Submitted by Fossidarity admin in meta (edited )

I might have a possible solution for the problem where a lot of threads end up in heated off-topic discussions and sometimes even name-calling: I would like to move those discussions to a new posts in a forum specifically made for that, maybe something like /f/mediation or something new like /f/discussion. I would like to do it with a message, something like:

This discussion is deemed off-topic and has been moved to raddle.me/f/discussion/topic. Please continue this discussion there in a civil manner. You will be banned when you continue the discussion here.

The idea behind this is to keep the drama contained and make sure it doesn't spread to every topic on Raddle without silencing the discussion but just by moving it to it's own place.

Any thoughts?

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hotcool wrote (edited )

I like how you grabbed the bull by the horns Foss, but do you think you can contain the toxic comments by doing it this way?

You can't tell a disease where to spread. It spreads where it wants.

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Fossidarity OP wrote

I'm not sure if it's possible to fully contain them but I hope it will help a bit.

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dele_ted wrote

I'm on the fence with this one. It sounds good in practice, but i can see a lot of potential issues with it too. Mainly, i think the people who would accept it and continue their discussion in the new thread are not the same people that this proposal is designed to protect against.

Then there's the issues with making everything more complicated and giving administrators even more power and responsibilities, which i don't think is a good idea at all.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Sounds reasonable and would help sometimes. I would do this already but haven't had the energy. It takes quite a bit of work to maintain that level of participation when mods/posters aren't actively doing it for the spaces they curate.

Perhaps we need to do a mod drive to get more people actively working on spaces.

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Fossidarity OP wrote

I would like to put the energy into it and do it actively. What forum would you recommend for this, /f/discussion, /f/mediation or something else?

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I don't recommend you take on draining tasks on your own but if you'd like to that's of course fine. One of the problems with this space is the unequal distribution of workload.

f/discussion sounds fine. Rather than f/discussion you could also the f/lobby as a default (and avoid having another new forum for arguments), but depending on the type of interaction it might be worthwhile to decide on the spot where to send it. It may even be more appropriate for some other forum.

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Fossidarity OP wrote

My hope is that it will be a bigger initial effort but that on the long run a culture will be created where the people who've been on Raddle longer take on these tasks themselves.

I've created the /f/discussion forum and made you a mod as well. Should this somehow be part of the ToS?

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Wouldn't be for me to decide. If you think it's worthwhile then make a proposal about it.

I generally prefer to keep things informal.

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____deleted____ wrote

Oppose. Given my ban from lobby, I'm forced to assume this will happen much too often, and be used very often to snip away what was hardly an issue. It's a nice idea, but as most powers used by admins/moderators/any authority, I doubt it will be used nicely in practice.

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Fossidarity OP wrote

But the administrative power won't be used to silence people, it will only be used to move conversation topics to the right place.

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