This reminds me of Craigslist, specifically I made a little greasemonkey filter that would cross out any combinations of information that I wasn't interested in, rather than having HUGE long lists of uninteresting content it would leave only certain ones uncrossed out, and underline my town too to help identify which ones were more local. Made sifting through the chaff much easier.

This is probably the best policy :)

There's plenty of threads I outright have never opened because they hold no interest to me.

Ugh. I knew this would degenerate into you taking a "me against the world" attitude. Calling you the wrong gender does not constitute hate speech. It may be insulting, it may be harassing, but it's no different than calling someone else an insensitive name. Just because its happening to you doesn't make it worse than what other people go through. You seem terribly insecure to me. But you have to stop making yourself a victim by being overly sensitive. If you ever do suffer a real tragedy no one will care because you're already so melodramatic.

dtgreene,

I did read the articles, now I am even more confused, I thought I understood what you meant prior (expect the part were starmaker (?) jumped in.

Don't get me wrong, but those two articles confused the hell out of me. To many words and not enough information. ;)

The way how I understood YOU: He/she, you choose, or what now?
Talking about looks what a lot of this articles were about, but not really giving themselves a gender. I am really confused. Help me out here.

And others, please please refrain from some of those statements I have seen.
@Paladin You might be right with what you wrote, but I could have been also addressed a bit more polite, or?

I do admit, I don't understand it, hence I do not judge. I tried to discuss with starmaker but waiting for reply. And maybe there is more to it than just an insult. But that was what I was trying to find out.

I don't always do polite. I'm ok offending people. People are free to offend me all they like, it doesn't bug me much at all. I was a United States sailor. I've been called some horrid names that hurt a lot worse than the racial slurs directed at me when I was younger. I've suffered from problems of my own, but I don't whine and bitch about it here usually. Someone wants to cry over names they've been called when I've been insulted for risking my life for my country, being shot at for others' benefit. I don't always put tender feelings first. So sue me.

Well, I have to say that I don't support the paywall option, and, at least, people might consider whether to click on the (+)/(-) signs if it were reflected publicly. The only problem with that, though, is you would probably have to provide a reason why you were choosing said option for things to remain constructive, and therefore a basis to determine whether the vote was not simply an attempt to aggravate the poster.

One other option I've considered is having to pass a CAPTCHA when the rep buttons are clicked -- yes, it's a bit of a pain, but at least it would prevent frivolous clicking of the rep buttons.

Failing everything else, just dump the rep system altogether, since it seems to serve no real purpose that I can see.

I stopped reading at the first line:

"There are multiple fronts that trans people have to fight on in order to educate the world about who we are."

The arrogance and righteousness in that first sentence alone is incredible.

News flash, the world doesn't give a shit about who they are nor want their "education".

That's what some people need to understand, they aren't special, nobody gives a crap about them, nobody gives a crap about their delicate feelings and nobody is interested in their sexual orientation or transitioning.

I disagree on several counts. One is that even though I am in a majority group (ostensibly) it does not mean that other humans cannot be rude or abusive towards me. Two is that I can (and do) belong to several groups that are very much a minority and being a member of such groups does involve derogatory terms and ridicule. I still maintain that this is fine, so long as it doesn't cross into physical abuse. And if it does, well, thank some old white men for the 2nd!

All that said, I sense that we are unlikely to end up agreeing. That is fine too. It's as fine for anyone to disagree with me as it is for them to disagree with you.
That. Except for that suing part.

Here here. I'd like to further state that I'm not usually rude or crass and that last comment I made took me back to a darker place than I expected. I apologize for anyone who was hurt by my statement. My desire is not to harm people, but my statement stands. People need to not be so sensitive about words said to them, or even about them.

So you heard worth, you got a thicker skin, so what? ;)
Does a little bit courtesy and friendliness really hurt ;)
As you said yourself, you have been called horrid names but did you beat them up for this? Would you have not liked it more to be address as what you are, a human being? That's All what I am saying ;)

EDIT: Agreed to certain certain extend, sometimes you need to have a thicker skin. As I always mentioned: If you enter the political threads, get your extra Armour on ;), but not on a normal thread.

EDIT2: Don't want to make to many replies, I hope you see it anyway Paladin: Thank you and not a prick ;)

I may have pounced on you a little bit, because you seem reasonable, and to get an opportunity to argue a couple of things more fully, on sort of related bits and pieces.

But I have a couple of genuine problems with the approach where we start out discussing what should be removed, because it's bad, etc. I wish to see an open debate about whether it is going to actually serve a purpose to remove anything at all. That's where this should start.

That we instead start off by implying that if we only talk about it enough, we're going to agree that someone specific has to be removed from the board - I'm not a huge fan of that sort of thing.

Oh, just wait and see. Anyone with power ends up like that :p No, seriously, though - it's an extremely short step from "I'm just helping out" and into "they were asking for it". Read the testimony from mr. "I was a moderator, and I've had to ban thousands of people, and it was extremely effecitve, to the point where we continued to ban truckloads of people" further up there.

Purely technically as well - nothing stops someone from just making another account.

Right. That's a problem. What I'm wondering is how useful it is to have rep-wars, or going around giving these people official attention. I sort of have the impression that if we tasked a community manager to run around on full time to just say: "haha, what a bad argument" to support the people who are so excessively easy to troll - this would not be a problem.

That they can't possibly do anything else to get a raise out of you. I agree it's not pleasant. But you really don't have to give them any attention if it destroys your soul in the process. I can also guarantee you that while I'm not going around repping people for blowing up and telling people off once in a while, it's refreshing and entertaining when it's done well. But it's your choice what you would like to see shape the debate you're having.
How? "I think you're making a bad point, kys". There's been some perfectly decent posts in between once in while, and I think that because we're so well protected and fairly anonymous, it's.. not a big deal. I like debating with trolls if they're clever enough, but .. it doesn't do much for me to "refute" someone who argues like that. Few others are interested as well. And it also doesn't carry any weight or distract from a discussion if it's not given any attention.

Sure. And if I ran things, there would be parts of the forum that would have more structured topics of sorts. On a gaming forum, that's .. not really much point, but I could for example easily see that more people here would be interested in some sort of informal commentary on certain types of releases, some games-media events, things like that. And I don't see why for example it would be possible to say that these threads would end up with some sort of requirement for minimal amounts of actual content per post. You know.. "I think this because I like mudkips". Some sort of statement and proposition that leads to something. A softer option that also would be very easy to implement would be that .. a soft ban list for certain posters could be included by default in those parts of the forum. I wouldn't want that, because I really don't think it's productive to have these rep-based filters, or some way to remove the users from the actual board. But making it easier for people to have their own blank-lists sounds like a good compromise. Focus on what actually is worth your time.

Yeah, no worries. But I genuinely think that it's not necessary to do anything but lay out the guidelines on the context, and only moderate in extreme situations where you would need to do something to protect a specific person from for example exposing their personal information, or engaging in something that actually would likely be illegal. In between here, if we have rules for interpretation, we're always going to be able to predict someone going off on some crusade to have people blacklisted, or have them reported for some nitpick or technicality of the rules, etc.

And we really don't need to deal with that.

Anyway, Alaric should at least get a medal or something, if he doesn't want to be paid :)

I didn't denigrate anyone as a human being. I not so politely asked someone to stop being so melodramatic. But you're right. No sense in being a total prick.

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Don't this the wrong way Fairfox, but have you been drinking? Your typing is beyond shit. :P

Wouldn't your request be better phrased as "I can has mod powers plz?" :-P