rigorousintuition.ca

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Greetings, readers and members!

Welcome to the evolving 2020 version of the Rigorous Intuition message board, an online library, club, and salon for High Weirdness and the Politically Weird since 2006.

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This is the long-overdue and oft-requested thread to discuss recent and ongoing changes to the board, and for you to pose questions to the admins.

The R.I. site was founded and is still owned by Jeff Wells, the Toronto author of what became the book, Rigorous Intuition, and the creator behind the Canadian satire magazine, Frank. The original R.I. blog unleashed a barrage of cautiously pessimistic skepticism about everything in the wake of 9/11. The message board has been running since 2006.

Jeff is no longer involved in the board's management, although he generously continues to pay the bills. He is active on Twitter and Facebook and has new projects in the works.

Last year, after agreeing to a rough outline of a set of changes I proposed to him, Jeff coronated me as the new board sovereign. I share this power with Elvis. We are the management team.

My own feeling is that I'm here, first of all, to preserve the awesome archive that this site has become. I hope this remains a place where interesting and illuminating discussions can continue.

Jeff's original rules ("Guidelines for Posting on R.I.") still apply.

Allow me to emphasize a couple of those: Rigorous Intuition "welcomes a range of informed perspectives," but "it is not intended to be a forum for the re-fighting of elemental human values." It is "an anti-fascist board" and "an anti-sexist board," and, I hope, a place where we "generate more light than heat."

Over the years hundreds of active posters have created great and turbulent discussions, with more than a few trademark monster threads running since the aughts. A couple of dozen members are currently active. The visitor numbers suggest a much larger number have never or rarely posted but are regular readers.

Those of us who have stuck with it know the board has a character and a set of research interests, if not obsessions, that are evident in the long-running thread and forum subjects. If you're not into it, it's okay! This place isn't meant for everyone.

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I'm doing this thread spontaneously, and haven't even made a list yet for what to say next, so if you allow, I shall now proceed with a series of bullet-points as things occur to me.

Peace.

(Allow me to begin with something boring. You can skip it.)

This board's phpBB software is a disaster, but it's still operating.

I have experience with a much less ambitious and newer phpBB set-up, but that is of limited use and there are problems here we have yet to solve. (I say we because I've been getting advice from one of the members, who may or may not wish to reveal himself here now. He certainly helped out with fixing the mySQL storm problem that was crippling the board some weeks ago.)

A lot of functions that should be simple are not available or require many extra steps. Here is a minor symptom you all can see, which I want you to imagine stands in for a number of other problems: I am a mod and the admin, and yet the board software does not list me as such, but instead lists a couple of people who ceased having mod and admin powers long ago. Also, it lists different ones in different places.

An update might fix the problems and get the database working properly, but there hasn't been an update in a long time and we are terrified of doing it just yet because we might lose data. We first want to make sure there is a working backup from which the board can be recreated in full. The database is enormous, there are hundreds of thousands of posts.

That last part is a good thing, I hope y'all agree.

I hope to keep the story short and do not intend to litigate all the details for days on end.

Late last year there was a dispute over a long period of board flooding. Flooding can come in many forms. The usual way is to start multiple threads on the same subject within a short period, with the effect (intended or not) of dominating discussion on the board (especially taking over the Active topics feature), and thus "winning" arguments by drowning everyone else out.

That's the main problem, but I'll confess to my personal annoyance at the way this also fragments topics into many threads and causes ongoing discussions to go lost, on a board that has many threads on single topics running for years. (Hereabouts most reading this know we refer to this as "thead proliferation.") I think the endless unlimited single-topic RI threads, treating given subjects in exhaustive depth, some of which again have been running since 2006-2011, are what makes this place exceptional, and I know a few of you agree with that.

The other usual flooding technique is to present extremely long copy-pastes without commentary or original material, and often with endless screens worth of animated gifs and meme-type graphics, generally in response to disagreements with other posters.

Long copy-pastes, especially of text, are generally fine. This board serves as an archive for awesome numbers of articles and visuals. It becomes flooding when a user repeats the same material over and over on multiple threads, and refuses to acknowledge complaints about it. This again has the effect of dominating the board and "winning" arguments by drowning others out.

Some people wanted it to end, and I was among them. This group was especially annoyed that one of the users doing the flooding centered it for years on wholesale daily repetitions of "mainstream" corporate media coverage of the same ongoing publicity campaign (#Russiagate and the Ukrainian impeachment).

Others who weren't the flooders either supported it, in part because they were hostile to the board, or honestly liked much of the material being flooded.

I hope we can reconcile with the latter, honest group.

The two mods until now, 82_28 and Elvis, were also split on these questions. I went to Jeff and demanded that he either a) ban me immediately or b) make me the admin, with the understanding that I would enact an anti-flooding plan and almost certainly ban certain users.

Jeff chose b.

After that and for a long time, my first and only action was to ask Elvis to be the only mod, and 82_28 to step down, which he did. Elvis then went ahead with the decisions he had already made at the time, starting with reinstating the ban of American Dream (a ban that 82_28 had lifted).

Then I got busy and caught up with other shit in real life. I didn't want to act as the new admin until I had the time to explain all this stuff. So things just kept going as before, until the matter with FourthBase's incredible personal hostility to other members (for the nth time) forced me out into the open.

So now, finally, I've had a chance to provide explanations and start the (not all that dramatic) board reorganization I'd outlined to Jeff.

Today I rearranged the board forums. This has been done after some loose discussion with Elvis, but maybe he'll chime in with disagreements or other suggestions. Which, of course, everyone is welcome to do. Just remember to be kind to your servant.

At the top, General Discussion is still queen, followed by Data and Research and The Lounge. No one had used Member Announcements in a long time, so I merged it into The Lounge. So that's the place for telling us any personal news you like, or making offers, as well as jokes and games and talking songs and shows and gossip, as before.

To reshuffle and I hope enliven things -- we'll see how the experiment goes -- there are now two new forums for the "Greatest RI Threads," High Weirdness and Political.

It's meant as a game. You're supposed to propose the "greatest." See here. (Or here, which is the exact same text for the other forum.)

JackRiddler wrote:Today I rearranged the board forums

I've been using the "View unread posts" feature, so I just see all new posts, from all forums, in chronological order. But organization into/of forums is absolutely useful & desirable (for one thing, most readers seem to prefer to read by forum), and I've long thought that some threads & forums could benefit from reorganization along these lines.

There are 35 subject forums! I split them into two groups.

About half are in the new category of "Active Since 2018," and half in "Relatively Historical."

Actually, there is no difference. It's just another way to reshuffle and perhaps enliven.

They are all still equally active. You can post in any of them. Any Subjects Forums thread on which you post will appear in Active topics.

(So really this whole categorization thing is meta and non-definitive, perhaps even a false god, but people like their false gods for providing them with maps of the world that may be more true than the gods themselves, no?)

Also, I moved the Franklin Forum into the Subject Forums (Active Since 2018).

We (the Mod Team) decided that Current Events was a noble experiment that failed. It has been moved down to a new section, Dream Forums.

This board is not really suitable as a daily breaking-news site. There aren't that many of us, and we tend to have very specialized interests. There have of course been many exceptions, with stories that pertain to shared core obsessions. Some damn thing happens and everyone chimes in and people run over here to check out "the RI treatment" on a particular event and within 24 hours we're on page 42 of a really long thread.

If you think a current news story merits its own new thread, please start it in whichever forum you think it should go. Maybe you can first look for an existing thread where it belongs, to avoid thread proliferation (where the same topic gets split among multiple threads). But damn it, if you think it's really new and really important, and if you're not about to start 38 other simultaneous threads on the same thing, please start the new thread!

Since more than 90 percent of the posts on "Current Events" were started by SLAD, it is now the SLAD Newswire.

We wish SLAD all the best. We hope she is well. If she is still interested in posting here, she can completely take over that forum. Also, she is only permitted to post in that forum. We are willing to move a few of her classic threads to it also (or to a new forum under "Dreams Forums," with the same rules). As new posts there do not appear in Active topics, we hope this is a way to avoid all the old fights.

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Fourth Base is banned forever and irrevocably.

He was banned several times by earlier moderators for his extremely hostile behavior to other members. The behavior in his final posts here really reached a whole new level, as those of you who saw it recall.

Jerky was also banned before by earlier moderators for being obnoxious. He announced at least once he was quitting and bade hostile goodbyes, as he found everything going on here to be really dumb and awful. He's hostile to most of what goes on here, so let's call it an amicably hostile divorce.

As a result of board happenings I guess MacC will no longer want to be my friend in the real world, but we were friends for a long time in Berlin. Banning him really upset me. Here's something I posted here, then deleted and sent him as a message:

JackRiddler wrote:Can you stop with this unbearable dramatization please?

Recommended reading in case I actually get suspended or even banned here:

It's easy:

- don't demand people give away information that may identify them [He was doing this because people were claiming professional knowledge of conditions at hospitals and he didn't believe it, so they had to be disinfo agents, so he demanded that they specify details that might end up identifying them, which is against the board rules]

- don't attack people for believing coronavirus is a dangerous pandemic that requires countermeasures or is overwhelming health resources (you can argue that it isn't so, obviously; several others are doing so without consequences)

- don't go off aggressively (or passive-aggressively) on anyone who disagrees with your premises about the events and call them a disinfo agent, or a body-snatched persona [he did the latter with me, demanding that I fill out a quiz to prove I was still the one he knew personally]

- don't compare these self-evident minor board rules to genocide and the third reich. (FFS)

Do I really have to explain this shit? You are getting the royal treatment. Someone I didn't know personally who acted like you did a couple of days ago would have been banned directly.

He kept doing most of the above, so I banned him. It's funny that he was an anti-board flooding hardliner who engaged in board flooding. I told him, "You have started enough threads to propagate your views on the corona crisis here (or whatever your preferred name for it is). More than anyone else.... Please just go ahead and do the thing you claim you want to do! Use the threads that exist. Stop wasting them. Stop litigating this shit all day. This is not my fucking full-time job. I do not have the time or inclination to tolerate this much longer."

So there are those of you who want him back. I get that, he's one of the most engaging writers here most of the time. But I still don't want to litigate this shit all day.

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Thanks for all your good work in keeping this boat afloat, Jack.
Much appreciation.

Re: MacC
I also had the pleasure of partying with him, IRL, in Berlin 2016. My impression was that he was drinking a lot at the thread proliferation time... It seems we all had quarantine induced meltdowns and coping mechanism going on.
Not to make excuses for bad behavior. Everybody is fully responsible for their own well being.
I do miss him here because when he was good - he was really, really good. And ditto when he was bad...

"Booze & pills & powders, you have to choose your medicine." Keith Richards

Thanks and kudos to Jack for the house he’s building. I'm wandering the halls adjusting to the new configuration of rooms.

LolaB » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:42 pm wrote:Thanks for all your good work in keeping this boat afloat, Jack.
Much appreciation.
Re: MacC
I also had the pleasure of partying with him, IRL, in Berlin 2016. My impression was that he was drinking a lot at the thread proliferation time... It seems we all had quarantine induced meltdowns and coping mechanism going on.
Not to make excuses for bad behavior. Everybody is fully responsible for their own well being.
I do miss him here because when he was good - he was really, really good. And ditto when he was bad...

"Booze & pills & powders, you have to choose your medicine." Keith Richards

I often wondered about that and if so, what a waste of a member’s intellect and talent.

But yeah, addictions (substance, behavioral, whatever) as coping mechanisms; it’s the human condition. As long as they don’t hurt someone else, I can’t judge.

I don’t miss scrolling past the endless Trump graffiti smeared on the walls but do miss SLAD and her other contributions, especially pre-2017. Jack’s offer to her seems reasonable, at least as a possible re-entry point, and I hope she won’t see it as being relegated to the ‘kid’s table’.

I liked Fourth Base and agreed and disagreed w/a lot of what he wrote. He knew he could be obnoxious (at best) and probably, also that his last reprehensible comment (which I saw as falling somewhere within the spectrum of personality disorders) would be his last.

Jerky didn’t bother me much because he was already out front with his name. He seemed more of a Puck character to me and loyal to his masters.

Still, justified, deservedly and asked for or not, it’s just kinda sad to see some valued board 'elders' booted off the island. Time passes, things change. My 2 cents, fwiw.

Edited to take out tasteless content.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Lola B and Cordelia.

Honestly I'd like to have MacC back, if he's willing, and if he can conform to the above guidelines which I think are very basic. Does anyone find them unfair? (I feel weird, us talking about his possible problems in his absence. It's meant in the best, gentlest way but after this maybe private messages are the better way to go.)

Fourth Base went over the line not only here but by exporting his harrassment off-site. That's terminal and irreversible. It becomes a question of self-defense. Whatever need for recognition or treatment or even real grievances may underlie his behavior in real life is not going to be something Rigorous Intuition (the site, its members, or current management) can or should fulfill.

Cordelia wrote:I don’t miss scrolling past the endless Trump graffiti smeared on the walls but do miss SLAD and her other contributions, especially pre-2017. Jack’s offer to her seems reasonable, at least as a possible re-entry point, and I hope she won’t see it as being relegated to the ‘kid’s table’.

In effect she'd be getting her own section to fill with material as she pleased. It respects years of work here, where she is the top poster all-time, and lets her curate it. It wouldn't intrude on GD, other forums, or Active topics, and thus obviate the need for the disputes we were having about flooding, or the feeling that the board had been repurposed into representation of a narrow line of thinking. There are plenty of people who feel as you do and would drop in, read her stuff, contribute, debate, probably get into arguments. Moderation could be limited to breaking up fights. At least, all this is the plan. Limits would include not posting stuff that's illegal or gets the site shut down, but this wasn't a problem with SLAD, and not demanding unreasonable work from the moderators. (I'd be happy to move a number of threads she started into that forum, if the replies were also mainly her own, but not if the demand was constant and meant litigation.)

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^^^

(I feel weird, us talking about his possible problems in his absence. It's meant in the best, gentlest way but after this maybe private messages are the better way to go.)

Yes, you're right; it's also unfair & inappropriate of me. Sorry Mac!

In effect she'd be getting her own section to fill with material as she pleased. It respects years of work here, where she is the top poster all-time, and lets her curate it. It wouldn't intrude on GD, other forums, or Active topics, and thus obviate the need for the disputes we were having about flooding, or the feeling that the board had been repurposed into representation of a narrow line of thinking. There are plenty of people who feel as you do and would drop in, read her stuff, contribute, debate, probably get into arguments. Moderation could be limited to breaking up fights. At least, all this is the plan. Limits would include not posting stuff that's illegal or gets the site shut down, but this wasn't a problem with SLAD, and not demanding unreasonable work from the moderators. (I'd be happy to move a number of threads she started into that forum, if the replies were also mainly her own, but not if the demand was constant and meant litigation.)

Sounds reasonable and generous.