I generally disagree with any censorship. That said... do no harm! IDC what anyone wants to believe or how they want to live as long as they do no harm. I can only control me and my reactions to the words of others. Words are just words. I like hearing from people who hold the same views as I do and from those who hold a complete opposite view.

I think part of the problem here is that I'm not sure what we have. Is this a discussion forum or social media site. The difference matters. As a discussion forum a certain amount of decorum is necessary and should be enforced. A social media site on the other hand should be much broader and looser with regard to censorship.

I try to treat Idw.community as a discussion forum, but sometimes if feels more like a social media site.

I'm struck by the elegance of the IDW Point/Level System. Is there a solution that parallels the desire for Game of Thrones to show political violence and incestuous nudity to HBO subscribers while precluding this content from getting a G Film rating or being shown on TV after school on PBS? Incendiary speech often looses its potency as the maturity/experience of the observer increases.

Perhaps a Like/Dislike button system that is weighted by the observer's Level would serve to raise objectionable posts to be view-only by viewers in a level that no-longer finds it objectionable -- as in a maturity level sufficient to permit dispassionate contemplation of the message.

So much for a 'clear policy decision', haha...

Why not simply remove truly malicious posts and let the rest be? Social Media is for society, which is also it's problem.

Readers get their feelings hurt and writers try to cut deep when angry.

Until human beings no longer feel emotions on social media... I don't see there being a fix other than to remove the worst of the posts that are not only angry, but devoid of reason and intentionally scathing for the purpose of making someone feel less than valuable. But above and beyond bullies shutting down the conversation by whining... let the people talk. No matter how poorly they manage to present their case. If they have a case to be made, they need to have unlimited opportunity to either convey their message or understand a better way to do so.

I am against censorship in general. However, I have recently seen an uptick in ad hominem attacks and a overall lack of civility. How about a review board type of approach? Say if a member is "referred" to the board by 3 or more other members for misconduct then a separate group of people could review the offending members posts/comments and issue a warning, then a temporary blockage of use, and finally a removal from the site.? Something along those lines. Every society has rules but we must alway err on the side of unfettered freedom.

I wonder what someone said that started this?

Out of a group of 20k I would guess there are 5 you can outright identify as uncivil without any equivocation. I would suggest eliminate those, use some star chamber methodology to choose candidates. The process itself smacks of fascism but survival of a group is hard.
I left FB because of ONE person.

Thank you! All good ideas. As for updating the originator/moderator role "to include reviewing posts that show up in their group," I'd say, it's almost essential if you're hoping to maintain civility. Moderators should be given the discretion to forward any post or conversation that veers away from IDW Community standards.

I am erging everyone to to revisit, re-read, reconsider their comments, idea's, and ways to solves the problems the creators of this website has asked us to help with they are reaching out to be a part of something bigger then just, me me me. We also need to understand even though some of us believe we are great at self policing we may not be, as well as others may not care to be at all. Right or no? This does become the responsibility of the site creator to manage and mantain with so many of us and so few of them this is impossible to do without a solution, compromise or bust? After reading back through all the comments posted in response to asks for help on this issue. It's up to us you want the most free speech platform or not?

It is too easy to use abuse in place of argument or evidence. A civility rule would eliminate a lot of worthless venting. I am in favour of enforcing polite discourse. This does NOT mean that one cannot write posts that are offensive to individuals or groups.

sounds equitable. making originators/moderators more responsible for their groups seems fair. I would go to making the removed category posts available for at least 48hrs though in order to give more time for viewing because not all level 7+ members can necessarily be available within a 24hr period.

My first suggestion would be to require a “Title” similar to your “category” requirement for a post. Many of the posts here either simply start by going off on some rambling screed or seem to have no information at all and are just a link to elsewhere. Sometimes it’s not worth looking to see ... especially as you get larger.
My second suggestion would be a simple Agree/Disagree icon separate from the Emoticons...
My third suggestion would be to take a page from FB and enable people to switch a contributor “off” as in, “See no more posts from ...” if you had a way of tracking these it might give you a good idea of “who” to look at.

Censorship is hard. I can see where you feel you need to do it if for no other reason than legal issues. If you institute a “flagging” system, perhaps you could make that a publicly seen number where each user could ONLY place one flag and when that number of flagging users gets to (pick a number ... 20) the original poster is warned at say 5 that they’re being flagged &/or Turned Off ... and the piece is removed at 20 ... perhaps after several incidences of this the user should be banned permanently. I would limit the peoples’ ability to “flag” at Users having a 5 or more score to ensure that a bunch of Johnny Come Latelies don’t begin to change content simply because they think they can.

If you can't have a discussion and or disagreement without personal attacks i will just ignore you. If you post something advocating peodophelia or other high crimes you should be gone. If you attack a group of people have facts to back it up. I left GAB because it was basically a Jew, Freemason bashing site. If you attack a group at least have facts to back it up or its just propaganda born out of ignorance and some cases stupidity.

I'm not as up on this? But if we could see what was said(removing personal identifiers, so a little 'whitewashing', might not the point be emphatic rather than philosophical, hypothetical? Eg. What could we do in this scenario?
...And request it be kept to 5 lines. A little precis work is good. What should we do? Then, even though some details are altered (ha! to protect the guilty!!), they might see this, change?

I haven't been around long enough to even have an opinion on civility.and applying it in a forum is not something I'm familiar with

What is a direct answer for one can seem rude to another

Violence and threats thereof should not be tolerated, even a tiny bit.

On Facebook, which I really don't care much about, I immediately unfriend anyone who posts a picture with an AK-47. That's a weapon with a terrorist association. Nice gun, nasty rep.

We could go by the, what are they, the Robert's Rules but such extreme formal politeness puts a damper on free exchanges

Perhaps a rotation of different people tasked with evaluating posts for violations would be preferable to a permanent group

Anyways, it's good that so many are concerned

My suggestion was free speech is a must unless it is with ill intent. Set up a private 7 or higher members only group to report all post reported to be reviewed. Have the contact numbers of needed authorities for any signs of extreme danger trafficking attempts etc. If you just remove such people they move to the next platform to cause harm or death.

My view is simple, only block open calls to violence, doxing and blatantly illegal activity. If it is possible developing a feature that singles out profiles that are only posting memes might be a way to thwart this behavior before it becomes an issue. Otherwise, possibly adding a report button for any truly harmful behavior seems like it would be wise.

First, laudable effort! I'm curious if you can happen upon a formula that works. I guess I hope the type of people the site attracts will have some bearing toward that end. Time will tell.

You mention crossing 20K members. Do you have numbers on various levels of activity, demographics, personality, etc.? It may be useful to know. It's easy enough to create a questionnaire.

You made a comment about the compassion of a guy like Jordan Peterson (or one of the others). I'd like to point out that JP has an edge. He's not always perfectly compassionate. I think seeing the structures that underlie being create an angst--an impatience because we as a species aren't better than we are--especially when those structures are both self-serving and potentially unnecessary. It's like he sees this thing and can't understand why others can't see it. Is he compassionate toward neomarxist postmodernists? Haha. MY OWN experience is that really smart people have that dilemma. They have an edge. I'm not sure they can easily discard the trait.

I'll help in any way I can, but I'm not convinced it's exactly possible. I don't know. Someone always inspires innovation, so maybe this will be something new. This might be hitting on my pessimistic side.

I think the “uncivil” post should be quarantined as you indicate. The post/comment could be voted on by high level members and if found to be uncivil, it could then be deleted. If not, the post could be reinstated.

What about something like (this is designed to be cautious) -->
Part01. Add a button “flag as inappropriate” at the bottom of each post. A button that doesn’t stand out too much.
Part02. Limit each user to ? uses. They can only use that flag maybe twice per month. So that people don’t abuse it.
Part03. Then if a post gets flagged by ? say, 5 or more different people, admin will know to review it.
Part04. Admin can then decide to send a “4 strikes” warning to that individual. Or the warning could be automated.

@admin Morality is meaningless without mortality.

I suggest we create a trusted web here.

You need to introduce mortality.

A username is arbitrary. A unique timestamp would be the "birthday"

In case of minor abuse, you could give a timeout-- the ratio of timestamp to current date would change. if the ratio was perfect, that would be a polite person.

In case of a major breach of rules, the offender would lose their timestamp and forfeit any coins.

This introduces a cultural wisdom. Elders gain respect, those with young timestamps are seen as foolish until proven otherwise.

What do you think? I'd like some feedback from you, I'm sure you are swamped, but this has DEEP implications to create a trusted source of news. Anyone who declares themself a propagator of truth will quickly be identified if they misrepresent or overtly lie about something.

It's the cure to fake news, eventually e-commerce will adopt a similar model if we do it right.

Is there any evidence that our "Level 7+" members are civil? Someone could be a lunatic obsessed with some topic, causing them to interact often on the site, which would not qualify them to screen for more productive discussions.

Insist the comments center on the argument not derogatory comments about the poster, perhaps also limiting the number of posts a particular individual has in a particular topic?

IF something can be over the line, it would be a highly contextual case, such as things already known to be wrong. Direct calls to harm another, such as DOXing and similar, sure, but discussion of all things should be valid, as well as about the techniques of things that would be a problem to do, for two reasons: 1) define the nature of the thing, for borders of context 2) know how to defend against or prevent such items, as it is often too late to do something by the time content would ever be removed.

This is a hard and thankless job, that none of us should want, but if we can agree to things that fit the above, about 1/10 of us would probably voluntarily help working such things as one would haul their own trash out.