Moderation

One feature of Skypeland that is important for determining the tone of a discussion is moderation, or the lack therefore. If there is no control of a discussion area, people will soon start to play music, whisper offensive statements, fill the room with static, blow whistles, or just scream obscenities. Some groups exist only to disrupt conversations and believe they are successful if they have interrupted a useful or pleasant conversation.

A perfect example is a group lead by P, known semi-affectionately as "Swede fags". The "Swede fags" were given this moniker because P, a young 20-something Swede and neoNazi, lives on government assistance which he supplements by servicing a Swedish gentleman in his seventies. P and his associates interrupt discussions in Skypeland when they make all kinds of off-topic comments, play recordings and music and do whatever they can to cause problems in a room. For example, P likes to make all kinds of statements in a falsetto voice, such as "weapons of mass destruction" and "I want hamburger and Coca Cola" and "yeehaw" and "George W. Bush". P plays recorded sounds of a Swedish woman reading text and white supremacy thrasher rock music. If P is not stopped, he will stop all meaningful conversation in a room.

A room can be "overmoderated" however. Some try to stamp out all dissent, disagreement and objectionable behavior and obtain what some call a "kumbaya" room. This is fine, except kumbaya rooms quickly die because they are so boring. No one wants to sit and discuss how much they hate the Jews with 3 other people who feel the same way they do, or at least for very long or very often. No one wants to listen to the same lecture about how 911 was an inside job from the same 3 people who all agree with the theory in all respects, with no disagreement or exploration of the controversy. No one wants to hear about how superior Islam is, or how lousy Islam is, for hours on end, day after day, with no dissent and no discussion allowed. Some rooms are so filtered that the only topics allowed are the weather, or what people had to eat that day. It quickly comes very tedious.

However, moderation is a fine art, and everyone does it differently. I like to very judiciously turn on and off people's microphones to force them to answer questions, in the style of a deposition, or a modified Socratic method. One of the most prominent difficulties in approaching controversial subjects in Skypeland is that people who want to "debate", and present their side, will often refuse to answer hard questions. They will just change the subject. If you ask them about why Muslim nations have such high illiteracy rates, they will immediately respond with something disconnected, such as claiming that "George Bush is a war criminal". If you ask them about high death rates in the Muslim world because of low water quality standards (basically, shit in their drinking water), they will refuse to answer the question and redirect the discussion towards the glory of the Islamic Caliphate over 1000 years ago. If you ask them about the beating of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban for laughing in public, they will not give any reply, but will talk about how the "bible is a book full of shit". It is sort of difficult to make any progress or reach any ressolution or conclusions, in this sort of situation, as you can imagine. Nevertheless, people are "topic changers" love to brag to all and sundry about their "debating skills". Somehow, I have never noticed this sort of approach in Oxford style debates. I think that it makes those who adopt the "topic changing" tactic look sort of stupid, but they believe that it makes them look like intellectual giants. Good moderation can avoid this problem, but few moderators are able or willing to force people to answer questions in a discussion. And so, the discussion in most cases almost always wanders off into the weeds.

Another complaint about moderation can focus on the apparent bias of the moderator. In one room that advertises itself as "fair and unbalanced", many discussion participants argue bitterly that it is not appropriate that they do not get equal time to present their position on how much they hate Jews and Israel, as those presenting the pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli perspective. One complained that the moderator was censoring those who used the word "kike" more often than those who used the word "nigger". When it was pointed out that the room promises nothing but an "unbalanced" discusssion, they became indignant, since they thought that "unbalanced" meant all points of view should be presented with equal weight, and maybe their own particular agenda should even be favored. Efforts to try to describe the meaning of the word "unbalanced" just seemed to fail, since they refused to believe that "unbalanced" actually meant just that, "unbalanced". Fancy that.

Another approach to room moderation was taken by H from India. H had a long memorized spiel he would just repeat endlessly, like a mantra or a chant. He will ask a participant where he comes from, and then launch into a diatribe, which goes something like, "Well you are from one of the most stupid countries on earth because your politicians are corrupt and your currency is going down, down down, and your literacy rates are terrible. What have you contributed to the world? You have an inferior military and your leader is clearly a moron. You are hated around the world and your women are
whores and sluts and ugly pigs. You have such limited and inferior intellectual capacity that you use profanity. You do not even know your own language. You should know English; English is your language and yet you do not know it. Your education system is awful and your cars constantly break down and are gas guzzlers. What have you done for the environment? Nothing, this just proves my point you see..." He does not pause for breath. At most he might allow the person he is talking to one or two seconds to respond. When they do not say anything, or manage to get only one word out, he cuts them off and continues. Often he turns off their microphones so they cannot respond. As you can imagine, when he is not moderating, the response from those who have been waiting for years to "get even" is pretty ugly. For years he has been nicknamed as "hiney", which is a shortened form of his Skype name. Interestingly, the other day we found out that he did not know what a "hiney" was. Well, what goes around, comes around sometimes in moderation.

Some with more extreme points of view can be effectively banned from a given room if the moderators choose to do so. One recent example I observed is a supposedly "very nice guy" who has opened several internet discussions with, "we should throw all Jews in the ovens". This had the unfortunate effect of creating a certain image for this gentleman, and he was promptly disinvited from further participation in that Skypeland forum. All entreaties to allow him to speak and "debate" so far have been denied, and he is miffed about this apparently. This has to be done carefully, because some of the most interesting characters in Skypeland are some of the most offensive. I would have little fodder for this blog if all the kooks, flakes, hate-mongers, malcontents, inebriated and mentally deranged were driven out of all open discussion venues.

However, a room moderator has to be a bit careful in the tone that they set for the room, particularly when it comes to setting rules. For example, if two people are arguing, and one complains that the other is constantly interrupting them, the moderator should not demand that only one of the participants be allowed to speak without interruption, and not accord the other the same courtesy. If P is calmly reading a newspaper article, and C is making huge fart noises and screaming "B, B, B, B, 'ere come 'ere you fucking cunt, you dirty child molester, I will hunt you down and kill you, you filthy mother fucker, I am going to tear your head off and shit down your throat you fucking weasel, you dirty wanker, fucking ponce, B, B, B...", the moderator has to be careful how they deal with the situation. Turning off the microphones of both P and C, and then lecturing P dozens of times over the next few days that P is a jerk and an asshole and should stop his obnoxious behavior will create a certain image for the moderator. P might even start to get a slightly negative impression of the moderator, to the detriment of further interactions. If F is having a dispute with Q, allowing Q to complain for hours in uninterrupted fashion about how awful F is without according F a few minutes to present his or her side of the story will create a certain tone. This is further compounded if when F attempts to make a comment about Q, he is met with a hail of criticism and cursing, such as "goddamnit F, I have heard enough of this shit from you, you should stop it immediately, etc". This approach might tend to cause F to believe that the moderator really does not value F's participation, and fully accepts Q's position. Gee, I wonder why that might be?

Moderators seem to be accorded a certain amount of respect and prominence in Skypeland, even if it is unearned and completely unjustified. As in real life, there is a tendency for power to corrupt, and arrogance among moderators often develops. Interestingly, I have heard some Skypelanders trying to present their side of a dispute to a moderator in the hopes of gaining his "cyber favor", as though he was acting as some sort of "cyber judge". I have even listened as a moderator squirmed uncomfortably after having been described as a "father figure" to some Skypeland participants who were roughly the same age as him.

Moderation is clearly vital to maintain a lively environment in Skypeland. However, it is incredibly easy for moderators to completely destroy a room by allowing in too much chaos, or by driving away their most interesting participants.