#meta 2018-09-02
2018-09-02 UTC
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[kevinmarks] Which helps newcomers a bit
# [kevinmarks] On the wiki editing question - we now have some degree of wiki editing using loqi that doesn't need login
# [kevinmarks] Could we have a "log user x to wiki" command?
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[jon] that seems like a good summary, Zegnat … thanks!
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jeremycherfas I've done a little work gardening /RSS. It might be useful if someone could integrate information from /reader, especially under alternatives, but I don't feel competent to do so.
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# [kevinmarks] Feels like we should mention podcasts in the intro
# jeremycherfas As consumers of RSS?
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# [kevinmarks] As the most current use of it.
# jeremycherfas Almost done.
# jeremycherfas Done
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# jeremycherfas I'm glad to hear that your impressions match mine jgmac1106 It would be good to find a way of organising things on that basis.
# jeremycherfas I don't do enough IndieWeb with WP to help with that, to be honest. I'm not even sure that a getting started with WP should be visibly a part of the wiki. Wouldn't it be more useful as a standalone page?
# jeremycherfas Sine Known no longer offers a hosted option, I reckon it is a bit beyond Getting started. But I will take a look at the page.
# jeremycherfas The Known page could also use some love as bits of it are definitely wrong now. But I'm not going to do that.
# jeremycherfas Actually, /Getting_Started_with_Known isn't even about getting started. And is a higher priority
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[jgmac1106] https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started_with_Known yeah reads more like an infomercial than a guid
# jeremycherfas And Tantek hasn't touched it since 2016. Maybe I will give it a go. I have half an hour ...
# [jgmac1106] I can help later as well....maybe I need to start pulling back from my own blog next week and spend two hours a day gardening...can't grow without pulling weeds
# jeremycherfas Known's own Getting Started is also way out of date.
# jeremycherfas Just noticed a post from jgmac1106 in #known here https://chat.indieweb.org/known/2018-09-02/1535892170642200 that does not show up for me in #knownchat on IRC. What am I doing wrong.
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Loqi [jgmac1106] @sdepolo We had talked awhile back about adding a Getting Started on #IndieWeb with @GoDaddy on here https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started#tutorials If you folks already have @WordPress or @withknown we can help. (http://jgregorymcverry.com/6374-2/)
# jeremycherfas I noticed it in the chat logs at /chat
# jeremycherfas There is definitely a disconnect between irc #knownchat and https://chat.indieweb.org/known/2018-09-02#bottom
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# jeremycherfas I just posted; can you see that in your client?
# jeremycherfas Traffic there has been so light it was a pure fluke that I noticed it. Only because I wanted to check the link.
# jeremycherfas OK. That was using BNC. Let me try direct.
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# jeremych_ ?
# jeremych_ So it isn't logged?
# jeremych_ Can you fix that?
# jeremych_ You're right. :) I don't see it.
# jeremych_ OK.
# jeremych_ And #knownchat does not have a channel operator.
# jeremych_ Oh well, my post wasn't that important. But it would be nice to have that channel back, just in case anyone wants to use it.
# jeremych_ Ah, so that's why [jgmac1106] post showed up, because it started life as a tweet.
# jeremych_ I'm going back to my BNC
# jeremycherfas I'm not sure how to word that request; would you mind doing it?
# jeremycherfas No problem. I've done quite enough gardening for one day. Better get ahead of supper now.
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Zegnat jeremycherfas, aaronpk: https://twitter.com/martijnvdven/status/1036255598407503872
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@martijnvdven @benwerd it looks like you are the only chat operator for #knownchat on Freenode. Nobody can speak in there right now because of spam protection. Could you please +O Loqi through ChanServ? You may also want to consider appointing an extra person with rights to manage the channel. (twitter.com/_/status/1036255598407503872)
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# jeremycherfas Zegnat++
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# [jon] i think its a HUGE mistake to see the WIlW thing as a toxic mob
# [jon] it was community defense by trans people against somebody who had a history of harming trans people
# Zegnat What I understood from the article, [tantek], is that instance admin saw reports coming in about him. And decided to act on that. That’s not really stopable with any sort of barrier. If people en-masse start contacting our CoC contacts about a specific user, we would probably act against that use too ...
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@DataPup_ important context for this is that on Twitter @wilwheaton had made a massively popular blocktogether list he aggressively promoted as “blocking the most abusive scum twitter” but he would put people on it for like, making Star Trek references at him. (Continued...) https://twitter.com/tsaypa/status/1034939060484284416 (twitter.com/_/status/1035544368575401985)
# Zegnat aaronpk, that’s what I said too: https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2018-09-01/1535841634506700
# [jon] wait. i want to go meta-meta here
# [jon] tantak your opinion is under-informed - and you obviously didn’t read the twitter thread
# Zegnat “He then unblocked them himself” - I am reading a lot of very split opinion on that. Some say that he has unblocked a few people when pointed out to him, while at the same time he kept adding more people to the blocklist. And a disproportional amount of the people he was adding was from minority groups.
# [jon] you are making an inaccurate statement that clearly reflects you not havingn read the thread i just shared
# [jon] which is giving you the benefit of the doubt - if you have read it, you’re ignoring trans people’s perspectives to defend a cis person.
# [jon] you started out this conversation by characterizing trans people’s methods you disagree about as a “toxic mob”
# [jon] THIS IS THE KIND OF BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES PEOPLE AWAY FROM INDIEWEB SPACES
# [jon] they’re the people who you’re referring to as a “toxic mob”
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# [jon] Will is most definitely not “obviously apologetic”.
# [jon] Wil did a long post on blocklists a few months ago, and didn’t even mention the situation his block list - let alone say “if you subscribed to my blocklist you’re blocking a lot of people by mistake, here’s how to undo it.”
# [jon] I agree about the flaw in shared block lists. But no, he has not actually made an effort to reduce harm. I know multiple trans people who tried to contact him and were ignored. I know trans people who were not on randi harper’s block list and were on his.
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[tantek] Though in the end isn’t that what he in effect did? He quit Twitter, this abandoning all twitter tools, including 3rd party block lists. I think that’s a reasonable option to take. If sometime is so broken sometimes the best option is to abandon - whether a shared block list or apparently all of Twitter (from his perspective, too much time/work to fix)
# [jon] he cost a lot of trans people money. and then rather than trying to make it right he left. so i don’t think that makes it okay.
# Zegnat And yes to shared block lists being problematic. E.g. it is completely fair for Wil to block someone who makes Star Trek references that he has seen a thousand times. He isn’t interested in that part of Twitter. The problem is when he gets big parts of his following to auto-block the same people he blocks. From that point forward he should have much more carefully considered the effects of adding anyone to the list.
# Zegnat I don’t actually have a bone to pick in this fight, as Wil hasn’t been on my radar for a while now and I do not personally know anyone from my LGBTQ+ circles in Sweden affected by this. Which is why I am much more interested in the actual underlying issue as it applies to our community: someone joins us who hasn’t done anything wrong while part of our community, but other community members start reporting them because they do
# Zegnat Not sure I agree there, [tantek]. As soon as Wil actively started to promote his blocklist as a product, he wasn’t just a user, he became a provider to other users. That doesn’t take away that the entire thing might have been too complex from the start and he didn’t realise what the tech was doing though, so part of it may be forgiven.
# Zegnat If he had done a tweet “here is my blocklist, maybe you find it useful too” I would have seen that a lot different. But he had a pinned tweet saying “If you want to remove a lot of toxic garbage from your mentions and timelines, you can subscribe to my blocklist”. Specifically promoting it as being against things that are often refered to as toxic on social media, as well as making it sound like a solution.
# [jon] [tantek] do you see how you focusing on specific wording can seen as you defending anti-trans behavior?
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# [jon] tantek, with that last question, i meant your quibbling about whether or not the anti-trans list he promoted was a “product” or not.
# [jon] [btw Zegnat i think you’re bringing up reasonable points and am sorry if I’m derailing.]
# [jon] The list was anti-trans. I don’t understand why you’re focused on whether he described it that way.
# [jon] Anti-trans people often say they’re anti-trans. Racists often say they’re not racists. Impact > intent.
# [jon] oops, I meant “Anti-trans people often say they’re not anti-trans”
# [jon] and, he clearly doesn’t think of himself as anti-trans
# [jon] the list he shared impacted the income of a lot of trans people. it was in practice anti-trans.
# jeremycherfas Enjoy, Zegnat.
# [kevinmarks] Everyone is susceptible to the fundamental attribution error. Wheaton doesn't think of himself as anti-trans. Linehan claims he isn't (though that is less supportable)
# [tantek] Jon, if there were indeed measurable income impacts, that ought to be documented with citations, and a reasonable criticism to add to Wil’s Wikipedia article (with said citations). those are pretty strong claims and thus need equivalently strong sources (that would likely be sufficient to cite on WP)
# [jon] i agree it’s a good criticism of shared block lists, and i agree with Zegnat about the interesting meta-issue of what to do when somebody with a (known or argumentatively) problematic past history shows up in Indieweb. I also agree that it highlights some interesting software engineering issues (in fact I’m working on a post on that)
# Loqi A block list is a list of accounts that a user has blocked on a service or site https://indieweb.org/block_list
# [jon] in terms of the measurable income impacts … earlier when i suggested you hadn’t read the link i shared, you got offended. but once again it sounds to me like you didn’t.
# [jon] no i won’t be at XOXO.
# [kevinmarks] I think there is a Susan Fowler problem here. A need for an unproblematic victim to change the balance of opinion.
# [jon] The part that concerns me the most is that a leader of the Indieweb community has been told by a trans person that he’s using anti-trans language and is continuing to do so
# [jon] bye
# [kevinmarks] Can you say "brigading" rather than "toxic mob"? You need a structural term. Jon is right that in describing the it this way you are prejudging
# [kevinmarks] And injecting such posts to discredit a group is a well worn tactic too.
# [kevinmarks] It is very messy, yes. There are shit posters and a lot of mutual blocking. One attempt to narrate this https://twitter.com/delmoi/status/1035372357098070017?s=19
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@delmoi So from what I can gather about this mastodon drama: 0) http://Bofa.lol is setup, bans Lauralai Bailey on sight. 1) Wil Wheaton shows up and people crack jokes. 2) someone with a http://bofa.lol owns him hard using a BOFA varient ("EIDma") (twitter.com/_/status/1035372357098070017)
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# [kevinmarks] Arguably, yes. I've said myself that prioritising mentions as the key thing is structurally problematic.
# [kevinmarks] And that has implications for webmentions too.
# [kevinmarks] Reposts can be - they can be a "look at this fool, go get him" signal
# [kevinmarks] It can be a micro-fisk
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petermolnar jgmac1106: past sins stay behind, unless brought in. See "What's in there? // Only what you take with you"
# petermolnar there are world-wide laws which obviously nobody want to circumvent (think war criminals, etc)
# petermolnar but people can realize mistakes, and should not be punished throughout their remaining lives for past mistakes
# petermolnar that would be an extremely unforgiving world
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gRegorLove I agree with [jon] and dgold's comments re: the Wil Wheaton thing. The meta discussion is good, but if we're looking for examples of "brigading" or "toxic mobs" or whatever the term is, there are better examples.
# gRegorLove Pick from a variety of LGBTQ+ who have been harassed off the platform over the years.
# jgmac1106 gRegorLove also trying to think about our own CoC maybe the line is “While these CoC govern IndieWeb events and online spaces community members may feel threatened or harrased in other online spaces. Continued harrassment across the web, regardless of of the space, can be reported using the process below
# gRegorLove Sorry, I meant "Twitter" not "the platform"
# gRegorLove Not suggesting being unforgiving. I think certain levels of repentance/restitution can be appropriate. As jon shared and that Twitter thread explains, the actions caused financial harm to people.
# gRegorLove "Sorry, I didn't realize I was blocking some innocents" doesn't seem enough imo
# @DataPup_ I wasn’t a part of the crowd that chased him off Mastodon but they didn’t do it as revenge. They did it because they were afraid he would once again use his power and platform to attack or communities again. He did material harm. We need a material fix. He’s anti-LGBT (twitter.com/_/status/1035544385923035136)
# petermolnar fear is a very powerful drive to make the wrong decisions
# gRegorLove I'm not sure yet that I agree with the framing as harassment. I'm less familiar with the term "brigading"
# gRegorLove That author addressed that higher up in the thread. https://twitter.com/DataPup_/status/1035544377966374912
# @DataPup_ It doesn’t matter what personal views Wil holds. He’s anti-LGBT because he harmed our community in a massive material way. Everyone knows someone who was impacted. He put already poor people into poverty. He has a net worth of $500,000. He has power we don’t have. He did this. (twitter.com/_/status/1035544377966374912)
# petermolnar I'm with [tantek] on this; the labelling is coming from one of the involved parties
# petermolnar wait, wait, no
# petermolnar that is not logic
# gRegorLove This is maybe veering off topic for meta
# petermolnar I'm still a bit uncertain what are we trying to discuss/prevent and what are we prepairing forr
# gRegorLove I still think there are better examples to use for a discussion of how IndieWeb community deals with reports of harassment outside IndieWeb spaces/events.
# gRegorLove (bringing it back OT a bit :)
# Zegnat exists in English). See https://scholar.social/@jon/100657325915863241
# Zegnat Secondly: I think everyone agrees that the way Wil got treated wasn’t pretty. It was a mass of people acting at once to stop something they thought of as future harm. These sort of reaction should never be encouraged, and I think [jon]’s point of working on strong moderation is what was needed there. Instance administrators didn’t have the experience or the tools to handle it, so it became a judgement-by-the-people (if that
# Zegnat Thirdly: the fact that this is powered by how easy it is to react to things online is a good observation. And yes, this will also apply to webmentions. (As petermolnar has pointed out, it would be trivial to spam mentions at someone.) This is a part we would have to focus on, because there is no such thing as third-party moderators between my website and anothers. Do block lists have a place here? ... Maybe.
# Zegnat Fourthly: I do think that this was a case of the negative side of a blocklist, and worth documenting on the wiki. I don’t recall who said it first, but the idea of “a shared blocklist of people” is dangerous. It is really easy for this to be a list of “types of people I do not approve of” and for that to unwittingly (or wittingly!) propogate.
# gRegorLove No worries!
# petermolnar re 1035544377966374912 - so anti-x is = harming, intentions don't matter at all...?
# gRegorLove Intent isn't magic
# gRegorLove (not to say intent doesn't matter at all)
# petermolnar intent _is_ what makes someone anti-x
# gRegorLove ok, really done with off-topic (not trying to shut it down, can continue in chat if you like)
# Zegnat Would you mind adding that on the agenda for Leaders again? /Leaders#Issues We discussed some theoreticals last time but I honestly do not recall reaching an actionable conclussion.
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# petermolnar btw the Vouch as chained whitelist should be a good enough protection, shouldn't it? I don't think block/blacklists would do any good for webmentions; greylists, on the other hand, my be useful, if we can adapt somehow.
# petermolnar nyaah, this is -dev
# petermolnar sorry, I move it there
# Zegnat Maybe. Honestly, as we discussed before, everyone should feel empowered to step up and moderate in coc conflicts. But on the technical side, people may step up but be powerless to kick an agressor out of the chat anyway. So having people available who may act in the communities best interest in such cases could be good.
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