1.) **BigT **is taking a swipe at the people who posted in Maastricht’s thread to give her reasons why a gastric bypass *wouldn’t *be a good idea and to provide potential alternatives, when she created the thread only asking for reasons why she *should *have the surgery.
2.) **AClockworkMelon **responded with a satirical hypothetical that pointed out why BigT’s criticism was so ridiculous. It was deliberately as hyperbolic as possible to make a point, and it would be interpreted by *no one *who was actually paying attention as endorsing that position.
**Melon **wasn’t being racist, just being a bit snarky at someone who was snarky at him first. I could see a mod stepping in to ask people to drop the issue entirely, but I fail to see any justification for issuing a note to Melon, especially in a way that seems to be pretty clear that it’s specifically the subject of the hypothetical thread (which only exists to provide an intentionally deeply stupid premise) that the moderator objects to.
Yeah, that was a bit odd, especially given that the mod in question also said:
So we’re moderating hypotheticals now? Jeebus.
The topic of the hypothetical thread was intended to be hyperbolic, in order to demonstrate the silliness of expecting everyone who posts in a thread to agree with the OP.
Thanks for pulling in that further clarification from Spectre. I’d meant to include it since it reinforced my assertion about what he was actually moderating.
Yes, ACM was letting BigT know that if a person starts a thread that invokes strong feelings, they won’t expect that everyone is going to tell them only what they want to hear, as Maastricht already knew. There was no inflammation occurring. Maybe we’re all oversensitized because of that other actual offensive thread that is going on.
I vote for acquittal, for what it’s worth. ACM was clearly saying “What, people can’t disagree with the OP? Don’t you see how that’s a stupid rule? Why, I could start a racist thread and demand that everyone agree!”
You just did it. Every time you quote someone using the quote button there’s a list of numbers that appears after the name. That’s a post number or something. It links back to where they originally said it. Obviously it doesn’t happen automatically when you’re manually quoting someone.
I’m hopeful that we’ll get some clarification from ACM if I’m wrong here. As I see it there were two possibilities.
[ul]
[1] He is postulating an OP that asserts a premise that nobody will agree with, yet only those who do agree are allowed to respond.
[2] He is postulating an OP that asserts a repugnant premise that nobody will agree with, yet only those who do agree are allowed to respond.
[/ul]
I’ll consider these seriatim.
the first possibility, he could have asserted the opposite of a physical law, like “gravity works upward”. In that case there would have been no justification for a race-related example.
The second possibility requires a repugnant premise to work, it is true, but even so it didn’t have to involve race. Knowing from the context that there was nothing more sinister at work here, and knowing ACM to be a decent guy, I was handling this as a question of good taste. We don’t prohibit bad taste, and a mod note doesn’t necessarily mean that something is going to happen to ACM, but we do like to encourage good taste and a racially sensitive attitude.
Remember that everything you type here is searchable by Google, and if you google “Why black people suck”, that thread comes up. Do you really want people to find us that way? If you don’t believe that race is a sensitive topic, just look at the other ATMB thread Why is this thread in GD, which is about this thread, since moved to IMHO.
There’s nothing to acquit ACM of–there’s no formal infraction or warning. We think he’s a great guy who adds a lot to the board here. I didn’t think for a moment that he was sincerely expressing a racist attitude. The intent of the mod note was simply as if to say, hey, next time just use something less sensitive.
The point was to create a hypothetical thread that BigT would be morally outraged by and realize that if he supported such a position as he did in Maas’ thread he’d have to advocate a similar position for all others. But if my mentioning race is the problem, by all means, you can go edit my post so that I’m suggesting a gaybashing thread instead.
