Some last observations on my little Kos incursion.

Out of 207 comments showing, I can read 73 of them. While logged in, I can no-longer see the poll I put up, though it reappears when I’m logged out (the number of visible comments remains the same). The results are below:

Does troll-rating stifle meaningful discourse?

Yes 11 votes - 19 %
No 25 votes - 43 %
Depends on the troll 13 votes - 22 %
What, you mean like now? 8 votes - 14 %

57 Total Votes

Only 43% of users indicated that troll-rating has no deleterious impact on discussions at kos. 22% indicate that the impact is situational, depending on the person being rated. 19% state it has, presumably, a uniform negative impact on the quality of discussion, while 14% indicated it was having a negative impact on discussion in the post I wrote. I intended both the “now” and “Yes” categories to be counted as “yes”, though in retrospect, some of those might have viewed the impact as situational. In any interpretation, over half of those responding acknowledge at least some negative impact exerted by troll rating. I’d love to go back and follow up, querying about the significance of the impact, but I can’t – I’ve joined Switters in the camp of users banned by Kos. I can no longer even comment, let alone write posts of my own.

Scanning the comments I am able to read, however, and comparing them to the poll results is informative. Why, do you suppose, doesn’t the directionality of the comments reflect the results of the poll? I’m left to conclude that either people are afraid to state an unpopular opinion out loud, or that those opinions were immediately troll-rated, and therefore invisible to me. Impossible for me to know, not having trusted user status, though this does bring up a point – if there is anyone reading this who is a trusted user, I would greatly appreciate an email with the copied comments included in their entirety (fieldingbandolier@hotmail.com). It would be helpful for me to see the obviously continuing discussions occurring which were invisible to me.

I won’t identify you, of course.

Many of my own comments are also invisible to me. I wish I could remember how many I wrote (I composed them there, rather than on a word processing program, saving each one). If I had to do it over again, I’d save what I wrote. It never occurred to me that my own comments might become invisible to me – the person who wrote them.

Switters lasted much longer than I did, because he rarely responded to comments. For me to get banned, all it took was one post on an unpopular topic, written in a manner that was intended to be inoffensive (debatable, I’m sure – though not by me! ;-)), and my attempt to respond to as many comments as I could, without rancor.

The vast majority of the criticisms I faced were essentially ad hominem attacks – I was accused of being a troll, or a sock-puppet. Objections based on the content fall into a couple of categories: Switters wasn’t funny, Switters was offensive, most of his posts were movie reviews – not appropriate for the site, and finally, that my motives were suspect (on the site to “defend the honor of Switters”, rather than to engage in honest dialogue).

Of all arguments, only the last would seem (to me) to have any validity. I attempted to counter this by steering the discussion back to the content of my original post – the deleterious impact of censorship on discussion, and how it seems incongruent for this to be occurring at kos. I never really had the chance to discuss this much, however.

Of those offended by the content of Switters diary, the most vocal was “Eternal Hope.” I attempted to engage her in a discussion about the value of parody, which she then attempted to misdirect by comparing Switters to a KKK propagandist, and then accusing me of being him. This latter, she attempted to support by providing a mangled quote by Switters on the Wag blog [her version: “'Teanciousk (sic) will have the last word.”]. When I responded with the accurate quote ["And leave it to TenaciousK to have the final word."], she troll-rated my response and it disappeared. Eternal Hope is a trusted user. [I don’t know what criteria they are using to determine what users are trusted, but it is obviously, seriously flawed.]

Rita in DC, another trusted user, provided misinformation to support the contention I was a sockpuppet; “The Switters sockpuppet family was smaller than some people surmised, according to Kos in a brief reply to my report a while back. However, a couple of the suspected user names were indeed Switters sockpuppets--previously banned, IIRC--and Kos did some more banning. Yawn. I'll send him another report.” Difficult for me to imagine there is an iota of truth to this – all of the people I am aware of, posting at kos, have been posting as themselves, and no-one else [exception being ZB, posting under DawnCoyote’s nic because he didn’t want to wait for his own, and Ender’s diary, which included (correctly attributed) posts written by other people].

I had one user leave a positive comment – that I seemed unusually sane for someone from Utah, and that the diary was interesting. One user initially supported my position (Robokos), but later reversed himself, and accused me of being an academic (?!?). Another user stated only that she or he was not like the people active on the thread – no more.

Some last comments from the thread, to illustrate the theme:

What the hell (1+ / 0-)

does Your charge of Groupthink have anything to do with THIS diary or the diarist "switters"?

maybe up comment -- but my comment was directly addressing the Diary -- 'switters' is a waste of bits -- and it has nothing at all to do with 'groupthink'

end the war in Iraq

by josephk on Fri Oct 13, 2006 at 03:17:27 PM MST

· You misunderstood my comment. (0 / 0)

The groupthink charge is in the response to Switters.

As far as dialectics go, I was referring to the distressing parallels between the enforced conformity and censorship here, the enforced conformity and suppression of opinion in both national political parties, and the enforced conformity and careful control of information/dialogue maintained by the current administration.

Dialectics are one way of talking about continuum on a single dimension. The national political dialogue is stuck - and has been carefully stuck there by a concerted effort by the party presently in the majority.

The comments here resemble a feeding frenzy. Go back and look at my post again. I was trying, carefully, to make a point.

Was I being inflammatory? Where?

All the charges of sockpuppetry, troll, etc. What do they have to do with what I actually wrote? It's eerily like being charged with being unpatriotic, because I was against the war.

Whether you agree with the content or not, the process I refer to is inherently problematic. That is my point.

Note how that point never really gets addressed. People were too busy fingerpointing to notice?

Did you notice where I corrected misinformation spouted by a "trusted user" above, and then she troll-rated my comment into oblivion? Her (inaccurate and unsupported) allegation now stands without challenge.

You don't find this to be distressing, from a process perspective?

Feel free to disagree with me, but all the name-calling is just insulting. And dishonest.

"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better." Laurie Anderson

by tenaciousk on Fri Oct 13, 2006 at 04:04:16 PM MST

o We've now reached the point where (0 / 0)

it's safe to say that any further discussion of switters and his pals is just trolling. Indeed, we reached that point a long time ago. If you think switters was done wrong by DKos, contact Kos or a frontpager and make your case. Beyond that, quit flooding this site with diaries and posts about switters. This blog isn't about switters and his pals. Get over it.

by Warren Terrer on Fri Oct 13, 2006 at 06:00:33 PM MST

I don’t think there’s anything I can add.

TK/FB