An honest question Bonnes....

[DaveW]

You say you are overly sensitive to racism...that's not a cop out for letting those crap threads fly as well as defending the author.

It's one thing to be against racism etc like most of us are, its a totally different thing to start going on a witch hunt declaring people left and right of being racists, this is no less than the 2nd thread since the start of Twinsdaily.com where a member accoused an employee(s) of the Twins for being racist.

 

Saying you are "against" racism doesn't give you a right to let people go on such a bull**** rant. I am against racism as well as I date someone who's nationality is looked down upon quite a bit in America, that doesn't give me the carte blance ability to go off and call people racists left and right when there is zero proof, espepically against the employees of the club we are talking about. There are plenty of things to blame the Twins org for, as well as the abilitly of Dickbert, but to throw out the thoughts that the Twins or Dickbert are racist? Give me a break...

 

The real kicker is you then go delete people's posts going after the OP but keep his posts around for civil discourse? Even though not one other person besides you agreed with Thrylos postig that post?

 

I like Twinsdaily, and I think Rocketpig was able to bring a lot of good posters/readers to the fold by merging BYTO in, but if crap like that thread is protected and even encouraged I'm not sure I can continue to visit such a site, and I am sure others will follow suit.

 

Feel free to lock this thread/ban/etc. It's your call I guess...

[John Bonnes]

I moved this thread to the About Twins Daily Forum. It seemed more appropriate there than in Twins Talk.

 

~~~~

 

There's a lot to cover here. You're asking for an explanation about how I handled the thryloss thread about Bremer, so I'll try to answer.

 

I didn't delete it. I almost did, but I thought it was valuable to have 20 or so posts giving fairly thoughtful and passionate contrary replies to the charge that thryloss raised. I think it's valuable to have a community respond to something like that and to have that response recorded.

 

I changed the title. As I said in the last post on the topic, I felt like the title was an inflammatory headline. Ultimately, what was being debated was the use of "property" for one race and "member" for another so I changed the title to talk about that.

 

I deleted personal attacks. The posts I deleted directly attacked thryloss without actually addressing his point. That is always going to be deleted. I deleted another with racist imagery. I modified one other one that addressed the point but degenerated down to an attack. I wanted to not lose the point, so I deleted the last line.

 

I closed the thread after making a post.

- I made the post to make clear where I stood on the topic and that I thought Thryloss initial charge was a huge stretch, which I thought I made clear, but apparently was not clear to you.

- I closed the thread because I literally got out of bed when I saw this as I was setting the alarm on my ipad. It is 1:30 AM and I need to be at work for an 8:00 meeting tomorrow. I cannot moderate it.

 

~~~~

 

I did all this rather than just delete the thread because I believe the quality of a community shows up when it needs to handle difficult and sensitive topics. Of the roughly 25 posts I saw responding to this, I was pleased with how the community handled themselves in most of them, and downright proud of several of them. I edited/deleted the rest because that's the responsibility of moderators and because they could only lead to escalation. I closed the thread because I felt like cooler heads are less likely to prevail at 3 AM.

 

And finally, I'll add this. I'm not perfect. All of us except Brock are failry new to moderating forums. In the light of day, with further reflection, I might have handled this differently. But it's 1:30 AM and it needs to be handled now, and so this is what I'm doing. We'll see if it's the right path.

[DaveW]

I get where you are coming from, but I (and most would prob agree) don't think you should even allow such non-sense to happen on this site. I know you deteled "personal attacks" against the original poster, but wasn't what he did a "personal attack" as well? In fact I consider it quite a bit worse.

 

Sadly enough it's comments/threads like Thrylos that keep "blogs"/forums out of the mainstream media acceptance more or less.

[John Bonnes]

Perhaps it is something we should talk about. Certainly, the very thread topic is ugly. Adn there is some ugliness that should probably just be deleted immediately.

 

I don't know where the line is, but I don't think it is anything to do with race. I think we would want to be able to address something that we really do think is racist. And when we think something is specious, then the community can (candidly, but civally) respond that way too.

[glunn]

I think that you have both made valid points. Personally, I don't know whether Thrylos was being serious or sarcastic. But I wish that Thrylos had posted it in a different section of the forum where people post other political stuff, like the Paul Ryan thread. And I still think that it might make sense to move such thread, because it seems tangential to discussing the ball club and because it has engendered a non-baseball vibe that distracts somewhat from what most of us are here for -- baseball analysis and discussion.

 

That said, I enjoy the posts of both John and Dave and my life will be a little less fun if either of them stops posting on TD.

 

Hopefully we can all learn from this and move on as brothers who share a common obsession, the Twins.

[Brock Beauchamp]

In all fairness to John, I probably would have done the same thing if I saw this thread at 2am. You never know what can happen in the middle of the night when posters get a little tipsy and start ramping a thread toward Extreme Forum Meltdown. I certainly think Thrylos was out of line with that thread but that doesn't give carte blanche to other posters insulting him.

 

All in all, it's an ugly situation. And in a situation like that, sometimes it's better to shut it down if you can't monitor the situation all night long. Nobody was banned for it and it looks like John was just taking preventive measures so he didn't wake up to a chaotic forum with drunken monkeys hanging from the chandeliers.

 

I'm sure we'll have plenty of discussion about it later today.

[TheLeviathan]

I'm with Dave - sometimes a post is just stupid and you're feeding the trolls to allow utter nonsense like that to even exist on a highly populated forum. We had a poster join just to enter that thread and call it stupid. You can bet many others saw that and had a very negative outlook on the site to indulge such ridiculous BS. This forum won't be successful just because it attracts a lot of well-mannered guests - it also has to be thought-provoking and unpopulated with troll-like nonsense.

 

This was a clear case of a thread that just needed to be closed and done away with - Dave is right on.

[Fire Dan Gladden]

It is a fine line to walk to allow opinions and knowing when those opinions go to far. I understand freedom of speech, but not all speech is free and protected (you can't yell FIRE in a movie theatre). Sometimes even speech that that is protected should not be said. Promoting individuals to blog and write on the site brings the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good and the bad we can deal with, but the ugly should not have a place here. I'm with Dave, should have been gone right away.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm with Dave - sometimes a post is just stupid and you're feeding the trolls to allow utter nonsense like that to even exist on a highly populated forum. We had a poster join just to enter that thread and call it stupid. You can bet many others saw that and had a very negative outlook on the site to indulge such ridiculous BS. This forum won't be successful just because it attracts a lot of well-mannered guests - it also has to be thought-provoking and unpopulated with troll-like nonsense.

 

This was a clear case of a thread that just needed to be closed and done away with - Dave is right on.

 

The problem is that calling someone an idiot almost never quells the thread. It only encourages the "idiot" to respond and the thread slowly descends into a flame war. In a perfect world, everybody would be allowed to circle around the village idiot and shame them into submission.

 

But this is the Internet. That is almost never the case. Provoking people with name-calling only begets more name-calling and the thread spirals into a fervor that only an eight year old could admire.

 

I understand your point on the surface, Levi, but my practical experience with forum moderation tells a very different story. I allowed a second thread to be re-opened because at the core of Thyrlos' issue, there was a valid point: why do we think it's okay to refer to people as "property"? Why is it okay to say it for a white man but not a black man? Those are valid questions and I hoped that the thread would discuss those topics (and largely, it did).

[TheLeviathan]

I'm not saying we have to call them idiots - I'm saying when there is a clearly stupid thread - just kill it. This forum is cracking down on insults in the name of not scaring off new posters. You know what scares me off? A forum that thinks that initial post is worth discussing. To even give such stupidity the time of day. It tells me any post, no matter how inane or insane, will be tolerated. That's going to scare people off too.

 

You want to discuss the racial connotations of "property" - the main thread of a baseball forum is a dumb place to do it.

[Seth Stohs]

I hate to continue the conversation, but I do somewhat feel responsible. I saw the thread go up. I thought it was ridiculous. I went back and forth in my own mind about whether to shut it down right away or not, especially seeing the responses. I didn't for a couple of reasons. First, I heard Bremer's comment and it makes me uncomfortable, yet know I that there was no intent. Second, I don't want to be a big censor just because threads can get tough. Third, I think, if handled properly, it should be something we should be able to discuss appropriately, without the name calling. Finally, I don't think that Twins Daily should be a place where tough issues like racism, PEDs, or whatever issue happens to present itself, should be hidden from. I think good, valuable discussion can be had. Maybe that's just me being a little naive because I know how most forums work, and it's too bad.

 

Finally, I fell asleep on the couch and didn't wake up until 3 and then I went right to bed and haven't had time to moderate. Lesson learned.

[TheLeviathan]

I don't think anyone has a problem with discussing larger social issues - the problem is that if we have no bottom floor for what a dumb thesis is and allow every inane conversation to have it's place out of not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings - you're going to scare off the kind of intelligent posters you want blogs from. If it was my first time at this forum and I saw that thread being treated as a worthy subject - I'd laugh and move on.

[DaveW]

I think the following is a good guideline for how one should act on this forum:

 

If you wouldn't say something to someone's face in real life, you probably shouldn't allow it. I agree that personal attacks/name calling generally should not be allowed. But if I was watching the game last night with a friend, family member, random person at the bar and they said "holy hell, Dick Bremer is a racist for blah blah blah" I would most certainly respond to them with "Wow, your an idiot" or worse.

 

I mean, the topic itself is just so absurd! And everyone other than the OP seems to agree with that notion.

[diehardtwinsfan]

posting a few months late, but isn't that why BYTO created a downs forum? I know it was ridiculously poor taste, but at the same time, the humiliation might make a few people take a step back or two...

[Brock Beauchamp]

posting a few months late, but isn't that why BYTO created a downs forum? I know it was ridiculously poor taste, but at the same time, the humiliation might make a few people take a step back or two...

 

I might miss the Baby Gots forum more than anything else. It absolutely doesn't fit in with the idea behind Twins Daily but I'll be damned if it wasn't funny to move a thread in there whenever I got annoyed.