Feedback How do you want us to moderate?

[-D.M.-]

DON'T BE CALGUNS! You literally couldn't open your mouth towards the end without getting a 3-day or more ban. Let people disagree, that's what debate is all about. Just keep the nastiness and personal attacks to an absolute minimum in this place will be great. Oh yeah, let us tell people selling their p365 for $2,700 that they're an idiot without being banished to the wasteland for thread-crapping

Not being calguns also means not giving every heel a soapbox to jump up on at every opportunity. It means not giving oxygen to every troll "just asking questions". It means not shouting someone down because their belief system doesn't 100% align with yours.

It means being a community again. Not just a collection of curmudgeons and chicken littles with completely binary thought processes.

 

[Hopi.]

Why don’t they hang out in forums like CGN if it is full of history? Many are on Reddit, IG, FB, YouTube. That’s where I was before I made this site. Reddit/FB/IG is very active with younger folks.

The large group you have includes a lot of Gen X’ers. There’s plenty, don’t get me wrong but we want an environment where everyone from all platforms can come and not be hated on. Our niche was the marketplace and organizing information. The hole is saw was of all those platforms information isn’t organized you have to keep searching. A lot of people are finding us more and more from google and other places. Like I said, we’re trying to support 200 competitors on a weekend at my range, I had 140.

Nobody really hangs out in forums anymore. They are repositories for generational knowledge, and the only place where gun and gun parts sales between private parties can be transacted without fees.
I enjoy the discourse around real time litigation and strategy so I check in when significant developments occur. Frankly, 99% of that strategy involves electing the right people and making substantive progress towards healing the courts. Which was my point earlier in this thread about the balance, what good does it do if 75% of the people you introduce to shooting actively undermine the right with their vote because they are not subjected to critical interrogation?

The question remains. Who is underrepresented? Sadly, a poop emoji response is about what I expected from that side of the argument in 2024.

 

[ikeo1]

Which was my point earlier in this thread about the balance, what good does it do if 75% of the people you introduce to shooting actively undermine the right with their vote because they are not subjected to critical interrogation?

This is the point. You aren’t interrogating the person here. It’s a bunch of opinions with no end. There are other forums specifically for that. I’m content with introducing people to shooting and allowing them to decide for themselves.

I prefer to keep balance. You already know how he feels via emoji and know it won’t go anywhere. So why waste the energy? If you were me, how would you go about moderating. I’m always open to other perspectives considering you seem like you understand the balance I’m trying to keep while still growing the site.

Personally, I was working on “Pending / SPF” label for the Classifieds. Where would you as a user of the site want my time spent? Moderating or making more tweaks. Should I be more relaxed?

 

[Hopi.]

This is the point. You aren’t interrogating the person here. It’s a bunch of opinions with no end. There are other forums specifically for that. I’m content with introducing people to shooting and allowing them to decide for themselves.

I prefer to keep balance. You already know how he feels via emoji and know it won’t go anywhere. So why waste the energy? If you were me, how would you go about moderating. I’m always open to other perspectives considering you seem like you understand the balance I’m trying to keep while still growing the site.

Personally, I was working on “Pending / SPF” label for the Classifieds. Where would you as a user of the site want my time spent? Moderating or making more tweaks. Should I be more relaxed?

Interrogating ideas, not people, with decorum and the common expectation that bad ideas should be challenged in an articulate way. I would suggest that a poop emoji response is as offensive/dismissive as the phrase “millennial rainbows”, but neither should be censored/moderated.

I moderate a couple of groups with wide demographics and general rules outlining polite behavior is effective for 99% of the users. Most people understand social norms. The 1% that don’t understand get a warning and then the boot if persistent. It’s not about content, it’s about tact and respect. Culling the 1% fringe doesn’t burden growth. CGN is notorious for bad moderating based on content, where identical rude and abusive tones are treated differently based on the bias of the admin. There have been entire new forums pop up during the last 20 years because of that alone.

Keep focusing on functional superiority and refining the classifieds. As the site grows I suspect the classifieds will see the most traffic, traffic which probably will have little consistent overlap into the other areas of the forum. Basically those that “hang around” are going to be a small percentage of traffic. My goal would be removing barriers for sellers and buyers to increase transactional lubricity and drive traffic to your most valuable resource.

 

[AndyZ]

Growth is hard and when you get a mix of people from several places, there's bound to be conflict. We're trying our best to keep the vibe here chill and welcoming. As such, we do delete posts or parts of them from time to time and want your feedback.

We're not banning anyone, unless they're spammers or potential threats, but we do moderate quite a bit. We try to neutralize any before they start because we've seen what can happen and don't want that to happen here.

So I'm asking do you approve of moderation? Our goal is not to censor anything, we like discourse. It is hard on our part since we're still getting the hang of it. So I'm opening it up for discussion as the site grows and I am getting more reports in general.

If we delete your post or parts of it, it's because we're trying to keep things chill without escalating things.

Honestly, all I want is for you to figure out how to hack calguns and inbox everybody with a link to this site so the older heads don't miss out. This site is head and shoulders above calguns and it makes me sad so many are unaware.

 

[46knuck]

We will see how this all goes but I remember back on Calgun I brought up how the NRA had shot itself in the foot and I like many others had dropped their membership. I was immediately called a commie democrat and many other nasty things. I had explained that I would return when the NRA cleaned up their act but no, that made some even angrier. It was not my fault that WLP and the NRA board screwed up causing 1 million members to leave.

 

[-D.M.-]

We will see how this all goes but I remember back on Calgun I brought up how the NRA had shot itself in the foot and I like many others had dropped their membership. I was immediately called a commie democrat and many other nasty things. I had explained that I would return when the NRA cleaned up their act but no, that made some even angrier. It was not my fault that WLP and the NRA board screwed up causing 1 million members to leave.

I got a similar response when I mentioned how the NRA had abandoned states like California and had dropped my membership a long while ago. The problem isn't that there was a dissenting opinion to my reasoning, it was the the moderator(s) deemed the personal attacks and name-calling an acceptable response to someone who presented a different point of view.

CalgunsOT is essentially an echo chamber with a handful of fudds who get their entire worldview from an information bubble that's extremely narrow in scope. And because the mod(s), admin(s) or owner's view, for the time being anyway, aligns with this handful of cretins, they're allowed to run roughshod over the OT and drive away users.

Not the most sound business strategy.

 

[Tere_Hanges]

I got a similar response when I mentioned how the NRA had abandoned states like California and had dropped my membership a long while ago. The problem isn't that there was a dissenting opinion to my reasoning, it was the the moderator(s) deemed the personal attacks and name-calling an acceptable response to someone who presented a different point of view.

CalgunsOT is essentially an echo chamber with a handful of fudds who get their entire worldview from an information bubble that's extremely narrow in scope. And because the mod(s), admin(s) or owner's view, for the time being anyway, aligns with this handful of cretins, they're allowed to run roughshod over the OT and drive away users.

Not the most sound business strategy.

Yup. It will be "interesting" to see what happens as the Calguns OT trolls find out there are less people to bully over there and start migrating here to "interrogate ideas" and "just ask questions". It all sounds so innocent and reasonable. However, their true intent is to create a situation where they can begin bullying and abusing others.

 

[fifer55]

Yup. It will be "interesting" to see what happens as the Calguns OT trolls find out there's less people to bully over there and start migrating here to "interrogate ideas".

easy, they will be migrated out.

They can change names or handles, but they views don't and wont be able to resist their old ways and thats when they are identified.

as other of said here, they love to name call and say we are easily offended, but in my experience, it's the other way around...

 

[Tere_Hanges]

easy, they will be migrated out.

They can change names or handles, but they views don't and wont be able to resist their old ways and thats when they are identified.

as other of said here, they love to name call and say we are easily offended, but in my experience, it's the other way around...

They live in glass mansions. It's ironic how they think they're so tough, yet completely lose it when they receive even a fraction of what they spew

 

[fifer55]

They live in glass mansions. It's weird how they think they are so tough but literally lose their chit when anyone dishes out just a shred of what they spew.

they demand respect, but don't know how to give it.

and that's what it's all about, respect. Funny thing, I thought they of all people would know about that!

 

[ikeo1]

Regardless of what it is, its a good space for that community. I've always been an advocate of both sites being available. I always believed it would come back and after initial actions I do think @DrJonesUSA is doing the right things and on the right path to stabilize the system.

The guys there need a place to discuss the topics they want and here, we welcome everyone but enforce our standard. We're definitely more narrow in our scope but I prefer it that way. I think we'll retire the ghost badge at the end of the month of September.

I can get back to working on my other projects. It's been another interesting saga. We'll see how many decide to stay and go but its good that people have the option to bounce around.

Ultimately, the site is doing better and better and I appreciate everyone who's helped spread the word and let people know there's another player in the space.

 

[Tere_Hanges]

they demand respect, but don't know how to give it.

and that's what it's all about, respect. Funny thing, I thought they of all people would know about that!

I don't think they are looking for mutual respect. They want total domination.

 

[DrJonesUSA]

Well, let's go through the statements that I quoted above, and for each of them everyone can determine for themselves whether they are false or true. For statements that are calls to action, instead feel free to determine whether they are desirable. And some of the statements are about the quoted user's mental state, which we can't evaluate:

• I feel like a caged Gorilla right about now
• I'd love nothing more, than to crack some f'ing liberal skulls
• Cracking f'ing liberal skulls is desirable and should be done
• Liberals have f'ing skulls, not regular skulls.
• The recent shooting at a Trump rally was an evil/liberal assassination conspiracy attempt
• There exists an evil/liberal conspiracy
• Trump is our true CIC/POTUS, life
• The evil liberal mother fu*kers are given free rein to attack our Country (our Freedoms)
• This should be a warning to everyone, meaning we need to take action against the evil liberal mother fu*kers
• CalGuns OT are (at least some) weak pathetic liberal pussies
• These weak pathetic liberal pussies only care about the f*cking Ukraine
• Here in America, our Country/Freedoms are being systematically destroyed
• And they are being destroyed by these filthy self-serving Treasonous MF'S

Nearly all the things said here are about politics, in the widest sense. Whether the above statements and instructions are true of false depends on everyone's personal views. But to your second question, whether they offensive or scary, here is my personal opinion: No, I don't find them scary at all; I think that person and all his fellow travelers do not pose a serious risk to either me or our society by doing violence. While political violence does exist in the US, it is not now (and never has been and isn't likely to become) of a scale that threatens my personal safety, or the survival and functioning of society and the state. There is a grave threat to our political system, but it doesn't come through violence, but through polarization, leading to disrespecting and ignoring the truth, societal norms, and the law.

Do I find these statements offensive? Absolutely not. Because they reflect the opinion of not just one person, but a significant fraction of the population. And honestly, it doesn't matter to me whether they are expressed with swear words or in fancy English. I have a very high tolerance for people speaking their mind, and I'm a free speech advocate in pretty much all realms.

What I do find offensive is outright lies. In particular in form of bad advice on legal questions. But offensive doesn't necessarily mean that speech should be prohibited; I think wrong statements in that realm should be argued and corrected.

The question we are discussing here in this thread is not whether the above statements (and many other similar ones) are true or false, or whether they are offensive, perhaps depending on using swearwords or the King's English. What we are discussing is whether in this particular forum they should be allowed or not. The reason this is an important question is that certain forms of speech make a discussion hard or impossible. What do you say to someone who advocates "cracking f'ing liberal skulls"? That this would be a crime, punishable under sections X, Y and Z of the California penal code? That political violence is not the answer and doesn't make our society work better? That cracking f'ing conservative skulls is also a good idea? That the statement is out of order because of the f-bomb? Is there any expectation that arguing with this particular poster is going to change his mind? That having a discussion about cracking skulls will make any difference whatsoever? That a constructive debate is possible when some forum members don't argue the points, but suggest cracking the other members' skulls?

Well I must say this;
Irrespective of WTF you believe, I really like & respect you.
You are clearly one of those VERY rare individuals - and I hope I don't offend you - who doesn't go off like an unhinged, overly-emotional toddler when you are faced with someone who differs - even slightly - in thought & opinion from you.

Weirdo!!!

In all seriousness; you really deserve praise for being so objective about statements that most would find inflammatory, offensive, etc. - just on its face.
I truly can't empathize with people like that.
How weak; how feeble; how pathetic your beliefs & opinions must be if you literally are mentally & emotionally incapable of merely LISTENING to differing perspectives without getting worked up into a rabid lather.

I definitely agree that outright namecalling; libel, slander, just being mean, rude & nasty, is uncalled for & warrants a ban. I do not think posts such as that should be edited nor removed; I love it when people like that speak up because then we know all we need to about them.
Let their words stand like a monument to their emotional & psychological f

Again; I don't care what you personally believe, mr. Treelogger; the simple fact you are a rare human capable of calmly & rationally discussing differing viewpoints makes you a gem in my book.

 

[goodcitizendefense]

This thread has been very enlightening to the opinions of members/admin here. Shocking even...

...general rules outlining polite behavior is effective for 99% of the users. Most people understand social norms. The 1% that don’t understand get a warning and then the boot if persistent. It’s not about content, it’s about tact and respect. Culling the 1% fringe doesn’t burden growth...

This 100%
If moderators find themselves busy "moderating" more than 1%, they may be doing it wrong.

 

[ikeo1]

This thread has been very enlightening to the opinions of members/admin here. Shocking even...

This 100%
If moderators find themselves busy "moderating" more than 1%, they may be doing it wrong.

This is why we brought this topic up. I don't like moderating but I had to based on the growing membership. We're now at 5,000 validated members and conversations were morphing. My focus is not to moderate bickering, so I opened it up to the floor for feedback. I like to focus on technology security and how it can help the community and be more engaging.

 

[NASAcollector]

I was banned for 30 days from CGN, for trying to help new buyers avoid a slimey POS, who waas selling a badly rusted and poorly refinished Browning Hi Power. The mods refused to protect new gun guys from buying something that was absolute garbage. They blamed me for thread crapping, something I never do and some poor guy bought a gun I wouldn't let my worst enemy buy.

 

[CalgunsMothershipAwayTeam]

Moderate like a capricious and often drunk Roman Emperor.