Censorship or what?

Guys,

today two of my posts got this:

Censoring0

The first post was:

The URL of this website starts with “discuss”. I answered immediately to a part of the post of Jason. Admittedly my answer may not fit very well to the headline, that is true. So I can accept, that said post has been flagged as “off topic”.

But it seems to me, that the content annoyed somebody who has some saying here - as immediately after that the following post also has been flagged:

Thumbs up to the original post are not allowed in this forum?? Come on…

This looks more like the attempt to censor me, if you ask me. Got it. Bye.

Cheers, Dominik

No relation to discuss.python.org moderator side. Just standard account holder.

Notification says ‘Post hidden by community flags’. Any community member can flag any post.

For me personally second post is off-topic (never read it before you posted it here). There is somebody out there who felt the same way and it bothered him/her enough to flag it. It is not taken down, just requires one additional click, so it’s hardly classifies as ‘censorship’.

It is widely used practice of forums/comments that negative score/flagged posts are hidden (but not taken down).

4 Likes

Nhat and Aivar,

thanks for the explanation!

Then the message one gets might be a bit misleading, as it says “the community” - one arbitrary community member hardly is “the community”…

Cheers, Dominik

I agree with you that this system can be abused. However, I don’t know what are the rules for flagged posts.

In the expanded footer of every post, there is flag icon described as “privately flag this post for attention or send a private notification about it”. If you click on it, lightbox is displayed:

As you can see ‘Off-Topic’ and ‘Spam’ seem to have similar weight. Is it so, I don’t know.

1 Like

It seems like it’s more than one, but I don’t know how many it actually is.

Considering the original post in this topic has been flagged, I’m suspicious there is some targeting happening here

1 Like

This thread might have been better suited for the discourse feedback section, but if it was flagged for that I would have expected it to be moved rather than hidden.

1 Like

For the :+1: post it was probably flagged as the post didn’t add anything. Discourse has hearts that you can click to show support so that you don’t accidentally spam everyone following the topic. Otherwise if everyone posted like this everyone would get inundated with emails or notifications all the time and it would make following things nearly impossible.

As for the other post, it was unnecessarily negative in my opinion. You might like where the language has gone, but claiming “Python gets worse and worse” isn’t constructive. And tacking on “if you ask me” doesn’t come off as sincere for all of the negativity with no specific ways suggested to improve things.

It’s important to remember that no one is purposefully trying to make anything worse here, but those people who you claim are making things worse are here and will see such messages and so it really isn’t constructive. This is the sort of thing that causes burn-out for maintainers.

8 Likes

Thanks Aivar!

What feels a little strange is, that said flagging seems to be an anonymous process, whereas the posts which had been flagged are not anonymous.

Maybe I am a little oversensitive, but in the history of my country anonymous denunciation plaid some bad role…

So, no hard feelings. It is good to know that this seems not to be the invention of the python forum but simply a property of the underlying forum software. Thanks for clearing this up!

Cheers, Dominik

1 Like

Thanks for your feedback Laurie - so, at least I was not alone with this impression…

Cheers, Dominik

1 Like

Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll try to have a look at said discourse feedback section!

Hi Brett,

I see - I get your point. And in a way I even agree a little :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

But on the other hand, what I wrote is my honest opinion (I admit, it could have been formulated a little less “direct”, sorry for that :slight_smile: :wink: I’ll try to do better next time) and I tried to provide the reasons / arguments “why” with it. Where, if not in a forum / discussion about Python should I discuss this?

If you pick this single post out, it is true that it might have a “negative” notion about some developments in the Python community. If you read all of my posts, you likely would come to the conclusion, that I am a Python enthusiast and my “average notion” is at least quite neutral. Some things concerning Python are absolutely great from my POV, some things I do not like at all - both with concrete reasons.

Everybody else is free to have another opinion and naturally also free to comment my opinion. Or just to ignore it. I would love to discuss these things on the basis of arguments. It seems so, that others do not want to discuss these things. OK, fine. But just “flagging me away”, really?

And you may admit, that the second post (the thumbs up) post, definitely has no “negative” notion at all, but it nevertheless was flagged at the very same time. So, my impression was, that somebody was getting personal.

So, all this leads to the question: is this forum (also) the place for discussing Python stuff or not? It is an honest question, I simply do not know, I am still quite new. If not, I naturally can accept that.

Anyway - thanks for your response, I appreciate that,

Cheers, Dominik

PS:

a solution should be obvious from my/said post: freeze any 3.* version as it had been done with 2.7.* for years. What I mean: the production quality branch should not be the experimental branch. Just my opinion…

2 Likes

It depends somewhat on your definition of “Python stuff”, but in general you can. But tone and how you present things are taken pretty seriously here to make sure it stays inviting and welcoming for everyone, including those who work on Python itself as this is one of our key platforms for discussion.

3 Likes

I’ll give my best to improve this next time, promised!

But guys, please, also take into account, that we are not all native English speakers. Sometimes it is hard to find the right diplomatic formulation…

What I mean: absolutely no harm meant from my side - you guys do an absolutely great job and Python is an outstanding project / ecosystem. When I critisize, please believe me, that it is not to annoy anybody, but to start a constructive discussion - hoping to help to improve things.

If a formulation of mine is annoying, please feel free to tell me - I am quite open to improve this too :yum:

So, I think, from my POV this topic had been cleared up?

Cheers, Dominik

2 Likes

Also, we try to keep an inclusive tone in our language. For example “you all do an absolutely great job”. This also goes for greetings (“hi all” instead of "hi guys") :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Is guys including girls? Is all including animals? Are they sound formal and polite to old people? And how I can include other if that is my base on my experience that I don’t known anything about if that also occurred for others?

How would we talk straight and hard truth with this inclusive, and hard issue took a lot of time for other to actual understand the real meaning. Flagging like this is remove evidence , data that may sound bad at the time. Cause missing the point and bent the fact

This is no discussion- it is show off, and teach ( one directional communication)

Hi Erlend,

thanks for your hint. But I do not get it:

whom do I exclude with “you guys”? I ran it through four web translators:




Are they wrong?

Cheers, Dominik

Isn’t this then more of a political discussion - although in this sense it might fit well to the headline “censorship” somehow?

The original point of this topic has been answered and it seems to have drifted into an off-topic conversation.