If you're looking for a bot to perform a task or function (and not just the shits and giggles bots that Reddit has), then IMO that's basically a smell that you need that feature integrated into...
If you're looking for a bot to perform a task or function (and not just the shits and giggles bots that Reddit has), then IMO that's basically a smell that you need that feature integrated into the site—and given Tildes is open source, contributions to the source would probably be welcome and accepted. The RemindMe! one is a good example. Bots on reddit are used as an almost quasi-monkeypatch for missing functionality.
Semantically, in my mind, comments are for humans and discussion. Not filling in for missing features.
indeed, but it's also a way for the community to fill in blanks that the developers can never furfill themselves (be it for reasons involving resource, financial, marketing, or otherwise). I think...
Bots on reddit are used as an almost quasi-monkeypatch for missing functionality.
indeed, but it's also a way for the community to fill in blanks that the developers can never furfill themselves (be it for reasons involving resource, financial, marketing, or otherwise).
I think the best example would be the automoderator on r/anime. For discussion threads on episodes, it scrapes websites to find when a show airs, create a thread, gives out official links to watch, generates links to other discussion threads, and creates a community poll. All in seconds. This is not only convienient, but is a way to cut down on spam as everyone rushes to post the same topic.
But this seems to be a niche use special to that community, and there are some moral quandaries to an official entity scraping websites. So it may not only be too much effort for a devloper to put in a site, but possibly risky.
I guess bots are mostly useful in that space where a feature is wanted or needed by one group, but unnecessary or superfluous for the site as a whole, so it won't get added to the codebase. I...
I guess bots are mostly useful in that space where a feature is wanted or needed by one group, but unnecessary or superfluous for the site as a whole, so it won't get added to the codebase. I think they are useful there, though. Maybe a bot has to be attached to a group in order to be allowed?
I agree with that. The "good" bots on reddit tend to be made for a specific sub anyway, with other Subs opt ing in to use it in their community. Same principle can apply here to protect against...
I agree with that. The "good" bots on reddit tend to be made for a specific sub anyway, with other Subs opt ing in to use it in their community. Same principle can apply here to protect against malice.
I think this kind of feature is only needed if your community userbase outgrows the moderation abilities, at which point things are already lost. I could see a case for scraping for automatic...
I think this kind of feature is only needed if your community userbase outgrows the moderation abilities, at which point things are already lost. I could see a case for scraping for automatic topic creation, but the foundation for that should be baked into the site itself.
The design of Tildes should prevent duplicate/multiple threads, rather then delegate to a bot. Polling seems of limited usefulness when discussion is the primary focus.
Yeah, the scraper stuff (which has uses in ~music and ~books and probably damn near everywhere) should be in-built, because that allows it to operate and pull up relevant external information...
Yeah, the scraper stuff (which has uses in ~music and ~books and probably damn near everywhere) should be in-built, because that allows it to operate and pull up relevant external information during the submission process rather than afterwards, which is exactly where you most want access to that information. You can't do that with a bot.
Having it there means you can present that info to the user on the submission preview, and they just have to edit the results a bit instead of putting in everything themselves. Things like ISBN numbers for books, genres and album/artist info for music, appropriate tags found at the other end of the link, relevant links to external sites, etc. It makes for a lazy submission process - which you really want on mobile.
It also allows the equivalent of automod/regex processing to happen during the submission itself, even for example auto-generating titles (which would be a killer feature in ~music.streams). You can't do that kind of stuff before the submission is finalized with a bot, since it can only act after the submission is there. This has caused lots of problems on reddit and I'd love for Tildes to take the next step there.
Scraping is a huge gray area. One low key detail about that anime bot I mentioned is a torrent site is one of the places it scrapes for releases. It's not promoted at all on the subreddit (and the...
I could see a case for scraping for automatic topic creation, but the foundation for that should be baked into the site itself.
Scraping is a huge gray area. One low key detail about that anime bot I mentioned is a torrent site is one of the places it scrapes for releases. It's not promoted at all on the subreddit (and the subreddit in facts auto removes comments mentioning the popular torrenting sites), but it gives value that in the end helps facilitate discussion and promote official platforms. So it's an ambivalent case overall.
Even with more legal entities, web scraping is usually against the ToS if they do not provide a public API.
We've had this discussion a couple of times. Specialized, clearly labeled bot accounts seemed the most reasonable, especially if those have restrictions on voting and possibly extended API access...
We've had this discussion a couple of times. Specialized, clearly labeled bot accounts seemed the most reasonable, especially if those have restrictions on voting and possibly extended API access in other ways. This lets us maintain some level of quality control over the good bots, makes sure people know when they see a bot, and limit or extend that bot's access to features as necessary for it to do its job, whatever that happens to be. That'll also help if an approved bot account gets compromised.
People will still write bots that aren't identifiable as bots and pretend to be users, that's just how it goes. Terms of use can easily say any bot that isn't on its own approved account gets the banhammer. Since Deimos worked on reddit's anti-evil team dealing with this I imagine he's got more experience with it than the rest of us combined.
Seems fair to me. Bots are a nearly essential tool as a userbase scales up. So it feels overkill and a self-defeating purpose to outright ban all bots unconditionally. But at the same time a bot...
Seems fair to me. Bots are a nearly essential tool as a userbase scales up. So it feels overkill and a self-defeating purpose to outright ban all bots unconditionally. But at the same time a bot doesn't need all user priveledges, like voting.
bots trying to pass off as real humans can be dealt on a case to case basis.
I don’t see how bots would be essential as a user base scales up. As someone said in a different thread, tildes is open source. Anyone who can write a bot can also submit a pull request. Would you...
I don’t see how bots would be essential as a user base scales up. As someone said in a different thread, tildes is open source. Anyone who can write a bot can also submit a pull request. Would you mind sharing some examples of bots being necessary, where it wouldn’t be better to build the feature into the site itself?
In r/Factorio they have a blueprint bot that takes blueprint strings and renders images of the blueprints (example). It's really useful for that one specific community, but isn't useful anywhere...
In r/Factorio they have a blueprint bot that takes blueprint strings and renders images of the blueprints (example). It's really useful for that one specific community, but isn't useful anywhere else on the site. There's no need for that to be a baked in site feature.
Anything that can benefit from automation that a community desires. One of the best examples was how for certain anime subreddit there was a bot that track a formatted message for a show name (e....
Anything that can benefit from automation that a community desires. One of the best examples was how for certain anime subreddit there was a bot that track a formatted message for a show name (e. g. {{anime name}}), and it would reply with a formatted message describing the work Including a brief summary, airing status, number of episodes, and link to databases for more information. This is a very helpful feature, but for a specific niche. not really one I'd feel is worth a PR for the entire website.
to help fill holes in any moderation habits. A big problem with rule breaking content that stays up is mostly due to the fact that moderators can't necessarily check around the clock. And if they can't get a certain mod on a different timezone there are holes to fill. This can definitely be a feature worthy of a PR for some kind of mod toolbox, but defining features needed per group may get tricky. There are still many features on reddit mod tools missing after years of promise.
Feature that may fall into gray areas for "official use". Back to the example in #1, maybe a PR can be made. But what would it say if the site decides to more or less "align" with certain databases by giving them native functions? The implications are much different from a user that decided to program something. Web scraping is another common technique used in user bots that is a grey area for official entities.
To give a few examples. It's not just to alleviate developer resources, but a soft legal protection.
I think the answer to that is yes, in most cases. It's possible that here, a bot might just be the first step to explore a future feature. There may be some specialized cases where a bot works...
I think the answer to that is yes, in most cases. It's possible that here, a bot might just be the first step to explore a future feature. There may be some specialized cases where a bot works better. One-offs for specific communities, interactions with other websites, that sort of thing.
I think that primary holds only if the userbase grows too fast, dismantling the community aspect and overpowering the ability to onboard sufficient moderators
Bots are a nearly essential tool as a userbase scales up. So it feels overkill and a self-defeating purpose to outright ban all bots unconditionally
I think that primary holds only if the userbase grows too fast, dismantling the community aspect and overpowering the ability to onboard sufficient moderators
To some extent yes. But at some point, it will be a lot harder to get your hundredth moderator than your hundred thousandth user. Or one of those moderators go inactive due to real life issues,...
To some extent yes. But at some point, it will be a lot harder to get your hundredth moderator than your hundred thousandth user. Or one of those moderators go inactive due to real life issues, which affects a community more than a few users popping in and out.
You can consider it a crutch of some sorts if cynical. But I see it as a necessary backup plan, especially since moderators are volunteers and relatively likely to pause/freeze their "duties" should something arise.
That's where the community aspect comes in. By building a healthy culture, it reduces the need for moderation. I was under the impression one of the initial goals of Tildes was to build a system...
That's where the community aspect comes in. By building a healthy culture, it reduces the need for moderation.
I was under the impression one of the initial goals of Tildes was to build a system that enables the entire community to moderate itself and help resolve the insufficient mod problem.
There can certainly be moderation tools baked into the platform to make the mod's life easier. One I'm a fan of is forced originality. Perhaps not as a removal mechanism, but as a 'bad actor detection' one. But modding decisions should ultimately be made by a human, even if the platform helps prioritize and triage.
I think bots on reddit are annoying except for the ones purpose built for a community. I assume you aren't taking about something like dadbot, but people leaving commands as comments to bots...
I think bots on reddit are annoying except for the ones purpose built for a community. I assume you aren't taking about something like dadbot, but people leaving commands as comments to bots causes a lot of clutter.
Without some sort of official endorsement by Tildes administration, bots should only be able to DM on an opt-in basis (i.e. a user DM's the bot first to opt-in to ongoing behavior, or the bot only...
Exemplary
Without some sort of official endorsement by Tildes administration, bots should only be able to DM on an opt-in basis (i.e. a user DM's the bot first to opt-in to ongoing behavior, or the bot only replies in direct reaction to a user DMing it). If a bot is getting official endorsement, then the question becomes why the functionality is not being added directly to the Tildes codebase.
If you had administrator permission (I'm thinking about the idea on many sites) and made it absolutely obvious to anybody who received a message that it wasn't official, I'd be okay with the idea....
If you had administrator permission (I'm thinking about the idea on many sites) and made it absolutely obvious to anybody who received a message that it wasn't official, I'd be okay with the idea. I'd prefer the balance of site clutter and comment responses, because it would potentially foster a discussion that would spread the idea better, and provide evidence that it's not just an individual being called out. I've been called out for this a couple times, and even wanting to do the right thing, there's a moment of offense when it happens. If that happens via DM from a bot and the only redress is to opt-out, it would possibly make this feeling worse, however detailed the explanation.
I just feel like leaving the possibility of immediate human intervention in an open space helps more.
I think having a bot for each separate instance of this would get annoying, but suppose it were something like a linter used for code? You shouldn’t need to write a bot, just a lint rule, and the...
I think having a bot for each separate instance of this would get annoying, but suppose it were something like a linter used for code? You shouldn’t need to write a bot, just a lint rule, and the feedback should appear before you publish a new post.
Having worked on actual linters deployed at pretty large scale, it’s important to beta-test each lint rule and make sure the false positives aren’t too high. (Back in the day, this is apparently what turned Microsoft’s Clippy into a joke.)
That seems like it could potentially result in a lot of false positives, so it would have to be an absolutely airtight implementation to not be super annoying to everyone, even with an opt-out....
That seems like it could potentially result in a lot of false positives, so it would have to be an absolutely airtight implementation to not be super annoying to everyone, even with an opt-out. E.g. "They crippled this software." Bot: "Hey, I noticed you used a historically offensive word in your comment." :P
Substring filters are hilariously awful. Unless you use them as a flagging system for possible violations and then perform a check against a dictionary of valid words for final validation, it's...
Substring filters are hilariously awful. Unless you use them as a flagging system for possible violations and then perform a check against a dictionary of valid words for final validation, it's inevitable that you're going to filter out ass every time you try to talk about class or sass. Sure, you'll still have the problem when misspellings occur, but having any form of whitelist is certainly better than nothing. I swear I lose another portion of my sanity whenever I see something like cl*** in a chat log :,)
Oh, don't worry, I wasn't assuming anything. I just opened the wikipedia page and ended up having flashbacks to all of the horrible substring filter implementations I've run into in the past, so I...
Oh, don't worry, I wasn't assuming anything. I just opened the wikipedia page and ended up having flashbacks to all of the horrible substring filter implementations I've run into in the past, so I felt the need to comment on it lol.
Sorry but I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you on this one. Words can have multiple meanings, and they change over time. And IMO just because one definition is potentially derogatory...
Sorry but I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you on this one. Words can have multiple meanings, and they change over time. And IMO just because one definition is potentially derogatory towards some people when directed at them doesn't necessarily mean that is inherent in any usage of the word. The OED's primary definition of "crippled" is "severely damaged or malfunctioning" and doesn't refer to personal disabilities at all.
Related words, entirely different meanings due to context. Crippled can be used as a derogatory word, and the etymological Middle English root of it meant "deprived of the use of limbs", but the...
Related words, entirely different meanings due to context. Crippled can be used as a derogatory word, and the etymological Middle English root of it meant "deprived of the use of limbs", but the modern usage is rarely that. Now it just generally means "severly damaged or malfunctioning" with no inherent derogatory implication, IMO. Meaning is contextual, varies by culture, and time.
Another prime example: When I was living in the UK, people saying they were "going out for a fag" (short for faggot, but referring to the original meaning of "a bundle of brushwood used for fuel") when they were going outside to smoke a cigarette was remarkably common to hear there... and that particular usage predates the derogatory one by several hundred years. I (even as "fag" myself who has had that word thrown in my face more times than I can count over the years) wasn't offended by that though, because I understood their intended meaning, and was cognizant of the context in which is was being used. A bot lacks that capability though, so automatically assuming a user meant a word in a derogatory way and responding as such, at least when it comes to words which also have a commonly intended benign meaning, is problematic for that exact reason, IMO.
It's been used that way since the middle ages. No clue when it started being used for the balls of meat offcuts but there's a quote from the early 1800 with it used in that context.
It's been used that way since the middle ages. No clue when it started being used for the balls of meat offcuts but there's a quote from the early 1800 with it used in that context.
Especially so here on Tildes, where we're working to discuss under the assumption of good faith discussion. I personally object to word censorship. Even saying blantently offensive words sometimes...
A bot lacks that capability though, so automatically assuming a user meant a word in a derogatory way and responding as such, at least when it comes to words which also have a commonly intended benign meaning, is problematic for that exact reason, IMO.
Especially so here on Tildes, where we're working to discuss under the assumption of good faith discussion.
I personally object to word censorship. Even saying blantently offensive words sometimes makes sense in the proper context. And given the fluidity of language, it's a somewhat futile exercise. I don't know a single person that mocks a mentally handicapped person by calling them a retard anymore. I saw a lot of people growing up mocking mentally handicapped people, but those people were retarded assholes who would mock the handicapped even if they couldn't use a specific word.
The use of the word retard has evolved. Cripple has even moreso. We shouldn't try to banish these words when being used appropriately outside of their offensive contexts.
Some words do break that generality, and the n-word would be one of them, simply because there was virtually no inoffensive use of that word until recently. Even then, it still has a place. Blazing Saddles is a roaringly hilarious comedy that couldn't be made today, even though it doesn't use the word in a genuinely malicious way given the context of the entire film.
But it applies equally well to crippled as well. It took over 1000 years for the word to be considered sufficiently derogatory. The entire concept of 'reclaiming a word' makes little sense to me,...
The entire concept of 'reclaiming a word' makes little sense to me, it just conflates the language and creates uncomfortable situations where you're only permitted to use a word under very specific circumstances (which online are virtually unverifiable). I elaborated more in this reply.
Eh, I'm more not on your side with this one that you probably might assume given my defense of the word crippled, which only applied specifically to when it's being used in reference to inanimate...
Eh, I'm more not on your side with this one that you probably might assume given my defense of the word crippled, which only applied specifically to when it's being used in reference to inanimate objects/systems/etc. When used to descibe people "crippled" is still absolutely derogatory though. And unless you're using retard to mean "prevent" (e.g. "to retard a fire"), I am not particularly keen on that one since otherwise it generally means "a mentally deficient person", and so you calling other people "retarded assholes" is absolutely, undeniably derogatory IMO, and inappropriate as a result... regardless of who you're applying it to.
Perhaps, but derogatory language will always be around so long as people have passionate disagreements and/or irrational hatred. The issue isn't necessarily the words themselves, but the context...
Perhaps, but derogatory language will always be around so long as people have passionate disagreements and/or irrational hatred. The issue isn't necessarily the words themselves, but the context behind how they are used. Yes, it is rude to call people retards. But it would be equally rude to call them mentally handicapped if they were not, medically speaking. The only difference is the level of verbosity required to do so.
I recall that there was a transition somewhere in the late 90's from homophobes saying fag and queer to just saying homo in place. It's not any less derogatory, it's just a different word being used in the same sense. The problem isn't to ban the word, but to dismantle the reason for the derogatory use of said word.
Did making the n-word so incredibly taboo, such that even I won't use it in a discussion relevant to it, actually stop people from being incredibly racist? I would contend that it did not, it just shifted racists to using other words that are just as derogatory. And now we're in this weird situation where we have black musicians singing and selling it to everyone, white people profiting off of it, and white listeners such as me being scorned for singing the lyrics as I would any other song.
Ultimately, making words taboo just adds to their power. Consider all of the other profanity in our language. The entire concept evolved out of class structures, where the slang of the lower classes was considered profane by the upper classes. Censorship of profanity additionally doesn't really accomplish much, and I would argue is much more harmful overall. It's ok to think less of a person using certain words on a personal level, and to give them a warning/ban in a given community for using the words if their usage violates the general 'good faith civil discussion' principles.
Meta: I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, but rather building on, and explaining my own stance on the issue. I'm sorry if it came across that way.
By contrast, I attended a public school in a rural area which had approximately 3 mentally handicapped people. Retard was used almost exclusively as a general-purpose insult, the only time I heard...
By contrast, I attended a public school in a rural area which had approximately 3 mentally handicapped people. Retard was used almost exclusively as a general-purpose insult, the only time I heard it used otherwise was by bullies who would use it indiscrimantly the same way they would use literally any other insult. If they were banned from saying the word, they'd just use a different word, or switch to mocking their mannerisms, which I would contend is far worse.
It's important to consider nuance in discussions of language. For instance, there's an ongoing debate in tech regarding the term "master" in different contexts due to its connotations with...
It's important to consider nuance in discussions of language. For instance, there's an ongoing debate in tech regarding the term "master" in different contexts due to its connotations with slavery, even when used in a context in which there is no "slave" equivalent. Despite this, it would be silly to suggest that saying you want to "master" a skill is in any way offensive.
Mind you, I'm not making a value judgment regarding the terms "crippled" and "cripple", I'm only stating that context is incredibly important in language and we can't simply look at a word's history or similarity to determine its worth in unrelated contexts.
That's fair. I do have my own thoughts on the matter as a whole, but it looks like you and everyone else have covered the subject fairly extensively, so to add anything more would be superfluous :)
That's fair. I do have my own thoughts on the matter as a whole, but it looks like you and everyone else have covered the subject fairly extensively, so to add anything more would be superfluous :)
If you have a problem with someone using a particular word, you can say it directly to them. No amount of passive-aggressive bots will fix whatever you think is a problem here. There is nothing...
If you have a problem with someone using a particular word, you can say it directly to them. No amount of passive-aggressive bots will fix whatever you think is a problem here.
There is nothing less welcoming in a community than being told by a script that you're englishing wrong. It's like getting a customer support email from noreply@.
To address @cfabbro's example though, "cripple" I see is defined as offensive when used as a noun in two particular instances, all referring to "people with disabilities": https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cripple - Wikipedia agrees with four citations. I had never heard of it being considered offensive when used as a verb ("to cripple something" -> to severely damage and limit its capabilities), and indeed some cursory research in a community I admittedly know little about has not convinced me many people within that community consider the verb to be problematic.
Unrelated to the verb, I came across this article while researching the use and thought this was a pretty neat take:
There are a variety of things that I cannot do: walk, talk, etc. Surely if someone says that I shouldn't refer to myself as a cripple or handicapped, they are taking away another ability—the ability to express myself.
This logic of "but this is where the word came from and what it originally meant, nevermind current usage" can be turned on its head to justify the use of every other slur you quoted in your post...
"Cripple", in its original form, referred to physically disabled people. Later uses, meaning "useless", "reduced in utility", and such, came entirely out of that definition.
This logic of "but this is where the word came from and what it originally meant, nevermind current usage" can be turned on its head to justify the use of every other slur you quoted in your post above. It is as flawed as the whole "master" debate mentioned elsewhere in the thread and breaks down very quickly with even the faintest of knowledge of how etymology works.
Offence usually comes with intent. What makes those words slurs is the general agreement that they are, in fact, slurs. It works like currency: Anything can be a currency, but only if a sufficient amount of people agree that it is in fact a currency. Saying "nevermind current usage, this is a slur because it's originally related to one" is basically saying "forget the central bank, this is legal tender because I think it is".
I'm going to stop talking about this in this thread now, as it's extremely off-topic, but do feel free to @ me should you start this discussion again elsewhere as I'm interested in continuing it.
I'd just like to point out how much endless space I see these excruciatingly pedantic discussions taking up on websites and forums the internet over. They always leave me scratching my head,...
Exemplary
I'd just like to point out how much endless space I see these excruciatingly pedantic discussions taking up on websites and forums the internet over. They always leave me scratching my head, wondering when we decided that a person's feelings were the ultimate ethical benchmark that must overrule everything else.
I come from the generation that answered concerns about feelings with 'life sucks, get a helmet' and vicious mockery - just for the simple reason that the world doesn't care and it never, ever will. Here's a half million people with an issue, let's force seven billion others, most of whom won't even grok the context, to change their behaviors just to placate that group. Give me a break, that's God tier levels of entitlement right there and it runs counter to liberty to boot. Liberty means having the ability to make an ass out of yourself if you want to. ;)
Seems like a nice topic for debate in some post-scarcity star-trek rosy future when we've run out of other things to sap our time and energy. Other than that all I can suggest is improving schools, and maybe, just maybe, you can get the next generation to improve - but I don't think you'll ever get older generations to change. The last thing I'm going to ever be doing in a conversation is mentally vetting every single word in my head against a phantom list of fifty groups I don't even know or care about just to try and avoid nonsense non-issues like microaggressions. But that's just me, YMMV.
I think this problem will persist as long as language does, and once we're past that, context and intent should be less of a problem. Until then, I'm not holding my breath.
Years ago, back when I was on reddit, there was a subreddit that used custom CSS to color some of their titles differently based on different properties. One of the colors they selected was green,...
Exemplary
Years ago, back when I was on reddit, there was a subreddit that used custom CSS to color some of their titles differently based on different properties. One of the colors they selected was green, and one day a user pointed out that, being red-green colorblind, they couldn't distinguish the green titles from some of the other colors.
They received a number of responses where people vociferously pointed out how outrageous it was that they mandate a change for someone else based on their individual needs and how they just needed to learn to deal with it. The tenor of the responses was, by and large, that a colorblind individual does not get to dictate the terms of the site because they are in the minority, and it's unjust to have to cater to them.
The kicker is that the person never requested a change in the first place. They literally just pointed out that it was an issue for them. What got responded to was not their actual comment "I can't distinguish the green titles" but a cultural projection onto their comment "I demand that people cater to me".
I mention this because I see some of that in your comment. It's clear you're speaking from a place of frustration on this topic and feel that it conflicts with deep-seated ideas of liberty and entitlement. I get that; I honestly do. You're baffled by people who insist on what you see as censorious paradigms in discourse, but I encourage you to consider how someone like me might be baffled when the conversation instantly escalates from the other side. @tindall merely mentioned how we might privately point out to certain users that certain terms have offensive histories. She meant it as a helpful, supportive, pro-social thing rooted in compassion. And now suddenly it's escalated to this.
There's a second piece here, which is the idea that the color green on the subreddit was an arbitrary choice. It represented nothing on its own and easily could have been any other color, including one that would have been easier to distinguish. The simple, community-minded response would have been to change the color simply to make it more effective at its intended purpose -- after all, if the intent of using different colors was to note categories, and they weren't doing that for some users, tweaking them is effectively a bugfix. However, it was not looked at this way because this moment wasn't about what was best for the community but instead became about holding the line against "special treatment". I think it's very much worth considering that sometimes "special treatment" is valuable, and that many of us benefit from invisible instances of it all while we decry it in others.
I'm going to preface what I'm about to say with the fact that I very much value you and your contributions here, and I mean you no ill will in the slightest, but I don't know how to say the following without sounding a little harsh: in your comment you rail against the feelings of others being the delimiting factor for our conduct, but in doing so you are making an explicit appeal to the idea that your feelings on this topic should be treated with importance. If we are ignoring feelings on this, why should we consider yours in the first place?
I promise I'm not saying this as a dig or as a gotcha, but I'm using it to point out the idea that communication is fundamentally rooted in compassion or, at the very least, audience awareness. Each of us is completely used to the idea that we accommodate our communication based on different settings and individuals. I don't say "fuck" in front of my students, and I don't ask my friend about his ex, for example, because different situations call for different standards, and sometimes those standards involve compassion for someone else over our own need to speak our true feelings. I don't see this as entitlement or an infringement on liberty but as a fundamental building block of discourse. I do think there are hard lines where it starts to approach those, but merely recommending increased awareness doesn't come close to that, from my perspective at least.
That is a truly insightful response. Subtle trick getting the part of my brain that focuses on forum mechanics to collide like a brick with the part of my brain that gets hung up on all of the...
That is a truly insightful response. Subtle trick getting the part of my brain that focuses on forum mechanics to collide like a brick with the part of my brain that gets hung up on all of the vitriol I perceive in these endless discussions about language and context using that perfect example. That actually snaps this into focus pretty clearly.
Edit: Yep, the more I think about it, the more I'm realizing I'm the idiot here. Now I'm going to be looking at this entire class of problems differently, so thanks for that. This is why I love this website. Had I a delta to award it'd be yours.
Thanks for hearing me out! I hesitated to type what I did for fear of getting shouted down or for putting you off entirely, so I'm glad things worked out well, and I appreciate you meeting my...
Thanks for hearing me out! I hesitated to type what I did for fear of getting shouted down or for putting you off entirely, so I'm glad things worked out well, and I appreciate you meeting my pushback with an open mind and genuine consideration. This interaction just further reinforces the idea that I greatly value your presence and contributions here. :)
Well, not you, but I definitely do have the impression of forced change being beaten into my head by the sheer number of these sorts of discussions - and the tone on other websites is anything but...
Well, not you, but I definitely do have the impression of forced change being beaten into my head by the sheer number of these sorts of discussions - and the tone on other websites is anything but civil when this happens. Here we can talk it out.
I think that impression of forced change comes from the cancel culture behaviors around these issues. Take one thing out of context, or out of time from the past, and then use it to assassinate someone's character - and really, is it because of what they said, or because they'd already made themselves a target elsewhere?
What if something like this were paired with the labelling system? As in, it's not automatically done on detection, but if X number of users flag the comment, the bot then shoots a PM to the user?
What if something like this were paired with the labelling system? As in, it's not automatically done on detection, but if X number of users flag the comment, the bot then shoots a PM to the user?
I would have much less of a problem with that too, since I trust the judgement of fellow Tildes users a heck of a lot more than a natural language parsing bot. CC: @kfwyre p.s. For the record I am...
I would have much less of a problem with that too, since I trust the judgement of fellow Tildes users a heck of a lot more than a natural language parsing bot.
p.s. For the record I am also legally disabled myself (though admittedly not physically), and in principle don't oppose trying to help people understand when words are offensive, and trying to change their habits of using such words. I even support changing the Master terminology in git to Main, especially since the programmer who originally picked that term for use in git admitted it was based on the Master/Slave terminology used in the programs that came before it. I just don't think crippled is as clear cut an example is all.
I'm glad we could find an amenable conclusion here, and some common ground, since I do respect you and your opinions, and would hate for that to be tainted by this disagreement. And don't get me...
I'm glad we could find an amenable conclusion here, and some common ground, since I do respect you and your opinions, and would hate for that to be tainted by this disagreement. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely find it offensive when crippled is used to refer to a person, or condition which a person suffers from, and am even glad we here in Ontario changed the "disabled parking permit" to "accessible parking permit" a few year ago. But I just don't find it particularly offensive when referring to an inanimate object... which is thankfully the majority of cases these days! :)
Hi don't see any prohibition of the use of automated accounts, I'm dad. No but really, bots on reddit drive me absolutely batty. I've banned hundreds and downvoted thousands. If they are...
Looking at the ToU, I don't see any prohibition of the use of automated accounts
Hi don't see any prohibition of the use of automated accounts, I'm dad.
No but really, bots on reddit drive me absolutely batty. I've banned hundreds and downvoted thousands. If they are introduced to Tildes, I will make heavy use of the noise tag. I can see no situation in which they make the place better.
If there's demand for a feature like "reminders", then build that into the site. Don't encourage people to post spammy, non-contributing comments which triggers dozens of others to do the same.
There's utility in moderation bots, but those too are best-implemented at the site-level unless they're very specific to a community/group.
I would like to see all bots manually vetted and approved by an admin. Let's learn from reddit's mistakes.
That's primarily what I was thinking when I heard the suggestion. of course, spam bots are spam bots. but several niche communities had some very helpful features and I'd like to at least give...
There's utility in moderation bots, but those too are best-implemented at the site-level unless they're very specific to a community/group.
That's primarily what I was thinking when I heard the suggestion. of course, spam bots are spam bots. but several niche communities had some very helpful features and I'd like to at least give those a chance once an API is ready.
There have been a bunch of particularly shitty bots on reddit that reply to random comments that include "I'm <something>" with "Hi <something>, I'm dad." Here's a recent example:...
There have been a bunch of particularly shitty bots on reddit that reply to random comments that include "I'm <something>" with "Hi <something>, I'm dad." Here's a recent example: https://www.reddit.com/user/BadDadBot (it's hard to tell because the timestamps are all "1 month ago", but it was commenting once every few seconds)
Even the best gimmick bots get old and the "utility bots" disrupt conversation or junk up comments. A possible feature that could maybe be built could be a "bot pane" that can be...
Even the best gimmick bots get old and the "utility bots" disrupt conversation or junk up comments. A possible feature that could maybe be built could be a "bot pane" that can be enabled/configured by a subreddit moderator. It could be a tab or slide-up chat pane on the right where commands for the sub-reddit could be sent.
I'll plug an old idea again - the reply box could also double as a command line interface for things like "!remindme 7 days" and I'm sure that will lead to interesting places.
I'll plug an old idea again - the reply box could also double as a command line interface for things like "!remindme 7 days" and I'm sure that will lead to interesting places.
Perhaps to reduce clutter, any reply to a topic or comment that invokes a bot response (convention: starts with !) should be displayed condensed/collapsed and not like a regular comment.
Perhaps to reduce clutter, any reply to a topic or comment that invokes a bot response (convention: starts with !) should be displayed condensed/collapsed and not like a regular comment.
I think you're missing the suggestion: rather that the submitted comment being turned into an actual, visible comment, this would instead interpret the comment as a command and not include...
I think you're missing the suggestion: rather that the submitted comment being turned into an actual, visible comment, this would instead interpret the comment as a command and not include anything in the comment tree at all. Then instead of reducing clutter, the clutter wouldn't even exist in the first place.
The convention has to dovetail with markdown nicely. Adding a command processor also opens a vulnerability window so it's got to be handled carefully. I was thinking it wouldn't show those...
The convention has to dovetail with markdown nicely. Adding a command processor also opens a vulnerability window so it's got to be handled carefully. I was thinking it wouldn't show those command-interactions to anyone other than the user who activated them. They could pile up faster than comments in some circumstances and it's just clutter keeping track of them in the interface.
I was about to add to this discussion with 'Just use bookmarking and an external calendar to remind you to check it.' I like your solution. Add an optional 'Reminder date' when bookmarking which...
I was about to add to this discussion with 'Just use bookmarking and an external calendar to remind you to check it.'
I like your solution. Add an optional 'Reminder date' when bookmarking which bubbles your bookmark to a notification.
If you're looking for a bot to perform a task or function (and not just the shits and giggles bots that Reddit has), then IMO that's basically a smell that you need that feature integrated into the site—and given Tildes is open source, contributions to the source would probably be welcome and accepted. The RemindMe! one is a good example. Bots on reddit are used as an almost quasi-monkeypatch for missing functionality.
Semantically, in my mind, comments are for humans and discussion. Not filling in for missing features.
indeed, but it's also a way for the community to fill in blanks that the developers can never furfill themselves (be it for reasons involving resource, financial, marketing, or otherwise).
I think the best example would be the automoderator on r/anime. For discussion threads on episodes, it scrapes websites to find when a show airs, create a thread, gives out official links to watch, generates links to other discussion threads, and creates a community poll. All in seconds. This is not only convienient, but is a way to cut down on spam as everyone rushes to post the same topic.
But this seems to be a niche use special to that community, and there are some moral quandaries to an official entity scraping websites. So it may not only be too much effort for a devloper to put in a site, but possibly risky.
I guess bots are mostly useful in that space where a feature is wanted or needed by one group, but unnecessary or superfluous for the site as a whole, so it won't get added to the codebase. I think they are useful there, though. Maybe a bot has to be attached to a group in order to be allowed?
I agree with that. The "good" bots on reddit tend to be made for a specific sub anyway, with other Subs opt ing in to use it in their community. Same principle can apply here to protect against malice.
I think this kind of feature is only needed if your community userbase outgrows the moderation abilities, at which point things are already lost. I could see a case for scraping for automatic topic creation, but the foundation for that should be baked into the site itself.
The design of Tildes should prevent duplicate/multiple threads, rather then delegate to a bot. Polling seems of limited usefulness when discussion is the primary focus.
Yeah, the scraper stuff (which has uses in ~music and ~books and probably damn near everywhere) should be in-built, because that allows it to operate and pull up relevant external information during the submission process rather than afterwards, which is exactly where you most want access to that information. You can't do that with a bot.
Having it there means you can present that info to the user on the submission preview, and they just have to edit the results a bit instead of putting in everything themselves. Things like ISBN numbers for books, genres and album/artist info for music, appropriate tags found at the other end of the link, relevant links to external sites, etc. It makes for a lazy submission process - which you really want on mobile.
It also allows the equivalent of automod/regex processing to happen during the submission itself, even for example auto-generating titles (which would be a killer feature in ~music.streams). You can't do that kind of stuff before the submission is finalized with a bot, since it can only act after the submission is there. This has caused lots of problems on reddit and I'd love for Tildes to take the next step there.
Scraping is a huge gray area. One low key detail about that anime bot I mentioned is a torrent site is one of the places it scrapes for releases. It's not promoted at all on the subreddit (and the subreddit in facts auto removes comments mentioning the popular torrenting sites), but it gives value that in the end helps facilitate discussion and promote official platforms. So it's an ambivalent case overall.
Even with more legal entities, web scraping is usually against the ToS if they do not provide a public API.
Might be against TOS, but not immoral. If I can see it with my eyes, it's fair game.
We've had this discussion a couple of times. Specialized, clearly labeled bot accounts seemed the most reasonable, especially if those have restrictions on voting and possibly extended API access in other ways. This lets us maintain some level of quality control over the good bots, makes sure people know when they see a bot, and limit or extend that bot's access to features as necessary for it to do its job, whatever that happens to be. That'll also help if an approved bot account gets compromised.
People will still write bots that aren't identifiable as bots and pretend to be users, that's just how it goes. Terms of use can easily say any bot that isn't on its own approved account gets the banhammer. Since Deimos worked on reddit's anti-evil team dealing with this I imagine he's got more experience with it than the rest of us combined.
Seems fair to me. Bots are a nearly essential tool as a userbase scales up. So it feels overkill and a self-defeating purpose to outright ban all bots unconditionally. But at the same time a bot doesn't need all user priveledges, like voting.
bots trying to pass off as real humans can be dealt on a case to case basis.
I don’t see how bots would be essential as a user base scales up. As someone said in a different thread, tildes is open source. Anyone who can write a bot can also submit a pull request. Would you mind sharing some examples of bots being necessary, where it wouldn’t be better to build the feature into the site itself?
In r/Factorio they have a blueprint bot that takes blueprint strings and renders images of the blueprints (example). It's really useful for that one specific community, but isn't useful anywhere else on the site. There's no need for that to be a baked in site feature.
Anything that can benefit from automation that a community desires. One of the best examples was how for certain anime subreddit there was a bot that track a formatted message for a show name (e. g. {{anime name}}), and it would reply with a formatted message describing the work Including a brief summary, airing status, number of episodes, and link to databases for more information. This is a very helpful feature, but for a specific niche. not really one I'd feel is worth a PR for the entire website.
to help fill holes in any moderation habits. A big problem with rule breaking content that stays up is mostly due to the fact that moderators can't necessarily check around the clock. And if they can't get a certain mod on a different timezone there are holes to fill. This can definitely be a feature worthy of a PR for some kind of mod toolbox, but defining features needed per group may get tricky. There are still many features on reddit mod tools missing after years of promise.
Feature that may fall into gray areas for "official use". Back to the example in #1, maybe a PR can be made. But what would it say if the site decides to more or less "align" with certain databases by giving them native functions? The implications are much different from a user that decided to program something. Web scraping is another common technique used in user bots that is a grey area for official entities.
To give a few examples. It's not just to alleviate developer resources, but a soft legal protection.
I think the answer to that is yes, in most cases. It's possible that here, a bot might just be the first step to explore a future feature. There may be some specialized cases where a bot works better. One-offs for specific communities, interactions with other websites, that sort of thing.
I think that primary holds only if the userbase grows too fast, dismantling the community aspect and overpowering the ability to onboard sufficient moderators
To some extent yes. But at some point, it will be a lot harder to get your hundredth moderator than your hundred thousandth user. Or one of those moderators go inactive due to real life issues, which affects a community more than a few users popping in and out.
You can consider it a crutch of some sorts if cynical. But I see it as a necessary backup plan, especially since moderators are volunteers and relatively likely to pause/freeze their "duties" should something arise.
That's where the community aspect comes in. By building a healthy culture, it reduces the need for moderation.
I was under the impression one of the initial goals of Tildes was to build a system that enables the entire community to moderate itself and help resolve the insufficient mod problem.
There can certainly be moderation tools baked into the platform to make the mod's life easier. One I'm a fan of is forced originality. Perhaps not as a removal mechanism, but as a 'bad actor detection' one. But modding decisions should ultimately be made by a human, even if the platform helps prioritize and triage.
I think bots on reddit are annoying except for the ones purpose built for a community. I assume you aren't taking about something like dadbot, but people leaving commands as comments to bots causes a lot of clutter.
Without some sort of official endorsement by Tildes administration, bots should only be able to DM on an opt-in basis (i.e. a user DM's the bot first to opt-in to ongoing behavior, or the bot only replies in direct reaction to a user DMing it). If a bot is getting official endorsement, then the question becomes why the functionality is not being added directly to the Tildes codebase.
If you had administrator permission (I'm thinking about the idea on many sites) and made it absolutely obvious to anybody who received a message that it wasn't official, I'd be okay with the idea. I'd prefer the balance of site clutter and comment responses, because it would potentially foster a discussion that would spread the idea better, and provide evidence that it's not just an individual being called out. I've been called out for this a couple times, and even wanting to do the right thing, there's a moment of offense when it happens. If that happens via DM from a bot and the only redress is to opt-out, it would possibly make this feeling worse, however detailed the explanation.
I just feel like leaving the possibility of immediate human intervention in an open space helps more.
I think having a bot for each separate instance of this would get annoying, but suppose it were something like a linter used for code? You shouldn’t need to write a bot, just a lint rule, and the feedback should appear before you publish a new post.
Having worked on actual linters deployed at pretty large scale, it’s important to beta-test each lint rule and make sure the false positives aren’t too high. (Back in the day, this is apparently what turned Microsoft’s Clippy into a joke.)
That seems like it could potentially result in a lot of false positives, so it would have to be an absolutely airtight implementation to not be super annoying to everyone, even with an opt-out. E.g. "They crippled this software." Bot: "Hey, I noticed you used a historically offensive word in your comment." :P
The Scunthorpe problem would have to be avoided as well.
Substring filters are hilariously awful. Unless you use them as a flagging system for possible violations and then perform a check against a dictionary of valid words for final validation, it's inevitable that you're going to filter out
assevery time you try to talk aboutclassorsass. Sure, you'll still have the problem when misspellings occur, but having any form of whitelist is certainly better than nothing. I swear I lose another portion of my sanity whenever I see something likecl***in a chat log :,)Oh, don't worry, I wasn't assuming anything. I just opened the wikipedia page and ended up having flashbacks to all of the horrible substring filter implementations I've run into in the past, so I felt the need to comment on it lol.
Sorry but I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you on this one. Words can have multiple meanings, and they change over time. And IMO just because one definition is potentially derogatory towards some people when directed at them doesn't necessarily mean that is inherent in any usage of the word. The OED's primary definition of "crippled" is "severely damaged or malfunctioning" and doesn't refer to personal disabilities at all.
Related words, entirely different meanings due to context. Crippled can be used as a derogatory word, and the etymological Middle English root of it meant "deprived of the use of limbs", but the modern usage is rarely that. Now it just generally means "severly damaged or malfunctioning" with no inherent derogatory implication, IMO. Meaning is contextual, varies by culture, and time.
Another prime example: When I was living in the UK, people saying they were "going out for a fag" (short for faggot, but referring to the original meaning of "a bundle of brushwood used for fuel") when they were going outside to smoke a cigarette was remarkably common to hear there... and that particular usage predates the derogatory one by several hundred years. I (even as "fag" myself who has had that word thrown in my face more times than I can count over the years) wasn't offended by that though, because I understood their intended meaning, and was cognizant of the context in which is was being used. A bot lacks that capability though, so automatically assuming a user meant a word in a derogatory way and responding as such, at least when it comes to words which also have a commonly intended benign meaning, is problematic for that exact reason, IMO.
Also in the UK faggots are on the menu in most chip shops. It's just a word with multiple meanings.
It's been used that way since the middle ages. No clue when it started being used for the balls of meat offcuts but there's a quote from the early 1800 with it used in that context.
Especially so here on Tildes, where we're working to discuss under the assumption of good faith discussion.
I personally object to word censorship. Even saying blantently offensive words sometimes makes sense in the proper context. And given the fluidity of language, it's a somewhat futile exercise. I don't know a single person that mocks a mentally handicapped person by calling them a retard anymore. I saw a lot of people growing up mocking mentally handicapped people, but those people were retarded assholes who would mock the handicapped even if they couldn't use a specific word.
The use of the word retard has evolved. Cripple has even moreso. We shouldn't try to banish these words when being used appropriately outside of their offensive contexts.
Some words do break that generality, and the n-word would be one of them, simply because there was virtually no inoffensive use of that word until recently. Even then, it still has a place. Blazing Saddles is a roaringly hilarious comedy that couldn't be made today, even though it doesn't use the word in a genuinely malicious way given the context of the entire film.
But it applies equally well to crippled as well. It took over 1000 years for the word to be considered sufficiently derogatory.
The entire concept of 'reclaiming a word' makes little sense to me, it just conflates the language and creates uncomfortable situations where you're only permitted to use a word under very specific circumstances (which online are virtually unverifiable). I elaborated more in this reply.
Eh, I'm more not on your side with this one that you probably might assume given my defense of the word crippled, which only applied specifically to when it's being used in reference to inanimate objects/systems/etc. When used to descibe people "crippled" is still absolutely derogatory though. And unless you're using retard to mean "prevent" (e.g. "to retard a fire"), I am not particularly keen on that one since otherwise it generally means "a mentally deficient person", and so you calling other people "retarded assholes" is absolutely, undeniably derogatory IMO, and inappropriate as a result... regardless of who you're applying it to.
Perhaps, but derogatory language will always be around so long as people have passionate disagreements and/or irrational hatred. The issue isn't necessarily the words themselves, but the context behind how they are used. Yes, it is rude to call people retards. But it would be equally rude to call them mentally handicapped if they were not, medically speaking. The only difference is the level of verbosity required to do so.
I recall that there was a transition somewhere in the late 90's from homophobes saying fag and queer to just saying homo in place. It's not any less derogatory, it's just a different word being used in the same sense. The problem isn't to ban the word, but to dismantle the reason for the derogatory use of said word.
Did making the n-word so incredibly taboo, such that even I won't use it in a discussion relevant to it, actually stop people from being incredibly racist? I would contend that it did not, it just shifted racists to using other words that are just as derogatory. And now we're in this weird situation where we have black musicians singing and selling it to everyone, white people profiting off of it, and white listeners such as me being scorned for singing the lyrics as I would any other song.
Ultimately, making words taboo just adds to their power. Consider all of the other profanity in our language. The entire concept evolved out of class structures, where the slang of the lower classes was considered profane by the upper classes. Censorship of profanity additionally doesn't really accomplish much, and I would argue is much more harmful overall. It's ok to think less of a person using certain words on a personal level, and to give them a warning/ban in a given community for using the words if their usage violates the general 'good faith civil discussion' principles.
Meta: I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, but rather building on, and explaining my own stance on the issue. I'm sorry if it came across that way.
By contrast, I attended a public school in a rural area which had approximately 3 mentally handicapped people. Retard was used almost exclusively as a general-purpose insult, the only time I heard it used otherwise was by bullies who would use it indiscrimantly the same way they would use literally any other insult. If they were banned from saying the word, they'd just use a different word, or switch to mocking their mannerisms, which I would contend is far worse.
It's important to consider nuance in discussions of language. For instance, there's an ongoing debate in tech regarding the term "master" in different contexts due to its connotations with slavery, even when used in a context in which there is no "slave" equivalent. Despite this, it would be silly to suggest that saying you want to "master" a skill is in any way offensive.
Mind you, I'm not making a value judgment regarding the terms "crippled" and "cripple", I'm only stating that context is incredibly important in language and we can't simply look at a word's history or similarity to determine its worth in unrelated contexts.
That's fair. I do have my own thoughts on the matter as a whole, but it looks like you and everyone else have covered the subject fairly extensively, so to add anything more would be superfluous :)
If you have a problem with someone using a particular word, you can say it directly to them. No amount of passive-aggressive bots will fix whatever you think is a problem here.
There is nothing less welcoming in a community than being told by a script that you're englishing wrong. It's like getting a customer support email from noreply@.
To address @cfabbro's example though, "cripple" I see is defined as offensive when used as a noun in two particular instances, all referring to "people with disabilities": https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cripple - Wikipedia agrees with four citations. I had never heard of it being considered offensive when used as a verb ("to cripple something" -> to severely damage and limit its capabilities), and indeed some cursory research in a community I admittedly know little about has not convinced me many people within that community consider the verb to be problematic.
Unrelated to the verb, I came across this article while researching the use and thought this was a pretty neat take:
Rings familiar…
This logic of "but this is where the word came from and what it originally meant, nevermind current usage" can be turned on its head to justify the use of every other slur you quoted in your post above. It is as flawed as the whole "master" debate mentioned elsewhere in the thread and breaks down very quickly with even the faintest of knowledge of how etymology works.
Offence usually comes with intent. What makes those words slurs is the general agreement that they are, in fact, slurs. It works like currency: Anything can be a currency, but only if a sufficient amount of people agree that it is in fact a currency. Saying "nevermind current usage, this is a slur because it's originally related to one" is basically saying "forget the central bank, this is legal tender because I think it is".
I'm going to stop talking about this in this thread now, as it's extremely off-topic, but do feel free to @ me should you start this discussion again elsewhere as I'm interested in continuing it.
I'd just like to point out how much endless space I see these excruciatingly pedantic discussions taking up on websites and forums the internet over. They always leave me scratching my head, wondering when we decided that a person's feelings were the ultimate ethical benchmark that must overrule everything else.
I come from the generation that answered concerns about feelings with 'life sucks, get a helmet' and vicious mockery - just for the simple reason that the world doesn't care and it never, ever will. Here's a half million people with an issue, let's force seven billion others, most of whom won't even grok the context, to change their behaviors just to placate that group. Give me a break, that's God tier levels of entitlement right there and it runs counter to liberty to boot. Liberty means having the ability to make an ass out of yourself if you want to. ;)
Seems like a nice topic for debate in some post-scarcity star-trek rosy future when we've run out of other things to sap our time and energy. Other than that all I can suggest is improving schools, and maybe, just maybe, you can get the next generation to improve - but I don't think you'll ever get older generations to change. The last thing I'm going to ever be doing in a conversation is mentally vetting every single word in my head against a phantom list of fifty groups I don't even know or care about just to try and avoid nonsense non-issues like microaggressions. But that's just me, YMMV.
I think this problem will persist as long as language does, and once we're past that, context and intent should be less of a problem. Until then, I'm not holding my breath.
Years ago, back when I was on reddit, there was a subreddit that used custom CSS to color some of their titles differently based on different properties. One of the colors they selected was green, and one day a user pointed out that, being red-green colorblind, they couldn't distinguish the green titles from some of the other colors.
They received a number of responses where people vociferously pointed out how outrageous it was that they mandate a change for someone else based on their individual needs and how they just needed to learn to deal with it. The tenor of the responses was, by and large, that a colorblind individual does not get to dictate the terms of the site because they are in the minority, and it's unjust to have to cater to them.
The kicker is that the person never requested a change in the first place. They literally just pointed out that it was an issue for them. What got responded to was not their actual comment "I can't distinguish the green titles" but a cultural projection onto their comment "I demand that people cater to me".
I mention this because I see some of that in your comment. It's clear you're speaking from a place of frustration on this topic and feel that it conflicts with deep-seated ideas of liberty and entitlement. I get that; I honestly do. You're baffled by people who insist on what you see as censorious paradigms in discourse, but I encourage you to consider how someone like me might be baffled when the conversation instantly escalates from the other side. @tindall merely mentioned how we might privately point out to certain users that certain terms have offensive histories. She meant it as a helpful, supportive, pro-social thing rooted in compassion. And now suddenly it's escalated to this.
There's a second piece here, which is the idea that the color green on the subreddit was an arbitrary choice. It represented nothing on its own and easily could have been any other color, including one that would have been easier to distinguish. The simple, community-minded response would have been to change the color simply to make it more effective at its intended purpose -- after all, if the intent of using different colors was to note categories, and they weren't doing that for some users, tweaking them is effectively a bugfix. However, it was not looked at this way because this moment wasn't about what was best for the community but instead became about holding the line against "special treatment". I think it's very much worth considering that sometimes "special treatment" is valuable, and that many of us benefit from invisible instances of it all while we decry it in others.
I'm going to preface what I'm about to say with the fact that I very much value you and your contributions here, and I mean you no ill will in the slightest, but I don't know how to say the following without sounding a little harsh: in your comment you rail against the feelings of others being the delimiting factor for our conduct, but in doing so you are making an explicit appeal to the idea that your feelings on this topic should be treated with importance. If we are ignoring feelings on this, why should we consider yours in the first place?
I promise I'm not saying this as a dig or as a gotcha, but I'm using it to point out the idea that communication is fundamentally rooted in compassion or, at the very least, audience awareness. Each of us is completely used to the idea that we accommodate our communication based on different settings and individuals. I don't say "fuck" in front of my students, and I don't ask my friend about his ex, for example, because different situations call for different standards, and sometimes those standards involve compassion for someone else over our own need to speak our true feelings. I don't see this as entitlement or an infringement on liberty but as a fundamental building block of discourse. I do think there are hard lines where it starts to approach those, but merely recommending increased awareness doesn't come close to that, from my perspective at least.
That is a truly insightful response. Subtle trick getting the part of my brain that focuses on forum mechanics to collide like a brick with the part of my brain that gets hung up on all of the vitriol I perceive in these endless discussions about language and context using that perfect example. That actually snaps this into focus pretty clearly.
Edit: Yep, the more I think about it, the more I'm realizing I'm the idiot here. Now I'm going to be looking at this entire class of problems differently, so thanks for that. This is why I love this website. Had I a delta to award it'd be yours.
Thanks for hearing me out! I hesitated to type what I did for fear of getting shouted down or for putting you off entirely, so I'm glad things worked out well, and I appreciate you meeting my pushback with an open mind and genuine consideration. This interaction just further reinforces the idea that I greatly value your presence and contributions here. :)
Well, not you, but I definitely do have the impression of forced change being beaten into my head by the sheer number of these sorts of discussions - and the tone on other websites is anything but civil when this happens. Here we can talk it out.
I think that impression of forced change comes from the cancel culture behaviors around these issues. Take one thing out of context, or out of time from the past, and then use it to assassinate someone's character - and really, is it because of what they said, or because they'd already made themselves a target elsewhere?
What if something like this were paired with the labelling system? As in, it's not automatically done on detection, but if X number of users flag the comment, the bot then shoots a PM to the user?
I would have much less of a problem with that too, since I trust the judgement of fellow Tildes users a heck of a lot more than a natural language parsing bot.
CC: @kfwyre
p.s. For the record I am also legally disabled myself (though admittedly not physically), and in principle don't oppose trying to help people understand when words are offensive, and trying to change their habits of using such words. I even support changing the Master terminology in git to Main, especially since the programmer who originally picked that term for use in git admitted it was based on the Master/Slave terminology used in the programs that came before it. I just don't think crippled is as clear cut an example is all.
I'm glad we could find an amenable conclusion here, and some common ground, since I do respect you and your opinions, and would hate for that to be tainted by this disagreement. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely find it offensive when crippled is used to refer to a person, or condition which a person suffers from, and am even glad we here in Ontario changed the "disabled parking permit" to "accessible parking permit" a few year ago. But I just don't find it particularly offensive when referring to an inanimate object... which is thankfully the majority of cases these days! :)
It could be cool to have a ~ community for text-based games with various bots to handle the game logic.
Hi don't see any prohibition of the use of automated accounts, I'm dad.
No but really, bots on reddit drive me absolutely batty. I've banned hundreds and downvoted thousands. If they are introduced to Tildes, I will make heavy use of the noise tag. I can see no situation in which they make the place better.
If there's demand for a feature like "reminders", then build that into the site. Don't encourage people to post spammy, non-contributing comments which triggers dozens of others to do the same.
There's utility in moderation bots, but those too are best-implemented at the site-level unless they're very specific to a community/group.
I would like to see all bots manually vetted and approved by an admin. Let's learn from reddit's mistakes.
That's primarily what I was thinking when I heard the suggestion. of course, spam bots are spam bots. but several niche communities had some very helpful features and I'd like to at least give those a chance once an API is ready.
There have been a bunch of particularly shitty bots on reddit that reply to random comments that include "I'm <something>" with "Hi <something>, I'm dad." Here's a recent example: https://www.reddit.com/user/BadDadBot (it's hard to tell because the timestamps are all "1 month ago", but it was commenting once every few seconds)
Even the best gimmick bots get old and the "utility bots" disrupt conversation or junk up comments. A possible feature that could maybe be built could be a "bot pane" that can be enabled/configured by a subreddit moderator. It could be a tab or slide-up chat pane on the right where commands for the sub-reddit could be sent.
I could see something like that built-in instead of a bot.
I'll plug an old idea again - the reply box could also double as a command line interface for things like "!remindme 7 days" and I'm sure that will lead to interesting places.
Perhaps to reduce clutter, any reply to a topic or comment that invokes a bot response (convention: starts with
!) should be displayed condensed/collapsed and not like a regular comment.I think you're missing the suggestion: rather that the submitted comment being turned into an actual, visible comment, this would instead interpret the comment as a command and not include anything in the comment tree at all. Then instead of reducing clutter, the clutter wouldn't even exist in the first place.
The convention has to dovetail with markdown nicely. Adding a command processor also opens a vulnerability window so it's got to be handled carefully. I was thinking it wouldn't show those command-interactions to anyone other than the user who activated them. They could pile up faster than comments in some circumstances and it's just clutter keeping track of them in the interface.
I like that idea. It would also open the door for a lot of other improvements.
I was about to add to this discussion with 'Just use bookmarking and an external calendar to remind you to check it.'
I like your solution. Add an optional 'Reminder date' when bookmarking which bubbles your bookmark to a notification.
Agreed. Subscribing and reminding about posts and even comments would be a very nice feature, one that saves the mess RemindMe! comments can cause.