I was dismayed when I found that node and it was already approved for the front page. Unfortunately, any of the hundreds of level-6-and-up members could have approved it and if there is any record of who did it, only vroom would be able to look that up.
Fortunately I immediately realized that it shouldn't be on the front page and I revoked that approval. I was very tempted at the time to also unapprove it from its section. Seeing how badly it turned out (with so many people replying to it and sierrathedog04 seemingly untiring in replying to the replies), I wish I had unapproved it from its section then. I did eventually unapprove it. But, to be honest, most of the people who replied to it probably saw it in Newest Nodes so unapproving it earlier probably would have made little difference.
Once people started replying to it, what could we do? With the concerted efforts of the right people, we could have started deleting nodes in the thread and perhaps done it a bit faster than they were being added and eventually had the entire thread removed.
But doing that would have surely upset quite a few people. And that probably would have resulted in at least a few threads on how the thread was handled (as you see we already have a few threads on how the thread was handled and we didn't do anything so drastic and controversal as that). And some of those threads would probably have been nearly as bad.
Alternately we could have purged just the root of the thread which would have left a rather large thread with no root (which makes some of the navigation rather strange). But that would have probably upset quite a few people as well as lead to a lot of people asking about the source of the thread, etc.
Getting really creative, we could have "obscured" most of the nodes of the thread such that people could view them if they wanted to make the extra effort and hoped that us making it harder to read would have clued more people into the fact that they shouldn't be extending the thread and it would have died down much sooner. Or maybe it wouldn't have. (And we have no way of stopping a node's author from going back and "unobscuring" their node unless vroom has some trick up his sleeve.)
The node was "considered" but (from what I hear) it quickly got 2 "keep" votes and so nothing else matters. When I saw the node I checked Worst Nodes and saw it was only at -5 and was quite surprised. I'd figure it would get more downvotes than that. At that point I downvoted it because I felt it was quite inappropriate. Much later the avalanche kicked in.
Perhaps if it had been "reaped" early on, people would have been less likely to reply to it (or to its replies) seeing that the root of it was "obscured" under the Reaper's veil. Hard to say. That may not have made much difference either.
The unfortunate fact is, you just can't stuff the genie back into the bottle.
I did my part to keep the problem under control -- I didn't post any nodes in that thread. I thought some of the first replies to the node did a pretty good job of indicating that the discussion was inappropriate. But after that, I place the majority of the blame on everyone who kept posting to the thread (especially sierrathedog04, who certainly seemed to be intent on "digging a hole with a keyboard").
If a node upsets you, it is a good idea to wait a few hours or a day before replying. Also, reduce the level of conflict with each reply that you make the mistake of posting. (:
I'm sorry, but I really don't think there is much of anything that could have been done by any "powers that be" that the powers could have been reasonably certain would have improved the eventual outcome such that they would have felt justified in doing it at the start of the "problem". Even with "20/20 hindsight", I don't see much that could have been done differently.
I'm sure we'll have quite a few ideas for new features to help this situations if it happens again. I'd throw some of my own ideas out here but I don't really see much point since I think very little is going to change unless vroom decides to let some volunteers help with site programming.
In the face of lots of different opinions, the best action is usually very conservative. vroom has done an great job of this and I think the site is quite excellent because of that. If I were in charge, I'd have probably made more severe changes more quickly (having a good deal of "virtue three", hubris) and probably gotten a worse outcome.
But I'd like to have some good people helping improve "the little things" so that vroom has more time to do more of the subtle changes he's been making (and that have mostly gone unnoticed) to carefully maneuver the feel of the site. It feels to me like he's been improving (but not eliminating -- which I think is impossible) some of the tricky "problems".
Finally, what do we do with "the thread" now that (I hope) it is mostly "done"?
I'm a very big fan of "no reaping". I don't see much point or value in reaping anything but blatant trolls and genuine duplicates. I'm even a bit dismayed by how many monks have been choosing to "wipe out" their nodes simply because they made a mistake. I'd rather have most of the mistakes around so that readers know that we are all human and because the mistakes often illustrate mistakes other readers are going to make so having the mistake and a correction to it kept around can often be as important or even more enlightening than having the "best", "correct" answer around.
But part of me wants to just wipe this whole thread out. I think it would very likely be a mistake to do that by fiat. But...
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tye
(but my friends call me "Tye")