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The Ricochet I Love
As an official Ricochet Moderator,™ some days I despair for the grand experiment in civil, right-wing community building that is Ricochet. So much of my energy on the site is spent dealing with sniping and griping that I start to wonder if anyone actually wants to have a conversation.
Too many times it feels like members are here to repeat the same arguments like a Groundhog Day from Hell, burn acres of strawmen, gloat over the fellow Ricochetti they consider their enemies, and bring up every less-than-complimentary thing anyone has ever said to them as justification for their own bad behavior, like a half of a couple that wants a divorce but wants to force the other party to be the one who actually files. Two things have happened in the last few days though that have rekindled hope that this community can actually work as intended.
The first is so simple it should hardly need to be mentioned. Brian Watt created a post on “ecosexuality.” iWe put up a disagreeing post that mentioned that it was in reaction to Brian’s. iWe didn’t hijack the thread to make himself the center of conversation; Brian didn’t complain about being embarrassed by having a fellow member disagree with him. It’s a beautiful model of how Ricochet as a good faith conversation should work.
The second is also a wonderful example of mature behavior. In GrannyDude’s recent post “The Mystery of Male Armies: Redux,” there was a flap over language. One party attempted to make a joke which due to the nature of text fell flat, and the recipient felt offended. The recipient admitted to hurt feelings and requested an apology, which was then given and accepted. Neither party went off-thread to complain about “that insulting jerk” or “that humorless scold.” Neither used knowledge of the other’s personal life to exacerbate the fight or poison the possibility of reconciliation. Neither appear to be holding a grudge that will be remembered for months or years. The thread has returned to being a pleasant conversation.
I realize that not every problem can be solved so easily, that we all have sore spots and wounds from our lives in general and previous conversations on Ricochet. I know that we all have those positions on which no compromise is able to be made. But civility can exist among adults who work to create it, and I’m happy that we still have many of those people at Ricochet.
Published in General
I’ve said this before, but it needs to be repeated every few months: Ricochet the site has no editorial position. It’s not a publication, it’s just a platform. The people you hear on the podcasts (yes, even the founders) or read on here are expressing their personal opinion, just like you are. They do not speak for Ricochet because there is nothing to speak for. Again, it’s just a platform. Disagree with something you heard on the podcast? Let them know.
Amy was also pointing out that the more pro-Trump contributors aren’t writing very much either (and, IMHO, there have been a couple whose essays have been… not helpful either).
Just speaking personally here: I’ve not wanted to write anything about Trump at all for a long time, either pro or con, or somewhere in between. There are several things he has done about which I have been quite ticked, but the default position for too many here is either absolute praise or absolute condemnation. I’d rather discuss these issues and get an honest back and forth, but I know who else would chime in, and they would turn it into a completely binary mud fest, with mutual accusations of treason and whatnot. So I’d rather not get involved.
My position on Trump is the same I have on my mom’s meatloaf: it’s better than going hungry or a crap sandwich, but it’s not what I wanted, I’m not going to sing hosannas about it, and I am bemused that anyone specifically requested it. And the last thing I want to do is spend all day analyzing it, because the less I think about it, the less disgusted I am by it.
I can say that as a HW I do not feel unwelcome on the Member Feed at all.
I think I owe everyone on the site an apology for being firmly in the “moderators should be able to take it” camp for far longer than was healthy. That I am no longer in that pernicious camp might be a reason some may perceive me as “testier” than I used to be, but a previous Editor and I learned the hard way that masochism and self-abasement in the name of “we can take it as long as it’s directed just at us and nobody else on the site” turned out to be very destructive long-term.
Ricochet has also seemed to me to be about a ten times better social media site than most similar websites.
A lot of that is just because there are a lot of kind, good, smart, experienced conservative and moderate people here.
I wish many more good people would join and stay on Ricochet, but what can I do?
I hope I haven’t offended anyone too badly over the years. Many of the controversial, un-PC political topics that we discuss here can hardly be discussed anywhere else.
Perhaps Facebook will implode someday and everyone will move here.
Until then…
I suspect that suspensions, thread closing, and redactions are the primary reason it hasn’t gotten there yet, not the good will of members.
It’s far, far more the goodwill of the members. And their willingness to abide by the CoC. The amount of posts or comments that actually get modded are a tiny percentage of the total.
There is a small number of people whose fondest wish is to feel repressed, and you just won’t play along.
Spoilsport.
That’s funny that you use that analogy. I have a lengthier analogy where I think of the Trump Administration as a restaurant, but I’ve never written it because I don’t feel like arguing about it. At the Seattle Meetup I did share my Trump Administration as a rock band metaphor, though.
Prisons hold a tiny percentage of the population. If you didn’t throw people in there, a far greater percentage of the population would commit crimes.
Ricochet, the site, is a platform, so that’s hard to argue with. But Ricochet, the business entity, selects podcasts, contributors, and mods. Now, we can recognize those groups speak for themselves, but we can’t ignore that the act of selection reflects a certain judgment–whatever that may be.
@midge – I will be honest, I generally avoid the moderation email partly out of concern that a complaint would be viewed as an attack on the mods and get me on probation. I have a hard enough time conveying intent IRL, online is worse. My conversations with you have generally been quite helpful.
@Skipsul – I think guest moderator is an excellent idea – both for mods and for users. There is a definite difference in perspective. Seeing the process of how a redaction happens in practice would be helpful. I would also encourage a more transparent warning system – if someone is on probation, is that forever? I have heard that certain people have been told that the next screw-up will lead to a permanent ban. Does that status ever go away, assuming what I heard was accurate? I think it would also be good to keep a record of penalties / infractions or some similar documentation in case you have to ban someone. Refs annouce the foul before assigning a penalty, after all.
We do keep those records. In the case of one particularly problematic member, editors were suspending her multiple times over the course of four years before a lifetime ban was enforced on every IP address that could be traced to her.
But there’s a question of how much publicity should punishments get. No one is punished arbitrarily or in a fit of pique; we don’t always negotiate the wording of mod notes, but all emails are hashed out over the course of hours. We debate back and forth about whether this comment or that post is just toeing the line or over it. Given the effort put into making the decision, we don’t want to announce a disciplinary measure only to have to relitigate whether it was deserved in the comments. In cases of suspensions or bans, we don’t want to be seen as shaming a member who can’t even reply. We also have thought that not publicizing disciplinary actions would help prevent copycats.
Personally, I lean toward the notion that punishing in public discourages further bad behavior more that it encourages, but it’s very much a judgment call. And I’ve make the wrong judgment call often enough to recognize my instincts aren’t always the best guide of what to do.
I’m glad to hear your and my PM conversations have been helpful — that’s what I was hoping for.
That said, I would encourage you — or anyone — to give communicating with mods@ricochet.com a try.
Before mods@ricochet.com was even a thing, the rare customer would send abusive and profanity-laden correspondence to @ricochet.com addresses (like info@ricochet.com and the various editors’ emails), and yes, sending abuse to any @ricochet.com address tends to get a user noticed in a negative way, which, if the abuse is bad enough, will influence disciplinary decisions. (We briefly had a user a few years ago who managed to turn a short suspension into a permanent ban by emailing filthy harangues to a Ricochet editor during the course of his suspension — my goodness, were those emails lewd.)
That said, none of what you’ve written me is anything like that kind of behind-the-scenes abuse. In fact, what you’ve written to me is the sort of feedback all the mods are interested in hearing. Furthermore, writing to mods@ricochet.com gives those supervising the mods the option (which they don’t always exercise, but it’s there) to check that the mods really are living up to expectations, which should be attractive to anyone who ever has doubts (and we know they sometimes arise) about how to keep the mods honest.
This has been punted back and forth a lot. The pro argument here is, of course, the visibility involved. The con argument is that it could be unnecessarily shaming to the members involved, and could also end up endlessly litigated. I can bear witness that this has happened in at least 2 instances where we were very up front on why 2 different members were banned after months of issues. In both these instances, defenders of the banned put up posts castigating us for the bans. We responded and cited what had led up to the ban (including the months of issues, and the final straw). One of defenders, who had put up the post in the first place, then went on a tirade about how we were unfairly sliming these now-ex-members and how we had no right to air their dirty laundry. It was a no-win scenario for us. If we kept it all under wraps then we were continuously open to libel and misinformation, but the moment we said anything we were condemned and had to spend hundreds of comments with people challenging the entire chain of events. So the transparency issue still is up in the air, with most leaning towards handling it behind the scenes.
On the question of probation & possible expiration – that too has been something in flux as the entire disciplinary ladder system has taken shape. Members are definitely told when they’re on probation, so they do know. Up until this point, however, those who have gone up the ladder to the point of getting a last warning generally haven’t taken the hint, and often very little more than a month or two elapses from them returning from a month-long ban, and then crashing right through anyway (I’d say some have even viewed it as a challenge).
So the issue of a probation eventually expiring hasn’t come to the fore…. yet.
This is roughly how the disciplinary ladders works, with the obvious note that with some very serious violations we’re going to escalate. All suspensions, and the chain of events that earned them, are recorded.
The “pubform” is an increasingly common model. Ricochet has also always been specifically right-of-center, not deplatforming those left-of-center willing to abide by our CoC, but still, simply favoring the right can be viewed as an editorial stance of sorts, albeit a very broad one.
Mods were first introduced during Ricochet’s “SSM wars”. When I was invited to mod, I invited Mike Rapkoch to volunteer to mod, too, in part because I sympathized with SoCons’ complaints that management just didn’t adequately understand them at the time, and I knew Rapkoch was a fierce SoCon also capable of being civil. Rapkoch is not a mod now, but he was one of our original mods.
Ultimately, the “side” mods are on is the side of civility, and mods can’t neatly be split into representatives of various “sides” otherwise. That said, the pattern of seeking out potential mods among a “side” that worries it’s not being heard has continued.
Yeah, I hear this a fair amount, so it’s probably time for another fact check on it: We have pro-Trump shows (Klavan, Bennett, Harvard Lunch Club, Victor Davis Hanson’s podcast), lot of shows with a mix of hosts (Flagship, Conservatarians, Powerline, Law Talk, WFB, The Editors, Mad Dogs), etc and yes, a few shows the are mostly NT (GLoP, Need To Know). We’ve made a concerted effort to balance the network as best we can while (hopefully) still maintaining the quality.
We have two editors: one (Jon) is not a Trump supporter (and he almost never writes about Trump) and the other (Bethany) supports Trump when she agrees with him on policy.
We have at least one Pro-Trump mod (Julie) and would be happy to add more. Are you volunteering?
Ummmm …..No. My point was not to impute bias or slant of any particular kind, but only to point out that Ricochet as a neutral platform is part of the picture, but not all of it.
Send me a PM with more details on what the position involves. I have limited availability during the workday, but I may be able to assist.
I think Chamberlain discovered that very thing.
Let me guess.
I’m so glad I’ve been around long enough to get some Ricochet insider references.
I’m not sure this particular one really counts as insider, I think it’s open knowledge at this point.
OK, you . . . you . . . spoilsport! :) Isn’t it bad enough that I feel left out when people talk about Kenneth?
Heck, Kenneth was before my time.
Believe me you are better off
I completely agree here. Many of us just don’t want the hassle, knowing full well that it’s most assuredly an invitation for all troublemakers on both sides to come out in full force. As an administration supporter, it’s best to simply ignore comments and OPs written by certain people who are simply looking for another fight.
Yes. Good will is in part a function of rules and enforcement.
Mine, too.