Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[benji]

harassment and doxxing is when you notice something I don't want you to mention

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

A member of my staff's home was posted on a harassment site and your discord refuses to even try and clean house. To get rid of the most toxic shitlords who are driving this. Instead of that you sit there and justify doxxing and personal threats.

There's a response written up, policy changes all ready to go, fucking fault being admitted and apologies written. But instead now we have to deal with doxxing and targeted harassment.

Is this the discord getting clipped for the picture posted here?

Hi B-dubs! Yes, Nep's home was posted yesterday on these forums. Why are you reading this hate forum? 

[Besticus Maximus]

Nepenthe is the toxic shitlord, Bdubs. And we're not in the discord, some of us have never even registered to your bullshit forum, it's just famous across the internet for being stupid

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

So posting public Twitter accounts is "doxxing" now?

I thought offsite posts don't matter? Now Discord does? I'm so confused. 

[benji]

Thanks for confirming it's Nepenthe's house!

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Nepenthe is the toxic shitlord, Bdubs. And we're not in the discord, some of us have never even registered to your bullshit forum, it's just famous across the internet for being stupid

Cannot confirm nor deny that I am Twohearts.

[TylenolJones]

There's a response written up, policy changes all ready to go, fucking fault being admitted and apologies written. But instead now we have to deal with doxxing and targeted harassment.

We were so close.

[benji]

There's a response written up, policy changes all ready to go, fucking fault being admitted and apologies written. But instead now we have to deal with doxxing and targeted harassment.

 This doesn't seem mutually exclusive in the slightest.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Maybe plagiarize should've apologized earlier instead of doubling and tripling down.

[TylenolJones]

1710104645[/url]']

1710104382[/url]']
So posting public Twitter accounts is "doxxing" now?

I thought offsite posts don't matter? Now Discord does? I'm so confused. 

The discord is responsible for all posts on the internet outside of Resetera. 

Also love bdumbs being unable to call the bore by its name. No issue with kiwi farms so it looks like we surpassed them!

[benji]

I've posted that house three times in the last six months and now it's suddenly a problem when so many are selflessly trying to bring Nepenthe's wisdom to the masses.

I've never even posted the address and the other day explicitly said why I wouldn't, do they think it's some kind of secret portal? Or drone photo?

[Besticus Maximus]

She should be more worried about explaining the posts calling for the ethnic cleansing of jews to her past, present and future employers

[nobody of note]

Constructive:

Before this gets out of hand, no one on the Discord posted this person's address, and if we ever found out they did, they would be swiftly ridiculed and kicked from the group. The PoliEra Discord collectively agrees that doxxing is extremely fucked up and should never happen to ANYONE. You're more than welcome to come in and look at the chat logs.

So does this mean the picture actually did make it to the discord from here? Or Is HamSandwich just reaching the logical conclusion of "someone's house was posted" and assuming it has to be talking about an address? I'm trying to figure out how many degrees the people B-Dubs wants to ban actually are from the offending content.

[HaughtyFrank]

They keep picking the worst choices indeed

[benji]

ResetERA.com isn't a "harassment site" even though the users post their tweets attacking people, swarm other places, get people fired, promote suicide, constantly dehumanize others (like when staff call for ethnic cleansing or say they don't give a shit about certain populations), organize in secret, etc. all while none of this is even pushed back against by the community and instead constantly justified alongside actual violence.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Nepenthe is the toxic shitlord, Bdubs. And we're not in the discord, some of us have never even registered to your bullshit forum, it's just famous across the internet for being stupid

Cannot confirm nor deny that I am Twohearts.

It's not as if I found the old bore through google when searching for why someone was banned on Resetera, lurked for a good while, then decided to post here after the Oct 7th attacks because the Ree community response was horrific. 

[railGUN]

[benji]

And just for the record, I would have never posted a picture of the house except that THE FUCKING VERSA WAS IN THE DRIVEWAY.

[nobody of note]

B-Dubs then drops the post about politics threads they've been working on in Constructive. Highlights include they're sending election stuff to a subforum so they can just ban people from politics subforum:

Despite everything, here is the post we wrote up and we intend to stick to it.

So, to start this off let me talk about the derails.

We already issue warnings, threadbans, and actual bans to people derailing totally unrelated threads with the situation in Gaza. We have been doing this for weeks now and I would like to point out that people have thanked us for it. To pretend like we haven't done anything is ignoring pretty much everything we do.

A larger policy has been drawn up if it was deemed the situation called for it and, quite frankly, it might. Here is what is happening starting on Monday:
A new subforum will be embedded in the main Etc forum, to start we'll call it something along the lines of US elections. All threads pertaining to election topics will be posted in that subforum. It will work similarly to the members-only threads in that all of these threads will show up on the main feed, but viewing will not be limited to members.
Anyone who is unable to treat their fellow posters with respect and carry on a productive conversation will be banned from this sub-forum in increasing intervals: a few days to start, a week, a month, and finally until the end of the election. If your posts are particularly bad, expect to skip a few steps.
This goes for anyone who is either derailing the threads with totally off-topic content as well as those who make wild accusations towards other members. So if all you want to do is derail unrelated threads with the situation in Gaza you are going to get banned from the subforum pretty fast. This also applies to those who like to accuse members of supporting Trump for criticizing Biden's actions in Gaza. Either have a respectful discussion or you don't get to have one at all.
Anyone posting some one-sentence drive-by will also be actioned in these threads. The issues at play are largely important to people's lives both in the US and across the world. While we understand that people might be angry or excited, there's far too many drive-bys from people not even looking to actively engage. That ends.
If you post a thread and your framing is either intentionally inflammatory or does not actually match up with the content of the OP you will be actioned. People think they can troll by being the first to make a thread? Nope, not going to happen. If you think you can get around a ban to the sub-forum by making a thread in the main forum, you will eat a ban.
These threads will also be tagged with a "Politics" prefix to help indicate where these rules will apply. While the prefix may not be applied immediately, the rules will still apply. Don't think no prefix means free reign to shitpost and troll.
The reason we haven't rolled these out quite yet is because they are fairly big changes to how things go and if the issue could be resolved the normal way that would be preferred. That has largely worked, however there are a few posters who don't seem to be getting the picture so here we are.

I also want to note, none of this means we will not be allowing people to criticize Biden in threads where Gaza is discussed or an issue. When he talks about his plans, when he answers questions about it, when it comes up in the event or article as a topic, members are free to criticize him for what he has done. We are not here to protect Joe Biden from criticism, if that is what you want then sorry it say it isn't happening. We will keep the threads on topic and make sure actual discussion can take place, but I must repeat because a lot of people don't seem to get this: we are not here to protect Joe Biden from criticism.


Moving on to people worried about antisemitism.

If you have seen literally any of my posts in the Gaza thread you know full well that we are not ok with bigotry in any form regardless of the situation. Here is the sort of stuff we have actively been banning people for:
Randomly accusing Jewish people of being Zionists in drive-by post.
Banning people who take part in the "Jews control the media" conspiracies
Banning people who dismiss antisemitic conspiracy theories
Banning people who make bullshit reports targeting Jewish members
Banning people who accuse other members of supporting genocide
That's just the last week by the way.

I need to be real, this shit is exhausting for all of us but especially for our Jewish mods. As a result, it might take us a bit to get to a ban. Maybe there aren't enough people around at that exact moment, maybe someone is taking some time off for their mental health, maybe someone is just tired and needs a bit to really think something over. We're going to make mistakes, we're going to miss stuff, we're occasionally going to need someone to point out the obvious due to pure fatigue.

For all those who used to be staff members, you all know full well how incredibly draining this topic is in general. In the past when it's come up, whatever situation was going on generally resolved or at least calmed down within a few weeks. We are currently on month six of this one. I, personally, have had a few different breakdowns trying to keep up with all of this. It's a lot harder emotionally than a lot of people think it is. We're trying our best and I get that it's not always up to our usual standard and I'm sorry for that, but you need to give us a little bit of leeway here.

Seriously, we have run ourselves ragged trying to keep on to of everything and people not reporting posts really doesn't help things at all. We can't be everywhere and see everything.

One area we know we've missed the mark previously was at the intersection of anticolonialist rhetoric and Israel specific discussion. While it would be wonderful if the state of Israel was not run by a gang of right wing authoritarian thugs, calling for its annihilation is tantamount to calling for the removal of Jewish people from the region. There's juet not another realistic outcome. Saying that it was a mistake to put it there is one thing, saying it shouldn't be in the form that it is is fine. We all think Israel should be better than the reality. But saying it shouldn't exist will be treated as a call for ethnic cleansing going forwards, because that's the inescapable consequence of rendering millions of people stateless, and will be actioned accordingly. Especially egregious examples of people doing this on the site may be actioned as well, or will at bare minimum be noted for reference on future bans.

The reason this turned into a problem stems from the very fact we try and allow the oppressed and marginalized space to speak their truths. The problem here is that antisemitism is incredibly pervasive in our society, especially in the last few months, and infests pretty much every corner of it. So when someone is talking anticolonialist theory, for example, the inherent bias can sneak through and infect their points. This can turn a tool meant to fight for the rights of the oppressed into a tool spreading bigotry. This got overlooked because members of staff looked at the post in question through that ideological lens instead giving it a plain reading and issuing the ban that should have been issued from the start.

In order to address this, staff will review the various forms that antisemitism can take, on both the right and the left, so that this doesn't happen again. In addition, we are going to start coming down on random drive-bys in sensitive threads. These issues generally pop up when people get too heated and don't think enough about their language and so by hitting inflamed drive-bys we can avoid the situation in it's entirety and bump the level of discussion in said threads. Essentially, if you want to post in a sensitive thread you will need to come with more than "fuck x" if you want to avoid getting hit. In order to help facilitate this we will be setting a minimum word count in sensitive threads somewhere between 20 and 50. This will, at the very least, force people to post complete thoughts and engage with each other and the topic in a more thoughtful way. We will also look at further adjustments depending on how these work and the needs of the community.


Anyone pretending we don't care about the victims of the October 7th attack have not paid any attention to how we have moderated the Gaza thread and outright banned dismissal or justification of the attacks. The number of bans and threadbans in that thread eclipses any other we have ever had on this site. The level of scrutiny any post about the October 7th attack, or the subsequent bombing of the people of Gaza, is unheard of for us. In moderating these threads we have been accused of not caring about the people of Palestine for not letting people express their anger the way they felt entitled to because it could, or did, stray into antisemitism. Anyone denying or justifying what these people went through has been banned permanently.

Anyone trying to whitewash the sexual assault or rape of these people get permanent bans on sight.

Here's the thing: we aren't going to stop people from criticizing Biden, Netanyahu, or the IDF in threads where it is relevant. We won't let them be bigots when they do it. We won't let them whitewash Hamas when they do it. We won't let them accuse other members of supporting genocide when they do it. We won't let them derail threads to do it. But that doesn't mean we are going to stop them from criticizing these people in threads about the crisis so long as this horrific situation continues.

Shitshow's run just got extended.

[kaleidoscopium]

I love that b dubs is admitting they fucked up and were changing policies. If only people hadn’t DOXXED the antisemitic admin. These evil users don’t deserve the new rules now!

[benji]

B-Dubs then drops the post about politics threads they've been working on in Constructive. Highlights include they're sending election stuff to a quarantine subforum:

I need to be real, this shit is exhausting for all of us but especially for our Jewish mods. As a result, it might take us a bit to get to a ban. Maybe there aren't enough people around at that exact moment, maybe someone is taking some time off for their mental health, maybe someone is just tired and needs a bit to really think something over. We're going to make mistakes, we're going to miss stuff, we're occasionally going to need someone to point out the obvious due to pure fatigue.

For all those who used to be staff members, you all know full well how incredibly draining this topic is in general. In the past when it's come up, whatever situation was going on generally resolved or at least calmed down within a few weeks. We are currently on month six of this one. I, personally, have had a few different breakdowns trying to keep up with all of this. It's a lot harder emotionally than a lot of people think it is. We're trying our best and I get that it's not always up to our usual standard and I'm sorry for that, but you need to give us a little bit of leeway here.

Seriously, we have run ourselves ragged trying to keep on to of everything and people not reporting posts really doesn't help things at all. We can't be everywhere and see everything.

[Besticus Maximus]

So when are you going to ban Nepenthe bdubs? Given that she's done literally all the shit there that you've spent 500 words agonising over

[benji]

But saying it shouldn't exist will be treated as a call for ethnic cleansing going forwards, because that's the inescapable consequence of rendering millions of people stateless, and will be actioned accordingly. Especially egregious examples of people doing this on the site may be actioned as well, or will at bare minimum be noted for reference on future bans.

So Nepenthe's grandfathered in as long as she keeps it off the forum.

Though that second sentence makes "especially egregious examples" sound less severe than the first one.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

Anyone trying to whitewash the sexual assault or rape of these people get permanent bans on sight.

plagiarize?

[TylenolJones]

Anyone trying to whitewash the sexual assault or rape of these people get permanent bans on sight.

So plagiarize is gone?

[Besticus Maximus]

Where's Malik's perma ban?

[nobody of note]

Honestly I'll give B-Dubs this: dumping that post right after declaring that they'd had staff's home doxxed by a hate site has done a decent job of creating favorable responses to his post. Going absolutely apeshit nuclear and hitting the doxx button then releasing changes means so far nobody on-site has noted the giant plagiarize hole in his post:

Looks great overall. Nobody wanted to ban criticism of Biden, Israel, or Netanyahu. This is a good plan towards making discussion fruitful again.

This seems like good steps going forward.

Very sorry to hear you were doxxed as well. That should never happen over internet/forum arguments.

That's really a fantastic policy, and I appreciate the nominal minimum word count element. I know I suggested that a while back to minimize the "fuck X" posts, and I think it'll do wonders going forward. I think the subforum is also a great idea to attempt.

as someone who actually put this entire domain on a block list for the past couple months so i wouldn't be tempted to post, get baited, and invariably get pissed off enough to get actioned, these actually do look like great first steps (and i think would be good even as the only steps), particularly the subforum and minimum word count elements.

Because, remember, they're always the victims in everything:

I wasn't, Nepenthe was.

If there's one thing you all need to understand it's this: these people care and do good work for no real credit but attacks from all of you. Yes, we will screw up sometimes or might miss something obvious, but some of the behavior we have seen recently goes way too far and it seems like nobody wants to take responsibility for it.

We have no issue admitting fault and making changes, I said that before and I'll say it again. We prove that every damn time we come in here for the most part. What about everyone else?

[kaleidoscopium]

Mods are exempt from all rules, admin are explicitly encouraged to break all existing rules. This is just how it is.

[railGUN]

Imagine if they would have admitted wrongdoing when they banned Brady and posted a “whoops our bad” and unbanned him, none of this would have happened. But no, let’s triple down on our stupidity and blame everyone else and cry about how hard it is moderating a forum while completely ignoring the nepelephant in the room.

You fucking moron(s).

[benji]

In order to address this, staff will review the various forms that antisemitism can take, on both the right and the left, so that this doesn't happen again.

Essentially, if you want to post in a sensitive thread you will need to come with more than "fuck x" if you want to avoid getting hit. In order to help facilitate this we will be setting a minimum word count in sensitive threads somewhere between 20 and 50.

Are they actually going to tag threads with "Sensitive"?