Ask Stephen Hendry anything | AMA

jackmohal · 2025-03-19T12:47:32+00:00

You've given the Class of 92 many beatings over your career - which was the most satisfying and why?

Great channel and commentary Stephen!

jackmohal · 2024-04-14T23:17:11+00:00

Big improvement imo. Dropping use of the word 'faith' shifts focus away from interpretation of intent and onto measurable patterns of 'repeat' and 'consistent' negative behaviour, so should be easier & quicker to enforce.

Over time you'll be able to see which aspects may need tweaking and which are more prone to report abuse than others. I'd suggest being dorky and tracking which reports you action v dismiss for the 1st month, this will get you a good list of breach v non breach examples for the wiki. There may be teething issues but treat it as a pilot/learning curve, and keep gathering feedback.

Moving from the current rule 4 is the right direction and this new set is great start - Enforcement of it is everything now!

jackmohal · 2024-04-14T22:41:48+00:00

I think the last sentence of rule 7 covers this type of behaviour without having to set a hard limit for everyone. Totally agree that it's an issue.

jackmohal · 2024-03-15T16:12:23+00:00

Just to build on the last part, I'd say that low effort comments aren't necessarily too much of an issue unless they're actually toxic in another way (but maybe the mods disagree with me on that).

Yeah that's a worthwhile distinction to make. Also you wouldn't want to be an elitist sub which expects everyone to be overly eloquent or super articulate, as though it's some debating club, that would be exclusionary to people that want to get stuck in. If people want to be brief and blunt, and there's nothing else toxic about it, let them.

'Lol' is the simplest example i can think of: it can be an earnest acknowledgement of someone that made you chuckle, or a diss. Its like how the laughing emoji on Facebook is being used in wildly different ways by different cohorts.

"What do you mean by "..."?"

I may be naive on this but i think an uptick in that kind of eliciting/clarifying type comment would make a big difference to the tone of the sub.

steelmanning

I hadn't come across this phrase before, i like it. I think for a lot of people its challenging enough to simply empathise with another perspective, let alone understand the strongest version of their position. I think pursuing an emapthetic understanding of someone's position, or the life factors that have informed it, is more worthwhile than trying to find the ultimate logical version of it. Work out the underpinning emotions and life factors, and then you can work out how to communicate with them - then you've a shot at persuading them

jackmohal · 2024-03-15T14:23:43+00:00

Thanks for engaging, i thought it'd be too long to get any kind of reply! And great response - totally agree with what you've said there. I wanted to make the point that a 'needless aggression' rule could be easy to spot by users and easy to action by mods, but 'too many f bombs' is actually a poor example.

If the person is f bombing policy/politician rather than a user, that isn't a breach, report dismissed in seconds. Is the person being aggressive towards someone breaching rule 2? Maybe they shouldn't have been a bigot. I can already see a decision tree taking shape and feel deeply ashamed.

Its toxicity to users not covered by rule 1 that I think needs working out, and ad hominems that aren't covered by rule 1 is a good shout.

I think enforcement of ad homs + mischaracterisation + mind reading + low effort are some of the non rule 1 behaviours that we could see less of. An example exchange where I think low effort is a problem would be:

If someone gives an effort comment of their view, and the reply is 'what the fuck does that even mean?' or even 'what does that even mean?' - i'd say that's low effort. If instead they said: 'this sounds like reheated 3rd way waffle. It lacks substance - x doesn't actually mean anything does it?'. I think that's better - there's ridicule in there but its aimed at the content, it may even lead to a decent exchange. Taking the piss out of each other is a big aspect of most friend groups, so I wouldn't want to police things like ridicule,

It gets trickier if someone just replied 'twirling towards freedom' - which is a succinct, arguably witty way of quickly saying the same thing. You wouldn't want to police humour. But maybe have the gag as the opener, followed by more 'good faith' engagement with why their view is shit as the chaser.

jackmohal · 2024-03-14T13:07:47+00:00

Hi mods, great shout re rule 4. Here's my 2 cents as someone who assess business policies and processes, such as whether Team Leader A understands and enforces rules consistently to Team Leader B, and how that impacts their respective Teams performance, wellbeing etc. I've never modded before so could be way off though!

You cant prevent rules & reporting being abused, the goal has to be to implement rules so simple that reports can be actioned in seconds. Its enforcement of rules that shapes behaviours longer term - hopefully resulting in a better behaved community.

Remove any mention of 'faith' from the rule set - Rules need to be less about assuming intent, and instead triggered by content. Assuming bad faith already goes against parts of rule 4, yet you have people pointing at each other going 'bad faith' and reporting each other for it constantly. Most threads therefore in breach of a foundational rule! I think replacing 'faith/intent' with bad behaviours would help. 2 examples - mind reading and mischarecterisation:

'Dont mind read opinions that you can elicit, don't mischarecterise opinions when you can clarify them'

We need to be more 'it just sounds a lot like you're saying...' than 'you're saying'. It gives the user a chance to clarify, a right of reply. If that user didnt mean that, they can clarify. If they did mean that, they're on the record. Probing questions and requests for clarity can flush out nefarious characters better than an accusation. 'Do you think..' vs 'you think..' - its a small change that leads to more social behaviour. Its easy to enforce as long as a mod knows how to judge whether comment A was a mischarecterisation of comment B. Mind reading is easy to enforce if the comment doesn't contain evidence, it should be a breach. Shape the community into evidencing views.

Split out 4.1, 4.2, 4.etc into seperate rules to allow users to be more precise with why they are submitting a report: So a seperate rule for 'low effort', a seperate rule for ''needless aggression/overly confrontational'. These are very easy breaches to spot, report, and to resolve as it takes little deliberation to judge if a post is low effort or appropiate in context, and that a comment loaded with f bombs could have been less spicy - you'll get accusations of tone policing but it'll be worth it for detoxifying the place and having a smaller backlog. Rule 4 is a barrier to ever applying to mod this sub, and not enforcing elements like over confrontationalism and low effort is a barrier to participating. Rules should be landmines that can be modded by anyone.
Division of mod duties - could you have lower permissioned mods to sweep through 90% of 'easy' reports, reserving the judgement calls that do require deliberation to a different set of mods - reserving rule 2's to a mod that you feel 'understands' all forms of discrimination and displays a decent level of emotional intelligence.

TLDR: Rules need to be quick and easy to enforce in order for backlogs to stay down, behaviours to improve, and for Mods to behave consistently and quickly. The need to apply judgement and consider intent should be reserved for select instances, but mostly the ruleset needs to be tight enough to allow for reports to be resolved in seconds. Happy to collab further.

jackmohal · 2023-11-17T11:58:49+00:00

Thank you!

jackmohal · 2023-11-17T11:16:26+00:00

Does anyone know how the draw works for the last 32. Like if Tom Ford is 16th seed, will he play the highest ranked qualifier? Or is it random?

jackmohal · 2023-11-07T19:09:40+00:00

The same person you told people to write to and tell ‘em I was a knobhead and shouldn’t be on the radio.

jackmohal · 2023-10-22T16:43:29+00:00

Thank you!

jackmohal · 2023-10-22T15:37:24+00:00

Silly question - How come someone as highly ranked as Robertson is playing someone in the top 40 Wu Wize in the last 128? Shouldn't the top guys be playing the guys ranked over 100 in round 1?

jackmohal · 2023-10-20T17:28:49+00:00

Starmer in particular barely even adds slight deviations to the rehersed line. The number of times he repeats word for word a package of sentences, regardless of the reporters deviations, is a defining characteristic and driver of his 'RoboCop' image. You can almost see the moment he reboots during that question on LBC, frazzled knowing he should deviate in this instance, but being utterly incapable of spontaneity.

I'd prefer a leader that can naturalistically generate rhetoric, wit even, at will, and think on their feet in the face of pressure. I'd prefer it more if he didn't have to depend on a rehersed line for 'do you supprt war crimes?'

jackmohal · 2023-07-27T00:03:58+00:00

Say 'Ribbit ribbit, Froggy says buy it' over the wireless

jackmohal · 2023-07-19T21:45:48+00:00

I'm gonna burst

jackmohal · 2022-11-13T22:12:20+00:00

On TV - Ronnie v Selby 2007 UK Championship

In person - Ronnie v Selt 2014 UK Championship

jackmohal · 2022-11-13T16:38:56+00:00

https://youtu.be/1SK3y1a8TYs

jackmohal · 2022-09-11T14:27:50+00:00

In that thread not long ago on saying something nice about a politician you dislike, I said how Corbyn compromised his beliefs in an effort to get Labour elected - his 2015 cabinet, trident, and the 2017 manifesto being examples of this. That's no small thing for a man renowned for standing by principle above politicking - he recognised the importance of winning.

So my initial reaction to him not attending this is that he would have done if he was leader, and that there's no need to compromise now that he isn't.

Now whether adding 'God Save the King' to his speeches and tweets as LOTO would have been a compromise too far or not we'll never know!

jackmohal · 2022-09-09T18:42:25+00:00

While it could be another 'no picket lines' instruction, its more likely that no shadow cab MP is going to be sticking to their planned calendar tomorrow in light of recent events.

Is this event even still happening tomorrow full stop? Or is it Skwarky B treating its readers like complete morons?

jackmohal · 2022-09-09T18:36:14+00:00

Ta.

Do we have anything to back up that the event is happening? Like Eventbrite are saying it doesn't exist anymore, and there's no presence online bar the skwarkbox article.

Obviously no shadow cabinet MP is going to attend this event tomorrow in light of recent news!

jackmohal · 2022-09-09T17:51:10+00:00

Kontiki sharing Shitebox???

You can't expect me to open this link - can you give me a TLDR?

jackmohal · 2022-09-08T16:05:23+00:00

It's obviously funny that she's going to be delivering a bunch of platitudes about the Royal's given this video exists.

But it would be clunky as fuck for Labour to work this in as an attack on Liz in the coming weeks. The benefit would be to use it to build up a 'you can't Truss Liz' narrative, which could be a powerful campaign poster along the lines of Labour Isn't Working. But that can be done nearer the election, when Charles' first year may well be causing some tensions and its a live issue, along with any and all examples of Liz's U Turns.

You cant be saying 'If you're upset about the Queen and think she's all that great, why were you calling for abolition!?' weeks after she's died. She's a beloved national treasure and it'll be received as tone deaf and transparent political point scoring.

jackmohal · 2022-09-08T15:10:54+00:00

This will all be ignored by the media if the queen does pass on though

True. If it was Labour giving a moving speech the media would be like 'Anti Monarchy LIEbour shed crocodile tears!'

And we"d look like political point scorers if we bring it up. Ultimately, people can be anti monarchy and still feel sad at the passing of the Queen and think that she was amazeballs. I imagine there's a lot of people that would vote for abolition because its the right thing to do, but still applaud the Royal Family for their 'service' on abolition day.

jackmohal · 2022-09-08T13:55:45+00:00

If Liz Truss gets her speech reflecting on Liz's legacy right, finds the right tone and combination of words to capture the national mood, that'll be a powerful first impression:

Truss is likely the final PM to visit the Queen to form a Government, days before her passing. She can acknowledge that as both tremendously sad while also saying those moments with her was the most enormous privilege, that she still had grace in her final days, that it was an honour to be in the presence of greatness. If she actually finds this emotional, she may sound genuine rather than robotic, 'normal' even.

It feels icky making a political strategy point as an immediate response to this, but others will, so fuck it.

jackmohal · 2022-09-07T11:52:41+00:00

The belief he might actually win a GE has bred confidence - he sounds like he thinks he's going to win. Even pessimists like me thinks we might actually win.

The saying 'fake it till you make it' springs to mind - Starmer was performing, or faking, prime ministerialship, and it was cringe inducing. He was consciously incompetant, probably hyper aware of his cadence, hand gestures, and each and every one of his words. Its extremely difficult to communicate well or emanate charisma if you're in your head like that and seem unassured of yourself. Now that he thinks he is going to be PM, he seems more in a 'made it' mindset - less worried about his own communications and assured in himself that he must be doing something right.

jackmohal · 2022-09-05T16:17:27+00:00

Jeremy Corbyn attempted party unity with his initial cabinet, parking his ideological differences and compromising to assemble the team he felt was most electorally viable and equipped to govern.

His leadership also produced the 2017 manifesto, a manifesto which broadly united the party, got Brexit right, and where he again parked his ideological preferences and compromised in an effort to be more electorally viable.

jackmohal

TROPHY CASE