Thank you, good response, I would link you but since it is right above, post 35, I agree, sometimes/often I do need to be corrected and in those situations I can usually recognize that…
BTW- Where/what is the other board that is “more civil”? I like this board Historum but, it is mainly for History*, in fact, the do not even do politics/current events. For a while the did but now they just link you to a completely separate forum for that. Maybe it is redundant to say but I liked and agreed with your explanation above, I think it was a good response.
*That board is very impressive, they know as much about history as people here do about politics/current events.
I confess that the comments from engineer_comp_geek are confusing to me. I’m quite clear that the Pit is no place for discussion of moderation on the SDMB, and ATMB is the place for that, but am I to understand that there is NO place on the board to legitimately bitch about moderation/moderators?
'Cos it looks to me like that happens all too often in this forum. And I find it tedious, as a rule. All the carping, cavilling, sentence-dissecting and rules-lawyering just makes my eyes glaze over. I dunno. Maybe my diffidence about such issues leads me to chuck all such discussions into a bin that I mentally apply the “bitching about moderation” label to.
To be honest, this forum is one of the LEAST interesting (to me) that I generally bother opening. When I do come around, my holy grail is a bannination announcement that might point me in the direction of an entertaining meltdown. Lately, it seems that some of the threads here have at least some entertainment value in that regard.
Not the thread referenced in the OP, though. I hate that thread; I find the title to be open-and-shut false; I can’t even see value in discussing the topic it posits, and I’m deliberately refusing to read any further than I have (approx. 20 posts).
The comment linked above (and reported apparently) was as dickish as they come. Its not insulting to say that it was a dickish comment, its just accurate.
All I’m hearing here is that some people have free reign to ignore the “don’t be a jerk” rule, and that there is nowhere to discuss that point.
And then people wonder why Great Debates is considered such an utter cesspool.
You can’t pit moderators the way you can a regular user, and conversations in ATMB are supposed to be polite and civil. There is no forum on the SDMB that allows you to simply bitch about the moderators.
While you can’t just bitch, you can politely discuss almost any aspect of the SDMB and its moderation in ATMB. If you have a legitimate issue, or even something that you just think might be a legitimate issue and aren’t even sure if it is, you are always more than free to discuss the issue here in ATMB. Just keep it polite. This isn’t the pit, or even the light version of the pit.
That said, it is more important to me that we resolve whatever issues someone is having than it is to keep a hard line in the enforcement of civility here. So you will find plenty of examples where someone has not been polite or civil, and you’ll find examples of folks bitching about the moderation here, and they aren’t always strictly modded for it.
As I said before, you can discuss pretty much anything here as long as you are polite and civil about it.
I never called anyone dickish. My original comment was something like biased or unobjective. This all goes back like a month. You can read what Tom said (yesterday) then what I said after:
Those are hyperlinked in the OP.
From two days ago (different thread):
Miller & Tom talking about insults, accuracy and Name calling:
Since I am not allowed to say anything too negative (in ATMB), I will say I found the comments of Miller and Tom to be both unkind and to posses elements of double standards that they apply to others, but, apparently, not to themselves. Odd behavior for a moderator.
Given that we are talking about moderator behavior*, I think the original word choice accurate.
*Civilly and politely, with no intent to insult.
These examples imply that attacking the poster (moderator) is acceptable, but aggressively critiquing posts is not. I thought the opposite was the case.
Is it the word “dickish” that makes the second example objectionable? If that is the case, if SDMB is going to expand the rules about word choice, you should publish a list. Otherwise, complaining about this word, or that word, is a lot like whining, “that’s meeeaan”.
Well, it appears mods are allowed to insult people. Now maybe a mod will come along and give them a slap on the wrist, like twickster did to herself when she called another poster an “asshole” outside of the Pit, or maybe not.
Well, yes. After I reported his post, after it was discussed at length in that thread, after (I suspect) it was bandied around the mod circuit, he apologized.
Again.
If this is the last time he oversteps like this, I’ll be mightily pleased. But I would prefer he be warned for his behavior.
Don’t be a JERK is a good rule. Arbitrarily up to board culture, it goes with the territory. Add some knowledge into the picture and we all are good to go.
This is why I joined SDMD. To exchange information, viewpoints, alternate opinions.
Be humble. be proud, don’t insult…pretty easy to do.
Clearly, you don’t understand what it means to be a mod. Their incredible work and self-sacrifice puts them on an entirely different plane from you and me. To you, this board is a pleasure…something you enjoy doing. To the mods, it is a Sisyphusian task. Only the hill is on fire and the boulder is encrusted with broken glass and there is a vast mob of hooting, screaming apes throwing shit at them. But they do it anyway because that is just the kind of people they are. So here they are, day in day out, doing this great and important work and small, low people want to tear them apart for the odd lapse in manners. Small, low people who would probably bitch at a fireman for not knocking first before carrying them down five flights of stairs covered with poisonous snakes in a burning building. This board is a mighty monument to knowledge and the mods are the cyclopean granite blocks from which it is built. Guys like you and me? We’re smudges of bird shit on that monument that will disappear with the next rain. A mod get a warning? What is wrong with you?
Jeez, Scumpup, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or what? I have to say, if I felt like this about the mods here, I would not be here.
I don’t know what you mean. Our mods here are just so very, very swell that even suggesting the idea of warning one of them for a civility infraction deserves a warning. They do a thankless, dangerous job and all I want is for them to get home safely to their families after they finish moderating us every day.