Fire at #news_garden

Posted on June 26, 2002 in IRC/Chat

Fire at #news_garden

With the collapse of the Dow, the thing most on the minds of chatters tonight was the much misinterpreted decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to declare the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance to be unconstitutional. Let me just say that I support the decision for two reasons: First, the word God doesn’t appear in the constitution and it doesn’t for a good reason: the founders did not want it there. They did not want a church of England. Second, because I know that good Christians who read their New Testament closely will be relieved to see a clear separation of church and state. No good Christian should want the acts of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush to be confused with divine authority. Jesus clearly states that there is, on one hand, the State (Caesar) and, on the other, there is God. Caesar may try to appear to rule with God’s authority or even be God himself, but he’s neither.

That opinion registered, let me describe the atypical night here. We had the usual round of baiting, threatening, indirect insults, and some very potent direct ones from our users. One user, a right winger who is sure that America is going down the drain, predicted that first thing tomorrow morning the US Supreme Court would overturn the decision. When several of us, including myself, pointed out that Supreme Court decisions are not capricious, he grew steadily angrier. He began accusing several of us of being unAmerican and gleefully heaped additional expletives on the subjects of his abuse, both on the channel and in private mesages. We could do nothing about the private messages, but I banned him twice and kicked him twice, for the final time. Other people began to approach his level of outrageousness on both sides of the fence, but only this fellow lost it enough to merit a kick.

Being a channel op isn’t easy. You have to watch yourself for things like prejudices against certain chatters. It is true that the people you kick are usually in the habit of “making trouble”, but picking individuals can blind you to the abuses of others. I think this experience is teaching me to view things in a balanced fashion. It’s good to have the other ops around, including the one’s on the “opposite side” to remind you that your anti-pets aren’t the only ones flouting the rules.

As I finish this up, we’re discussing what to do about baiters, people who know how to play the line so that other people cross it while they get to stay on the channel. The chatter I mentioned was very much being egged on by others: only he said things that violated the rules. Baiting strikes many of us as evil, but defining it in such a way that does not kill chat entirely has been a true struggle.

In private, I said this to my fellow #news_garden ops:

We need to put a little distance here and THINK what we can do to minimize the baiting. Maybe there are some loopholes that need closing here. I don’t know. We don’t need to rush into this decision, but we should watch and understand the patterns that are going on. Including what we may purposefully or inadvertently do.