Being a jerk, minus a million points

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

Or calling someone stupid, or going after their mental health therapy...

I'm pretty sure that there's no way to make "being a jerk" or "acting in bad faith" or "accusing people of being bullies for calling you out for being a jerk" illegal, nor should it be in a free society. I don't want to live in a society where everything that's legal is considered socially acceptable, though.

Indeed. The question then becomes: how do we pull Talossans back in line when they go over the edge of civil discourse?

The whole problem is similar to that that pertains in the United States: one side will excuse any bad behaviour if it's done by their political allies. This means that moderation of Wittenberg is totally politicised. Both sides will support the Wittenberg death penalty for the least snarky comment from their opponent ("JUST STOP BULLYING ME!!!", they'll shriek), whereas any pushback on their own slander and personal abuse will be met with pearl-clutching about freedom of speech.

My own "Thunderdome" proposal - not deleting angry and nasty posts, but moving them to a separate forum where they could be engaged with or ignored - was trialled, but failed because people refused to respect the moderator's decisions in that regard. The problem in Talossa is there are no effective sanctions on bad behaviour that both political sides will endorse - or even an agreed definition of what "bad behaviour" is.

I wonder if that can be fixed, or whether we're in a situation of "our miéida doesn't stink" - i.e. one side will never admit to going too far in their political invective, or will always argue that whatever they do is justified. And we can't have impartial moderation because there's no "referee" whom both sides will respect and trust and whose decisions they will abide by.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Both sides will support the Wittenberg death penalty for the least snarky comment from their opponent ("JUST STOP BULLYING ME!!!", they'll shriek), whereas any pushback on their own slander and personal abuse will be met with pearl-clutching about freedom of speech.

It's really gross to me that you've turned your campaign of harassment from a few years ago into a joke, and it's all the worse when you include it in a speech about civility.  For months, you replied to almost everything I said on Wittenberg with cruel, personal mockery, trying to make things so unpleasant for me that I would agree to fire a political cartoonist at my paper.  You called it "rough music," and it was truly unbearable to be on the other end of it.  I didn't ask for a "Wittenberg death penalty" from any moderator at any time, and I didn't even say that it was unfair to criticize me -- I just begged you to stop your deliberate campaign of harassment.

You have said how you are delighted by the fact that you were able to disrupt my mental health and hurt me, and you still appear certain that it was fair and I deserved any cruelty you wanted to inflict.  I've given up hope of trying to change your views on that.  But would it be too much to ask for you to stop referencing it, over and over, every year, as a means to keep hurting me?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

^^^^ Just as I said. The problem with "cleaning up Talossan discourse" is that every proposal is "whatabout"ed to death.

Just like in the United States - there is a lack of social consensus on where the line between "robust political debate" and "disinformation, personal abuse and smear tactics" lies. Achieving that will have to be the first step to cleaning up the discourse. And I think it would have to start with finding a mechanism for Wittenberg moderation in which mods couldn't be pestered out of their decisions, which is what happened with Thunderdome.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

^^^^ Just as I said. The problem with "cleaning up Talossan discourse" is that every proposal is "whatabout"ed to death.

Just like in the United States - there is a lack of social consensus on where the line between "robust political debate" and "disinformation, personal abuse and smear tactics" lies. Achieving that will have to be the first step to cleaning up the discourse.

I just think that a speech about civility and treating each other better might be more successful without including cruel jokes about a time when you hurt someone.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

Let's explore this question of "hurt". The good Baron and I will likely never agree whether Rough Music was justified in response to his Beric'ht Talossan newspaper giving a platform to religious bigotry and not withdrawing it. But if the good Baron understands that, Rough Music happened because I was personally hurt by BT, then we may be a step closer to a consensus.

In situations of heightened political conflict, where existential or principled issues are at stage, both sides get hurt. The whataboutist response here would be for me to list all the times, and all the ways, in which I have been "hurt" by how people in Talossa deal with me. To which the inevitiable responses would be:

• you weren't really hurt;
• and if you were, you deserved it for your bad behaviour.

See? It never ends unless both sides agree to stop reacting and start acting. Peace is only possible at the point where both sides are willing to forgive. And I use that word in a technical sense. It doesn't mean "pretending that what you did to me was okay". It means "realising that if I don't set aside my understandable urge to get even, the cycle doesn't end".

The beginning of a permanent solution to this in Talossa will be agreeing to a new regime of Wittenberg moderation which is respected by both sides and cleans up the discourse while protecting robust debate and free speech.

(I should add as a PS that the reference to "bullying" is a response more to the IMHO outlandish response of the TNC leader to the Coalition party's IMHO courteous request that he cut out trying to subvert the election result. The flip side to "anything goes" smears of your enemies is attempts to cast political pushback as morally impermissible. It's not the sort of thing that can be banned but it's the kind of thing that poisons the discourse.)

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Let's explore this question of "hurt". The good Baron and I will likely never agree whether Rough Music was justified in response to his Beric'ht Talossan newspaper giving a platform to religious bigotry and not withdrawing it. But if the good Baron understands that, Rough Music happened because I was personally hurt by BT, then we may be a step closer to a consensus.

You really disliked a cartoon and you thought it was out-of-bounds.  Your response was a campaign of harassment against the editor to try to make him miserable enough that he would fire the cartoonist.  That is not okay.  Instead, I would suggest that you could have stopped reading the newspaper, tried to start a boycotting campaign to get others to stop reading it, publicly pressured contributors to withdraw from the publication, etc.  I can imagine very few times in Talossa when it's okay to start a harassment campaign, and "I don't like what someone wrote in your paper" isn't among them.

In situations of heightened political conflict, where existential or principled issues are at stage, both sides get hurt. The whataboutist response here would be for me to list all the times, and all the ways, in which I have been "hurt" by how people in Talossa deal with me. To which the inevitiable responses would be:

• you weren't really hurt;
• and if you were, you deserved it for your bad behaviour.

I am saying that a specific thing you are doing right now and in this thread is wrong and cruel.  You are inventing a hypothetical conversation.  That's not the same.

See? It never ends unless both sides agree to stop reacting and start acting. Peace is only possible at the point where both sides are willing to forgive. And I use that word in a technical sense. It doesn't mean "pretending that what you did to me was okay". It means "realising that if I don't set aside my understandable urge to get even, the cycle doesn't end".

I'm not trying to get even. I'm asking you to stop something specific that you're doing which is cruel.

It's not the end of the world.  I'm not going to go to sleep crying tonight because you're laughing about something cruel that you did.  But I just couldn't believe you would make a speech about civility while quoting, right down to the capitalization and formatting, something I said to you when I was begging you to stop.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Look, I don't want to relitigate this again.  As I've indicated, I'd strongly prefer to move on.  But if we're going to do that, you need to move on, too -- you can't keep making mocking jokes about your harassment campaign.  Your speech was about maybe moving past things like this, but that requires your participation, too.

So how about we just say forget it and we move on, and you just stop doing this in the future?  No need to figure out whether it was right or wrong -- let's just agree to move on?  Is that possible?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

Back to the beginning, then - we need a new schema for Witt moderation which will be rigorously non-partisan, pro-civility, and whose decisions will be respected by both sides. I encourage the TNC to make suggestions to that end.

I encourage the TNC to consider what about their political behaviour and rhetoric might be causing hurt to their political opponents, right now. If their answer is "no errors, we're scrumdiddlyumptious", then any civil dialogue is impossible.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Well, the Chancery moderates Witt.  But the Secretary of State is also the head of the lead party of the Government.  Maybe we should separate the Chancery from politics, again.

EDIT: In case it isn't obvious, I'm not saying Txec is doing anything wrong.  But if you want impartial and neutral moderation, ensuring the moderator is nonpartisan would be a start.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

This is a red herring for the following reasons:

- the current SoS is being sued by a member of his own party due to responsibility for the decisions of a moderator who is the leader of the opposing party.
- we have the numbers (barely) for a nonpartisan Civil Service and Judiciary, not an apolitical one. Imagine if the plaintiff in the case mentioned above refused to recognize the authority of the CpI whose Senior Judge is a TNC MC.
- I don't remember people being that happy with Witt moderation decisions before the SoS was elected as FreeDems leader, eg. the endless complaints which ended the "Thunderdome" experiment.

So we're between the Scylla of "I don't trust someone from the opposing party to moderate me", and the Charybdis of "moderators are scared to moderate anything lest they be sued or personally harassed". If there's no protection for moderators, then doing nothing will always be the safest option. Nothing is possible in a situation where your standards of civility are marked by whether it's your political side doing it or not.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I'm not sure it's a "red herring," which is a term that implies I am using a bad-faith submission to try to distract from real solutions.  I think that it's actually kind of basic: if you want neutral and nonpartisan moderation, having neutral and nonpartisan moderators is probably a good idea.

This isn't really an issue right now (Txec is doing a great job and is very careful), but if moderators start segregating speech again, then it's probably going to come up.  It might not be practical, but that's different than saying it's just a distraction.

Really, I don't think a Speech Police is very practical, no matter who's doing it.  The main issue is that Talossa has shrunk so much that any hope of diversifying into different fora has vanished.  There used to be some hope of multiple Wittenbergs, with an official message board only for official things and multiple other private boards for different subcommunities.  Right now, there's basically no way to "vote with your feet" besides becoming inactive.  If you think someone is repellant, you can't go to a different Wittenberg.  The solution is probably just to focus on growing the nation until we're healthy enough that being Talossan doesn't mean being forced to be around every Talossan.

[Ián S.G. Txaglh]

flamewar, sublime flamewar! to paraphrase my favourite quote from battle for dune ;)

honestly, besides we all turn angels right now, i do not see any realistic way of such moderation. we are either willing not to step on others' toes anyway or not, and no moderation is going to rectify it. how it usually ends is, that whatever side is getting "moderated" for misbehaviour is not going to accept it, cos they do not think they did anything wrong, and they would feel hurt and would either retaliate or endlessly whine about it. and instead of the moderated forum, we'll get the forum even more polarised.

plus, we do not have any strong moral authority here acceptable for everyone (or at least for the majority).

personally, i belive not in punishment, but in openness. openly speaking about what i found wrong, supported by arguments (and not emotional outbursts), may have a stronger effect than any moderation. if there is some kind of "ethic-/fact-checking" rather than moderation, i may work better, imho (supported by the research in cognitive psychology). no miracles to be expected, but less tension definitely.

guys, this is talossa, be happy not to have a copy here of the scrumming world outside...

[Viteu]

Proposed scheme: if we have the numbers--a three-person panel for Witt moderation sans any and all fora that serve as official organs of the State (e.g. the Ziu and the Government and the Judiciary).  Individual provinces may elect to join the scheme if they wish provided that the province's state organs can never be moderated by the panel similar to the national fora.

The panel is made up of one person chosen by the Government (i.e. the party(ies) forming a majority in the Ziu); one person is formed by the Opposition (i.e. the party(ies) not in coalition with or making up the Government); and one person is appointed on a non-partisan by the entire Ziu and Senate (they can continue to serve across governments if they maintain majority support of both houses).  The non-partisan representative is similarly expected to refrain from all politicking a la UC judges. 

A 2-1 or 2-0 decision is appealable as of right to the UC; a 3-0 decision is appealable by permission to the UC or perhaps not appealable at all. A UC judge can serve as the non-partisan member, provided that they do not participate in any appeals or do not compromise the ability of a three-judge panel to hear an appeal.

This may be too bureaucratic or complicated for Talossa, but I figured I'd propose a framework that I would view as a way to achieve the most fair and equitable approach to Witt moderation that protects the minority and the majority from each other. 

[Sir Txec dal Nordselvă, UrB]

I understand the trepidation some people have about Witt moderation. With very, very few exceptions, the current scheme has worked well. We as a nation often struggle to fill even the most vital posts, so creating a new bureaucracy doesn't seem terribly wise to me. Something more appropriate might be developed instead. Perhaps a point-based system can be used to determine if a post violates Wittiquette. Rack up so many points, and the post gets moved (not deleted) or locked. Just a thought. Personally, whenever I'm moderating I refer back to Wittiquette to see if something specific has been violated. I will move posts or even lock them, but I don't delete them. That's a step too far. I've also never temp or perm banned anyone. That isn't really my place, except in highly exceptional cases, which no one has yet even come close.

[Viteu]

I don't necessarily disagree with your point about bureaucracy.  In truth, my initial thought was creating a non-partisan and apolitical moderator position subject to the same limitations as a CpI Judge to ensure fairness.

I have included an alternative proposal that I opted not to post out of concern of making things too complicated for Talossa's needs. But my initial idea was: 

(1)   People can report questionable posts for investigation/determination to the moderator, or the moderator initiatre and investigation on their own accord, with each report requiring a short and concise explanation, with sufficient detail to put the respondent on notice of the accusation, on how the post may violate Wittiquette. 


(2)   The moderator may request that the poster explain why they think the post does not violate Wittiquette.  The idea being that any determination is not arbitrary and capricious or unsupported by the record (i.e. not supported by substantial evidence)—the record being made up of only the necessary documents or information needed to make a determination. 

(3)   The moderator makes a determination of whether a violation occurred and, if one did, the chosen course of action: deleting, locking, or moving the post.  If warranted, the moderator could suspend the individual for a time certain depending on volume and frequency of the poster's violations.  The determination must provide sufficent detail to support the moderator's conclusion regarding violation and punishment.

(4)   If no violation, the reporting party may appeal as of right to the CpI.  The respondent may appeal of right to the CpI an adverse determination--whether the conclusion that a violation occurred or the punishment imposed.  The moderator cannot appeal their own determination (this prevents a moderator punting on matters so the CpI takes on their role). 

(5)   In reviewing whether a violation occurred, the CpI must, as a threshold matter, determine whether the conclusion is (1) arbitrary and capricious, or (2) unsupported by the record; in reviewing the punishment imposed, the CpI must determine, as a threshold matter,  whether such is (1) supra, (2) supra, or (3) against the interest of justice.  The idea being that the CpI defers to the moderator and does not become a de facto Witt moderation panel.  The threshold question focuses on whether the moderator is in error based on the aforementioned standards, and, if not, there is no need for the CpI to undertake a de novo review.  If the CpI were to determine that the moderator was in error based on those standards, it can then undertake a de novo review.  The standards proposed are borrowed mostly from judicial review of administrative decisions in the U.S.  This sounds cumbersome but, in practice, it is not terribly complicated.

As mentioned, I omitted the standards of review, etc. from the initial proposed framework because I wanted to avoid overcomplicating this in light of Talossa's needs, provided, however, there is a panel of three moderators.  I include it now as part of a single-moderator proposal.  Both proposals seek to minimize accusations of partiality and unfairness from all sides.  But neither may not be what Talossa needs.

I'm not married to either framework.  If some other framework or the status quo is preferred, I'd only suggest that the Ziu enact some type of judicial review procedure for those decisions, which should include the appropriate standards of review to streamline the process a bit and so the parties know what to argue.

Regarding whether any scheme involving direct review by the CpI as of right is Organic, here are my preliminary thoughts based on a cursory review of the Organic Law (note that these thoughts are not indicative of what I may think following a careful review or arguments from those who think otherwise).  In any event, pursuant to VIII.6, the CpI may not be compelled to exercise its appellate authority.  However, VIII.2 states that the CpI has original jurisdiction in all matters involving, inter alia, the organs of the Kingdom of Talossa.  Because Lex.J.3 appears to imply that Wittenberg is a state organ, this would not be within the CpI's appellate authority but its original jurisdiction.  Of course, VIII.2 also states that the CpI may remand any matter to which it has original jurisdiction to an inferior cort.  In other words, part of this may rest on the CpI accepting the right of appeal as described (I am not at all suggesting amending the Org Law if some framework is proposed because such would likely derail the entire proposed framework, whatever that may be.)

If aframework were adopted, the SOS or Seneschal or even the King could simply ask the CpI if it intends to acquiesce to such.  However, any answer would not be binding.  On the other hand, VIII.6 also states that the King, SOS, or Seneschal may refer an issue to the CpI for an advisory opinion if there is no live case or controversy that would otherwise determine the issue, and there is a reasonable need for resolution.  It could be the case that if the Ziu adopted some type of framework with a right of appeal to the CpI, the King could veto and recommend it to the CpI, or promulgate and the King, SOS, or Seneschal may refer it to the CpI.  The CpI could, in turn, issue a binding decision (three judge panel) on whether it will, by its choice, acquiesce to the framework.  Taht decision could then only be overturned by a subsequent CpI decision where the advisory opinion is challenged. 


Lastly, I repeat that these are only proposals striving to achieve fair and equitable moderation and to minimize accusations of unfairness or partiality, and I'm mostly spitballing ideas.  Either proposal may be too complicated and not needed under the present circumstance, especially in light that this issue does not seem to come up too often.  I will, however, concede only that some other things in Talossa may have contributed to my commentary that some type of framework for judicial review should be considereded.