Help shape the direction of Townsy Cafe

[Laura Hagar Rush]

A really interesting conversation is taking shape on Townsy Cafe about what will be allowed on the discussion boards and what won't be. Please add your comments ... they are important to me and I am curious about what you have to say.

https://www.townsycafe-westcounty.co...e-comments/250


FOR BACKGROUND:

These are the Townsy Cafe Community Guidelines.

They are easy to remember, just think T.O.W.N.

• Be (T)houghtful
• Be (O)rganized
• Be (W)atchful
• Be (N)eighborly

Be (T)houghtful

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.
Be (O)rganized

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up.

Spend a little time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Some Don’ts

• Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
• Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
• Don’t post no-content replies.
• Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
• Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Be (W)atchful


Help us keep our community safe by flagging abusive, threatening or fraudulent posts. Any post that receives 3 or more flags will be automatically hidden pending moderator review.

Abusive behavior will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. However repeated warnings will result in a permanent ban.

We have a zero tolerance policy in cases of violent or hateful speech.

• Threats of violence will result in a permanent ban.
• Hate speech* will result in a permanent ban.

*We define hate speech as “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behavior that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender or other identity factor.”

Be (N)eighborly

Remember that everyone here is a member of your community. Treat them as you would like to be treated. (Unless you want to be treated poorly in which case treat them as you wouldn’t want to be treated… um…)

It takes both warp and weft to weave a tapestry. If possible, try to find common ground. If there’s none to be found, consider disengaging.

If you have questions, you can message us here or email us directly at [email protected].


SPECIAL COVID SECTION:

Given the current severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Townsy Cafe staff feels a moral and ethical obligation to intervene in conversations that:

• dismiss or downplay the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• question the efficacy of mask wearing and social distancing.
• advocate for the disobedience public health measures and regulations.
• undermine public confidence in the vaccine.

Topics and replies that do any of the above will be muted. We invite everyone here to check out the CDC website for more information. Stay home, wear a mask, be safe!

[Laura Hagar Rush]

OK, looking back at our COVID section, I agree we went overboard. There is obviously a way to responsibly discuss each one of these bulleted topics. What I was trying to get at was ‘Don’t be a nutball in a way that undermines public health.’
I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on how to do this. (Probably avoiding the word “nutball” would be a good start. Sigh.)
But I will say it again: As a journalist, the thought of giving actual falsehoods (“COVID isn’t as bad as they say” or “Vaccines don’t work”) a public platform makes my skin crawl. I think it’s injurious to the public good.
What we saw at the Capitol earlier this month was an example of what happens when lies are spread and promoted and given room and oxygen to thrive.

[Goat Rock Ukulele]

One persons nutball is another's free thinker. Everyone on this or any other forum needs to use their own BS filter and keep it well tuned. The internet often is not a place of truth. It's a place of opinion. Even the wildest can be backed up by a hundred Internet articles. It's a bit like a video game. You can chose any fantasy you want, science or logic not required. Some on wacco chose some pretty far out fantasies. I remember many years ago when I first started Wacco there was a discussion about an amazing psychic surgeon who was coming to Sebastopol from the Philippines. He could remove tumors with his bare hands and not leave a scar. When I called those claims into question did I ever get flamed. That was a wakeup call for me.


It's a real dilemma for a moderator to become the decider of what is good and want is not. I would never want to moderate a public forum especially when screen names are used. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are all struggling with this issue. I guess it's a moderators cross to bare. I thought Barry did a pretty good job setting up "conspiracy theories" It was leaky but worked pretty well.

[GoldenDragon]

When I clicked on the link to this thread from my email, it brought me to an ad to complete a survey for Primerewardz and a chance to receive an Apple Watch.

Just an FYI...

[Laura Hagar Rush]

This happens every so often on WaccoBB for me. I just back out.

Try this: https://www.townsycafe-westcounty.co...e-comments/250

Will also message you this link.

[Barry]

When I clicked on the link to this thread from my email, it brought me to an ad to complete a survey for Primerewardz and a chance to receive an Apple Watch.

Yes, that appears to have something to with some malware that has attached itself to WaccoBB
If you don't click on the spammy link should be nothing to worry about.
It's among the reasons I've decided to close it down.

[Barry]

A really interesting conversation is taking shape on Townsy Cafe about what will be allowed on the discussion boards and what won't be. Please add your comments ... they are important to me and I am curious about what you have to say

Here's the link again except not clickable. If you copy and paste it into your browser you should be fine:

townsycafe-westcounty.com/t/community-guideline-comments/250

[Laura Hagar Rush]

As a journalist, I live in a world of facts, and the fantasies of the internet, while of interest to me as subjects for stories, aren’t on an equal footing in my mind. The erosion of the whole notion of facts and truth is what got us where we are. Examples:

1. Here is a fact: roughly 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The fact that people can download hundreds of papers on the internet that purport to dispute this that doesn’t make the first fact (6 million dead Jews) any less true. But it does make those who doubt that fact either dangerous liars or deluded fools and, usually, anti-Semites. See the difference? One fact is true, one is not. (Note: I know you know this and I don’t mean to suggest in any way that you’re a believer in this particular internet fantasy.)
   
2. As a reporter, I sometimes cover the city council. I record them so I get the quotes down correctly and I use those quotes in context. I try my damnedest to portray the proceedings accurately, with a minimum of commentary, so that people can see what their city council is up to. I do this because I believe that portraying what’s happening in the world accurately is essential to the running of civilized democracy – otherwise you end up with a bunch of people thinking that – oh, I don’t know – Democrats are a bunch of Satan-worshiping, cannibalistic pedophiles.
   
   Letting lies stand–and giving them a place to breed–is taking a wrecking ball to the foundations of modern civilization.
   

[M/M]

Your analogy about fact/deluded liars and fools I believe to be premature. History, like hindsight, gives us a better view of events for sure. However, I think we are in the not-so-early days of something that is poorly seen and little understood. The fact that sides are so drawn, people so disrespectful of views that do not match theirs, should make that quite obvious.

There are thousands of scientific and medical voices being censored right now. So how is it even possible to know without doubt what is fact and what is not... especially when most people's sources of information are media based.

An article w/links as one case in point: (Note: I do identify as progressive left in my politics; and a friend's relative, after 8 days' of hypoxia, had his health turn around dramatically after 1st dose of HCQ and continued to improve thereafter.)
FB oversight reverses hydroxychloroquine censorship decision https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/f...rship-decision Facebook failed to satisfactorily explain why it removed the post, and that their 'misinformation and imminent harm rule' is too vague - recommending that the company clarify its standards on health misinformation. ...One can't help but wonder how many lives the left's politicization of HCQ may have cost, after several studies have concluded that when taken early into a COVID-19 infection, the antimalarial has been shown to reduce mortality.

These are linked in above article. Each study has several references where additional information may be obtained:
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S...534-8/fulltext

https://link.springer.com/article/10...06-020-05983-z

CONCLUSIONS: In this retrospective study of over 6000 ambulatory and hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the New York City metropolitan area, age, male sex, tachypnea, low systolic blood pressure, low peripheral oxygen saturation, impaired renal function, elevated IL-6, elevated D-dimer, and elevated troponin were found to be risk factors for mortality. Hydroxychloroquine use was associated with decreased mortality.

[Kevind]

The best suggestion I can make for the success of Townsy Cafe is to not permit screen names, but to require actual human names of posters, and their photos.

Over the course of the pandemic, as a group of Covid nutcases hijacked the site, I gradually added more and more WACCO posters--most if not all using screen aliases--to my Blocked list. By last month, I rarely did more than glance at my WACCO digest, because almost all of the posters were blocked.

Anonymity engenders incivility.

Kevin Dwan

[Barry]

...Anonymity engenders incivility...

"Incivility" generally wasn't a big problem, in my opinion. There wasn't much rudeness. And while people often did use handles, their real names were generally available on their public profiles.

I consider the problem to be a mirror image of the problem the right has with their looney/fringe/far right members. I have allowed pace for the loony/fringe/far left, who are concerned about corporate world dominating overlords getting rid of useless eaters, and desperately trying to wake up the merely progressive left sheeple.

Splitting the fringe posters and their "research" into its own category (Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories) I think was the right approach, but then that begs the question of where to draw the line.

Inevitably the line will miss the mark, but nonetheless it needs to be drawn, so users have a choice if they want to hear what the red pill people have to say or not. And, no doubt, there there will be nuggets of truth and wisdom there, mixed in with a lot of paranoid bullshit.

So what I would suggest to Townsy, is to have a Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories category, renamed to be more broad, perhaps like our short lived Red Pill Roundtable, where such stuff would be moved to.

I would limit certain posters to only post in that category (ok, and maybe housing )

I would use something like Media Bias Fact Check to assess the references (particularly the source of the article) to see how trustworthy it was.

But then someone has to do that. Anybody(s) want to volunteer over at Townsy for helping to draw that line?

[Finell]

Actually, lots of studies show that online communication fosters incivility. There is something about the online experience that emboldens people, whether called TruthTeller or Sam Jameson, to say nasty things to others that they will never encounter face-to-face. Most boys learn by 3rd grade not to insult the bully. So boys who were picked on by the bully realize that someone who will never be within arms' length can't hurt them. They can be nasty to almost anyone online with no consequence. It's a kind of displaced revenge.

In my work, I communicate with lots of people that I never, or hardly ever, meet in person. I spend most of my day in Outlook. I use Outlook for email and to dial my phone. When I put a contact in Outlook, I add the individual's picture if I can find one. Most of the people I communicate with have profiles with photos on LinkedIn, so I often use that photo. When I dial or email the individual, I see their face. It helps me remember who they are, and it reminds me that I am communicating with a real person with real feelings.

For a similar reason, I add my photo to my online profiles.

Anonymity engenders incivility.·

[Deborah Thayer]

I'm reminded of a great book written for children but sage for all of us...

"Old Turtle and the Broken Truth"...by Douglas Wood...

[Laura Hagar Rush]

I found a lovely reading of this story.

Thanks, Deborah, for drawing my attention to this book.

Gorgeous watercolors.

[M/M]

Beautiful Deborah. May it BE...

[M/M]

Media Bias Fact Check site appears to not have big money supporting it (I didn't really dig deep), yet my heart breaks... seeing the fences or corrals one would put around one's own mind, around one's wonder, openness, and curiosity -- if one allowed Media Bias Fact Check to determine one's thinking. In a similar vein, imagine my surprise to learn that Snopes - the arbiter of big-R Reality for many - was solely run by a married couple. And then there is this to at least be aware of:

Fact-checking now represents a multimillion-dollar industry that stands to benefit certain interests.
“Facebook and Google are major funders of news organizations and fact check efforts,” Attkisson reports, “spending hundreds of millions of dollars.”
...
PolitiFact is a branch of the Poynter Institute that says fact-checking journalism is its “heart,” while Science Feedback is a French organization that claims it verifies the “credibility” of “influential” science claims in the media.

Science Feedback, which often sides with the vaccine industry, was also used to discredit a documentary that tied the coronavirus to a lab in Wuhan, China, but Science Feedback’s source was a U.S. scientist who worked at the Wuhan lab.

PolitiFact also received $900,000 from the Democracy Fund, which is a major funder of anti-Trump political efforts, while the left-leaning Open Society Foundations and Omidyar Network gave the Poynter Institute $1.3 million for its international fact-checking network.

Attkisson says fact-checking censorship ramped up in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign with Twitter censoring or labeling Trump’s tweets and a New York Post exposé on Joe Biden’s son, and, after the election, YouTube banning videos disputing Biden’s victory. Ultimately, what’s wrong with companies trying to keep harmful information or conspiracy theories from reaching people?

As Vorhies said, “The problem is that they’re a monopoly.
.....
Efforts to shut down public discussions and information are in full force. So, what can you do? Knowledge truly is power, so look beyond fact-checkers’ labels and the top of Google’s canned search results — and the corporations behind them — in your search for truth.

from: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...nsorship.aspx?

Some other thoughts ... in the light of Old Turtle and the Broken Truth
Remember many with 'gifts' don't always feel gifted nor always understand their seeing:

There have always been those who live on the edge of the village. The village tends to see them as outlaws; and to the extent it doesn't acknowledge their value and make a place for them in its own context, it makes rebels and chronic dissidents of them. But in communities where their function is recognized, they become the medicine people, the shamans, the seers, the prophets.

Living on the edge gives a different perspective - outside the law of the village, but also more connected to the larger laws of the universe." ~ Elizabeth Cogburn.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. ~ Carl G. Jung

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day
into the answer.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

and a blessing:

For The Traveler

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

~ John O’Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings