jismith1989:

sudanglo:Now if the typical Esperantist was one of the beautiful people, full of charisma and likely to inspire others to follow his/her lead, I wouldn't complain about there being a typical Esperantist.

Perhaps you should try to exude beauty in your own posts then (as robbkvasnak's contribution does), because you certainly don't seem "full of charisma" to me. Others may, or may not, disagree with me; others may, or may not, wish to follow your lead (of, for example, repeatedly and gratuitously making insensitive comments about the need to get rid of "weirdo's and freaks" [sic] in a thread made by a schoolkid who's obviously having real trouble finding his place in a hostile and shallow-thinking world).

I agree with you!

voxclamantes:Doesn't change anything. A handful of people are responsible for 99% of the vicious attacks and insults against other Lernu users and you, erinja, can't tell the difference between bullies and their targets.

Frankly, I think you personally are ruining the only active Esperanto forum on the Internet and are driving away people because all of your threats are empty and you can't tell the difference between freedom of expression and bullying.

Sorry to hear you aren't happy with our forum. We do the best we can to moderate the forums, between cries of "censorship" from both sides. We don't delete accounts easily, but there are times when we are accused of being incredibly delete-happy. We do our best, but we can never make everyone happy. And we don't have time to read a 50-page thread to see who started it (this site isn't anyone's full-time job), so yes, we depend on users to report things, and the user who responds rudely to a rude post is breaking the site's terms of service, the same as the person who started it. If no one responded to a rude post, it could never turn into a flame war. It would get reported and deleted.

Incidentally, I suggest that you try reporting a rude post before assuming that reporting does nothing. I hear these complaints, "reporting does nothing" but we receive VERY few reports of rude or insulting posts, and the people who complain that reporting does nothing frequently have seldom or never reported a post. We look into every single report we receive, but VERY few users report these posts. When a message is reported, and when I look at the rest of the thread, I am sometimes shocked at how long the insults have been going on before someone reported something. But if you respond rudely rather than reporting something, there's nothing we can do, because we can't read all the threads.

spreecamper:
The guard will set 'Bear Hug from the Rear with Arms Pinned' to cool down somebody who did freak out inside huge mass of persons. Often that offense technique will be applied to drunken persons who do freak out. I don't know how to name the state to which bear huged person will forced. Is it 'to cool down' or 'to force somebody non-actively'? Of course there excists techniques to defend against such 'Bear Hug from the Rear with Arms Pinned' attacks. I.e. that Krav-Maga technique. But drunken persons are not capable to defend that way. Krav-Maga is Israeli self-defense system.

I think I understand, and possibly the word you seek is "subdue".

voxclamantes:

erinja:This is one of our biggest problems on the lernu forums. A starts verbally abusing B; B responds rudely, 'gloves off', and it turns into a flame war. A and B are both breaking lernu's rules, and they both risk getting their messages deleted and possibly their accounts.

Yeah, right. There are people who have had over a hundred of their posts deleted because of attacks on other Lernu users and are still doing the same thing they always did.

This is precisely the problem at Lernu - fight back when people attack you, falsely accuse you of something, or spread lies and misinformation about something, and then if you report this to the administrator (erinja), nothing happens to the troublemaker. People fight back because YOU DO NOTHING TO STOP THE BULLIES!

erinja:Then they both complain to me with "but the other one started it", or "but the other one has insulted me many times on another thread before I said anything here", etc.

But to you it doesn't matter who the instigator was, does it? I think the question of who started being rude, violating the rules, etc. is EXTREMELY relevant. But by all means, please continue to treat people who fight back the same way as the people who started the fight ...

erinja:Don't take off the gloves just because someone else was rude first. Report the message.

Doesn't change anything. A handful of people are responsible for 99% of the vicious attacks and insults against other Lernu users and you, erinja, can't tell the difference between bullies and their targets.

Frankly, I think you personally are ruining the only active Esperanto forum on the Internet and are driving away people because all of your threats are empty and you can't tell the difference between freedom of expression and bullying.

All this coming from someone who either (a) had their account deleted (ironic) or (b) made a new account to hide who they are (this is very suspicious).
Stop spouting this unsubstantiated hearsay and give proof, or silentu. I am quite tired of seeing these unwarranted attacks against the Lernu staff from all sides. Some complain of too much interference while others complain about not enough, so it is obviously somewhere in the middle where it should be.
So,
(1) If you can't follow the rules you agreed to, don't complain about action. It is not your interpretation of the rules that matters, but the administrators.
(2) If you are so insecure in your thoughts/beliefs that some anonymous person on the internet can disrupt your tranquility, then you should delete your accounts and unplug from the world, because people will be people. When entering into a discussion on the web you should expect to meet bullies/etc. or you are fooling yourself.

Grow up, people.

kaŝperanto:I think I understand, and possibly the word you seek is "subdue".

Yes, you're right. That word does meet it.

kaŝperanto:All this coming from someone who either (a) had their account deleted (ironic) or (b) made a new account to hide who they are (this is very suspicious).

That would be option (b), I believe. This looks to be the same user who has deleted his or her own account twice and created a new one (once right after I asked if it was the same person as the previous account -- funny that.) It looks like this user repeatedly deletes his or her account then resumes the debate under a new name. I don't know why.

erinja:I asked if it was the same person as the previous account

You "can" ban yourself and come immediately back with a new name, or have and use multiple accounts at same time ... kiel traduki FYI: sockpuppetry sucks en EO?

Clarence666:You "can" ban yourself and come immediately back with a new name, or have and use multiple accounts at same time ... kiel traduki FYI: sockpuppetry sucks en EO?

Right.

I would hesitate to call it "banning yourself", because some people delete an account for legitimate reasons. The difference is that these users are usually open about what they have done, and say "Yes, I am the same person as XYZ, this is my new account".

We have had a few cases where a user was repeatedly banned (for bad behavior on the site) and repeatedly created new accounts, but this particular instance with Rargos/senideano/voxclamantes is the first time that I can personally remember when the same user kept deleting their own account then coming back repeatedly under different names. Rargos appeared fairly suddenly and I do somewhat wonder whether there were other usernames that I was unaware of, before the user started posting under the Rargos account.

spreecamper:

kaŝperanto:I think I understand, and possibly the word you seek is "subdue".

Yes, you're right. That word does meet it.

with "meet" do you mean "hit"? as in "das Wort trifft es"? Or do you mean "comes close to"?

I was a moderator, back in the late '90's stretching into the mid-2000's, of a fairly active Yahoo Groups mailing list.

In the beginning, when I was new, I tried to be a kind and fair moderator, trying to referee disputes even-handedly, and making sure that only guilty parties were chastised, etc. Only in the worst cases would people be banned. Complaints would be discussed ad infinitum, he started it no she did no it was you blah blah blah, and the arguments would go on and on and on.

By the time I decided I no longer wanted to be a moderator, after many years of putting up with it, I had no trouble at all flicking troublemakers off the list like breadcrumbs off a table. I had become utterly brutal. I had to, and there really was no reason not to be.

I found that, from the practical standpoint of running a public list/forum, the role of the moderator actually isn't to referee disputes. The role of the moderator has nothing to do with being fair. The role of the moderator is to preserve order. That's it. A functioning forum requires order, and troublemakers disturb that order. Remove the troublemakers, and the forum will, in fact, continue fine without them. Forums lose nothing when they lose troublemakers.

When there's a catfight in my backyard, I don't puzzle out who started what; I turn the hose on them both. The only downside is to the cats, whose fighting is disturbing me, so why not? They don't fight, there's no hose. They do fight, they get wet. It's an easy equation.

People whose main contributions are seemingly negative are rarely missed once they are gone. Even if they "didn't start it", they do keep whatever "it" is going - every post they make is one more additional bit of noise. Whatever they are yelling about may be important to them, but they have to understand: it probably isn't nearly as important to the forum as a whole as they think it is. What *is* important to a functioning forum is order, not justice. If the participants are polite and well-mannered, then they are imposing the order themselves. Good for them. If they can't do that on their own, then it is the role of the moderator to do it for them. That may work out a little differently.

Harsh, I know. But I've been there. I was there a long time. So far my only criticism of the Lernu moderators would be an expression of surprise that they put up with as much as they do.

So, I've had posts deleted. Some of them were pretty long ones, in which I made some pretty good points (or, at least, so I claim). Whatever. I'm a big boy. I'll live. Complaining about it would just be adding more noise.

Honestly, I take more pity on the moderators than I do anything else. I have a good sense of what they have to put up with.