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It works for me.

6 (31.6%)

It does not work for me.

1 (5.3%)

I'd be willing to help test it.

6 (31.6%)

I'm not interested in testing it.

1 (5.3%)

I might be willing to help test it.

5 (26.3%)

Total Members Voted: 14

[Angle]

Aha! Alright, I see how that works.

[Angle]

Alright, so I'm working on putting together a graphical client using java's AWT and swing frameworks. In the meantime, perhaps we should discuss the moderation policies to be used on the agora framework. I think the system will need fairly heavy moderation in order to function properly. In order to counter balance the possibility of abuse this presents, I think we need a system of moderating the moderators. I think that all moderating activity should be logged and open to criticism. This should prevent moderators from abusing their privileges to promote their ideas at the expense of others.

Next, of course, there are the actual policies to be followed. I think that most any topic should be up for debate, but that the rules for this debate must be very strict, but mostly restricted to logical fallacies. For example, it should be legal to discuss things like "We shouldn't vote for What'sHisFace because he's an x and a y", but things like "don't listen to What'sHerFace, she's an x and a y" should not be acceptable, because that's an ad hominem and detracts from the discussion. In some cases, I think people should be held accountable for their arguments - for example, if you want to argue that "all x people are y, and that's a bad thing", then you'd better either make a good argument, or apologize and rescind your position, or face consequences for it.

You can disagree, of course, and I rather hope some of you will -  and of course, I look forward to hearing about it. I have to go to work now though, so I'll catch up when I get back.

[Anvilfolk]

Alright, so I'm working on putting together a graphical client using java's AWT and swing frameworks.

Sweet! I really should learn how to use those! Do they support hardware acceleration? I think the reason I discounted them is 1) I don't know them yet and 2) always thought they might underperform. Keep us updated on how this goes!

I think the system will need fairly heavy moderation in order to function properly. In order to counter balance the possibility of abuse this presents, I think we need a system of moderating the moderators. I think that all moderating activity should be logged and open to criticism. This should prevent moderators from abusing their privileges to promote their ideas at the expense of others.

This might be going overboard with features.

Forums works fine with a simple hierarchy of administrator->moderator->regular user. Why would it be insufficient here? I'm not sure we want to allow "meta-debate" to influence the debate itself, e.g. a debate about politics shouldn't eventually devolve into whether a moderator was right in removing this or that message.

Furthermore, these debating frameworks are self-moderating. The results of debates are a direct consequence of the community that engages in that debate. Communities with lots of trolls will get troll outcomes, and mature communities will get interesting, significant outcomes for their debates because they are able to downvote troll arguments into insignificance. That's something we need to accept, much like the creators of phpBB or SMF did. We're providing a platform. People are going to use it differently in different parts of the internet.

Next, of course, there are the actual policies to be followed. I think that most any topic should be up for debate, but that the rules for this debate must be very strict, but mostly restricted to logical fallacies. For example, it should be legal to discuss things like "We shouldn't vote for What'sHisFace because he's an x and a y", but things like "don't listen to What'sHerFace, she's an x and a y" should not be acceptable, because that's an ad hominem and detracts from the discussion. In some cases, I think people should be held accountable for their arguments - for example, if you want to argue that "all x people are y, and that's a bad thing", then you'd better either make a good argument, or apologize and rescind your position, or face consequences for it.

This is up to each particular host that uses the Agora framework, much like every forum has different policies. Of course, we should absolutely provide a website that is Agora-enabled for people to try it and understand what it's all about. And this website, like any other, is going to require an administration and moderation team as well as moderation policies.

I kind of feel that if a user consistently cites unreliable sources, it's a significant contribution to a debate that he might be doing so again. Why not let it happen organically?

Although I can roll with having a super serious debating subforum where this isn't allowed, and users follow up on citations to find what is wrong with them, etc. Then it makes sense that ad hominem arguments should be against the rules, and removed by moderators.

[Angle]

The main trouble is that there are people who will drown out any honest conversation with abusive rhetoric - if you let them. (See the comments on any youtube video for details.) They can even drag down the rest of the discussion, as the people they insult get angry and respond in kind. This means that significant moderation is necessary in order to keep things productive. This is in turn means that there is potential for the moderators to abuse the system. In most forums, this abuse doesn't really matter, because the things being discussed don't really matter, but I'm designing Agora so that people can talk about things that do matter, such as global warming, international politics, and other pressing issues. This means that there is substantial pressure for people to either abuse the system, or accuse their opponents of abusing the system. Thus, a system is needed to prevent such abuse.

As for policies, I agree that many bad arguments should be allowed, so that the people arguing have something to cut their teeth on. There are a few things that should not be allowed, such as ad hominems and pointless insults - these make the debate excessively hostile and make it far less likely that people will learn new things from it.

There's also the question of what discussions to allow. If a bunch of Neo-Nazis want to debate Naziism, do we allow that? I think we should, though with strict moderation, because it might end up changing some of the Neo-Nazi's minds.

I know that many of these are topics about the use of a particular forum, not about Agora as a whole, but before Agora sees greater adoption, we'll need to demonstrate it's capabilities.

[Fniff]

This is really interesting! I would make this a usual PTW, but I had a thought. Is Agora meant to be debates only, or would it be similar to a regular forum in having topics for game discussions, emotion threads, or forum roleplaying? The last one would work brilliantly on this, I imagine. A common dilemma on such threads is who is talking to who and where.

Anyway, nevermind my nerdy indulgence, PTWing with interest.

[Angle]

All of the above, with specialized  subsystems for the various varieties. Eventually, anyway.

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah, when we say debates, we really mean any kind of discussion. The main thing is that there is an explicit formal way of relating what people are saying, by specifying that the point I made invalidates your point, or something like that.

Wow, I've rewritten this post about 3 or 4 times now :\ I'll try to keep it short this time!

Moderation policies will be up to whoever is hosting the Agora service. I think as the official Agora website, we probably want to have several subforums for different levels of seriousness, and different levels of moderation, and we should discuss policies for those at some point.

Other than that, different websites will define their own moderation policies, like forums do these days.

I don't think we need moderation for moderators. There is always potential for abuse, be it moderators, administrators, governments... ultimately, you frequent websites with whose community, moderation and administration you're comfortable with.

It's the administration's responsibility to keep moderators in check. If anybody is unhappy with the moderation, they can take their concerns to the administration, or can start a debate on that very issue - after all, that's what Agora is all about This is how most forums work these days, and the system works OK.

Having everything super public and open for debate will just really confuse discussions and give them lots of meta-layers that will dilute the issue under consideration. I quite like how Bay12 is moderated, for instance. Someone reports the posts, Toady comes in, removes the flame wars posts, and writes a comment saying what happened. Why wouldn't that work?

[Angle]

It probably would- I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I don't really think there'd be a problem with there being huge debates about a moderators action - either it's obviously wrong, or it's not.

[Anvilfolk]

I agree! I think debates about moderation are a big part of online communities and that they need to be represented in the Agora framework, but I think it makes more sense for that to happen as a debate in itself, as in current forums

[Angle]

But don't you think that the activities of the moderators should be logged, so that people have concrete facts to discuss, instead of just allegations?

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah, that's probably a good idea! Shouldn't be too hard to accommodate as a feature either!

[Angle]

That's the entirety of my idea though - that moderator's actions should be logged, and that people should be able to criticize them. Though I suppose we might not want to have large conversations over each and every action by a moderator. I don't really think this'll be a problem, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

On another note, I can't seem to get the text client to work. It's giving me this error:

Code: [Select]

[JAgoraLib] Error opening connection to bigornas.bounceme.net:1597 (Connection refused)
[JAgoraLib] Could not connect because socket could not be opened.

Did we change the settings on the server? I can still log in normally through the web page, so I know it's still up. and I updated to the latest version of all the agora projects, so I'm pretty sure it's not that.

[Anvilfolk]

Oh, right. I guess I'm just not sure how to present information about stuff that's been deleted, and would actually like to delete it at some point for performance reasons, but I'm sure we can come up with a nice simple solution

You should run a local server! Then the server connects to the database which is running in bigornas, and your client connects locally to the server. Does that make sense?

[Angle]

Alright, I see how that works. thank you! Now I just need to make my graphical client use this to access the server so I have a something to display.

[Anvilfolk]

I'm on Skype and in the Agora google doc, just in case