Pene and I have had a couple of very frustrating weeks, and I'm about ready to give up. Our friendly flamers and trolls have been very active, and we've had a terrible time trying to keep things under control. What's worse, it seems like dozens of regular Mudcatters are jumping in to cheer on the flamers, and that has made an awful mess of things.

The standard Mudcat policy on flamers is this:

Please Don't Respond to Flamers in any way!

If people could just follow this simple rule, Pene and I could tweak a few things quietly here and there, and things would be quite peaceful. That's not what happens, though. Flames generate hundreds of responses from Mudcatters, who seem eager to give flamers all the attention they crave. As a result, the flamers go into a feeding frenzy, and the flame wars last longer and longer. Is that what you want?

Let's take some examples:

• A few weeks ago, somebody registered with a user name that was very similar to that of a well-known Mudcatter, and the miscreant posted a number of messages intended to embarrass the Mudcatter. I noted the problem and took care of it quietly, and told the Mudcatter what I had done. That would have been the end of it, but the Mudcatter felt compelled to start a thread to tell the world what had happened. Within two minutes of the starting of the thread, the same person or a copycat created another false membership, and the cycle began all over again. Once the problem was broadcast in a thread, I couldn't handle the copycat problem. Luckily, Pene came up with a solution a while later.
• More recently, there was an "obit" thread about an R&B singer who was killed in a plane wreck. Somebody questioned why this was appropriate for a folk music forum, and a nasty argument ensued. Then, somebody decided to start "obit" threads for Alexander Graham Bell and Marilyn Monroe - obviously a response to the perceived triviality of the thread on the R&B singer. It looked like the Forum was going to be flooded with "obit" threads, so I combined the two threads and hoped that would be the end of it. That caused somebody to start yet another thread to question my combining things. Maybe my combining threads was a bad call - but, as I said in another thread, it's difficult to second-guess an asshole. Whatever the case, it would have been much easier to handle things if Mudcatters had stepped back and said nothing.
• Over the last couple of days, anonymous people started a couple of threads with some rather nasty anti-Semitic messages. Other anonymous people started threads in the regular forum and the Help Forum, demanding that the offensive messages be deleted - and Mudcatters added dozens of messages to these threads. Not only that, but they also started "answer" threads, like "What Kind of Racist Are You?" and "Mudcat a Tolerant Forum?" – and those threads generated dozens of replies.

  Some people demanded that we delete the offensive messages, and couldn't understand why we left those messages up and yet we deleted a thread that attacked an individual. The reason for that is simple – we edit as little as possible because we want to preserve free and open discussion, but we can't allow attacks or threats against individuals. We also can't allow people to take over the way we operate things, flood Mudcat with threads, or manipulate or deceive – that's why I dealt with the false memberships and combined the obit threads. We also can't handle things the same way every time - because our predictability would give flamers an advantage, and because we're human and sometimes don't always do things the best way.

I'd like to see people follow the basic rule: don't respond to flamers. That means that you should give them no public acknowledgement whatsoever – and you certainly shouldn't start threads in the Forum or Help Forum to call attention to them. If there's a problem, handle it by sending a personal message to Pene or me, or both of us – but don't talk about it publicly. If you can't do that, then I think Pene and I should stop trying to control things, and just let things happen as they will. Without your cooperation, we can do nothing, and we might as well let things run their course.

OK, so that's the situation. Things are a bit messy here. I hate to add another thread to the mess because each thread we create seems to encourage more – but what is it you would like us to do, and what are you willing to do to help us?

Pene and I are independent – we answer to nobody but Max. We'll do what we think is best, and I believe that's the way it should be. However, we're open to suggestions. We can discuss it openly here and now. Ordinarily, though, it's best to discuss these things with us by personal message. We monitor the Forum and adjust things when we can to prevent the worst of problems – but we ordinarily do our best to ignore general nastiness and bigotry. If it's a personal attack against an individual, we want to know about it right away (privately), so we can deal with it quickly. Generally, we're not going to delete or edit flames – that only provokes and encourages flamers. We ask your help in keeping things civil here at Mudcat - please do your best to ignore flamers completely.

OK, so what do you think?

-Joe Offer-