August 25, 2011

get bored and floored an uproar in the grocery store they ran out of soymilk and kombucha and now the goddamn yuppies posing as middle age hippies are dancing in the aisles overturning buggies and screaming to damn the man damn the man damn the man that made this decision to hate this shopping convenience. we're still exploited but look at all the fucking choice we have....

ms. postrel tells us that the wealth of our nation is in diversity in the shopping lanes and she claims we are more free because we have the freedom of not just choice but the freedom of choices....these are just words to remind the rest of us that some people deserve to have their backs up against the wall

fifteen kinds of coffee eighteen brands of soap all easy on the skin all hard on the wallet but these aren't for the working class they've still got their decaying malls and their big box marts and we cut hearts in expensive cheese and bleed all over the dying animals, kept serenely in nature until their throats are slit to feed us...

because even if you do everything green and organic and natural and humanely you are still consuming you are still death incarnate and it's not a question of when it's how much you're willing to give up

dementia is a pension for the mention of the convention and who wins the nomination to take a chance to lead the nation straight down the goddamn rabbit hole but there is no wonderland there is only a deadened hand to play out in this last game of poker before they close down the halls and chop up the tables to use as kindling so keep your kin warm and remember that tribalism, despite the best efforts of the best minds of European descent, still thrives in some darkened corners.

i can't bare sequences of consequences as my mind winces when the menses mince words and churn out turds to curdle up to and wrap their languid lips on and taste what's inside that's not a rainbow that's the death throes of a dying empire this is not the age of founding it's the time to cast down and burn

Ah, chanops. Since The Debutante has asked for a discussion on what the role of this group should be, and since I am one of the more active members of the group, I thought I'd very quickly share my own views on the subject.

We +people have a variety of powers at our disposal to help with moderating and monitoring chatterbox activity. These include the ability to go in and out of any room at will, see all the rooms' activities at once, move people in and out of various rooms (called nerf borging because it doesn't "lock" noders into the room to which they've been moved), dragging which instantly transports a disruptive user to The Debriefing Room and keeps them there for thirty minutes, a Silence button that will wipe the catbox and if pressed fast enough will prevent information from being recorded by ascorbic's archive, the ability to borg, of course, and an Are-You-ush-Tool. We can also speak as any of the E2 bots with the exception of E2D2.

My own personal preference is to handle fights by sending personal messages to the people involved along the lines of, "Calm down," or "Ignore the troll." Sometimes these work, sometimes they don't. I am more likely to use the /drag or /borg commands on noders with whom gentle prodding does not work and even more likely to borg people who I've received complaints about especial if those complaints come from multiple people. If you ever feel a user is out of line, message the chanops team. We work for you. I am additionally more willing to drag a name I don't recognize that is disruptive than one I do. A newbie who is combative or insulting is more likely to be some ghastly form of internet troll than a noder who might just be having a bad day. Dragging is better than borging in these situations because it allows a chanops member to explain why the offender was dragged rather than just shutting them up. I will borg for personal insults directed at people other than myself (I feel that having a thicker skin is inherent in the job). chanops official policy is that the catbox be blanked if personal data such as addresses and phone numbers are dropped in it accidentally, or maliciously.

Due to the nature of the job, it is impossible to make everybody happy and eventually any chanop is going to gain somebody who feels that they were borged unfairly. Again, if this happens talk to the chanops team. We should not be some unquestionable higher catbox authority, our actions are open to discussion (though I will admit that I believe most people are capable of defending themselves and I get a little winded when somebody tries to defend a person who has neither asked for or needs defense).

In brief, chanops works for you, any and all feed back is appreciated. Feel free to drop a line here or here for praise, insults, or constructive criticism.

For what my opinion is worth, the current state of the catbox is just fine. The chanops seem to be doing a good job of isolating trolls and other ne'er-do-wells, and compared to the other forums I spend time in most folks are polite and reasonably mature without being a bunch of stuffy oiks. Carry on, please.

Writing this up largely in the abstract, since I can't remember the last time I saw actual "disruption" in the catbox.

• I would like it if the chanops were more upfront and brutal in their disciplinary activities. I like a borging to be as hilarious as it is well-deserved.
• I'd like to see a resurrection of the use of borging, silencing and dragging-to-other-rooms for comic effect during routine conversation.
• "If you don't like it, /ignore it" is not a viable alternative to actually dealing with people who are making E2 a worse place. That's equivalent to telling people "go and sit in the corner while we turn E2 into something you hate, and no complaining".

Huh, reading the rest of the logs, must have been some catbox stuff going on that I've missed. Knickers all in a twist, right? Me too, but I'm just generally cranky today. Why does one keep having to grow up over and over again? It is really annoying.

I just dropped the EF off at college last week, driving him and another freshman across the state. We left Tuesday afternoon, I got them dinner in Ellensburg, WA and we got to Pullman at about 11:00 pm. They both were in a joyous mood, finally leaving for college, finally free, finally GROWN UP. However, the other Young Man didn't actually know where his dorm was on campus. I had carefully not done any interfering with the EF's packing other than to say it had to fit in the car. En route I asked if the EF had brought his bike lock. "Uh, no." "Your helmet?" "Uh, DAMN!" We took the EF to his dorm and asked where the other dorm was. Found it and unloaded them both. I went to a motel, but they were full. Having anticipated this and too lazy to reserve one ahead of time, I slept reasonably well in the back of the station wagon in my sleeping bag. A gas station across the street provided bathroom and tooth brushing. In the morning I found the other boy's wallet in the back seat. I was meeting the EF to go to the financial aid office with him, and we returned the wallet as well.

It just seems funny and ironic to see them feeling that they are finally grown up, and at the same time spending a stupid amount of time thinking about intimacy and wishing that I felt grown up. No, not sexual intimacy, but what is grown up emotional intimacy? I think it's funny that over and over in our lives we have to learn new things and grow up another part of ourselves. I wrote about it yesterday and am back out of feeling satisfied, am back in my grumpy crucible. Now I'm going running, maybe I can run my grumpiness off. Or perhaps I could write a factual node, that would be a challenge. Oh, I need to go to work too. Damn.

Happy days all.

Some technical details about the catbox of which many might not be aware.

Firstly, borging cuts off not only your ability to chat but also your ability to send private messages until the borging automatically expires. Further, the more you're borged, the longer this punishment lasts. It's a decently harsh thing.

Secondly, there is a form of punishment, rarely exercised, called chat suspension. This allows somebody to send private messages, but prevents them from chatting. Chat suspension is invisible to regular users except for the affected person and does not automatically expire.

Thirdly, there are additional rooms on E2. No one has proposed this option, as they are rarely used, but you can always ask a group of people to move their discussion to another room such as Political Asylum. This can allow a conversation that may be interesting to a small group, but generally off-putting to others, placing it somewhere with a smaller audience and less chance of a permanent record.

I'm going to withhold my personal views on the functioning of chanops, as I cause them enough headaches as is.

EDIT EDIT. Okay, after calming down and having a looksee at The Debutante's Editor log, I suppose I may as well put in my two cents since I'm already in here.

E2 is phenomenal, to my mind, when it comes to moderator-user communication. Despite being here for a year, I'm still used to other sites' methods, which usually boil down to: 'You are users. You are here for free. Quit your bitching about the way things are run, or we ban you. Shut up, sit down, and go play.' That's if they're present at all. Some places I've been too just have them totally behind the scenes, with maybe one puppet account between the whole horde of them for announcements. Which is one of the reasons why I like E2 so much. Not only do the mods here actually log in, but they talk to people, and play silly /egg games, and act like people. So, yeah. That's the background where I'm coming from.

As for disturbances and the like. One of the odd things about E2 is the reluctance to thump someone with the banstick. Other places, someone stirs up shit on purpose, they get forcibly removed from that part of the internet. Accounts terminated or at least suspended so they can't log back in for a week or so. Here, instead, you guys have a lighthearted little thing called borging. It's a nice quirk. After a warning from the chat moderators, if someone doesn't clean up their act- whether it be a rant, drunkenly threatening another user, or just posting COCK COCK COCK in a giant, catbox-flooding wall of text, then yeah, borg them. It's not like it's permanent. I agree with Sam512: it should be public and obvious. Maybe a little message from E2D2 or EDB pops up. SO-AND-SO has been BORGED!

If it was an honest user who just wouldn't take the warnings, maybe it will give them time to calm down. If it was a drive-by-troll, they won't care and will just move on to the next place.

So, yeah. My $.002 on that matter.

EDIT: It occurs to me that there's some sort of catbox thing going on. Fuck it. I don't care at the moment. Pardon the harshness of tone, but right now, I find myself not giving a damn about anything else at the moment.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fucking fuckidy fu-diddily-uck. Yes, there's going to be a lot of cursing. Some situations call for gratuitous emphatic expletives, and few carry the needed amount of dammit-all-to-hell-and-back that the word fuck supplies so readily.

Beaky's dead.

The little mutant baby in my homenode pic? The picture I put up fucking yesterday? The baby who had a vet appointment scheduled for Saturday to get his eponymous beak trimmed? The same baby who was crawling all over my shoulder yesterday and the cause of a humorous mismessage, who I bottle fed not even twenty-four hours ago and made 'om nom' noises to as he awkwardly glugged down baby bird food, and was just starting to get the hang of the whole 'flying' thing?

Yeah, he's dead now. I don't know why, other than he's always been a sickly little thing. Maybe it caught up to him.

I don't know.I just got done digging a little grave for him - one foot by one foot by one foot for all four inches of him. Fuck. I already buried him. He's out there, now, beside the aviary. I just told my mom to cancel the vet appointment.

Fucking hell fuck fuck fuck.

I usually try really hard Not to get attached to the birds. They aren't pets: they're breeders. I feed them and take care of them and talk at them while I'm out there, and give them toys to play with and can even tell most of them apart, but except for the occasional exception, they aren't pets. They don't have names, and if they do, it's usually a generic nickname that can be applied to at least three other birds.

"Hey, Mama Blue. Hi, Bitey. Hi, Slapper."

But dammit, I liked Beaky. He was born with a crooked beak, so we were sure he'd die young. Instead, out of the four eggs that had hatched, Beaky and his two yellow sibs made it to fledgedom while the healthy looking one that might've been green if it had grown up died in what I can't help thinking of 'his stead'.

Then we started handfeeding the little mutant bastard and he just looked so fucking ridiculous with that baby food gruel dribbling down his face. And he looked so happy when he got to perch on our heads. Sometimes he'd try flying around the room and instead of going straight from point A to point B, he'd make a slow descent downwards until he finally landed on the ground. Then he'd look around giving off the impression of "What? How did this happen?!" when he found himself standing on the floor beside where point B ought to have been.

Fuck. I got attached to the little monster.

Dammit. I adored the little monster.

We weren't going to sell him. Obviously. I mean, nobody'd want a little mutant bird like him, even if he did have the prettiest coloring I'd ever seen in any of the birds we'd raised. Depending on what the vet said on Saturday, we weren't going to put him down, either. We have a giant cage in the rec-room: about a foot wide, four feet tall, five feet long. It would have been all his. And maybe a friend, so he wouldn't get lonely when we were gone.

The bastard was playing in my hair yesterday. He expelled himself on my fucking Where's Waldo shirt. I really tried not to like him, and just when I was starting to let my guard down and embrace it, the little bastard decided he'd had his fill and leaves the table.

Manipulative bastard. I bet he did it on purpose. I'm gonna miss the little fucker.

hi

I am new here, despite my longstanding on-again-off-again addiction to everything.

I realize that e2 is a thing of thought and opinion and experiences, not a therapy group. This day has been set aside to critique the chat as the primary social function of e2. All I can say about chat is that I shouldn't, at least most of the time. At times I feel as if I don't know if I'm being a douche or worse but really I can tell you that I know all too well. The idea of being social is alien to me right now as I am processing some grief that would likely be way less (and less) toxic had I become a conscientious contributor when I first began reading here. My personal project now is to accept fate and control my reaction(s) thereof. I chose this facet of the universe to seek alignment because I feel drawn to you, as if we had met before or pathed crosses irl or in an other place or life or dream. Chances are that I'm dead wrong on all accounts in which case you should maybe count your lucky stars. The past can be a scary place.

All I want is to leave 98 senses for every two cents taken. I want the change more than chat.

Alright, Let’s keep this brief.

Yes, the chanops need guidelines, if the ab(users) have rules to live by the enforcers need rules too.

I think we need to relax with the censorship as well. Arguments that have turned ugly, yes; but not because you believe someone is talking about a taboo subject and will not quiet because you rudely wiped their message. I do have examples, but I am not here to be extensive and point fingers. I just feel we all know deep down that a chanop can bully a person with their privileges, that is wrong, and there should be an ethics model for them to work off and punishments if they are acting in a unethical manner.

Thank you, your friend.