 egoldstein says: I've done a lot of talking and writing lately about the type of environment we're trying to create here on clipmarks. I hope/think that i've been very clear. I know i've given it a great deal of thought. Please click through to the source and read the entire blog post to know where i stand. I want to be 100% clear. I am going to begin disabling accounts of users who i feel consistently violate the spirit of what this is all about. A VERY bold move Eric. Hopefully this will bring the respect users once had for each other. Hats off I have a question. I remember an account being disabled when I first came on to Clipmarks. But I believe she reaccessed Clipmarks by clicking on the activation link. So.... We learned from that  So they can't reactivate accounts now? Only 4 POPs? POPing this clip should be mandatory. Well Eric, Clipmarks is different, and that is the reason why I joined. It's so easy to hide behind the anonymity of the internet and be mean-spirited. It's so much harder to be honest, and I think I was honest in one of my clips about how I felt about comment that was left even though it would have been so much easier to not be honest. I want clipmarks to be a noble place, not a place where name-calling and hatred exits. It's going to be liberal and conservative Eric. Clipmarks is going to be a place of convictions, and let's celebrate that in a mutually respective environment. Dude, you're awesome. I'm very glad to see you making an explicit stand, not just on the need for discourse to remain civil, but also in recognizing that Clipmarks has created a forum for informed (with evidence!) exchange unique in our divisive times. However, I would offer this concern: the civility of a person's tone often functions on a sliding scale. It is directly related to the way someone with an opposing view point confronts them. I research terrorism and religious violence. My job is to have reasonable discussions with people everyone else has presumed are unreasonable. The results are always a revelation. They are normal (and reasonable) people in most facets of their lives. (Granted, some of them h... Oh, Egoldstein, thank you. As I type this I am crying. Last night I decided that I was no longer going to be a part of Clipmarks because I just cannot stomach the viciousness. This morning I logged on for the last time and saw your clip. I know you have such a good thing going in Clipmarks and for the want of a little kindness this could be the greatest spot on the entire web. let's keep clipmarks the honest, fun, learning experience we all came here for in the first place...it's up to all of us (the users)-- we're the ones that set the tone-- so let's respect our environment! thanks egoldstein! I agree with michelle. Some days I come here and think it's the last time. Then, I find a wonderful that keeps me hooked. There are other sites where the debaters can battle the issues. It doesn't feel right when a thread gets vicious. The point is lost and clippers turn away. This is a learning experience for all of us. Let's help keep eric's dream a good thing. Where else can you go to get this kind of education? I live in China, and the government has charmingly blocked wordpress lately: ouyangwulongThis is interesting, I have heard that blogger is banned in Pakistan. I don't know what end results these governments try to achieve by blocking the sites off of internet, people know that it doesn't effectively work anyway. egoldstein: I do apologize again, I didn't have all the facts regarding the ugliness of that clip and the extreme use of the clippers vulgar language. Thank you for making Clipmarks a great place to be and a fun and exciting experience for everyone to see. k9riley  Wow, eric and co. I must have missed the latest bruhaha! So sorry you’re going through this. I appreciate your efforts, and the difficulty of the task. I do love Clipmarks, and although I’m more likely to get angry or disgusted than to cry about it, I too have my days when I wonder if it’s worth the trouble. Then too, I have my days when I’m feeling frisky and tend to engage to a certain degree. I generally try to keep my comments within a certain reasonable range of civility, there are certain issues and responses that really push my buttons. Being a queer woman in a society of hate can be difficult at times. For some people a clip itself may be a slap in the face, or a direct challenge t... If you've got a conscious (preferably your own) guiding you, then I bet you have nothing to worry about. It's people who don't think before opening their mouths and repeating things they've heard that cause the most problems. Hateful speech is even more hateful when the person speaking doesn't even realize what they're saying. If clipmarks may be roiling with passion, its still better than the apathy I see in the rest of the world around me! Oh, and my faith in humanity is once again affirmed by clipmarks! I've been overwhelmed with considerate response from my fellow clippers who forwarded me the blog post!  Currently Blogspot and Wordpress domains are blocked, (Blogspot was the first about four years ago) but I'm touched that so many people would be kind enough to help me get around it by sending me the pages. In the future, if I need similar help again, I know I can count on my fellow clippers.Currently they also have pretty consistent blocks against the BBC news, Project Gutenberg (with no rational explanation possible) and Wikipedia, although I have my ways around it. Fortunately, due to the clever structure of the Cl... As for some people sometimes losing it and going over the top ...... mea culpa. That said, Clipmarks and almost every clipper here including those I may have offended in the past are a precious part of the Clipmarks experience, and so I too shall do my very best to help Eric's dream come true. My best to all of you. I haven't hacked my way around it yet : ouyangwulongThere may be a way for you to subscribe to blogs via email, couple of services I'm aware of are rssfwd and r-mail, and of course now you can email yourself (and others) the blog posts from everywhere via Google Reader. I have shared my views a while back on community experience as expounded by M. Scott Peck (I call him my guru). Scott Peck postulates that there are four stages of human spiritual development (community experience):
Another view I shared a while back is of different levels of people all coming together at one platform. It is actually impossible (in my view) to sustain a continuous fair environment for such a huge website where there are apparently no levels among different kind of people. Some people may disagree with this, but I think community within a community (i.e, user based groups) are inevitable. We're all not alike and all of us go through different phases of life all the time. It is impossible to assume that we all can live happily with each other all the time (doesn't even happen among the family let alone among strangers on the net), and it is actually Utopian to assume that everyone wil... @oyangwulong: can you post a link to your research? I am in religious studies myself and have dabbled in the study of religious violence. In fact I'm in the middle of grading a stack of papers on the topic, right now. First, this is a privately owned site and those that own it can do whatever wish to do with it (within the bounds of the law of course). Second, I don't like the thought of someone arbitrarily deciding what is civil and what is not and banning them for it. I hope this will only be done in extreme cases. Everyone is human, and can make mistakes this includes those doing the banning. And with civility being such a relative term, those with a certain ideology are more prone to forgive those that share their ideology, or not even see that something they agree with as being uncivil. Sure one can profess that they will be fair, but unfortunately the human condition says we are not fair, we discri... I've said it before and I'll say it again. Moderation is only moderation when it is truly un-biased. Anything else is censorshp. Good Job EG! I've been waiting and kinda holding my breath for ClipMarks to return to its roots a little. Remember when we were a community, able to transcend our different social environments and truly discuss our circumstances in our world today? Yes, we had different opinions but we were respectful and civilized to each other. Lately clipmarks has been a seething torment of extremes that tries to push you in one direction or the other and if you refuse to bow to their whims you are berrated until you do. I tried to ressurrect the 10 clipmandments in a hope to quell some of the hostility but noone seems interested in that type of thinking anymore. Clipmarks went public because it was a goo... Moderation is only moderation when it is truly un-biased. Anything else is censorshp.I don't pay for clipmarks so the clipdaddies can run this place anyway they see fit. If they want to censor me they can. If I don't like it I can leave. The whole thing you must remember is that before clipmarks went big there was no need for moderation or censorship because some of us were able to control ourselves. I say to anyone that doesn't like it to just leave and go on with their lives. If I get a warning that I am being unclipmarky then I will either change my ways to conform to the rules or walk away. If you don't agree with the rules just find somewhere else to go online. Right move, definitely! I hope I will not appear on your black list one day, Eric, because I find I am sharp sometimes when one attacks me without reasonable arguments but just because my way of thinking is not on the same wavelength with his. I believe it is right to be sharp, but exclusively on argument level, never on personal level. I believe, too, that more I am sharp with my arguments more I should be careful and civil on personal level. arifsali, thank you for Scott Peck postulates – I like them as good starting-point for contemplating. 1.) As I have just started clipping I believe that this will help me as well as various other thing before you act. 2.) All humans make mistakes but only the truly vulgar and obscene should be banned. If the control is lacking then go ahead and ban away. 3.) Clipmarks should be a place were the mind can be nurtured for grow and development as well for live long education, but it should not lack the emotions that give a debate it thrill. Like white with a hint of gray. Unless you make it a complete private place, your not going to keep the trouble makers out. Too many ways around disabling accounts. They will just come back making things even worse. Okay, BD!!! Cut it out! *LOL* (we have to stop meeting like this... people will talk! )with civility being such a relative term, those with a certain ideology*Bravo* every comment I post I will say to your face. I know this because most As a long time user of CM I can recall quite a few occasions (as will others) when moderation was the only recourse. The fellas let things go for as long as they could, longer than some of us wanted. They were steadfast in their belief of freedom to express one's opinion. However, freedom to express your opinion does NOT give you the right to verbally abuse someone. Just as my compadre Skwirls says, we don't pay to use this site therefore it is totally their decision as to what they allow or not allow. You have the choice to stick around or say goodbye. A few more thoughts on freedom of expression... EG's responsiblity to preserve the freedom of clipmarks includes a responsiblity to protect that freedom from others as well. Those who abuse, badger, intimidate, belittle or demean others are taking the freedom away of those clippers they berate. By removing them, he preserves our freedom to speak freely. (There is in fact legal precedent for this interpretation on a larger scale, which I will clip when I find it.) And the freedom to express ourselves implies the responsibility to do so meaningfully. People who abuse freedoms undermine the implicit social contract between themselves and the society that provides those freedoms. Oh, and Enb... the founder set down a set of principles to be followed and the users have done all the policing.You haven't visited Craigslist lately, have you? The user policing is horrendous in some forums, bordering on open harassment and threats. The staff is often very slow or non-responsive to complaints. thats why places like craigslist is great. the founder set down a set of principles to be followed and the users have done all the policing. thats the essence of 2.0...Craigslist Forums are not the hot ticket, they ARE a mess. The listings, however are continually policed by the user communtity. There is a button on every listing that allows you to flag the listing as SPAM or innapropraite. That's what works. When the owner starts seeing a bunch of flags going up on a certain user or their listings, the problem is dealt with. Craigs is no slouch site either, they were offered over 125 million and they turned it down. They must be... Quite true, Napster, and that's what I'd like to see here. A button on comments where users can report inappropriate conduct, but the user themselves is not blocked from clips at large. Addendum. I resist the idea of user blocking because, by silencing a user from clips at large without explanation, it gives the impression that a user is a problem or troublemaker. When, in fact, they may have just ruffled the fur of one person for whatever reason. Good point. I was *actually* blocked by a user here, but I didn't block them. I have nothing to hide from or block. I am above all that. Good job Goldi. I'm glad you're doing this. Most people on here are very civilized anyway, but yes, I've seen quite a few 'bad apples' nonetheless. Kudos, bud. egoldstein, you do not have to justify the new guidelines, but it's nice that you did. and making it clear. but all of us at some time or another got our button push a bit too hard, and before we know it we had pressed the 'enter' key...oops too late for retraction...even Abraham Lincoln, according to him, had wrote some pretty nasty letters when he was flamed, but instead of mailing these letters, he had kept them in his desk drawers. And as his temper cooled he destroyed them. my point is that i (although i am a quite a cool guy, how cool? so cool that i had sometimes resort to 'anti-freezing' agent) myself, needed some reminders on 1.) anger management, and 2.) good communicat... 1. Make use of smileys. (it buffers the punch.)This is advice I use all the time, though more smileys to choose from would be greatly appreciated! (Nugde nugde clipfathers...again.) <insert begging smiley here> 5. Ease off the caffeine.Now THIS is just taking things a little too far sidegik! Nobody touches the coffee!! Let's not even go there!! *LOL* Other than that, sometimes posing something as a question, instead of a postulate makes a clip or a comment more approachable, I think. Don't you? . I like it! I'm very glad to see you making an explicit stand, not just on the needThank you! Many people need to learn the difference between debating opinion and fact. Fact: Oranges contain vitamin C. Opinion: Oranges are the best source of vitamin C. In my opinion, it's very hard to have a constructive debate where one person is stating a fact and the other is debating an opinion. Either debate fact vs. fact (providing accurate facts, not just more opinions, as evidence) or opinion vs. opinion. Or things can get really nasty, really fast. P.S. It's really hard to debate fact vs. fact, unless your debating the validity of the source of the facts...which then turns it into a debate of fact vs. opinion, where someone's opinion is that someone else's source is invalid. *oops, you're I think I should be drinking that cup of green tea right about now. I must add one advice for myself and maybe for some other “non Anglo natives” (you see what I am doing…): never stop to learn English! If you don’t know full mining of some word association, you can insult somebody unintentionally or you can “only” make a fool from yourselves (…unintentionally). Off cause this can’t be excuse for any insolence, but it can be good reason for me (and alike) to be even more careful, especially when I find myself on the age of confrontation. Smiley is great idea because it uses universal (if not even cosmic) language – smile! I say to anyone that doesn't like it to just leave and go on with their lives.Amen! I couldn't have said it better myself - and I've tried. If issues of censorship and freedom of speech are so important to some people, then they should find somewhere else to express themselves OR start their own forum where there are no rules or censorship. That's the great thing about the Internet. If you don't like someone's site, create your own! Also, that there are people who d... Unless you make it a complete private place, your not going to keep theYou don't disable rules because they are hard to enforce. Rules are made because circumstances have proven them necessary. So what if people get around the bans? The rule of civility is the standard to which all of our behavior is being held. That way, when someone doesn't follow that standard, there is a rule in place to justify the next action, which is to ban that person. sometimes posing something as a question, instead of a postulate makes a clip or a comment more approachablethisname..., that is a good idea, i have noted that myself. If you don’t know full mining of some word association, youduvelic, i can see your dot (point). < (illustrating your point.) If you don't agree with the rules just find somewhere else to go online. - skwirlinatorskwirlinator, things that are addictive are hard to break away ...sugar, cola, caffeine, irritability, and... clipmarks. It's really hard to debate fact v... LOL! Probably this was one of the most important clips of EricG and I'm applauding here. |
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