Could LFGSS still work with a "no asshole" rule?

thanks hun

damo
cliveo
arseo

Just sayin'

Yes mashto?

Descended in to a childish thread in fourr pages. Longer than usual.

Incidentally, would Hippy be subject to the "no asshole" rule? I know he has more of a right to do it to new people as he has to deal with merges etc etc etc, and I have no problem with how he behaves, but in the short time i've been on here, he appears to have been more consistently mean than most of the others mentioned so far

What a load of utter shit.

so with my new name can i tell you all what cunts you are with no comeback?

fucking bunch of

needs to set up signature to tell you that you are

Guess not.

• arsehole
  

mr moderator

i wanted to start a thread about arseholes, i have made my three posts

why cant i start a thread?

should i buy a create bike?

VB must've been bored today.

• arsehole
  

why do cyclists run red lights?

We need DJ to come along and bully this newbie. Where is James when you need him?

should i wear a helmet?

If James gets hold of you - yes.

if i take the brakes off my new create bike will that make me cool

i saw an article on the guardian website, brakeless sounds so hipster and i want to be like them

so i log off for a couple of minutes and some cretinous noob comes along and asks a bunch of utterly fucking retarded questions

i come back and he disappears

you need people like me to keep the idiots at bay

Boring...

Dovvles

Arsehole for mentioning my name on the arsehole thread

-arsehole

WTF have I started. Face palm time.

Really, the problem I see is one of scale and civility.

It used to be that the site was small, and everyone knew each other (or was only separated by 2 degrees). And so civility was built in, no one wants to be a dick to their friends. This created a great atmosphere in which a lot of really cool things got done, and that in turn creates this energetic edginess and passion that pervades the place.

And now we're big, and the degrees of separation has crept up to 6 (the maximum), and suddenly that energy feels like it's gone, and that we're blocked by the cynicism and collective apathy. The good people are still here, but the ass-hatery is also here that acts as a blocker to doing stuff. It's far more common to read a thread and see a sarcastic and rude retort than anything helpful or constructive... it's far more common to see a hundred pics of popcorn and pie than it is to find these great threads of people helping each other and then detecting a larger problem stepping up to work out what to do about stuff.

So the size makes it feel like the energy to work together achieve stuff is much reduced (or massively diluted), but the energy to slag each other of seems to have increased.

At a really basic level the site was always (to me) a sanctuary away from bullshit. And the site as a sanctuary was an escape from work politics, that really negative shit that's everywhere... because here we are as fellow cyclists, and we ride. And that lifts us up and sets us free, it's a liberation from the tube, the commute, and the over-populated stops near stations... we got to experience London different and that came through in this great place.

Now, I'm not down about this place. It's awesome, it's still phenomenally large and 2 days ago was the busiest ever day on the forum (23,000 unique visitors in one day). So it's not in decline at all, my question is really, what can we do to help the site maintain what made it so great as we continue to get larger.

The inspiration for this came through a speech I heard in which a company owner had a 'no asshole' hiring policy. His view was that his company creates this alumni of cool people who have worked for him, and that because the ratio of assholes was so low due to this rule, that only a few existed in the alumni, so the alumni effectively were this really great pool of people that were still connected to the company and did all this great stuff.

I was wondering aloud with this thread, would it be possible to have a better tone setting start such that we could discourage or exclude the assholes early on, so that the tone would change into this really good one and that the wider ratio of assholes on LFGSS was kept really low. I want to stop what I see as a vicious cycle of this tone encouraging other people to take that tone.

At no point was I contemplating going on some ban crusade and banning people I arbitrarily and retrospectively define as an asshole. That would undoubtedly make me the greater asshole.

So it's about changing the tone, an idea for how to start doing that. An underlying feeling that the vast majority are of the opinion that this may no longer be the site we want, and for me to do something that tells everyone that they're free, and encouraged, to create the site that they do want.

Ultimately this means that it's up to us to make the site good, to make it this cool place we want to be part of. And really the heart of that is a post really early in this thread, "Can't we all be friends?"... yeah, friends are not assholes to each other. And a friendship group wouldn't let someone enter who is an asshole.

I dont get how people can't like Partridge.

Classic miss-timed response

Ah, so this thread is why people have started calling each other arseholes in other threads. And there I was thinking it might be for no reason.

I find that 'no arsehole' theory interesting, but I'm not sure the same question arises concerning the forum as it does concerning companies. There are obviously similarities between the perceived problems, but I think that they're different and require different solutions.

However, I think, firstly, that people actually don't seem to agree on what the problem(s) is/are, and, secondly, that we'd have to be clearer on what it is that we want to change to find a solution. Thirdly, I can imagine that any solution would involve heavier moderation, as has been said by others, and while I don't think that that is necessarily a bad thing, it can involve a risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i.e. is part of what makes the forum fun the lack of moderation, and while that does involve excesses, is it necessary to run the risk of those in order not to endanger what makes it fun?

A company/corporate environment is only aimed at keeping workers motivated to be most efficient, but a lot of people use the forum precisely to get a bit of distraction from work.

That's all very theoretical and I don't have particularly good ideas as to how things could be improved other than boring ones like outlawing sexism and the like. I've always liked the fact that the forum is largely self-policing, but of course it's not likely that that can continue forever.

Maybe have a mechanism whereby people can 'arsehole' particular posts, which then either get hidden (after a certain threshold) like ignored posts and it only says 'x users found this post objectionable' and you can still click it open if you want, possibly just to add your own disapproval, with massively objected-to posts getting reported for moderator action, or being automatically hidden inaccessibly--so it's every troll's own choice whether they want people to be able to read their posts, and they could be certain in the knowledge, if people actually took this action, that they wouldn't last long enough to upset enough people to satisfy the troll.

If this wasn't personal like the rep system (people could obviously still neg rep the poster, as well, if they so wished), I doubt that it would descend into rep war-style wars, and it would still give moderators a tool to decide whose posts were consistently unpopular.

I think it wouldn't be such a good idea to kick particular people out too quickly other than for the usual well-established reasons (Nursery, Classified rules, etc.). This sort of system would give them a chance to improve.

It might be too much to programme, but perhaps suitable routines from existing mechanisms could be adapted for making the new moderation tools. Just an idea.

And now we're big, and the degrees of separation has crept up to 6 (the maximum), and suddenly that energy feels like it's gone, and that we're blocked by the cynicism and collective apathy. The good people are still here, but the ass-hatery is also here that acts as a blocker to doing stuff. It's far more common to read a thread and see a sarcastic and rude retort than anything helpful or constructive... it's far more common to see a hundred pics of popcorn and pie than it is to find these great threads of people helping each other and then detecting a larger problem stepping up to work out what to do about stuff.

So the size makes it feel like the energy to work together achieve stuff is much reduced (or massively diluted), but the energy to slag each other of seems to have increased.

Ah yes, that's exactly what I meant to address by my suggestion. Only saw your post after I posted.