Thank you.
I haven’t laughed this hard in such a long time.
Here you go Oh Thoughtful Critic:
Point #1: I never advocated a banning
Point #2: IMO, TPTB wanted to get rid of Cesario
Point #3: TPTB lacked the balls to act on what they wanted in a firm and forceful way
Point #4: So they got rid of Cesario by continuing to bear down on him until he quit
Point #5: I’m glad Cesario is gone
Whether I, in particular thought banning him out of hand was the right thing to do is largely irrelevant to the discussion and I wish I hadn’t even included it, since you seem to want to hyper focus on that. What is germane is that since the mods (IMO, YMMV, etc.) wanted him gone, they should have just sent him packing early on in this happy little dope drama.
The situation was handled poorly. I’m sure TPTB think they did a fucking stellar job, of course.
Yeah, I get it - your whole criticism is based on your mind reading abilities. Colour me unimpressed. I bet the mods figure they made the best of a bad situation rather than a “stellar job”, at least that’s what I think.
And thinking about, even giving you your mind reading point#2, I don’t see point#3 either. There was a fairly decent contingent that wanted to ban him immediately, I can’t see it taking much bravery to have done just that.
Dum-dee-dum. Shock and surprise. Who could have seen that coming?!
Once again I am appalled at the chickenshitness of TPTB. They constantly brag about their ability to ban at will because we are all subject to their benevolence. They wanted Cesario gone. The mob roared “crucify him”. Did they ban him? No, of course. God forbid they be seen playing by mob rules. They looked all intellectual and in defense of some higher principles. They let him live. A week later, they make up some ridiculous charges on him and say “if you blink you are banned”. He blinked. He is now banned not because they don’t like him. Not because the mob asked them. No. He was banned for his failure to follow the distinguished protocols of this enlightened community ruled with magnanimity and justice.
Puke me a river.
Baited and banned. One more little stamp on the side of the plane. Mission Accomplished. Banner will be delivered to your bridge in 1-2 business days. Hang it proud.
My criticism is based on my observation. As to you being impressed, who gives a shit?
The idea of the mods digging in their heels in the face of an angry mob seems quite reasonable.
ETA: Sapo, careful. CarnalK will accuse you of being a mind reader and a thoughtless critic.
Did I sleep through half of february and all of march? CarnalK is TPTB’s apologist? Now I have to double check to see if it is you or me reading this wrong. Please hold.
ETA after reading through: no u
I, too, don’t believe the mods think they did a “stellar” job. I am sure many of them are disappointed/shamed that it came to this, but they aren’t going to come out and admit it.
And you accusing Cloudy of being a powers-that-be apologizer is priceless.
In this case, it seems that he’s doing just that.
God help me, I opened this thread expecting to read that **Cesario **had been made a mod.
Kicked upstairs, indeed.
Upstairs?
(Kidding! I love you guys, I swear!)
He does have the right to think that the administration has done the right thing (even though he is wrong). It doesn’t have to be all of one thing or all of the other. The opinion of people like that is just like the music on an elevator in how valuable a content they add to our experience. He saw the issue and chose a side based on what he thinks and not just on who is on what side. Good for him.
I fully agree with your points 2-5 and disagree with Carnal’s position on this thread. From there to him being a serial TPTB fellator is a long walk, though.
I don’t think I’ve argued anyone doesn’t have a right to an opinion.
I happen to disagree with his view. I also don’t understand how anyone who’s followed this little saga can think that it’s mind reading to think the mods wanted Cesario gone.
Sure. But serial is your word, not mine.
Some people think you can’t sincerely agree with the moderators on any issue, that if you support their decisions you must be trying to curry favor or something.
What I don’t get is the vocal contingent who spend so much time and energy complaining about every moderator decision and action around here. If they’re so unhappy, why do they hang out here? If the mods are such jackbooted thugs, why hang around? Do they just want to complain?
Seriously, if I thought the moderators were genuinely unfair or were habitually arbitrary and spiteful, I think I would find other places to spend my time. I don’t think I would spend thread after thread posting things like “you guys never do anything right, once again you screwed up, this is up to your usual level of suckatude” etc. What’s the point?
Let’s get back to the basic issues here.
If the complaint is that we waited too long to focus on Cesario, I don’t think anyone on the staff would disagree. In a way, this was mostly an administrative problem. He was given five notes by three different mods, three in GD and two in IMHO. Up till now we haven’t tracked notes because there are so many. (We do track warnings.) Nobody on the staff realized what a pain he’d become. His posting history also lulled us. He posted only seven times in November and ten times in December; some of the staff thought he’d gone away. He started posting more frequently toward the end of January and things came to a boil in early February. We put him on notice Feb. 7 and he was gone eight days later. So we got rid of him pretty fast once we got a fix on him. Although we can ban anybody for any reason, we rarely do this; our typical practice with a problem poster is to draw a line in the sand and say not to cross it. The incorrigible cases can’t resist and that’s the end of them. We think that’s a better system than banning people arbitrarily.
Two related questions going forward are (a) how we keep an eye on people who express abhorrent opinions, and (b) what we do about them. Nobody on the staff thinks adults having sex with children is OK, nor do we think there’s any real room for debate about this. We also don’t think there’s much to be said in favor of murder, rape, slavery, etc. At the same time, the Straight Dope being what it is, we’ve been reluctant to declare up front that certain topics are off-limits, certain opinions can’t be expressed, and people with certain proclivities aren’t allowed to post. I’m not enthusiastic about doing so even now.
Still, there’s no reason we can’t keep posters in favor of criminal or otherwise abhorrent acts on a short leash. We may need to set up a watch list. (I know that sounds Big Brotherish; that’s why we’ve been reluctant to do it.) Although it’s not likely we would preemptively ban anyone, we could draw the line in the sand a lot sooner than we have.
No. I think the objection is that after you failed to ban him for what were very legitimate reasons, you ended up banning him for some utterly ridiculous made up offense that you stole from an Ally Bank TV ad.
By doing that you showed no spine in standing up to someone universally loathed by the community you have charged yourself with moderating and came through as weasels in banning him for a non existent offense. It might have been clever get Al Capone for tax evasion but there was a reason that had to be done. That was not the case here. At all.
ETA: You might have been hoping that “getting back to the basic issues” of “we all hate Cesario. Pedos are bad” would galvanize public opinion and rally in your support but it mostly just reminds everyone that you failed to address the real problem with Cesario.
I’m going to take you at your word on this. I said before that much as I disapproved of what was happening, I understood the impulses behind it.
Still, like I said before, I hope some lessons are being learned from this. I’d like to add a suggestion, if I could. The Pit isn’t just a place where we snipe at each other - it is a place where posters who have really offended community standards or broken the rules here are called out. Cesario was often pitted, and for nontrivial reasons. This should have landed him on your watch list.
I have made use of post reporting and other features, but simply looking at who is raising hackles will indicate who needs looking after more closely. I know some people get pitted for reasons wholly unconnected to behavior - but some people land there often because of conduct. It is a decent indicator, and while not determinative of rulebreaking at least should have shown the mods that something was amiss.
If that’s the interpretation you want to place on it, that’s your privilege. I don’t see it that way. “No personal agendas” has been in our rules for many years, precisely to deal with cases like this.
Personally, I think the mods should take this up as their official motto. And, just as with mswas, its a chickenshit way to go about things.
I would argue that it was far from inevitably that Cesario would be eventually banned. There have been other cases where posters came in on a flame of controversy, were put on a short leash and then stayed on that leash, at least for many months.
The conditions that Cesario were under were not as onerous as either he or posters in this thread have made them out to be and I don’t view it at all as a pro-forma whitewash for an inevitable banning.