I virtually never reply personally to post reports either; first, because we get a lot of reports, and second, it takes an extra step to reply since we need to cut up and paste the poster’s email address in another message - we can’t reply directly to the report. And third, because as far as I can see most posters don’t regard it as any big deal if we do reply or not.
If you report a post, and it gets no action, it probably means that all the forum mods saw the report and decided it wasn’t worth acting on. Sometimes it means that for one reason or another it was overlooked.
If you’re really concerned by the lack of action, as engineer says, report the post again or PM a mod. I will usually respond if asked directly about why a report was not acted on.
You appear to have misunderstood what I wrote. “Identifiably conservative” was meant in the context of the paragraph which preceded the one you quoted. The fuller quote was as follows:
In the thread you refer to, one moderator (Loach) announced that he had very rarely voted for Democratic candidates. Leaving aside the issue of whether that implies that he’s a conservative (1) he’s in NJ, where the scale is somewhat shifted left, and 2) it’s not clear how often he’s voted altogether), the point is that he’s not “identifiably conservative”. Loach is not a conservative voice on this board, and he rarely if ever argues the conservative position in discussions here. This suggests that to the extent that he’s a conservative altogether he’s not a very politically oriented guy. It’s for this reason that he’s not identifiably conservative, and for this reason that political ideology would form a smaller part of his mindset than it would for someone who is more focused on such matters.
It’s not comparable to the liberal side, where there are several moderators who are identifiably liberal in the sense described. Tomndebb and Miller come to mind offhand, but there are others too. Not all, of course, and there are undoubtedly some centrists or apolitical liberals. But collectively, the weight of the staff leans left.
FTR, I personally have no problems with the moderation of this board. I think the leftward skew is inevitable on a board which itself skews left, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. If you are a conservative who wants to participate on a left-oriented MB, that’s just something you have to deal with. So far I’m doing fine.
But I do find it interesting as a discussion topic. And one of the points of interest is the level of denial that the moderators are in. Bias is part of human nature, and the moderators are all human. As I alluded to above, it’s inconceivable that anyone would fail to recognize that a jury in which several members were known to have a strong bias about the matter and the rest were ambivalent would be collectively biased. Somehow the mods here have deluded themselves into thinking that they’re (collectively) above that.
I’ve PMed the mods a few times when reported posts were not acted on, and I’ve always gotten a nice response from one of the mods. I agree that it would be a ridiculous burden to expect a reply to every reported post.
Why shouldn’t they? We often have threads in ATMB where people weigh in on specific instances of moderation that were not aimed at them. Youcertainlyseem to have an opinion about moderator actions that are not aimed at you, and lots of liberals post in those threads too.
It’s possible that various moderators have made the decision to make an active effort to be “objective” in their duties. It seems to me that it is obvious that in such cases, claims of bias are going to be meet with resistance.
Most of the complaints of unfairness generally involve socio-political threads and topics. (I doubt that anyone claims unfairness in topics covering physics, for example.)
I am not sure “deluded” is a fair term to use for a mod who makes the effort to be fair, but falls just a touch short based on what may very well be a subjective scale after all. (As I view politics to be inherently subjective.)
I just wish posters could keep their political penis in their pants once in awhile. Like for example when discussing criminal activity related to a politician. It leads off on tangents that blur any understanding of the real issue.
