So today we've had a flag because someone joked that the big bang theory still being on air is proof that there's no god, and because someone else compared over-zealous flagging to ISIS.

does this make sense to people?

@Cerberus That's great... but what of the people who come here to ask a question about ELU? Is that really something you think is appropriate for them to see as their first interaction with the chat space?

it makes no sense to me.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Phew, I'm glad you added that bit about sarcasm, or you'd have been suspended on the spot! People are too lazy to bother about the context these days.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Nothing about chat flags makes a shred of sense on a good day

@Catija Well, if they bother to read the context a little bit, they will understand. For example, when there is no animosity between two chatters, and one suddenly calls the other gay or whatever, it would be clear enough that it was an innocent joke between friends.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Really? Wow.

Oh man...

Does anyone who flagged the isis thing care to explain why that was offensive?

or the "no god" thing?

Yes, I'd like to know this too.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 People who don't hang out here often enough to take those in the spirit they were intended.

@terdon Bienvenue.

Out of context (context here being that this room is always like this and we don't actually ever mean it) they can be kinda jarring.

@Cerberus But when someone from inside flag it and other user just comes to check. Is calling them troll also ok?

@terdon Why didn't they bother to read the context?

@Cerberus Hey Cerb, I'm alwayus around,lurking.

@Cerberus Well, to be honest, the context is the past few years i which we've all gotten to know each other.

@terdon Even without any context whatsovever, those messages were not offensive that I can see. Unless someone thinks atheists are by definition offensive, in which case, eff that.

Plus, there's been a serious meltdown in one of the other chat rooms and the mods are a little trigger happy as a result.

@Cerberus If I were a normal, reasonable person and I saw someone say (paraphrasing) "At least I'm not (offensive word for people with intellectual disabilities) and don't talk like I'm a (offensive word for a homosexual)" I find that offensive.

@AnkitSharma I'm not calling anyone a troll. But I think many people enjoy punishing others and are fairly lazy, and the current flagging system encourages all that. So it is partly SE's fault.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, people do, you know. And yes, eff that indeed.

@terdon As an atheist, I find that offensive. So can I flag the flag?

@Catija To give you some context, the person who posted that knew perfectly well that at least one chat regular and one of the most respected users here are a) gay and b) would know not to take offense at that. It is basically silly banter between friends.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I wish.

@terdon But this isn't a "private" room... It's ELU's main room.

I can certainly understand why that message was flagged, but I also happen to know that it doesn't represent the position of the person who posted it. It was a joke.

@terdon Meh, if you or Reg suddenly says "you're so gay" out of nowhere, when there is no animosity between the interlocutors, neither bore the line nor after, then anyone could figure out it was an innocent joke.

@Catija I know, I know. But each room has developed its own culture over the years.

@terdon Ah, I see. Which room?

@Cerberus SciFi

@Cerberus Yes, but the word in question was fag which is a good deal more offensive. Out of context, I'm sure you can see why it could be considered offensive.

@AnkitSharma That was obviously a joke. Don't you agree?

@terdon Yes, out of context. But this wasn't out of context.

Basically, this room is a haven of open minded, very liberal people. The vast majority of the regulars are very much non racist, homophobic or any of the other things their messages might suggest they are.

@Cerberus Flags are shown network wide, as you know, and people are very twitchy at the moment.

@Cerberus Before that someone also accused SFF people and called everyone trolls. And repeating a offensive joke doesn't remain that much of a joke

@Catija Offensive? If you knew it were a joke?

@terdon I know. It has always been more or less this way.

@AnkitSharma I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

@AnkitSharma Offensive is in the eye of the beholder. None of this is offensive to the room's regulars. I can understand the reaction but you really need to take the room's culture into account. This is a relatively close-knit group and most of us already know that Reg isn't in any way homophobic.

Is there any way for a mod to unsuspend Robusto? I mean, sheesh.

I understand that you guys are just being heterosexual life partners ("bros") and understand all that about each other. My question is why a validated flag automatically results in suspension.

@Cerberus Have you even read the message before you trollies message ?

Good grief, I only now saw what Rob was suspended for. I thought he'd said what Reg did.

So I have a crazy idea. So crazy it just might work. We can restore Reg's message, only replace the word fag with the word flag, as flags are way more insulting and offensive.

@Cerberus How should I know it's a joke? Is there a joke tag added to it that I didn't see? ELU is a very high-volume site, which is great... but do you not think that this sort of vernacular might turn someone off from participating in here?

"Don't be such a flag"

that sort of thing.

If you like it then you should put a flag in it

@terdon It doesn't seems much welcoming to called troll just for checking on flag.

@AnkitSharma No, that's not cool.

@AnkitSharma That's not what it was for and you ought to know that.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What the hell is going on here...

@Gigili overreaction by oversensitive people validating flags.

@Robusto Let's not escalate. Leave it be please.

@AnkitSharma No, I just saw the word troll a few times and was trying to lighten the mood.

And I don't use the word "oversensitive" lightly.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That clears it up.

@Catija You could find out by reading the conversation that it was a part of?

OK. Everyone: What is and is not flagged depends on each chatroom. There are no global rules for what is allowed. Apart from the classic "be nice", that is. Some chat rooms don't accept any profanity at all, for example, while this one has absolutely no issue with it.

That someone was flagged in another room for something that wouldn't be considered flaggable here is no reason to start applying the standard of the other room to this one.

@Catija As to people who might be turned off, that message was probably only on the first screen for a minute or so. It soon disappears into the invisible archives.

I was suspended because I was defending @RegDwigнt in chat. This is abuse of the flagging system, IMO.

Offensive, by definition, depends on whoever is taking the offense.

I said NOTHING offensive.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Haha touché. And not in a good way.

@Robusto Which is why I unsuspended you, but tensions are a bit high now.

@Cerberus aw, come on, I always touché you in a good way.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Don't tell my boyfriend.

Oh dear, I hope we won't get flagged now.

I won't if you don't.

wink

@terdon So, you're saying that the help pages are a lie, then? english.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice

Nothing on that help pages says anything about intent... it says "no bigotry". Period.

@Catija Not at all. I'm saying that what is considered being a jerk depends on who you're talking to. For example, I can call a friend of mine a fag, safe in the knowledge that he won't take offense at it. I would certainly never consider calling a stranger that. It all depends on context.

The Be nice policy is great but, perforce, a little vague.

@Catija "Bigotry" and "offense" are vague, context-sensitive terms.

Personally, I understand why people would flag the fag post.

Catja was kicked

Catija?

Kicking was not necessary

Wow... nice. That was uncalled for.

But the other posts? people just getting offended for the sake of being offended

@terdon in private maybe but in public, it might come as offense

@Catija Can you be a bigot without harbouring any bigot feelings?

Ohhh....great....kick people who are not agree with you.

@AnkitSharma Shog made a good point the other day when he called chat rooms "a third place" and compared them to bars. This is our local bar where we all sort of know each other and know what is and is not offensive to each other.

If I'm at my favorite bar with a couple of my friends and you hear me saying something you consider offensive to one of them, I assume you wouldn't intervene if you could clearly see that the person it was directed at wasn't taking offense.

@terdon I actually think the be nice policy is great. It is most important thing, especially towards newcomers.

This is similar.

@Cerberus Damn straight! Of course it is.

@AnkitSharma I wrote a meta post recently that touches on something relevant to this.

Point is that it is kind of vague.

@Catija That most certainly was uncalled for if you were indeed kicked. Wow.

@Catija Huh you were suspended? For what?

@Cerberus What if the newcomers come in with the intent to disrupt our chat for their own petty reasons?

So where's the line of separation there? Why is be nice working differently across exchanges, while they all have the same mods (in terms of the power to moderate)?

@Robusto We deal with that if and when it happens. In this case the newcomers came in with the best of intentions.

Let me dig it up, but the main draw point was that language is a shared experience, which in turn in something like chat, is actually kind of a fluid existence.

All anybody here wanted was to make sure the chat was civil and running smoothly.

@terdon Really? All due respect, you weren't here when the came in.

@Robusto Etiquette transcends vehement disagreement, yea, even animosity.

@Robusto I was, I haven't logged out of this room in ages and anyway, I read the transcript.

@terdon Yes, I was kicked out. It's was messed up... and now I have to leave for class... so... whatever.

@Robusto But I wasn't here, so I don't know what happened exactly.

@Robusto This is indeed not a good thing, sure. But of course assuming that motivation without any basis isn't either

So, yes, some people overreacted based on the code of conduct which they are familiar with from other rooms. There was no malice here though, just people unfamiliar with this room's particular brand of facetiousness thinking they were doing the right thing.

@Catija Huh, what were you kicked out over?

Here's the thread. Worth a read. Main takeaway that's relevant here - yes, a chatroom can have its own culture, where certain language standards become lax because in-house, that language has lost its offensive meaning.

@terdon I suppose the flash mob of flaggers was coincidence?

But it's important to realize that it's still a very public room, and the population of a room can shift. And language should probably accommodate that.

@Cerberus No clue. It came immediately after I posted the be nice help page. It was a kick mute, I guess... I've never gotten one before.

So why can one room change its culture and another can't?

Also, people, kicking other users out of chat because you happen to be able to and disagree with what they're saying is not acceptable.

@Catija Hmm very strange. You didn't deserve it!

Perhaps it was a misclick.

@Catija and it won't happen again. On pain of suspension.

A room's culture should be adaptable.

Anyway, I think we've all wasted enough time on this. Shall we move on?

The the first line of defence dealing with offence or disagreement should be dialogue, not violence or censorship.

When you've got a score of people of a different culture present, throwing stuff they don't accept is not going to work out well. At the same time, that score of people attempting to overthrow the existing culture is also unproductive.

Right.

But it will pass.

@Cerberus This is a key point. One that can sometimes be difficult, though, because it's a very real thing that people who try to speak up about certain things have had backlash for doing so. So it causes the more common reaction to dealing with it, to be the silent-but-actionable form.

It escalates the problem, makes everybody madder, but in a day or two people will have forgotten.

@Cerberus Great, now we've stooped to platitudes :P

bows

@terdon "now"?

:)

@GraceNote I understand, but then, is that really worth it, for a line that is only in view for a minute or two, thereafter to disappear into the bottomless chat archives where none shall see it?

@terdon looks back way a head of you

@MattE.Эллен That's where you spend most of your time, alas.

:D

So @GraceNote you only visit us now when the place is on fire :(

@Cerberus When it's actively happening and it's actively making one uncomfortable? I would say yes.

@Cerberus That's one of the main drawbacks of the flag system. On the one hand, we need to have chat flags visible to users who are not in a chat room since that can be the only way to stop abuse. On the other hand, this can lead to situations like this one where well-meaning people who are unfamiliar with a room end up making things worse rather than better.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Technically I came in here slightly before it was on fire. And up until Catja got kicked it wasn't entirely necessary for me to step in and say anything.

But now we have 20 people who are uncomfortable, for much longer than a few minutes. And I would say most of them are more than uncomfortable. Does that really compare to seeing the word "fag" somewhere, out of context?

Still, it does work most of the time.

@Cerberus Which I think is a problem on both sides. Not one or the other, but both.

@GraceNote Yeah but you used to hang out here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I used to hang out on the Bridge too. I miss those days.

Maybe when I'm not as busy as I have been for so many months. Which isn't letting up until February at minimum now.

yikes!

@Cerberus I don't think someone solely flagging something that made them uncomfortable, is a problem, because that's what flagging is, y'know, kinda designed for?

But explosions because flagging happened, over-defensive defense of the flagger, over-defensive defense of the flagged.

That's unproductive.

@terdon I understand the reasoning behind it. But I think SE greatly overestimates the importance of "cleansing" chat: any line will be up for a few minutes only, in a busy room. Is it really necessary to have everything 100% clean?

@Cerberus Cleaning stuff that is already gone is pointless

But it's not already gone.

@GraceNote Maybe, but people are people, and I've seen this happen countless times in various rooms after flag suspension. It escalates things very much.

Someone digging into the archives to flag every instance over the past year? That's not really very productive.

But that's not what happened here.

Let me take an example from the Bridge. Using examples of our mod-elects being flagged in fact.

@GraceNote But that is what always happens, it's inherent in the flag system. You can't change how people react, right?

@GraceNote That happens here on a regular basis as well.

Regulars? We know that one of them is pretty rowdy and brings up some crazy things. Sometimes he says stuff that's out of line in a public sense. If it's only regulars around, though, it flies by. If it's not? It gets flagged and deleted. And everyone moves on.

Except that people don't move on.

@Cerberus We're all people. We're all capable of adjusting our reactions. If the community is able to be one that changes how they react to things that are offensive to certain groups, they can work on something that's far, far simpler like flag incidents.

Instead, we spend hours dealing with the conflict between vocal defenders and attackers.

@GraceNote But that's just not what happens.

I get mad when I feel that one of the high-reps on this site was unjustly suspended, I can't help it.

And has your rage resulted in anything productive?

And the flaggers can't help getting upset when what they see as a violation is being defended.

@GraceNote I think it has: upholding justice as I see it, and letting the flaggers know that what they did was not OK.

But I regret having to do it.

I think that the moment we're calling a tool like flagging "not OK" is the opposite of upholding justice.

Of course I stayed polite, as I always strive to do.

@terdon Also an idiot?

@GraceNote Not the tool, but abusing the tool.

The tool is well intended.

But this discussion has seen the line between "usage" and "abuse" blurred, and right now, you're calling out both people as in the wrong.

Did I?

Let me put it this way.

Your position was that it was OK the way this work as they are. I disagreed.

I think all this flagging creates more problems than it solves.

It gets more people upset for a longer time.

Could you stop starring random messages? That makes it hard to follow the conversation, too distracting.

WOuld it help if I just came forward and said it is all my fault? I'm sorry. So sorry.

My position is that flagging action when people actively are uncomfortable is a legitimate action - the overreactions of those defending the flagger is not, but that's independent of the flagger's action at the start.

Aww Mitchy.

@Gigili starred

Why can't we get back to talking about nothing at all.

The fault lies squarely in the people's reaction to the flags, but the flag itself was a tool that was designed for a proper use, and was used for that.

If people want this conversation to end, I'll oblige that.

I miss the days of randomly trolling ourselves with profanity and rudeness and veiled in no way animosity.

@Mitch Punch you in the face

But now all we seem to do is talk about flagging those who randomly troll ourselves with profanity and rudeness and ... oh, you get it!

@Gigili Ow.

I was not expecting that.

@GraceNote At that point, I wasn't even arguing about legitimacy (although I see most of the problematic flags as illegitimate): my point is that you can't change people, and, the way it is now, you 10 get people coming to this room to defend the flag who get upset, and 10 regulars who defend the flaggee who get upset. So the flag has created a new problem that wasn't there before, in order to solve another problem.

that hurt

@Mitch I am unexpected like that!

pours coffee for @Mitch

@Cerberus Making people change is literally one of my jobs.

If you wondering (and I suspect you are) I am currently listening to a well reasoned and insightful discussion of the israeli-Palestinian problem involving slightly raised voices and level headed questions about historical facts.

Which is really funny if one takes it out of context.

@Gigili Whoa dude, not right where you punched me!

Honestly a lot of the job of a community manager can be twisted to sound extremely nefarious.

Expletive!

Expletive, expletive!

@GraceNote It has been the same for many years. Do you think you can change people in this particular way?

beep

Even before I got employed, I could say I emptied out a bank vault and got paid BIG for my resume

You Expletive. May you expletive expletive, go expletive.

@MattE.Эллен How dare you.

> peace and quiet → a line gets flagged which regulars feel is unjust → lots of people from outside the room enter it and get upset; lots of regulars get upset

like that

Those arrows are intended as causal links.

Who the hell are all the lurkers? Can't you just go make a new chatroom for yourself?

@Mitch So you refuse to drink the coffee?

...now I'm just thinking what's the most wonk way I can write my deeds as a CM on a resume in the least explanatory way possible.

@Gigili Yeah. What are you gonna do about, coffee drinker. I bet you like cats.

And I mean that to sting.

@GraceNote Wait, you not have wonk?

That we can help with.

Oh I have plenty of wonk

TMI

EW

jimx

that's no jinx

too much information != enough wonk

Very accurate perception

Just, there's a lot of things to cover and it's probably sane to limit one's deed list to, say, 5 incidents.

1 page, two at most.

no one reads anymore

I have proof

I read it just then

@Mitch That too, yes :)

dammit you're undermining everything I stand for.

sits down

chair falls apart

@Mitch stomps off in a huff

rage fucking quits

@Mitch flags offensive misuse of infix "fucking"

@GraceNote So anyway, I think we've milked the subject for what it's worth. But give it some thought: now we have several newcomers to this room who were at least mildly upset because of the discussion. Is that really worth deleting a line that was only up for a minute before vanishing into the transcript? Or should the system be reformed somewhat?