[Seattle-editorial] Proposal to hide

[Jonathan Lawson]

Clarification: the proposal is not to "ban" a particular user--we have no
mechanism for doing that--rather, we're deciding to hide a classification
of posts. In the unlikely event that "Jake the snake" posted  something
that didn't fit into the class defined below, it wouldn't be automatically
hideable according to this decision.

So, re. Gentry's point, the issue of the poster changing his or her ID
isn't so much the issue. Posts that fit into the category we're
mentioning--erring on the side of tolerance--most of which will be
immediately identifiably as the work of this guy or 2 guys or
whatever--are hidable. If we decide to do this, we should also keep track
of what we're hiding on the list, and of course continue to discuss
questionable cases where we're not sure about a particular post.


Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 10:55:54 -0700
From: Jeremy Kahn <jgk at fifthhorseman.net>
To: g at art13.com, List Editorial <seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] Proposal to hide
Gentry Lange wrote:
>I like the policy, but what about them just changing their "handles" to keep
>up this crap? And could we also word it to include others doing the same
>thing rather than just "jake the snake"?
>
I understand why we might want to have such a policy (I'd *love* one!),
but in past discussions we've found it difficult to word a policy that
seems to be general enough to handle the cases we hate (like these
schmucks) but still leaves room to allow "insurrectionary response", to
use the term of art.
In concrete terms, this "ban a handle" has worked fairly well -- I think
these fellows are motivated by ego, and if they can't adopt a consistent
online identity, then there's no egotistic thrill of being The Troll.
(you just become "An Anonymous Jerk" instead, which is much less
satisfying than being "The Guy Who Ruined seattle.indymedia". It's
amazing how much semantic weight is carried in the definite article! ).
If anybody feels like there's a way to structure a policy that makes it
easy to ban these guys without a discussion like this, please feel free
to propose it. In the mean time, I approve of Jonathan and Gentry's
suggestions that "Jake the Snake" be kicked.  What an ass: he's hostile
and interfering, attacking 2 of our 4 principles of quality
newswire-ness, as Jonathan noticed.
--jeremy
>
>Gentry
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: jonathan lawson [mailto:jonathan at indymedia.org]
>Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 8:35 AM
>To: g at art13.com; seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] Proposal to hide
>
>
>Requires some discussion (not this particular post, but the whole lot of
>them). So here's a quick concrete proposal to get the discussion started:
>
>Proposal: to hide the current wave of right-wing articles and comments
>associated with "Jake the Snake," "Mark W." and similar.
>
>These posts have become very frequent in the last week--a troll
>entertaining himself by goading and insulting readers and journalists who
>are posting legitimate stories, esp. local anti-war stories. Posts also
>include numerous reposts from the National Review and other right-wing
>magazines.
>
>In total, these posts constitute an attack on the newswire intended to
>reduce the newswire's usefulness as an information resource. This is a
>violation of our editorial policy principle #4. The comments in particular
>also violate provision #2, "safe space," by creating an environment where
>anyone publishing an anti-war piece can expect to be met by a barrage of
>obscenities from this joker.
>
>As we have done successfully in the past with two trolls (J.C./Badass and
>Robert Meade "Bobby" "Israel" Deaf Messenger), we should identify these
>posts as a class which violates our editorial policy, hide the existing
>examples, and be prepared to hide additional posts on sight which fit into
>the same group, defined as follows:
><Posts which appear to be associated with the right-wing troll "Jake the
>Snake," and which contain abusive language and/or attempt to clog the
>newswire with pre-published right-wing views from other publications.>
>
>