Negative awards

[DavidB6937]

Quite often I'll use it as a judgement as to whether I should watch wrestling or not. There's a lot of opinions I value on here compared to a bunch of whiners on social media.

[Pinc]

On 8/18/2020 at 1:44 PM, neil said:

Are negative awards potentially harmful for some people? Yes I could see that. But I'd say that the internet is not a safe place for you to be if you're that much at risk of self-harm to be honest.

I don't understand how you can concede that the negative awards could be harmful but not support getting rid of them. Why take the risk? Who finds the negative awards so amusing to risk causing harm? Vulnerable people often aren't the best placed to work out whether the internet is a safe place for them. Why put that decision on them? When the consequences could be dire?

Note I'm not mentioning a clique because I think all that talk is silly, and the apparent clique members just read like a list of the best posters. And I'm also not saying people shouldn't be allowed to disagree or even ridicule eachother. The piss taking is often the best part of the forum and I never see it spill over into anything pathological (these days), but nominating and voting people as dolts seems really unkind and like its had its day.

[Devon Malcolm]

14 minutes ago, Pinc said:

I don't understand how you can concede that the negative awards could be harmful but not support getting rid of them.

Out of interest, were you in favour of ditching downvoting?

[neil]

1 hour ago, Pinc said:

I don't understand how you can concede that the negative awards could be harmful but not support getting rid of them. Why take the risk? Who finds the negative awards so amusing to risk causing harm? Vulnerable people often aren't the best placed to work out whether the internet is a safe place for them. Why put that decision on them? When the consequences could be dire?

Because I can see the difference between the possibility for them to be harmful vs them actually being harmful. We've had a "At, not with" award since 2003 you know. Now I know what you're going to retort with, "so you're ok with it just because someone hasn't done themselves in yet? Disgustedly yours, Pinc". But lets consider the following:

Let's assume we do get rid of the negative awards, what happens? Probably people end up flaming someone in whatever threads they post in because there is no other mechanism to express such views, so I suppose those types of posts should be banned too because surely there is the same risk of harm there if someone gets flamed? Oh wait we do have a rule for that, but I can't stop someone from posting that and the person seeing that post and if they see it then who knows what they might do. Ok I'll make it so everyones posts need to be approved. Sounds like a fun forum. Don't be silly neil, that is over the top, just police the forum and make it clear that any flaming at all results in a ban, its fine if we ban the 10 year largely loved poster because they got pissed off with the brand new poster who keeps on posting shit in every thread ruining any discussion that was taking place.

Ok, so what if the person just keeps on posting away, pissing off the majority of the forum, then what? Posters should use the report function for them because they are "low quality posts" (note: a rule many forums have and aggressively enforce), and perhaps a mod sees enough reports and bans the person. Should we ban the act of banning because of the risk that someone may view getting banned as putting them over the edge? Ah thats not going to work then is it, ok what about downvotes? Nope can't have them because cliques use it to bully someone don't they. What about karma? That will work won't it, just like reddit...oh wait.

My point being is that I don't see any magical solution for this risk, if someone is in that fragile of a state it's pretty much impossible to have a functional forum where people freely interact while completely mitigating the risk of someone doing self-harm. That's why I say that the decision whether to stay as a participant on this forum needs to be made by them, I cannot and will not do a mental assessment of each and every poster here to figure out whether I should stop them from posting here or not.

If there were enough people who messaged mods on this forum that negative awards were doing them in then I would imagine we'd adjust them, but we haven't had any reports that I recall in almost 20 years. What we have received year after year are complaints from shit posters who don't like being nominated for them despite being encouraged to be less shit.

[MPDTT]

As the recipient of the 2019 Dolt of the year award, I should probably comment - particularly given that employee wellbeing has become a huge concern for me in the workplace since Covid hit and I'm dealing many examples of employees truly struggling with burnout and their mental health. I genuinely believe @RedRooster is coming at this with the right motives and based on your arguments, it's difficult to argue with you. I wouldn't have said the same thing a year ago - I rolled my eyes at the time when the whole #bekind movement was a thing - but that feels like a lifetime ago.

That said......I was not in a vulnerable state of mind at the time and really it didn't bother me in the slightest - in fact I voted for myself......and I don't mind being remembered as the final Dolt of the year, it it does end. I do accept however that it could be harmful to someone in a fragile state of mind and it doesn't really sit well with the concept of 'community'. 

 

 

[Pinc]

6 minutes ago, neil said:

Because I can see the difference between [...]

This is a massive overreaction to what I said mate, and in my post I already said I’m not calling for an end to disagreement or even ridicule. There’s no point trying to remove those things as they’re just human nature. And often the best parts of the forum!

But a vote on Dolt of the Year isn’t human nature and it can go without anyone’s enjoyment of the forum being effected.

[neil]

6 minutes ago, Pinc said:

But a vote on Dolt of the Year isn’t human nature and it can go without anyone’s enjoyment of the forum being effected.

And I guess that is where we differ, I see those awards as ridicule.

[Keith Houchen]

11 minutes ago, MPDTT said:

I don't mind being remembered as the final Dolt of the year

I think you’re a good example of this whole thing. You probably won because of one thread, the AEW one, but you’re also known for the invaluable expertise you have given out in employment threads and the help you’ve given to a bunch of strangers because that’s what we do here. 

[Tommy!]

If it wasn't for the awards we'd still have Tricky Ricky / Family Guy PMSL posting wouldn't we? Every cloud has a silver lining. 

 

[Pinc]

8 minutes ago, neil said:

And I guess that is where we differ, I see those awards as ridicule.

There’s a difference between conversational ridicule where both sides can reply to eachother and a democratic vote on who the biggest tit is.

[Duke]

25 minutes ago, MPDTT said:

As the recipient of the 2019 Dolt of the year award, I should probably comment - particularly given that employee wellbeing has become a huge concern for me in the workplace since Covid hit and I'm dealing many examples of employees truly struggling with burnout and their mental health. I genuinely believe @RedRooster is coming at this with the right motives and based on your arguments, it's difficult to argue with you. I wouldn't have said the same thing a year ago - I rolled my eyes at the time when the whole #bekind movement was a thing - but that feels like a lifetime ago.

Yeah, for the record, I've got lots of respect for Red Rooster throwing this out there. I know we have this chat a lot, but that's mostly been in paid and Rooster wouldn't know that. They saw something they found concerning and raised it, knowing it might get shouted down. I disagree on the issue, but I respect you for raising it.

 

Navigator Fan is just trying to dig at Butch and Keith, and should be ignored.

[Carbomb]

Sorry for the thread bump, but I've just been baking some bread and doing a couple of tasks that remind me of how good this place is and how much I get from it. 

One of my best friends, I met indirectly through the forum - Chris B and I met at FWA Starsearch, but we re-connected through here. I now bake bread regularly directly because of tiger_rick and his amazing cooking posts, and a big part of why I cook more often now and experiment with recipes is down to that thread, the Veganmania/new Vegan thread, and Onyx' and Thunderplex' invaluable advice. I have copied Frankie Crisp's motivational "Things I Could Do" board, and now find myself getting so much done because of it. I've recently gone on a bit of a voyage of discovery of rap and hip-hop past the 1980s for various reasons (one of which was Chest Rockwell posting a song that I regularly listen to for inspiration), and the Hip-Hop Thread has been invaluable in helping me not only familiarise myself with the scene, but also getting esoteric recommendations, from SuperBacon, wandshogun09 and others. Music-wise in general, I have got SO much out of this place - Sergio Mendacious is the man for Latin American music amongst others, and over the years I've discovered good shit from The Elitist Music Thread started by Vito (wonder if he'll ever show up again?), Rob Edwards' stellar pop music thread, and I even got recommendations for stuff that I dove into and still listen to this day from Mr. Seven and kendal mint cake! Lister has always been one of the forum's top wrestling posters, and when Butch first showed up as Frank Sidebottom, I was blown away by the depth of his knowledge of classic Southern wrestling and British wrestling. Fog Dude is a man after my own heart with his trivia knowledge, Cannibal Man, Thunderplex, Lion of the Midlands, Scott Malbranque, and Astro Hollywood have had me crying with laughter on a regular basis, wandshogun, jimufctna, David and Egg Shen are probably my main motivators for starting and continuing to watch MMA, and JLM/Toryumark got me massively into DragonGate when it first rebranded, which was one of the richest wrestling viewing times I ever had as a fan. I think we can all agree that the forum would be much poorer without Devon's film posts, BomberPat's & Chris B's posts on politics (and wrestling), IANdrewDiceClay's posts on wrestling and Gangrel's consumption of crisps, Rule One's belt fandom, Pitcos' acerbic wit and often grounding posts when some get carried away, and a whole host of posters who bring the benefit of their unique passions to this board, whether it's gaming, sports, music, literature, TV, film, art, food, or anything else.

Also, there are just some fucking good people on here, some of the best people I know. Not wanting to embarrass them, I won't post exactly who, but there have been people on here who have reached out personally when I was going through a bad time, and I've seen enough posts from others on here who have had the exact same experience. This here is an actual, living, working community of people who help and support each other. 

There's only really been one time I ever thought the forum might have shown a little cliquey behaviour: when Pitcos won the Failed Comedian awards, and there was a load of rationalising as to "how to save him" from the suspension booby prize that anyone else would've normally got. But it's the only outright example I can think of, and it hasn't happened since.

TL;DR - I don't think we should get rid of the negative awards on the basis of so-called cliquey behaviour, and I think for the most part we're a robust-enough group of individuals to have them.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Carbomb