am dealing with considerable stress and depression relating to a severe flare up in my condition I felt it best and with great sadness to take a leave of absence for my wellbeing. I really enjoyed the interactions with staff and members of Geekzone over the years but sadly a very, very small number of members can muddy what is a great community. At a time in the future when my health improves I would like to think I will be welcome to rejoin the Geekzone family. I would like to thank everyone for all the well wishes it means a lot to me."

I will keep this thread open for a few more days and then lock it.

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#2572029 22-Sep-2020 14:00

neb:

For people who fall into this pattern, look up "mindful speech", an unfortunately vaguely-defined term derived from the Buddhist concept of "Right Speech", being aware of the impact of your words on others. As Borges put it, "Don't talk unless you can improve the silence". A lot of the writeups on it are rather woolly, but one of the better ones might be this one. Edited to add: Another one of the better ones here.

Equally these things go both ways. There's a very small subset of users that tend to post extremely controversial opinions that are ill-supported by elaboration, let alone objective evidence, that when challenged frequently resort to claims of personal attack and the like. That kind of thing I can let pass; what's hard to bear is when I see (it doesn't just happen to me) people go to the effort of making a seriously go at starting a discussion - see the thread on cannabis in the Politics forum) - and it's just derailed by people repeatedly hectoring simple one-liners. I've also seen instances where people are asserting obviously correct positions/beliefs about consumer law and the like and usually the same few individuals who will loudly shout them down using "facts" that are more fake than your average politician's speech. When things get to a point where I, for example, as one of the few people who truly have an expertise on these issues step in to help stop the blathering and you still find a huge collection of "+1s" for the unreasonable posts, it's rather disheartening. Those mightn't be FUG breaches, mightn't look like "attacks", but they are equally as rude.

Edit: clarified my thoughts a bit and quoted people properly.

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#2572031 22-Sep-2020 14:05

Thanks for posting that Mauricio. It's good to know that Mike is doing what he needs to do to take care of himself, and hopefully we will see him back sometime when he's ready.

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#2572105 22-Sep-2020 14:39

freitasm:

Hi folks. MikeB4 has commented privately and asked me to post this:

"The decision to leave Geekzone had nothing to do with the staff of Geekzone. The decision to leave was a result of a post about me that I felt was impugning of my life's work and it was long history of similar posts. This time it had an impact on me more than most and as I am dealing with considerable stress and depression relating to a severe flare up in my condition I felt it best and with great sadness to take a leave of absence for my wellbeing. I really enjoyed the interactions with staff and members of Geekzone over the years but sadly a very, very small number of members can muddy what is a great community. At a time in the future when my health improves I would like to think I will be welcome to rejoin the Geekzone family. I would like to thank everyone for all the well wishes it means a lot to me."

I will keep this thread open for a few more days and then lock it.

It pains me to realise I never actually knew what MikeB4's life's work may have been. That makes me kind of sad...

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neb

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#2572109 22-Sep-2020 14:48

Handsomedan:
It pains me to realise I never actually knew what MikeB4's life's work may have been. That makes me kind of sad...

Maybe he wanted it that way. That's one of the nice things about this site, you can be anyone you want to be, and release as much or as little information about yourself as you feel comfortable with. For example in the Covid19 thread there were qualified medical people who commented without anyone needing to know which political party or sports team they supported, how they felt about immigrants or abortion, or any of the other things that can divide people. I just see MikeB4 as a contributor to GZ about whom I know, presumably, as much as he wanted people to know.

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#2572214 22-Sep-2020 16:50

Just a gentle reminder, if there's a post you see that you feel breaches the FUGs or you think it's abit dickish, please do report to us. As freitasm has said, we just don't have the time to monitor every thread and every reply (we are all volunteers with normal day jobs which keep us busy, excluding @sbiddle, who knows what he does) so you're the best alert system we have.

There's also no penalty if you report a thread - we don't tell anyone who reported it, and if we don't feel it's a breach, we'll discuss why with you, and we all move on.

If you need further clarification, mash the PM button and flick me a message.

Cheers.

Eva888

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#2572293 22-Sep-2020 18:11

@Mikeb4

Hope you get to share your life’s work with those who will appreciate it. Don’t allow anyone to deprive you of whatever sparks joy for you.

You can always return and choose to ignore anyone whose sole purpose is to prove they are always right.

Best wishes.

dejadeadnz

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#2572322 22-Sep-2020 19:12

Are you actually here to post in response to the subject matter at hand or are you here just to launch digs at people? There's something all rather cowardly about these sorts of backhanders.

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#2572325 22-Sep-2020 19:18

Like I said earlier this morning to someone else, stop reading into things trying to pick a fight where there isn't one. You're flying very close to Wheaton at the moment @dejadeadnz. If you recognise yourself in someone's comments that's on you, not them.

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