Selecting a Despot for the Autism Thunderdome

[JosephStalin]

Have been a sub-mod, later a mod, on a redboard basically just like A and H. Spend the vast majority of my time here on A and H, most relevant to me.

Was given some very general parameters, such as not allowing CP. Always stayed in contact with board owner.

As needed, when things started veering too much off-topic, too much pigfighting, or people started getting crazy reminded people why we were here. Have done that here in certain threads to keep discussion productive. Banning was something done rarely, but I did it.

A and H is a rather topical board, from it's very name. Always going to have a lot of opinions, going to have clashes. Believe Null's intent has always been to keep the discussions moving, and the pigfighting minimized, for the info and benefit of all. Null has been very tolerant of posters' actions here, rarely bans anyone. Was on one board where you could be banned for merely disagreeing with the board owner.

Far as time commitment goes, obviously spend time here but have other things I do in life.

Null, if I can help, fine. If not, no sweat.

 

[Suburban Bastard]

I have a few ideas, whether or not they're good is debateable.

First off, like you said we've got a problem with combativeness. There's way yoo many people in here whose only goal is to start shit and puss people off. Sure, we like a little trolling, but we don't need 20 people @ing HHH everytime someone says or does dumb shit. For that I propose the following: Make @ing people to start shit a bannable (or otherwise punishable) offense. If you've got shit to talk, take it to dms you fucking spergs.

To add to that point, we dont need 5 million derangement/enslavement threads where people can shit around screaming at eachother about how stupid the other side is. Remove all those threads, disallow further ones, and instead have a megathread for making fun of all political spergs who tard out online. If they tard hard enough just make a fucking thread. We need to stop taking this shit so seriously and start laughing at retards who do. The Biden megathread can stay because it's for posting news regarding Joe Biden, our sitting president.

If people want to start shit and/pr glow post, they don't belong here. Same for doom posting. Crying about how terrible everything is and threatening to murder politicians in minecraft doesn't further discussion and it makes threads fucking unreadable. The only way to read half the threads is through highlights. You wonder why autistic thunderdome threads grow so fast? It's all the retards screaming about fucking nothing.

Nothing will ever change the "my side good your side bad" mentality. I should know, I fucking hate democrats and I can't pretend to be unbiased. That doesn't mean that we can't fucking talk to each other like civilized adults. It's a total fucking fog of war shit flinging frenzy out here whenever anything happens and some of you spergs think we're the pinnacle of unbiased discussion. We're fucking not, so at least play nice or get your tots taken away.

If it's gonna be a multi-mod job, simply put we need different mods for the different boards.

Articles and News needs someone to make sure that what's getting posted is actually articles and news. I'm not saying catparty and their weird threads have to go, just that we clean up satirical or outright inflammatory articles (which I almost never see but some tards will find any excuse to fling shit). They're rare but a funny haha article kind of takes away from the intended experience. Maybe just a megathread for satirical news. Keep politisperging to a minimum unless it actually contributes somewhat to understanding or discussing the posted article.

Deep thoughts is more chill. It should probably be kept as is but with a mod in there making sure there's actual discussion going on, not rampant opinion-flinging, screeching monkey orgies.

Happenings needs a TON of cleaning up. It's where we discuss ongoing major events and its 90% just noise. Reading through the highlights of any given thread doesn't help either because every other post is people complaining about all the niggercattle pissing 10 feet straight up into the goddamn air like autistic rainmakers. We would need multiple mods for this board, especially when happenings get featured because when that happens we combine the normal userbase with a ravenous sea of autistic sharks with no teeth. It's a fucking mess. We want happenings to be readable? We gotta clean out all the fucking white noise. Will people complain? Yeah. But who fucking cares? If you're mad you can't write scat fanfic about how the people with different opinions have messy forceful sex with their geriatric man of choice then go cry about it on fucking onionfarms or whatever.

Finally, and I doubt you could do this, but we should have a fourth autistic thunderdome board, also named the Autistic Thunderdome. There are no mods. No rules. Only negrates, no positive rates. Clicking the report button is an automatic ban for the clicker. Posting in the board gives an automatic badge of the star of david to signify them as posters in the board.
Again, unfeasible, but it would be funny.


Anyways that's just like, my opinion man.

Unironically the best idea so far, great job dude!

 

[Absolutego]

That there are zero rules are a large part of why that section of the site is such a cesspit. I understand Null may not like moderating politics, but just moderating post quality would do a lot to clean up the Thunderdome. Some frequent issues I see constantly in A&H:

-Absolutely trash-tier OPs, with zero effort done by the user to clean up referral/meta text, broken images, etc. Often this results in threads where it's obvious no one ITT has read beyond the headline, (because it's a pain to do so, what with how unreadable it is) which is often itself editorialized by the submitter. What results from this? The same general talking points being posted by the same regulars about the topic at hand, and soon we have just another A&H political general, lowering the quality of discussion and, if it goes on long enough, inviting flame wars.

-Speaking of flame wars, regulars have developed vendettas against certain users who disagree with the local hivemind, to the point of pinging them into threads to argue with them on a multi-page tangent that descends into the shittiest of dumb fite me irl posts. It has actually turned the ignore feature into a useful tool to identify which posts are part of the slapfight and which are actually related to the topic at hand.

-And I know @L50LasPak had to resign over it, but @Null, if you don't want to be a dumping ground for 8pol extremism, there are going to be certain users who are going to have to go. I'd prefer they prove they're uninterested in assimilating to forum culture via a couple of temp bans before a site ban, but there are definitely people who will fail the 3 strikes rule even with that. Actually, can you ban users from specific sections of the site? I'd be interested to see how a user reacts to being tempbanned from the Thunderdome. Do they leave entirely (proving they have no interest in the overall forum), or do they try to explore the rest of the site and assimilate?

In terms of things I think could be a good start:

-Have a number of junior jannies to clean up OP and thread post quality
-Give anyone pinging in a contrarian to fight them a temp ban with the reminder that this is a site for laughing at current events, not engaging in flame wars
-Fedposters/Western World Saviors get to take a break from the Thunderdome to cool down, unless they continue to prove they have no interest in assimilating.

 

[mold]

-Fedposters/Western World Saviors get to take a break from the Thunderdome to cool down, unless they continue to prove they have no interest in assimilating.

this is a really good idea

 

[Vince McMahon]

@Null

Jannysaries need to issue selective thread bans to most active users as means of cooldown.

If the thread banned user brings a sock before cooldown is expired - cooldown period increase by a power of 10. 3 infractions and you are banned from Autistic Thunderdome. The rest of the community is available. Circumvention just bans you from AT, no need to issue a sitewide ban.

Jannysaries should create a locked topic, where all the users can see who got thread banned. If a threadban is for a specific reason - link a thread and explain why.

News threads - locked after crossing 50 pages.
Happenings - rebrand as discussions, lock threshold - 1000 pages, then topic is deleted, users are free to recreate the topic again but it has to be clearly shown in the topic name what is the topic about. Jannysaries are permitted to exercise their judgement, subject to your oversight. Off-topic results in three-strike cooldown rule outlined above.

Also, introduce routine randomized bannings. Users reaching three strikes and already banned from Autistic Thunderdome will be eligible for a month ban at random on selected days. If they attempt to circumvent the ban and get detected - permaban.

I think it won't stop dedicated faggots, but it will thin out the herd significantly.

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

it looks like I'm the only jackass sperg from A&H who is even participating here

honestly if the problem posters can't come up with any solutions maybe we deserve to lose the board

Nah, I'm here too. It's just kind of pointless; the whiners will carry the day as usual as they have on all the blighted websites everyone is complaining about.

 

[Fek]

I would say that following the model started by HK-47 would be a pretty ideal way to handle things.

• Try to stay hands-off and ensure people understand that their views will be challenged if they participate
• Make sport out of people being mad at the internet so that everyone else can laugh at their momentary retardation
  • Remove people who are extreme and blatant habitual offenders
• Be active and jump into a conversation to (eloquently, if possible) point out where someone else is being stupid instead of whining about it
• Set the example you'd like to see the other users follow in your own actions and posting habits
  • Encourage others to rise to a higher standard instead of the more top-down "do x, y, or z or else" approach

And beyond what HK started, I'd say that the current approach of demanding people integrate just isn't working anymore, so creativity is needed. If you want the mod team to help with that? I'd suggest the following:

• Channel the flow of the boards in more natural ways vs trying to dam them up
  • Less containment zone for undesirables, more mutant child who you love in spite of its flaws
  • Make suggestions related to topics brought up in Thunderdome threads which direct those users to the other boards
    • Maybe warn the mods in those other boards first, just to be safe
  • Give reasons for Thunderdome users to feel included elsewhere
• Encourage users from other parts of the board to participate in the Thunderdome in various ways
  • The Pastadome is a phenomenal example, as it lets them laugh at retards just like elsewhere
  • Might need to hold off on this for more entertaining ideas in line with the meat of the forum
• Reinforce the idea that it's actually okay to have ended up here for reasons outside of lolcowdom
  • Give frequent but passive encouragement to see all the site has to offer so people unfamiliar with someone like The Gunt might develop an appreciation
• Drop the adversarial attitudes which only serve to reinforce the problems

It's a start, at least.

Spoiler: On the note of adversarial issues

I use the term 'combative' to distinguish off-topic from A&H. This is why people hate that board and its users. Everywhere else on the site, there is a team. People generally understand and appreciate that this site and our community is balanced on a fucking thread. A&H does not get that. They are mostly users who joined after all of our largest problems were taken care of and don't care about the rest of the site. I feel these users are exploitative and see the forum as a means to an end rather than something to contribute to.

While I don't doubt some of the users see it as a means to an end, it's not as if constantly demonizing this area of the forum as having just the worst userbase is going to help that notion either. The only people I see complain openly about A/H in general tend to not contribute in any constructive way to discussions that take place (when meaningful discussion is actually had, of course). They deliberately threadshit and crybully time after time.

To be fair, I will certainly agree that most threads in Articles and News specifically are the same talking points repeated ad nauseam and aren't productive. This trend does apply across many topics on the board at large (and human nature in general), but political hot takes are orders of magnitude worse in that regard.

If you feel like people are peeing in your proverbial cheerios (as some no doubt are), then perhaps many of the users simply don't understand the efforts you've gone through in setting up and maintaining the board. "Lurk more" is a great mantra (and one I agree with) when a community is small enough to handle it, but growing pains are diminishing its effectiveness and have for quite a long time now (that extends to other boards, too). I also don't doubt a fair chunk of the new users are simply just twats, but people who have nothing to say aside from habitual meaningless bad-faith or dough-brain dookie should probably just be removed. That could apply to any board, though.

Beyond that, I really don't see many users who frequent other parts of the forum interact in the Thunderdome either. Sure, you can say that's because they can rationalize it away with poopoo peepee or thinking they're just too gosh darn smart for those retarded A/H-ers, but that just further reinforces a boogeyman that still gets unfairly applied to people whom they never actually dare interact. It's inherently dishonest behavior. Over the course of society during these last several years, I think a lot of people have forgotten that they can have retarded takes on things simply because TV man or their sycophantic friends agree with them. It's okay (and healthy) for others to point it out.

Edit also anyone who WANTS to be a mod can’t really be trusted with that power

Yeah, it attracts faggots by default. Those who seek power over others almost never do so out of benevolence for (or duty to) their fellow man.

 

[Wodanaz]

Policing political discussion isn't easy. Just to have some kind of set standards maybe a mod or despot could intervene in A&H forum activities in the following situations:
1. When someone makes any threats regarding acts of violence that would take place in real life
2. When there is some pedantic mud flinging contest tell people to chill out otherwise the thread will be locked for too much sperging

Also I nominate myself as Despot with the promise I shall uphold the free speech standards of KiwiFarms while also making sure the political part of the site doesn't become a big circlejerk for any side of the political aisle.

Pretty much this. Ban retards who indicate they want to hurt people, and step in to remind the others flinging shit that they are interacting with other human beings and should observe at least the bare minimum of courtesy when doing so (they shouldn't act like white niggers). There's a fine line between some bantering and the repeated flinging of shit over and over. I'm not innocent of it, null has deleted two or three of my posts in the mati thread for pointless shitflinging with some retard. In the end I think it just comes down to the offender having enough maturity, common sense, perspective, etc, not to repeat this foolish behavior. Beyond that, there's little you can do.
It might be advantageous to just start a few threads specifically for """debate""" on issues that people feel strongly about. Then they can get all their autism out of their system and the rest of the threads will hopefully suffer less for it. Maybe a whole board dedicated to this purpose. I don't know, it might work, but I can also see the opposite happening, as those retards who actually debate people on the Internet mistakenly think they're welcome everywhere else. Maybe if you make it clear in the rules that autistic shitflinging goes "here" and not "there", it might work.
The goal would be to get them to communicate, because without that, there's no hope for any understanding at all. Perhaps that's too optimistic for people like that. Personally I would attempt something like this before straight up banning people, because that just leads to more resentment as people develop victim complexes when they're penalized for their political views. Pretty much every radical group on the Internet has some vague idea that the Kiwifarms is a bastion of whatever political philosophy they don't like. If they had the chance to debate with the other users, perhaps that would change, and they would see the truth of the diversity of viewpoints we enjoy here.
I understand your plight and have great sympathy for it, null. I'm glad you've provided a place for people to speak their minds. I'm not going to volunteer for the head janny position because I generally don't want power and responsibility over people, but if you need some help I would be willing to give it a try. Stay frosty, and don't give up hope.

 

[mold]

Nah, I'm here too. It's just kind of pointless; the whiners will carry the day as usual as they have on all the blighted websites everyone is complaining about.

sorry mr bricklaying piggie I did not recognize you

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

I vouch for @snailslime if anyone, she seems active enough on the farms and already knows what's going on over there.

Otherwise I'd volunteer for the job. I go to the Deep Thoughts section every now in a while, so I can definitely keep things clean if needed. But then the issue is that's only 1/3 of the thunderdome.

I literally dont have a job or a life and spend all days shitposting about current affairs or pro wrestling. I will swear to keep the autism contained in the thunderdome in the name of our lord Terry. Make a mod if you want.

I don't recall ever seeing your face there. Maybe that's because you exclusively go to the news section? Eh anyways if you're very active I see no reason not to promote you.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

Also, the amount of people that literally do not read the article content and just rage post based on the title is wild. Dunno how to fix that though

 

[thismanlies]

I say we tag users based off their political leanings, kick back, and watch ourselves a good dumpster fire.

 

[an retard]

This is kinda outing me as a "current-thing" lurker I guess, because I don't know if this applies to the wider Thunderdome board culture or not and I'm using it as a bit of a case study, but I like the kind of two-state solution that's emerged with the Ukraine threads where both sides got their own corners to have their pro/anti Russian postings, and occasionally a vatnik comes into the MSM thread to piss up the wall and vice versa. Usually when that happens its bad-faith sperging though and kind of sours discussion.

In this case, clamping down on that kind of combativeness by banning them out of that corner would probably improve quality of discussion, but when you prohibit people from shitting where they want it does bring about the hugbox accusations and makes it look like threads have to keep to consensus opinion or the jannies swoop down.

I think in this position where discussion quality is the goal, I would let the hugbox accusations rain in and just threadban people coming in to shit on the thread's consensus. I don't think this necessarily means the consensus should be never be challenged, if you have a good-faith case against someone's opinion that's something that should be posted, but when you can clearly see some fuckin retard is rolling in just to stir shit up because he sees the posters there as ideological opponents or something, they should really just fuck off. I guess it can be hard to differentiate the two sometimes, but there is definitely a class of Thunderdome posters who just aggressively seek out opinions they disagree with in order to be combative and I feel like a good mod would be able to identify these people and treat them accordingly when they come into a thread with no other clear intention than to shit on the floor.

NOT volunteering btw, janny work sounds like hell and I have under 30 posts and mostly just lurk so its entirely possible my position on this is tilted. Too busy to sweep up full time, too.

 

[Android raptor]

I don't have what it takes to be a mod, but I'll continue to pop into the Thunderdome and make fun of the /pol/tards clutching pearls over embryos in between trading animal autism with them.

Bonding over cool/cute/interesting animal facts and pics might just be the way to world peace.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

I've been thinking a bit about this. I have some ideas on how the nuclear option might be avoided.

A) Schizo-reactionarism needs to go. There's no value added to a community that can only say every mass shooting is a glow-op and it causes too much problems.

B) Informative Posters need to be valued. If you post links, videos, photos and extra info often, in my eyes you are more valuable that just text posters. If there's a dispute, the informative poster should be valued.

C) Use lower signal-to noise ration to measure success. I should be able to click the "next highlight" a couple of times to get valuable info.. If there is useless, and not informative posts in such a quantity that highlights don't work then the mods should act.

D) Choose someone who is ruthless for a determined amount of time.. I don't think the gradual approach will work. Either they comply and becoe informative and not-schizo rambling infighters or they are out. After a while of ruthlesness the comunity will be easier to handle and the mods can just cruise.

E) Immediately threadban users for deliberately shitting up threads. A lot users like to derail threads by deliberately posting bait, and having dipshits fall for it This causes a lot of threads to bloat with pages upon pages of retarded slapfighting. And I don't even mean by just posting a differing opinion. I mean by deliberately provoking fights, and shit, which leads me to the following:

F) Immediately threadban anyone who tags someone just to start shit. Too many speds try to tag HHH, or Snailslime just to farm stickers by starting a fight with them. It's fucking annoying, and pathetic. It has to go.

G) Fact-check shit better. Not trying to be a deboonker here, but a lot of threads get cluttered by retards claiming shit only to not post sources, post sources that are incorrect/outdated/biased/etc, or just outright refuse to post any when asked, and an increasing number of articles have been turning out to just be satire posted by speds who don't understand the difference. This not only causes confuses, and infighting, it goes directly against the one of the site's main goals which is to accurately document information.

If it's an accident, then sure, let them off with a warning, but if a user repeatedly claims shit and refuses to post sources, or posts them with any of the issues listed above, threadban them immediately. Either put up, or shut up.

H) Immediately threadban people who repeatedly report users for stupid shit. HHH disagreeing with you is not a reportable offense. Neither is Snailslime doing it, or anyone else doing it. Shitting on politicians you like is not a reportable offense either. If it's in noncombative, non-spergy way, fucking ignore it, and move on. If you tardrage about someone having a different opinion than you, you deserve to be threadbanned, and mocked into oblivion.

 

[DumbDude42]

What I need is someone who has an idea of how to run the entire category of Autism Thunderdome, with an emphasis on maintaining unity within the community.

i do not think there can be 'unity within the community' when the community is made up of people from radically different extremes who hate each other to the core

like, on the one hand you have hardline leftist feminists on this site who, if it was subject to EU jurisdiction, would not hesitate one second before reporting the site, its users and its admin to the authorities, try to get the site banned for hosting hate speech and josh jailed for spreading violent extremist rhetoric on his weekly youtube stream.
and on the other hand you have hardcore internet nazis who sometimes fedpost hard enough to draw actual american glowie attention to the site.

i don't think these extremes can be reconciled. 'unity within the community' is impossible unless you pick one side and purge the other.

 

[CircuSphere]

I ain't no power hungry janny wanna be but I will weild the broom to ban actionable threats and shit to keep A&H open if need be.... I read the articles threads 3 or 4 times daily and I would be quite remiss in thier absence.

I just want to shit on Journos man!

 

[Absolutego]

H) Immediately threadban people who repeatedly report users for stupid shit. HHH disagreeing with you is not a reportable offense. Neither is Snailslime doing it, or anyone else doing it. If it's in noncombative, non-spergy way, fucking ignore it, and move on. If you tardrage about someone having a different opinion about you, you deserve to be threadbanned, and mocked into oblivion.

I dunno if removing a user's ability to use the report feature is a thing in Xenforo, but permanently taking that button away from them after abusing it like that would be my preferred long-term solution.
But that was also my idea for how to solve the mean stickers crisis, since my understanding is that it escalated into mutual report wars, and Null chose to take them away instead, so it probably isn't.
Would make for a GREAT Sneedforo feature though.

 

[mold]

I don't have what it takes to be a mod

the first part of wisdom

 

[R00T]

Null said he wanted a despot. Every solution has been so indecisive so I’ll propose something like a true despot.

If a thread gets more than 10 reports overall every user in the thread will be lined up, and 1/10th will be picked out and temp banned for 10days. There will be no order or reasoning.

“But Root they’ll just not use the report function.”
Appropriate reports will result in your name being removed from the pool of potential bans and that can be settled by a few trusted jannies. Mods will also be able to declare a thread “derailed” or “full of spergs” and initiate a culling. If you want to post you will keep it civil, keep it on topic, or risk losing it for a period. Reporting bad faith actors and spergs will be encouraged as it will potentially protect you. False reports will get you banned for 30 days as it’s an insult to the despot to try and pull a fast one.

It will be an adjustment, but after a few cullings there would be a begrudging peace.