Is there any evidence that either Duncan or Said are actually detrimental to the site in general, or is it mostly in their interactions directly with each other? As far as I can see, 99% of the drama here is in their conflicts directly with each other and heavy moderation team involvement in it.
From my point of view (as an interested reader and commenter), this latest drama appears to have started partly due to site moderation essentially forcing them into direct conflict with each other via a proposal to adopt norms based on Duncan’s post while Said and others were and continue to be banned from commenting on it.
From this point of view, I don’t see what either of Said or Duncan have done to justify any sort of ban, temporary or not.
This decision is based on mostly on past patterns with both of them, over the course of ~6 years.
The recent conflict, in isolation, is something where I’d kinda look sternly at them and kinda judge them (and maybe a couple others) for getting themselves into a demon thread*, where each decision might look locally reasonable but nonetheless it escalates into a weird proliferating discussion that is (at best) a huge attention sink and (at worst) gets people into an increasingly antagonistic fight that brings out people’s worse instincts. If I spent a long time analyzing I might come to more clarity about who was more at fault, but I think the most I might do for this one instance is ban one or both of them for like a week or so and tell them to knock it off.
The motivation here is from a larger history. (I’ve summarized one chunk of that history from Said here, and expect to go into both a bit more detail about Said and a bit more about Duncan in some other comments soon, although I think I describe the broad strokes in the top-level-comment here)
And notably, my preference is for this not to result in a ban. I’m hoping we can work something out. The thing I’m laying down in this comment is “we do have to actually work something out.”
Is there any evidence that either Duncan or Said are actually detrimental to the site in general, or is it mostly in their interactions directly with each other? As far as I can see, 99% of the drama here is in their conflicts directly with each other and heavy moderation team involvement in it.
From my point of view (as an interested reader and commenter), this latest drama appears to have started partly due to site moderation essentially forcing them into direct conflict with each other via a proposal to adopt norms based on Duncan’s post while Said and others were and continue to be banned from commenting on it.
From this point of view, I don’t see what either of Said or Duncan have done to justify any sort of ban, temporary or not.
This decision is based on mostly on past patterns with both of them, over the course of ~6 years.
The recent conflict, in isolation, is something where I’d kinda look sternly at them and kinda judge them (and maybe a couple others) for getting themselves into a demon thread*, where each decision might look locally reasonable but nonetheless it escalates into a weird proliferating discussion that is (at best) a huge attention sink and (at worst) gets people into an increasingly antagonistic fight that brings out people’s worse instincts. If I spent a long time analyzing I might come to more clarity about who was more at fault, but I think the most I might do for this one instance is ban one or both of them for like a week or so and tell them to knock it off.
The motivation here is from a larger history. (I’ve summarized one chunk of that history from Said here, and expect to go into both a bit more detail about Said and a bit more about Duncan in some other comments soon, although I think I describe the broad strokes in the top-level-comment here)
And notably, my preference is for this not to result in a ban. I’m hoping we can work something out. The thing I’m laying down in this comment is “we do have to actually work something out.”