I'd like to speak to the manager

[Steady Hands]

We don't have a system for promotion, but honestly, it's worth thinking about.

Agreed. For members who want to nominate others for recognition I would suggest that they consider posting in the CIK Member Appreciation Thread, not here in the trolls' lounge.

If sincere, I admire the effort from @Seng Hock. However the placement of the post in the trolls' lounge seems incongruous. Also, if a nominating member describes the nominated member's "worthiness for promotion by consistently contributing high-quality posts to this forum" then, at the very least, one example of these posts should be included in the nomination.

I would give these new guys a rep point if we had that system. I'd say some kind of bump in forum rank would be justified.

There seems to be three main ways to offer the equivalent of a rep point here:
(i) Write a post on their profile (if they allow profile posts via their account settings)
(ii) Write a post in the CIK Member Appreciation Thread.
(iii) Use 'thumbs up', 'seal of approval' or other positive reactions.

I don't see a need for a hierarchy here even if it's a meaningless one, I think we should all be on equal footing.

I'll explain a few reasons why it is useful to have a hierarchical system that offers higher ranking members privileges such as access to private sections, additional posting privileges, etc.

1. To reflect how meritocratic organisations function. Just showing up to a company and "wanting" things doesn't lead to dinner with the CEO. Hopefully this can help teach young men something useful, like how present effort -> future rewards.

2. To protect personal or sensitive topics. We have a private sub-forum where we can share things without putting them on a web/Google archive. A random member with no link to RVF, no contributions here, and/or no meetups doesn't deserve access to that section.

3. To help newbies learn who is who. Most rookies aren't keen on rankings because they're at the bottom. However rankings can give hints at who is worth listening to.

4. To encourage effortful participation. Initially, CIK sign-ups via RVF were rewarded, with higher rankings allowing enhanced posting privileges as determined by time committed to RVF, quantity of postings, and the general status of the member.

On RVF, members offered others supportive comments on their profile reflecting (a) recognition of contributions, in particular high quality singular efforts on a certain topic and/or (b) a statement of meeting up. Wutang referred to this rep system below:

Those ranks were earned simply by the number of posts you had on the forum. They weren't recognition of contributing quality. For that there was the reputation system where users would award each another user a point.

5. To encourage meetings and connections made in real life.

In a largely bygone era of men's groups online, there was usually a public section and a private section. The only way to get into the private section was to meetup in real life. This represented an incentive for new members to get verified and exert effort in the real world. In any case, making real friends was by far the clearest benefit of taking a chance with a random meetup.

I do not judge anyone here for not meeting others, as I cannot know their circumstances. This is important to emphasize.

Nonetheless, I do have a custom of e-introducing members who state that they would never meetup with any other member, even if the opportunity was safe and feasible



Final note. This system shouldn't foster arrogance in higher ranking members or permit them to insult others. "Respect my rep sheet, newb, I don't need to explain my fortune cookie one-liner wisdom to you!" No sir, that's counter-productive to the spirit of the forum.

That said, if a new account signs up and makes numerous enquiries about another man's beard... well... you know the deal (GIFs away).

 

[Matsufubu]

You asked for it...

 

[Caduceus]

I don't see a need for a hierarchy here even if it's a meaningless one, I think we should all be on equal footing.

ok commie

 

[Seng Hock]

We don't have a system for promotion, but honestly, it's worth thinking about.

Thank you for considering my concerns. However, I must admit that I am disappointed that members with low or no rank have no opportunity for promotion.

As it stands, the only way to achieve a higher rank is through posts made in the old RVF forums, which are then carried over here. Yet, even after contributing hundreds or even thousands of posts in this forum, attaining a prestigious rank like Heritage remains impossible. As a result, members are indefinitely stuck as Remnants or remain rankless, regardless of their contributions.

The only alternative path to gaining rank is by donating to the forum, which grants the Philanthropist status. While I understand the incentive to encourage donations, this approach essentially creates a pay-to-win system. There should still be a way to earn promotions based on merit.​

Agreed. For members who want to nominate others for recognition I would suggest that they consider posting in the CIK Member Appreciation Thread, not here in the trolls' lounge.

If sincere, I admire the effort from @Seng Hock. However the placement of the post in the trolls' lounge seems incongruous. Also, if a nominating member describes the nominated member's "worthiness for promotion by consistently contributing high-quality posts to this forum" then, at the very least, one example of these posts should be included in the nomination.

I understand why my post might be perceived as a joke, but I assure you that it is not.

What prompted me to write it was seeing PurpleUrkel’s post, where he expressed surprise that his meetup thread had gained significant interest. The irony is that he was the one who started that thread, yet it was later moved to the private forum, where, as a low-ranking Remnant member, he no longer had access. As a result, he is literally unable to participate in the very discussion he initiated. This issue would not have occurred if he had at least reached the Heritage tier rank, which grants access to the private forum.

I posted this in the troll thread because I noticed that multiple members had used it to defend their positions—Magoo at the start of the thread and MusicForThePiano across several pages. I also previously used this thread to advocate for TrainedLogosmotion’s right to have his Christian status reinstated instead of being classified as Agnostic.

Additionally, I included a screenshot of PurpleUrkel’s profile as evidence of his quality contributions. With around 1.000 posts and a reaction score exceeding 3.000, I believe his posting history speaks for itself.

That said, I see merit in your suggestion. Moving forward, I will make an effort to post more in the appreciation thread and in members’ profile posts.​

 

[PurpleUrkel]

Next time you plagiarize

Instead of admitting to having plagiarized your content

Is plagiarizing a bannable offense?

 

[Cooper]

^LaNegra copy-pasted from a secondary source without naming that source. If you're going to do this, you have to name your source. The content quoted wasn't just straight quotations of articles and their authors, but also the writing and analysis by a secondary source who had cobbled together and commented on alleged primary sources. Therefore, that secondary source needs to be acknowledged as his source if he's going to copy-paste that guy's content.

This was a recurrent problem with the banned poster whose name escapes me who used to lift a lot of text in his long kitchen sink-type responses. He never posted his sources because they were dodgy.

In the case of LaNegra's source above, the guy in question is a neoliberal from SF espousing luciferian concepts like "as above so below".

As Above, So Below

We take some conceptual heuristics for granted but discard others without good reason, but all pure concepts have a similar degree of non-existence.

andercot.substack.com

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

@Cooper
We reviewed @LaAguilaNegra post, and while he could have been more scrupulous, he did not commit plagiarism.
He used italicization to highlight excerpts from a longer text, he didn't claim the authorship and openly stated that he forwarded the text.

This isn't just my personal opinion, it's the moderation team's.
The council has spoken
View attachment 25872
Case closed.

In many ancient societies falsely accusing third parties of misdemeanor, crimes and/or attempts at character assassination through spreading falsehoods would be punishable by double the stated penalty that stands for the charged offense. Even in today's warped justice systems claimants often have to cover to lawyer expenses of the party accused when losing a case.

As an extension of this the CIK policy on making false claims needs to be laid out in the open. It is undesirable to uphold a zero punishment policy on bad faith actors' attempts at playing the system, it sets a bad precedent and will lead to deteriorating quality of discussion down the line.

Furthermore the usage of 'report button' needs to be specified. AFAIK the report button is the mechanism in place to emphasize/inform moderators on rule-breaking and other unwanted forum dynamics. Nevertheless member Cooper is deliberately putting both moderators and defendants on the spot by throwing his tantrums in discussion threads. In case anyone thinks this is done by accident, it is not. It's obviously done to incite and slander yours truly by negative association.

The moderator team needs to draw a line on this type of bad faith behavior. Member Cooper knew dammed well his garbage accusation, like most of his posts bytheway, didn't make any sense but tried his luck anyway because there isn't a drawback. That needs to change.

 

[Cooper]

@Cooper
We reviewed @LaAguilaNegra post, and while he could have been more scrupulous, he did not commit plagiarism.
He used italicization to highlight excerpts from a longer text, he didn't claim the authorship and openly stated that he forwarded the text.

This isn't just my personal opinion, it's the moderation team's.
The council has spoken

Case closed.

My point was, he should have posted the source of the text he had copy-pasted. It was a pretty long passage and when posting outside content, one should post the author/source.

The fact that it takes very little additional effort to post the author of the long commentary that he cut and pasted leads me to believe that he has willfully withheld that information. Just forwarding the text and not being held to stating its source is the aspect that IMHO delves into plagiarism. MusicForThePiano was constantly doing this.

Thanks to the team for taking the time to review that issue.

 

[Cooper]

In many ancient societies falsely accusing third parties of misdemeanor, crimes and/or attempts at character assassination through spreading falsehoods would be punishable by double the stated penalty that stands for the charged offense. Even in today's warped justice systems claimants often have to cover to lawyer expenses of the party accused when losing a case.

As an extension of this the CIK policy on making false claims needs to be laid out in the open. It is undesirable to uphold a zero punishment policy on bad faith actors' attempts at playing the system, it sets a bad precedent and will lead to deteriorating quality of discussion down the line.

Furthermore the usage of 'report button' needs to be specified. AFAIK the report button is the mechanism in place to emphasize/inform moderators on rule-breaking and other unwanted forum dynamics. Nevertheless member Cooper is deliberately putting both moderators and defendants on the spot by throwing his tantrums in discussion threads. In case anyone thinks this is done by accident, it is not. It's obviously done to incite and slander yours truly by negative association.

The moderator team needs to draw a line on this type of bad faith behavior. Member Cooper knew dammed well his garbage accusation, like most of his posts bytheway, didn't make any sense but tried his luck anyway because there isn't a drawback. That needs to change.

I made my case above about why you should post the source of your content when you cut and paste long passages,

I think it is a valid point, even though the mods thought it did not merit any disciplinary action.

For your info, none of the warnings you have received about insulting me or others were initiated by my reporting these insults. If I were to report every time you have slandered and insulted me, I would have reported a dozen of your posts this week alone.

I don't need to assassinate your character, you do a pretty good job of that through the tenor of your content, most of your posts being aberrant in their constant and extreme use of vitriol, and their tone is invariably angry and sardonic. Can you talk about various subjects in a normal English tone?

This, if anything, is what would improve the "deteriorating quality of discussion" to quote your point above (see, it's not that hard to state your sources when you quote someone ).

 

[TruckDriver9]

In many ancient societies falsely accusing third parties of misdemeanor, crimes and/or attempts at character assassination through spreading falsehoods would be punishable by double the stated penalty that stands for the charged offense. Even in today's warped justice systems claimants often have to cover to lawyer expenses of the party accused when losing a case.

As an extension of this the CIK policy on making false claims needs to be laid out in the open. It is undesirable to uphold a zero punishment policy on bad faith actors' attempts at playing the system, it sets a bad precedent and will lead to deteriorating quality of discussion down the line

You should have listened to Your own advice and used the report button.
Because now, after You publicly asked me to punish Cooper, any decision I make will be questioned as biased against one of You. So I won't be making any decisions on this. I recuse myself - one of the other moderators will make this call.

 

[TruckDriver9]

Thread renamed from "Contest my ban" to "I'd like to speak to the manager".

 

[scorpion]

@LaAguilaNegra - make an effort to cite your sources and quotations better. By a careful reading, you didn't plagiarize, but you didn't explicitly attribute your quote, either.

@Cooper - Understand that given your long history of mutual antagonism with LAN, any accusation you make against him must be taken with a grain of salt. This goes both ways.

Gentlemen, the moderation team takes no pleasure in playing referee in your feud. We generally allow you guys a lot of leeway in your posting toward each other, given that you both seem to give as well as you get, and are engaged what can only be described as the internet forum version of mutual combat. If you want to argue about China and Israel until you're blue in the face, have at it. Just stay within the bounds of the forum rules, and don't come crying to the mod team to enforce discipline unless there is truly some out-of-bounds behavior. We're not here to provide you guys another means by which to get one over on one another. If your beef gets out of hand again any time soon, you'll both receive a time out.