Selecting a Despot for the Autism Thunderdome

The world itself is a shitty, stupid place. If you plan on discussing that world, it will eventually become a shitty stupid discussion. It's inevitable. Even academic journals intent on discussing pure science go the same way the moment something big happens in the world that can't be ignored.
Go too far one way, you get slapfights and political sperging, go too far the other way and it turns into a hugbox where dissenting opinions are banned. Unless you plan to be heavyhanded to the point of becoming Reddit 2.0, the best anyone can hope for is containment, and occasionally have someone clean up the porn.
 
I think we're at an impasse with the "no shitting up threads" goal. In my biased view, this includes slap-fighting, baitposting, and the resulting meltdowns. However, a large proportion of users quite enjoy this, see it as "banter" and a fundamental internet forum experience (some users love to go out of their way to do this). I love shitposting and dark jokes as much as the next guy, but intentionally "hugbox busting" feels more like trying to start fights "for the lolz". Maybe it's worth it for the lolcow milk? Basically I just scroll past -- maybe if we ignore it users will get board we can go back to making sometimes-informative, edgy/dark humorous, and conspiracy theories-filled posts like all good thunderdomers.

I think reporting to mods of negrates from said slap-fights, if they really are shitting up the mod queue, are dumb and should be auto-discarded. Have the submitter warned (3 strikes until ban) or something. That seems too easy of a fix and cannot be the major cause for all of AT's woes.

In any case, I'm fine with leaving it the way it is and taking a more "hands off" approach as @Secret Asshole described in his wonderful essay. If we try to go more heavy-handed with moderating shitting-up threads, as L50 tried, we may end up sliding towards SA and Reddit. If I was a mod, that's how I'd try to approach this (maybe I should be relieved nobody @'d me to be a mod -- I don't know how I'd feel about that). Getting the cool badge by my username and pfp would be snazzy though... 😎
 
Last edited:
Unfortunately, the world is shit, everything is shit.
As someone who posts in A&H, I apologize for what these spergs do. I agree that it's absolutely tiresome but that's just the internet culture of the west now. The cancer formed with Le Goobergate and it's just torn everything apart. I hope the best for you and this site man.
I hate the anti-christ
I hate the anti-christ
 
it seems to me you should have a minimum post count before you're even allowed into the politics forum, but that may only curb new users so much. What we need to do is implement a 'no shit' rule. Any post that's plainly obvious should be grounds for automatic removal from a thread, and any post that reiterates a previous point is grounds for removal. You should be expected to read the highlighted posts at MINIMUM before posting and if you can't keep track of that amount of information you shouldn't be posting in the first place. the Happenings threads shouldn't balloon past fifty pages outside of extreme cases to begin with and rules like these will drastically reduce the post count to begin with. Frankly speaking there should be a hard rule that your post is either a. funny or b. informative, and if your 'informative' post is regurgitated the same points we've heard for the last ten years it gets removed. Go to that texas shooting thread and maybe 1 in 10 posts is about the shooting itself, the rest are caught up in the gun control debate as if anyone has anything new to say about it.

Put me in coach.
 
Fedposting, baiting other users or just autistic shitting up a thread => 1 month ban for first time offense.
Do it again and it is permanent.

Unless your registration data is post 2020. Then every infraction is automatic permaban.

You have to wield an iron fist and crack some eggs. Then the rest will fall in line.

EDIT:
Bannable offences:
1, fedposting
2, tiresome sperging about the jews or the new world order
3, obvious schizo shit
4, baiting other users or hostility aggainst other users
5, retarded conspiracy theory shit about covid/vaccines/5g/bill-gates
6, shitting up a thread with one-line nonsense off-topic shit


First offence: 1 month ban from the site
Second offence: permanent ban.

@Null I am ready and willing to swing the banhammer to protect the innocence of the site and cleanse it of the filth.
I promise to ban everyone I disagree with and use the powers for my own personal gain.
Fedposting is in the too stupid to breathe category or is that, so should go one sight, but most of the rest is the great majority of the content of the autism thunderdrome. The fedposter and those of clearly similar ill will should go, but you reject all rejects. It's inhuman, lacking in love.

One prime ban rule should be for the fuckers who just copy paste without making the slight, slightest effort to make the text look right, particularly in the opening post of the a thread.

Maybe me, maybe not, just at least the killing of fed and lazy posting.
 
What happened to @CatParty ? I nominated him last time you asked for a mod; is he not still DOING IT FOR FREE....?
@CatParty isn't here to moderate so much as he's here to punish A&H by drowning us all in rage inducing articles about troonism until we literally have rage strokes that kill us.
He is Nulls endgame for doing away with A&H.
 
I went back and forth as to whether I should chime in on this. I know some people will take issue with anything I say on the topics of politics, forums, and moderation, so feel free to ignore. But here goes...

I'm probably one of the "problem users." Because my interests lie in current events, because I value the perspectives of people here and the ability to anonymously say things you can't elsewhere, I mostly post and read A&H and Happenings. No sense in trying to deny it. I wasn't an OG Chrisfan and rarely post outside of the Thunderdome. But I like the ability to do so, and there are some other topics I like to read about and contribute to now and then, so if the solution was "restrict Thunderdome posters from posting anywhere else", I would be sad.

I have seen first hand what Null is talking about, I was part of a community that was changed radically by the 2016 election and did not survive. Some would blame me, and I certainly wish things had gone differently, but I do think I learned some things applicable to here.

First, on every community I have been on for 20+ years, overmoderation is never good. The more rules, the more cult of personality with mods, the more people get personal, the worse it is.

Second, the size of a community matters. I was hyperattuned to seeing bad actors around every corner, perhaps too much, but I still can see those things, and I don't see it as much here. There are some derails, slapfights, blatantly racist and antisemitic posters, and fedposting. But the size of the community means it's naturally countered and absorbed.

Third, the biggest issues seem to be people getting pissy and whining to mods. Where I've posted over the past 20+ years, people who whine to mods, care about postcounts, regdates, and negrates are faggy babies and need to harden the fuck up. It's the internet, don't take it personally. As a once great forum once said, "Arguing on the Internet is like being in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded." Scroll down and if someone really bugs you, put them on Ignore.

Fourth, there are some really good posters in A&H and Happenings, people like Joseph Stalin, Otterly, a bunch of erudite IRL lawyers, medical professionals, chill people who make pizza, a ton of folks I forget right now but If I see their names I think "oh, that's a cool cat I respect." Would be a shame to lose all those people in a mass culling.

Fifth, there is no place on the Internet that even comes close to being a source for truth and breaking news. We have people on the insides of every industry, posting from Ukraine and Shanghai, sharing local rumors and video, weaponized autists getting real names and deets of criminals and other stories the media tries to hide. This is something Kiwifarms should be proud of. It would be a loss to the world and free thought.

Some moderation is surely needed: merging of threads, getting rid of spam, getting major derails on track (though for the most part it's a discussion forum, people should discuss what they will. I have scrolled past pages of discussion on cooking burgers in a megathread on COVID or whatever. Big whoop), timeouts for people coming in to antagonize, threaten public figures, or fed post. But the more rules you have about what can or can't be said, arbitrary limits on topics ie ending discussion after X number of pages and not just opening a new thread to stop software issues, point systems, etc--these just become a feedback loop of drama. I have seen this time and time again. Less is more. I've learned this.

Thanks to those who didn't scroll past my Ted Talk.
 
intentionally "hugbox busting" feels more like trying to start fights "for the lolz".
That's what it is a lot of times. But I think most of the "well known" users (both the loved and the hated) should be allotted partial immunity from any new restrictions. As much of a sperg as some of the hated ones are, the reaction they get says a lot more about those reacting than the posters themselves most of the time.

It's a different story when someone like @JimmyNugget is stirring the pot than when it's some "literally who?" showing up out of nowhere starting problems.
 
But there seems to be a lot of female hate on the board and it just screams "when's my government issued girlfriend coming via Amazon Prime?" I don't think they realise how pathetic they look because they are used to the circle jerk.
I want to read that stuff, I don't want it segregated to weird hard to access parts of the internet, because it's really funny
 
To make a serious suggestion

If there's gonna be like a squad of new A&H jannies

Start threadbanning people a lot more

But just for a day

If all some people are doing is slapfighting and people are complaining about it

Tell em and make em go chill out wrt that thread until tomorrow

And that's all it is, a chill out until tomorrow thing. I'd give everyone a lot of chances before going farther than that. But I'd also be pretty quick on the trigger because it's not supposed to be a big deal it's just go chill out the thread will still be there tomorrow

Maybe I need all the optimistics lol I dunno
 
@CatParty isn't here to moderate so much as he's here to punish A&H by drowning us all in rage inducing articles about troonism until we literally have rage strokes that kill us.
He is Nulls endgame for doing away with A&H.
He knows how to have fun, he’s smarter than most people here.
 
I think it's perfectly fair that well-known and established members of a community are offered greater leniency than those that nobody really knows or cares about.
Nah. That's not what you're doing. You're just being disingenuous and creating a double standard where things you like are okay and things you don't are not.
 
Back