Critiquing techniques vs critiquing people: what speech is permissible?

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#1

We’re always 100% transparent with the challenges of running a public forum. And the biggest challenge there, and a very timely one at that, is what type of conversation should be permitted. In an ideal world, we’d have clear rules so that moderation becomes a simple matter of following them. But this is very often not the case.

A recent example shines a spotlight on this difficulty. A great player out on the intertubes makes a video critiquing the techniques of famous players. It generates heated discussion as to the validity of the technical points, the reasons for choosing them, and the motivation of the player in making the video. This is a predictable outcome given the nature of the video in question.

Here comes the hard part.

Someone on our forum comments on the intent of the video and the methods used in it. The poster expresses some negative opinions of the video and creator, but also offers praise in other respects. The tone is not insulting to other people here, and only insulting to the video creator insofar as some of the opinions are negative. Because the commentary focuses on critiquing the person and their motivation, this leads to disagreement and the insults start flying. This goes double when people know or or fans of the individual in question. Some of this is unfounded. e.g. “Person is running a scam!” Other aspects of this are simply negative opinions. e.g. “I don’t like this person / playing / video.”

Personally, I don’t enjoy having these types of conversations on the forum because It’s way less problematic to talk about guitar technique, and feelings are way less likely to get hurt. The policing of that type of speech is also much simpler. It mainly boils down to monitoring for interpersonal commenter attacks. That’s pretty easy to do.

But policing any negative opinion about people is much trickier. Negative opinions aren’t by their nature prohibited in any reasonably free discourse. But having that commentary on the forum creates the appearance that we’re a place that harbors negative sentiment about other players, possibly for business reasons and trying to be competitive. This is 100% not the case. We have in fact occasionally advertised other players courses through other vendors on our * own * mailing list, as part of a give and take with those other players and vendors. But someone cruising by a thread they found on a Google search won’t know this. So you can see why someone might * think * there is ulterior motive here.

The end result is that this type of conversation would be permitted and also pretty middle of the road on a forum like The Gear Page, but bad for * us * given the appearance it creates. That is not a level playing field.

So give us some thoughts here. What should guidelines be about topics like this and how should we handle them?

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#4
#5

Just as an additional footnote, I’d like to show you the following thread if you haven’t seen it. This is just one of many, many examples of places on the internet where players talk about * our * stuff in a way that on the surface appears quite negative:

Because of the personal nature of the original post, i.e. directed against me, this is precisely the type of conversation where, if it happened here, and the subject was another player on the internet who sells guitar courses, it would be problematic and probably lead to a meltdown like we had this week.

However threads like this Gear Page thread actually do not hurt our business. Despite the negative framing, they usually contain a mix of positive and negative sentiments, and the positive sentiments at least in this example are pretty level-headed and more or less accurately represent what we do.

Most of the negativity in threads like this are from posters who very clearly don’t understand what we do or teach, and this is obvious to anyone who does, including others on the thread. Anyone who is genuinely looking for information about us, and finds this discussion, will be likely to read through it all. If they do, it would not surprise me if they drop by here looking for more information.

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#6

My general feeling is that the less like TGP we are the better.

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#7

Well, there’s that. But we have to draw the line somewhere and we need to know where that is. I’ve been on there, had an account since I think 2006. Last time I was there, someone with a very high post count told me in all caps that what I teach is “BULLSHIT”, to my face, and nobody said a peep. This is the type of thing I won’t tolerate here.

But again, interpersonal attacks are easy to moderate. The other stuff is much harder.

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#8

TGP doesn’t take kindly to anyone that doesn’t want to play Robben Ford note for note / gear for gear.

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#9

One of the things that makes this my favorite guitar forum (indeed, pretty much the only one I frequent) is the iterative approach to seeking understanding* that Troy and the team foster: hypothesize, test, revise. I think it would hinder keeping this approach active on the forums if criticizing people’s claims were not allowed at all. On the other hand, I understand the need to manage perceptions of your own material and space.

Here’s a more specific, actionable idea: Might it help to create a separate subforum for “Other Instructional Material,” with different (probably stricter) rules on criticism? This could conceivably help dampen the perceptions you’re worried about.

* also called "science"

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#10

Hm, that’s an interesting idea. One problem is that Anton’s video isn’t an instructional video per se, it’s just a YT video that people react to.

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#11

I probably sound like I’m no fun, but “Just a YT video that people react to” sounds like it doesn’t belong here. There’s already a place where people can shoot the breeze about that, and it rhymes with “Blue Cube”.

If that video features awesome guitar playing and we’d like to discuss the playing, this forum is a great place for it. And we should discuss the playing. If someone doesn’t like the playing…why say anything? Or at the worst case say, “sorry, not my thing, but it’s just taste”. I’m still baffled how the whole thing went south. If we keep on topic and act like adults, it should take care of itself.

#12

I think it could be easily interpreted as an advertisement for his own material, though. That was certainly my impression.

#13

Sorry if I’m not being clear here. I just mean, there are many meaty, substantive videos on the guitar internet that people are going to want to talk about that do not really fit the definition of a product that can be discussed in a products-only section of the forum. The Anton video is on that line since it is adjacent to stuff he is selling, and presumably supporting that stuff. So it’s a great example of something that is problematic for us because it straddles lines.

#14

My impression on how the thread went south was that Oparin made some specific, pretty strong claims that not everyone agreed with (or in my case, wasn’t sure there was enough evidence presented for those claims). I don’t think a single person in that thread thinks he’s a bad player, and I don’t think “eh, he’s good but this isn’t my thing” is particularly incendiary. I don’t have the Mod’s-Eye View of that thread, though, so I may be wrong on the first point.

#15

Gotcha. I just view his stuff the exact way I view anything Rick Beato puts out - entertainment/education. At the end, you’re always told where you can buy stuff. So it’s a very long Ad that I happen to enjoy :slight_smile:

#16

Sure. I don’t know if Rick makes videos where he specifically talks about people who could be construed as his peers and points out what he thinks are negative aspects of what they do. I don’t watch his stuff, so you can tell me. But that type of approach is absolutely going to lead to heated discussion and the discussion is more likely to cross lines.

#17

In general he is very positive. He does have some “old man yelling at clouds” type of rants though. Usually in the vein of “why music these days just isn’t as good as the old days”. Unless the new music is some band he happens to be good friends with, like A7X, Periphery, Polyphia or Animals As Leaders lol! And to his credit, that is all high quality stuff. But yeah I could see someone posting a video of his, just the right one, on your forum, going exactly how the Anton video went.

#18

That’s a good point. Do you think he actively shies away from making ranty videos when it comes to bands that are let’s say adjacent to ones he likes or people he knows? Because that is kind of the challenge here. We are adjacent to Anton and others who teach and sell, in the same industry, so negative commentary of any sort seems like it’s attributed to us, or at least, seems like it’s harbored by us.

#19

I’m not a Rick superfan, but I’ve seen a lot of his videos. Whether he shies away from rants like you just described…not sure but I’ve definitely never seen anything like that. And I don’t think he’s every shaming or saying stuff sucks. He’s an academic. It’s more like, he’ll compare it to the “good old stuff” and show how awesomely complicated chord progressions used to be. That sort of thing. He’s never outright malicious.

I get what you mean about being adjacent to Anton though. I see why that is a super slippery slope.

#20

At the end of the day though this is his opinion, right? That certain types of songwriting is “good” music and some other type is “bad”. That’s very judgy. If you’re the type writing the “bad” stuff then that is an attack, even if he doesn’t say you’re a bad person for doing it. It’s possible that the people being critiqued negatively are people he doesn’t know, or aren’t in a position to respond for one reason or another. My point is that it’s definitely negative, and selectively so, and he gets to choose the target so there is no blowback, or only blowback that presumably doesn’t matter because it doesn’t affect him.

We don’t get to choose on the forum who says the negative stuff about whom.

#21

I don’t think there’s a way to decrease the need for moderation and still have the kind of forum you want.

I think maintaining the quality of discussion here (and the reputation of the site) boils down to the tone/intention of posts and comments, which will always require subjective moderator interpretation.

It’s possible to frame criticism in a way that maintains a respectful tone. The guiding question seems to be “does the post/comment make the CTC community look like a sanctuary for assholes?” Unless you adopt really draconian restrictions on criticism, I think that will always have to be a judgment call for moderators, which most of the time should be pretty straightforward, especially on a community like this without a large/churning moderator group.

I think you’ve already done a good job of making clear the spirit of posting you expect here, and the recent havoc has been more a result of people declining to adhere to that. In particular, you had at least a couple of people in that recent thread double down on comments that violated the spirit of the rules, even after moderator weigh-in.

I think it’s less about a need for different guidelines, and regrettably, maybe a heavier hand in dealing with community members who disregard the spirit of the guidelines you’ve already established. There will always be a few people who complain about anything other than completely wide-open posting. But if you want things to stay civil, you’ll have to make a small number of people unhappy.

Pulling numbers out of my ass, I’d suggest maybe one “warning” re: “not meeting the expectation to ‘be civil’”. The “free” warning starts a 30 day clock. If any further warnings are received within that 30 days, they reset the clock and come with a 7 day suspension from posting. After 30 days with no warnings, clean slate. But the rules also need to be clear that this isn’t intended as an invitation to act out once per month, and that chronic bad actors or people who seem to be trying to “game” the system will be subject to longer suspensions, or expulsion.

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#22

All good thoughts. I agree with everything you’re saying, I just think we need guidance on the edge cases.

To be very specific about it, how do you feel about the post on the other thread by tomster that landed us here in this one? What specifically would you object to in there, if anything?