Official Off Topic Discussion Thread #1

[Chicxulub]

Hey man theres something that you guys should consider. For quite some time now theres a tactic being used that doesnt seem to get resolved unless its dealt with at the source. Members will see a thread or discussion that either they dont like or disagree with and start posting political or outlandish stuff, then get the thread locked effectively silencing the discussion that they dislike instead of just moving along.

I get what headbanger_jib is saying "Well how we handle such occurrences is upto us mods"

Unless the person who posts the inappropriate material is dealt with or just their comment deleted this tactic will continue.

I fully understand its a free site and our membership can be cancelled at any time. I guess we'll have to see how this new implementation is going to be rolled out and decided how enjoyable the site is moving forward.

Agreed, this is a big part of the problem.

Politics has no place here. Religion has no place here. Politicized topics that could cause fights have no place here.

This is intended to be a fish forum with an off topic section. We've become an off topic chan/subreddit type thing with a vague fish theme.

A course correction is needed to get us back on topic. There's been times in the past when the Lounge was closed for a period; I'm seriously considering taking that route again, though I would really prefer not to have to go that far. And I am fairly certain that someone will take that as some sort of veiled threat and be offended and feel patronized. Can't help that. I can only be direct, and I intend to be.

I know that this whole thing is going to basically piss off the entire Lounge crew, but I don't see any way to accomplish my goal of driving the forum forward to discuss fish and cut back on fighting without trying to remove the aspects of discussion that seem to be responsible for the infighting. Driving discussion in the on topic sections of the forum is the most important thing. Removing the ability to discuss these items that cause members to fight is what drove the last golden age of the forum. Hopefully bringing back these standards will drive a renaissance.

 

[Warborg]

We want all our members to have a great experience as long as they're on our forum, and I am sure, most members here, are not on our forum to discuss off topic issues,

While it's true I did sign up here because of fish. At times it does become boring. Right now I'm down to 1 tank with just 4 fish that hide all the time( 1 will come out if I'm around the tank). Most of the time when I go to a post about fish, the comments I want to say have already been said so I don't bother. You can say I agree so may times.

The lounge opens this up to a wide variety of things such as getting to know people more(what their other interests are). To be honest my activity on this site would drop dramatically if it was about fish only.

 

[skjl47]

Gentlemen, I never said to waterboard any child.

I said they should see a demonstration.
But I can see how this was easily misunderstood.
You guys have a lot to read.

we will be starting to watch out more for threads / comments that have potential for being taken the wrong way...

while some of the older folks / fluent english speakers get that the comment was made as tongue in cheek, some may get offended by it, so please dont take it personally...

Hello; The above exchange highlights, to my way of thinking, a potential problem with the stated goals. let me use an example from my teaching days. I used a joke with students. It went either "I hear you eat vittles" or "I hear you slumber in the bed". A play on words joke. Vittles is a word for any food. Slumber is a word for sleep. Well one morning I get called into the principals office. The parents of a student were incensed over one of these jokes. When I understood the issue I was relieved figuring it could be easily resolved. Not the case however. Even after my explaining the joke the parents refused to let it go. Even now I do not know if they were truly ignorant or just were not going to let it go once their mad was up. I wound up being chewed out by the principal in front of them and had to sit and take it.

let me use a different example. In the recent animal cruelty thread I used a term that bothered some other members, "blood lust". Over the course of a few posts we seem to have worked out our differences. None of us resorted to the tactic of using banned language and were very careful to respect each other.
By the propose enforcement instructions I see in the last day or so each offended person is to report to you mods first thing. At this point I do not understand how this will make your task any simpler. See more below.

Unless the person who posts the inappropriate material is dealt with or just their comment deleted this tactic will continue.

Hello; For a year or two some of us have been trying to point out a serious problem with the approach used in the policing of the site. Jaws7777 stated it well. At some point in a disputed thread some individual or individuals will get nasty and go beyond the TOS. The tactic of just closing the entire thread gets the job done I guess but has often left me with frustration. I have been trying hard to stay civil and stay within the bounds but I get shut down the same as the offenders.

What you can do to save such threads is report the posts that don't agree with the ToS, and we can keep the thread alive

Hello; I understand my place and will be watching to see how this plays out. Back when I was being chewed out by my school principal because two parents either did not understand my joke or simply chose not to understand I had to sit and take it. My job was on the line. I like this site for two reasons. One is it is about a hobby I have been into for over 50 years. That is the lesser of why I like the site. I like to a greater degree the lounge and an exchange of off hobby ideas.
I understand the lounge needs to be civil but am not at this point sure the approach so far proposed by you Mods will work out the way you want. My respects to you all and I am watchfully waiting the outcome.

 

[Warborg]

A course correction is needed to get us back on topic. There's been times in the past when the Lounge was closed for a period; I'm seriously considering taking that route again, though I would really prefer not to have to go that far. And I am fairly certain that someone will take that as some sort of veiled threat and be offended and feel patronized. Can't help that. I can only be direct, and I intend to be.

I know that this whole thing is going to basically piss off the entire Lounge crew, but I don't see any way to accomplish my goal of driving the forum forward to discuss fish and cut back on fighting without trying to remove the aspects of discussion that seem to be responsible for the infighting. Driving discussion in the on topic sections of the forum is the most important thing. Removing the ability to discuss these items that cause members to fight is what drove the last golden age of the forum. Hopefully bringing back these standards will drive a renaissance.

You posted this as I was typing. The Lounge seems to have this reputation as to being this evil place. I've seen just as much arguing in the fish section as here. The common ones are over too small a tank or who likes what fish food. And even it can get 'political' too such as a member stealing fish and getting praised for it (by mods and members) but the thread went on far too long.

 

[Chicxulub]

You posted this as I was typing. The Lounge seems to have this reputation as to being this evil place. I've seen just as much arguing in the fish section as here. The common ones are over too small a tank or who likes what fish food. And even it can get 'political' too such as a member stealing fish and getting praised for it (by mods and members but the thread went on far too long.

I don't view the Lounge as THE problem, just the center of it.

Enforcement will be everywhere. That's the main reason I've onboarded so many new mods.

 

[Steve_C]

While it's true I did sign up here because of fish. At times it does become boring. Right now I'm down to 1 tank with just 4 fish that hide all the time( 1 will come out if I'm around the tank). Most of the time when I go to a post about fish, the comments I want to say have already been said so I don't bother. You can say I agree so may times.

The lounge opens this up to a wide variety of things such as getting to know people more(what their other interests are). To be honest my activity on this site would drop dramatically if it was about fish only.

Basically the same way I feel as well. Yes this is a fish site, but lets be honest after being around for a number of years, how much can you talk about the same fish topics every single day? Yes I came here for fish talk, but after sharing all my tanks, replying to newbie questions, and asking the questions I needed to ask, you start to see the exact same fish threads again and again. So this area gives you a reason to stay here and still get into the fish talk when there's a thread that is different from the same stuff that been talked about time & time again. Just about every popular website has an area such as this. On my site it is called the Lodge, here it's the lounge, other sites it's called general chatter. Without an area like this members really don't spend quite as much time on a site on a daily bases. I'm probably on this site at least 12-20 rimes per day because there's a number of "online friendships" that I have made with people and I like to talk/get to know them better. If that goes away then just like Warborg said my activity here will probably follow suit.

And that's not some veiled threat or anything like that. You can't "offend" me because I'm not the type of person that jumps to the offend button and thinks things have to be my way. As I said before I run a pretty comparable site to this one only outdoor related, and I know if a handful of members left it wouldn't really change how popular the site is in any way, but I do care about the input of my more active members, and I would hope that you guys that run this site would feel the same way here.

 

[jaws7777]

I agree with borg theres sections i completely avoided for a while and will start avoiding again. Could i be part of the problem sure... could i just ignore stuff... maybe. Maybe not.

Countless comments and threads have been taken out of context in many sections on here. Even after a post was explained... it just happened on a thread a few days ago. Guy explained his comment was not to offend women and still he was flamed.


It was mentioned that water boarding joke may have been taken as offensive due to us members being from different regions. I guess a joke in one place is not a joke in another. Why not just ask the member what he meant by the comment ? Or remove the comment ? Surely deleting a comment requires the same amount of work as locking a thread.

I get it we live in a PC culture but maybe we can also be a litlte less overly sensative. I still cant see how the water boarding comment was taken seriously and if so why not just delete imo the over all tone was politicized and interpreted by a mod or mods as being something THEY personally disagreed with. Im not trying to fan the flames just putting my thoughts out there.

 

[headbanger_jib]

While it's true I did sign up here because of fish. At times it does become boring. Right now I'm down to 1 tank with just 4 fish that hide all the time( 1 will come out if I'm around the tank). Most of the time when I go to a post about fish, the comments I want to say have already been said so I don't bother. You can say I agree so may times.

The lounge opens this up to a wide variety of things such as getting to know people more(what their other interests are). To be honest my activity on this site would drop dramatically if it was about fish only.

Well we all have such tanks, where people look at them and are happy looking at the dithers or the feeders, whereas the main fish for what the tank was setup hides in a dark corner

 

[RD.]

Politics has no place here. Religion has no place here. Politicized topics that could cause fights have no place here.

This is intended to be a fish forum with an off topic section. We've become an off topic chan/subreddit type thing with a vague fish theme.

A course correction is needed to get us back on topic. There's been times in the past when the Lounge was closed for a period; I'm seriously considering taking that route again, though I would really prefer not to have to go that far. And I am fairly certain that someone will take that as some sort of veiled threat and be offended and feel patronized. Can't help that. I can only be direct, and I intend to be.

I know that this whole thing is going to basically piss off the entire Lounge crew, but I don't see any way to accomplish my goal of driving the forum forward to discuss fish and cut back on fighting without trying to remove the aspects of discussion that seem to be responsible for the infighting. Driving discussion in the on topic sections of the forum is the most important thing. Removing the ability to discuss these items that cause members to fight is what drove the last golden age of the forum. Hopefully bringing back these standards will drive a renaissance.

Bravo!

And that's not me hating the Lounge, or any of the people that post in it, that's me agreeing with not liking the direction that this forum has taken over the past few years. I agree with Rob when he stated: "We've become an off topic chan/subreddit type thing with a vague fish theme." It certainly seems that way at times.

Back in the good ol days mods like Phil (Oddball) took no prisoners, no back & forth, there's the door, see you later. We lost some good members that got a wee bit too caught up in things, some were/are friends of mine, offline as well as online, but the overall membership got the message.

This isn't a democracy, and it isn't the United States of MFK. It's a private site that was designed around fishkeeping, and ultimately Li decides what's ok, and what isn't. The admin/mods are simply attempting to enforce that.

Guy explained his comment was not to offend women and still he was flamed.

He was called out for his initial comment, go back & re-read it. Nice spin, but not reality. Female type response .... means only one thing when I read it. I don't plan on going back & forth over this, it is what it is, and I would hope that member said it in the heat of the moment. I was simply pointing out how those types of comments are probably not welcome by most of the female population here. Not flaming, just pointing out how ridiculous as well as demeaning it was.

 

[Chicxulub]

I would hope that you guys that run this site would feel the same way here.

We certainly do. We've tried to allow open discussions here, but the problem is that it quite clearly doesn't work.

People fight over dumb things. The one and only concept I believe probably everyone in the US can agree on is that basically everyone is on edge and ready to throw down over anything at the drop of a hat.

For example. Let's say someone makes a thread along the lines of "Dude! Have you seen the 2020 Shelby GT500? This thing is awesome!"

We all know that the thread will turn into Mopar and Chevy guys defending the honor of their brand, with the Ford guys going in on them and everyone picking on the random Nissan guy that pops up. Some people will get heated, some arguments will occur, people will end up working it out and laughing.

So be it. I don't care.

The problem is when one random guy pops up and is all "F- Ford, they have factories in MEXICO! We need American jobs back and a tariff!"

Of course, someone else will come back with something along the lines of "No! F you and F Trump!", and down the rabbit hole we go until eventually someone gets called a Nazi and we go full Godwin's law.

THAT is the nonsense I want to put the brakes on. How does allowing that behavior help make the forum a better place?

If I can level the playing field FOR ALL OF YOU and take away that political nonsense, maybe we can keep threads open and not scare off new people *shrug*

And fwiw, believe it or not, I'm a military loving, gun toting, truck driving redneck. I'd get along great with a lot of you all OUTSIDE of MFK. Hell, when I was in the Army I was military police. I found the video in question to have been reprehensible.

Still though, none of that changes my opinion that stuff like that video does not belong here.