I have written and deleted this thread millions of times lately but I need to speak, I have been feeling very uncomfortable with some happenings here in this forum which is the home of our community.
There’s a mess of fake accounts that needs to be reviewed. Already flag so many comments and profiles go around saying things that hit the guidelines of what not to do. I am tired. Sincerely.
Who are these people who judge and accuse and keep lowering the level of interactions here? Am I the only one who realizes how harmful and toxic this is? How long will this continue to happen?
Sometimes I find myself wondering if these people hiding in fake accounts suck or if they’re putting on a brilliant performance. But what I feel is that there are healthier ways of relating.
Who is responsible for this? Seriously… I see it’s already staggering and every day a new fake comes talking ***** everywere.
A suggestion: Show who you are, edit your profile with information that helps us get to know each other. And please stop disrespecting real people with important projects.
I hope I have opened this space for us to talk and discover a solution together. Our NEARverse can and deserves more and better.
Hello @LulucaL
thank you for this post, I share this discomfort with you.
For me it’s the main point:
All the messages are repetitive, agressive and in my point of view does not contribute in building a healthy community, as there is no listening to what all we are really doing and building together. There is no movement in understanding, all is focused on accusations, done in a very unkind language, and also unfunded.
If there are things that must change and if they (if they are real) know what, why don’t share projects, solutions and help community on growing in a collaborative way?
Thank you very much for sharing and opening this space
as someone who is shy, interacting on the forum already takes a lot. i push myself every time i post on here, i try to remind myself of our “oneness” and how making mistakes is okay.
to be hit with accusations (unfounded ones at that) has made me more anxious of this space.
my solution going forward is silence, i refuse to feed the trolls.
@reespect I think it’s just terrible that you feel silence is the safest thing to do (literally, this is closing down our voices). But I understand and feel the same way.
I’m tagging a few women here to let them know how you feel and to stand with you – and together. I think we need a safe space here on NEAR.
That’s pretty much how I feel @reespect . The forum has great potential for collaboration, building together, but especially to “atypical” people what seems simple to many members, it’s already a struggle to overcome and to have to deal with all this unnecessary stress and anxiety on top can be too much.
We’re creatives, many of us are sensitive, with a lot of baggage to deal, yet we’re always trying to build new things, new ways of living, growing, thriving and sharing our views with others.
I hope we can come out with a positive solution for this…
Dear @LulucaL sharing here also my feeling of disrespect.
In one of our DAO’s proposals we had some questions that made me think that the people behind this trolls they don’t have much to contribute in the ecosystem. Actually, we are contributing and going much further, because contribution, means also work together.
The action of attack other is really far of a contribution. How could someone contribute while attacking?
I can take constructive criticism, but criticism without any basis, research, attempt to understand the genre of things, this is not criticism, to me, this is mere empty aggression.
There is an old saying: “if you don’t know what to say, better to keep your mouth shut”, that’s about it. They should keep quiet… who are they, how old are they, what gender they identify themselves, interesting that we don’t know, but some of their attitudes give us some clues.
While I welcomed the questions of one of these questioners, I invited they to share their projects with me and build something together.
Obviously, they didn’t share, obviously they don’t care, or they don’t have any
The best thing to do is to leave them in a vacuum, and continue our hard ant work.
I am not sure we should just “brush this under the rug” – I mean, would we tell a woman IRL who is being verbally abused or demeaned to just ignore it? IRL we would support her and tell her where to go for safety. Perhaps we are making this worse by not finding a collective solution.
What’s worse is that I kind of have a feeling that some of the people who are most vocal might be women. Men tend to feel empowered to represent themselves, but women might be hiding and attacking others.
So, I am not feeling like blaming men, I am feeling like “Gaslighting” which in California is now considered an act of aggression and violence in personal relationships (legally speaking in divorce and suits for abuse)-- is what we should focus on.
So, at the end of the day, perhaps the new code of ethics and behavior by the NDC is our opportunity to have clear “anti-gaslighting” rules – not just “bullying” – And/Or we need a new place to meet?
I don’t know. But, I’m sick of being afraid, here and in the world. I’m really just sick of it.
Thank you, @LulucaL for your sensibility and wisdom oppening this honest conversation!
And thank you @sarahkornfeld for tagging me and for your energy and community sense!
About the fake accounts, I shocked at first, but then I started imagining if there are ways of to combat this fake invasion in a more formal and punctual way, establishing more specific and clearer coexistence guidelines about limits and transparency in communication. @blusw brought up the need to have ethical guidelines to protect ourselves from possible harassers without having to communicate directly with them, to avoid engaging in their interactions.
We are real and they will not drive us crazy, but It can be only the beggining, lots of other fakes can come consume our health while we’re being real, so I agree we should’nt respond to them directly but It I also agree we can and should organize to find a consistent way of keeping trolls out of our business.
Just a suggestion but we could gather something like a consensus of ethical guidelines specifying what defines different kinds of abusive languages and even social symbolisms, supremacist communication, misoginist standarts, transphobic vocabulary, and everything that’s relevant for a respectfull communication for a start, then we could propose it to NDC, try to formalize it as much as possible so we could have systemical means to ban fakes and random trolls based on their own unnecessary behavior.
Thanks again, love connect to yall. And we’re still real!
I want to glue it here, as one more reference for this conversation
Guidelines
Much like the blockchain itself, the NEAR Community does not discriminate against participants based on their color, creed, sex, or background. In this respect, we will not tolerate derogatory comments within the Forum whatsoever.
This amounts to comments on another user’s:
Race
Nationality
Gender
Sexuality
Age
Programming skills
That list isn’t exhaustive, and you should keep in mind the below guidelines when posting anything in the Forum or in the wider NEAR community.
When on the Forum, you should:
Treat others online as you would treat them in real life;
Be tolerant towards other’s viewpoints; respectfully disagree when opinions do not align;
Respect the privacy and personal information of other contributors;
Communicate with courtesy and respect;
Provide accurate information, if you are not sure, please cross-check or contact someone from the NEAR Core team for support;
You should not:
Make personal attacks on other community members;
Use defamatory remarks or make false statements against others;
Post prejudiced comments or profanity;
Post sexually explicit content;
Post discriminating content, this includes content around religion and politics;
Bully or make inflammatory remarks to other community members;
Post spam
Failing to adhere to these rules may result in a permanent ban from the NEAR Governance Forum without warning.
What Should I Do if I’m Feeling Attacked or Uncomfortable?
If you or someone you know is feeling attacked or uncomfortable on the NEAR Governance Forum, or you have identified posts that are in violation of the above guidelines, then please report the offending posts using the report system.
How Do I Report a Post?
Hit the flag icon beneath the offending post
Select a category and hit 'Flag Post’
All done Your post has been sent to the admins for review
On that note, a huge welcome to the NEAR Community , we’re excited to BUIDL with you!
Thank you to @TayOlua for a brilliant suggestion for actual ethical guidelines:
“what defines different kinds of abusive languages and even social symbolisms, supremacist communication, misogynist standarts, transphobic vocabulary, and everything that’s relevant for a respectfull communication for a start, then we could propose it to NDC, try to formalize it”
What we may need seems to be more specific than the guidelines we currently have. And perhaps it’s also about some very specific details to the list that @blusw just posted with the official list.
No Gaslighting (description and link to what it is)
No false accusations (how this is enforced, no idea but seems fair)
No repeated attacks or statements on individuals when the community has asked you to stop
Clearly, we have (NO to) “Bully or make inflammatory remarks to other community members;” (from the list above) but it is happening! So, does it need more specifics? More details to ensure the community and community managers have a clear mandate?
I’ll cc @blaze here so he can see our thinking, and also the @NDC_Comms to let them know we are here to help with this as well as for community standards being developed. Also @David_NEAR to share with him.
From what we already have as guidelines, I think we could try to create a form to systematically respond, not only disrespectful comments, but unreal accounts, like flagging or notifiyng frequent abusive behavior from one specific account.
To collectively silence fake accounts or to apply different periods of account banishment according to how toxic is the owner’s account behavior, (just an example) specifying how many disrespectful interactions could cause a permanent banishment as a form to adopt practical means to communicate the community is for real people and serious projects only, being very careful at specifying parameters for definitive exclusion, that could be very negative if not well applied.
We have many examples of how problematic a tolerant behavior in front of intolerance can be dangerous and how common are toxic discussions on forums in general, so I’m putting some reflections and suggestions of how we can presev our dialogue space here.
Please let me know if there was already similar suggestions before, I’ve arrived recently.
Also feel free to point anything disfuncional about my suggestions.
Hi.
Your message is very good. I support him completely. I wanted to follow you on Twitter, but you don’t have an Avatar and a tick confirming that this is not fake. I searched for confirmed accounts in the other links you specified, unfortunately I did not find them. Provide me with your verified social media account, I will contact you first. There were no insults to the person or any projects on my part. Why women and you call them all?) What kind of discrimination? Why don’t you call men? Do you want to see suggestions from me on the forum? Well, the offer will be made within a few days and you will be able to write your comments, thoughts, maybe even support my idea. Thank you for your time
Thx
I do agree that accountability on the forum has recently been driven by a handful of pseudo-anonymous accounts on the forum.
However, we do have automated processes in place which prevent sock puppet (fake) accounts. This is a combination of both automatic and manual monitoring for flags that indicate that.
That said, everyone is free to share their comments and concerns on the forum so long as it does not directly violate the community guidelines.
I would like to urge every participant on the forum to follow some best practices in regard to sharing feedback:
Where possible, open a civil dialogue, rather than pointing fingers
I’m of the opinion, frankly, that there are a number of ‘armchair contributors’ - those who can sit and point at what’s going wrong/why x,y,z is incorrect, but never step up to contribute in a meaningful manner to change it.
The legitimate contributors should be positioned to respond to these questions, however. Only within reason, though - if it persists to the point where certain individuals are intentionally creating discourse and adding 0 value to a discussion then they may be restricted from forum usage.
As we continue to expand the Community Team at NEAR Foundation, we’ll have an individual who is responsible for improving the forum experience, particularly when it comes to in-forum discussions. This should be taking place v soon! We can and will do better
Appreciate everyone continuing to battle on and seeing the big picture. When we look back, in the future, at the achievements we’ve made together then scenarios like this will seem like the smallest bump in the road.
Please do continue to use the flag feature in the forum. Every comment is reviewed manually for guideline violations.
Thanks everyone for exchanging ideas here, but as I said, I’m tired of flagging and seeing that it gets worse and worse. And I didn’t even talk about the bounty fakes. Taged the two accounts that bother me the most. This counterproductive movement of accounts that don’t show themselves as real subjects needs to end! Good morning, good afternoon and good night.
@David_NEAR you know i’m a fan of the flag but i’m sorry i’m afraid the situation will get out of hand. I hope everything gets resolved and our future is bright, but what about the present? I don’t want to be so messed up with things I see and experience on this forum anymore. Please do something? Tnx.
We cannot disclude members simply because they ask tough questions. Can you share some examples of when they (anyone) has stepped out of line and I can review the policies.
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