Who turned the Dean of the SC into a troll.

The CDS forums can be brutal. Its a place where we are supposed to be posting our political ideas and opinions. Making comments on the government and such. Unfortunately, my observation is that its really difficult for some people to separate a person's ideas with the people themselves. Because of that, sometimes, often actually, posters are upset about someone commenting on an action or an idea or a perception and instead of rebutting the idea, they attack the person who said it , calling them names, etc. "shoot the messenger" syndrome. When the people on the forums sharing ideas and observations and comments are also neighbors and political opponents, well the mix gets a bit wild and wacky at times.

Now the forums claim to be moderated by the Scientific Council of the CDS. They have some guidelines.. no harassment, no libel, no lots of things.. BUT. Wow that is hard to moderate, and given that the members of the SC may actually be connected politically and have great motivation to make someone or break someone in CDS it may be asking too much altogether. For example, the SC members all know they can be impeached by a 2/3 vote of the RA so they may have a bit of incentive to be less than impartial if a RA member is disagreeing with them or questioning their actions.

So recently our Dean of the SC in CDS in a meeting said this: 

Callipygian Christensen [09:36] You need to start approaching this as if you are dealing with junior high kids acting out, not adults working together

 

She was referring to something else .. but she did subsequent to the comment put in a thumbs up or down rating system in CDS which on day 3 made her the first ever official CDS forum Troll.

That's right the first ever "troll" of the CDS forums ended up being non other than the Dean of the SC herself.

So this thing is called Reputation system or something. It seems more like a junior high popularity contest at best to me, and a new method to bully and ostracize at worst, with an inbetween result of giving a skewed message to the reading public. I suppose we all have to put up with biased media in the USA, Fox News or NPR, and if we all know this, then the ratings will have new meanings. The colors will mean more about who are aligned with than whether you are good or bad, no matter what the media outlet and those who control it want others to think.

This system can work in CDS, but in its form now IMHO its quite badly flawed. If the system is fully transparent and everyone can see who put what points to whom where and when and why .. then that is a great way for more people to easily give their opinions. I would applaud that system. The way the reputation system  is set up now though, incentivizes something other than transparency and freedom of speech.

If citizens disagree with Cally's reputation system it hardly makes her a "troll". It would be nice if we can see who disagrees with her and why rather than calling her names. Calling people names is actually in violation of the moderation guidelines itself.


 This  system seems totally inappropriate to me in that the issues being brought up on the forums are often political in nature so of course sides will be taken. But more importantly, sometimes initial whistleblowers don't have much support in the early days of them pointing out issues such as government corruption at worst or minor hypocrisy ..

The need to improve a system is typically initiated from a "need" or a "flaw". Someone has to discover this need or flaw.  Someone has to shed light on it. When people are unable to disconnect peoples actions and ideas from who they are, the whistleblower gets labeled as an attacker. If the discovery of a flaw in the system means that fixing that flaw would take something away from a person.. something like an unfair advantage, or any other kind of perk its not uncommon for there to be a move to "shut them up" by any means necessary. If the person shedding light on the  flaw in a democracy we give more of a voice and credibility to the "popular" people isn't this skewing what people who are looking to the forums for information on how to vote?


The Dean of the SC is now the first ever legitimate, official "Troll" of the CDS forums.  

And why the name "Troll"? Her message was not one the raters agreed with. Why would our system then call her names?  We need a system that  regulates how people approach the posting of ideas  and stops them from online bullying ( moderators reviewing posts for breaking posting rules of the forums) not one that is a junior high popularity contest that ends up itself calling people names.


 Our Dean of the SC Callipygian is on record as saying in a meeting that CDS citizens should be treated like junior high children. Is that what she was thinking ? I would like to believe she didn't mean for this experiment to turn out this way, for good intentions I give her ONE thumbs up.

But, I  give a thousand thumbs down to the experiment.

EXPERIMENT  FAILED !