By the way, where is Cesario’s actual self-destruct post? It doesn’t look like it got linked to.
He announced he didn’t plan on following his orders here and when that was closed continued with this.
Excuse me, I did not call for a banning and I did not call the staff dumb. I’ll thank you to not put words in my mouth. (I believe an apology is in order.) You may believe I implied that, but I did not say that.
I did say that if they’d used their hammer on C I don’t think AT would have chosen the actions he took. And I stand by what I said. They have the hammer but, for whatever reason, don’t seem to want to use it, even when the community is screaming for them too. Failing to ban someone who is clearly ‘being a jerk’ only leads other people to dance up to the line, confident that if they step over it they’ll only get a warning or suspension. That’s why this kind of crap keeps happening, in my opinion.
This same thing is going to play out again and again, the same way. Jerk acts jerkish, mods afraid to make a call, jerk pushes the line, community begins to say WTH, mods afraid to make the call, and on and on, just like the C thing. Bite the bullet, make the call, use the hammer. Ban a couple of people and watch the jerks pull back from dancing on the line. The result is less drama and fewer freaking train wrecks.
I was never calling for AT, in particular, to be banned, I was simply expressing my opinion that yet another warning was part of the problem, not the solution.
Now, kindly retract the words you attributed to me, which, I never said. Man up.
Then why the gnashing of teeth and wailing in that thread? You said “We need better moderation and we needed it, like yesterday. I say use the hammer, quit dragging everything out like this.”
So you weren’t saying to “use the hammer” in the case under discussion? You are talking about all the future pedos? Earlier in post 179, clearly regarding Argent’s warning, you say “OOOOh a warning! That’ll show him!”
If that was all about future hypotheticals, I think you should go clarify it there rather than demand apologies for your lack of clarity. And I’m saying “lack of clarity” to give you the benefit of the doubt because it looks a lot more like you’re backtracking to me. Go ahead, man up yourself.
Staff are volunteers. This means that moderating is something that we do in our spare time, as other things in our lives allow. Sometimes, many or most of us are busy doing other things at the same time. If the planets align in such a way so that many or most of the staff are busy doing other things, I will GUARANTEE that a trainwreck or three will happen right then. Sometimes, too, one or more of us loses computer or internet access for a period of time.
Another thing is that we usually have to discuss things in especially volatile situations. We have those of us who are in favor of suspending the posters in question until we get things sorted out. Then there are others who want to give everyone a chance to calm down. And sometimes we have to wait for Ed to weigh in, especially on the issues that are going to affect the way the board continues in the future.
This, in my book, skates awfully close to bullshit. **Argent **wasn’t taking up **Cesario’s **mantle. He didn’t do his dumb PM’ing on the merits of the fact that **Cesario ***wasn’t *banned earlier than he was. In fact, I don’t see how **Cesario’s **existance has anything to do with this latest kerfuffle at all.
I agree on that.
I understand, and that may explain why the ball was dropped initially. But nothing should stop you from saying “oh, we might have missed this for a few days, but we have to punish it now.”
There should be no shame in acting decisively when that becomes possible.
I demand no apology for my lack of clarity. I believe I was clear. I demand an apology for putting words, I didn’t say, into my mouth.
Which part of that did you not understand? If the hammer had come down on C, I believe, AT would have thought a little longer and harder before taking the action he took, in my opinion. I honestly don’t know how I can say it any clearer. I was calling for the mods to be a little tougher, not on AT specifically but to be less impotent overall and then jerks dancing up the line wouldn’t keep happening. In my opinion. And we’d all be spared yet another long drawn out trainwreck.
I happen to feel this impotence is what’s leading to all this long drawn out bullshit. I’m sorry if you perceive that as wailing and gnashing of teeth. I stand by it as a reasonable position.
Others seem to have understood, why’s it so hard for you?
See also;
Second sentence, Ed Zotti.
So, where’s my apology for putting words into my mouth that I never said?
You make good points, but in my opinion, his last OP regarding children tipped his hand that he was indeed a bona fide troll. As others have said, that OP was nothing but the kid’s game of, “Can’t get mad - not touching.” I’ll agree with anyone who says that he put the mods in a no-win position - they ban his ass pre-emptively and they get a five page thread on their jackbootedness, they give him enough rope to hang himself and they get a five page thread on their tolerance of pedophilia. It was damned near the perfect troll.
Says you, I guess. Reality begs to differ:
Your sarcastic response to Ed clearly implied that the warning to Argent was not enough. At the perilous risk of your wrath, you can stop asking for an apology from me. If you can’t see my obvious interpretation of your words, despite not technically saying “ban” and “Argent” in the same sentence, that’s your problem, not mine.
That is the situation in one cogent paragraph.
It’s true of a lot of situations here but particularly so in this case where the line is not at all bright and clear.
We gave Cesario the benefit of the doubt at the beginning. Expressing unpopular/controversial opinions or points of view is not a bannable offense in itself and we could not truly ascertain whether this was someone trolling or someone who was sincere.
(In view of how this played out, it could well have been both at the same time. That’s new for us.)
We do try to keep the idea that here at the Dope we can discuss damn near anything, even potentially ugly or explosive topics.
And we did lose track along the way. That didn’t help.
All in all, very cleverly played.
I would be willing to bet the next unpopular statement won’t get the same kind of latitude. We experience, we learn, things change. That will of course be something else for people to complain about. That never changes. 
No, my response to Ed was because it seemed just another impotent response from the mods to a community screaming for moderation. He dragged his sorry self in and started with, ‘not this again’, and then issued a warning. I was reacting to the, ‘not this again’ lameness, not the warning. But hey, you’re clearly not one to get hung up on what’s really being said, you just interpret it as you wish and call people out for things they never did.
You have accused me of calling for a banning, when I clearly did not.
You have accused me of calling the mods dumb, when I clearly did not.
If you want to say you think I implied those things, feel free. But to accuse me of having said things I specifically did not say is called lying.
You owe me an apology. (And everyone with two braincells can see it, so man up.)
What the hell “screaming for moderation” are you talking about?
We were YEARNING for moderation, the way Cesario yearns for tight pre-teen ass.
Lovely mental image, dear. Thank you. We were YEARNING for Cesario to be removed, but there was no YEARNING for moderation, for bannings, for young pre-teen ass, or anything else, regarding AT. There was perhaps yearning (smaller letters) that he apologize and admit he did something stupid, instead of trying to defend it.
That’s how I see things through my eyes, anyway, which aren’t much good even though I have four of them.
Tell you what, rather than continue your hole digging hijack, start a Pit thread demanding my apology and see if anyone actually agrees with you. I promise to show up.
Yes, and then
This is a message board, not a chat room. If moderation comes a few days later, so be it. It is not like the fate of the nation hinges on any of this. Specially since it was already acknowledged that there was a problem and that it had not been dealt when it should have.
This is also why I have suggested a couple of times that you guys need some sort of “fumata nera” that lets the masses know that the issue is being discussed and please hold, your call is important to us.
Now I am beginning to think that you are being deliberately obtuse. Yes, my point was that this was dealt with in a chickenshit manner. Then I explained in full detail why and how I think it should have gone. This is not about who has more hair on his chest. It is about TPTB not having had the nerve to do what needed to be done about Cesario and having bagged him for an invented offense. If you need more details, then please reread my previous posts. There is no point in repeating myself.
Now I know you are being deliberately obtuse. Yes, you can find counterexamples of him posting on threads without bringing up his, er, condition. Woo-hoo! It wasn’t on every single thread. He shouldn’t have been banned. Congratulations. You won. He did it enough that he pissed off a lot of people. I think that was enough to ban him. TPTB seem to agree.
It is when you insist on being icky time after time. Being icky is a separate issue, though. An interesting one that I hadn’t seen invoked before.
The hard fact is I did not say what you have attributed to me.
Anyone that can read can see as much for themselves.
You have been given ample opportunity to retract or reframe your accusation.
Unlike yourself, I am willing to stand behind what I said, how I said it, what I meant by it. I don’t expect everyone will agree with my position, never did. But at least I can own it, right or wrong.
If you wish to leave it this way, wherein you have clearly been shown to be lying about the words another poster said, that’s on you. Hope that works out for you.
Why I would want to further engage with someone unwilling to own their own words and willing to lie about the words of another, I cannot imagine?