# Colibri's "Political" moderation **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [December 9, 2015, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880 "2015-12-09T00:58:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/41 "2015-12-09T04:58:50Z")
> [@Idle\_Thoughts](#): > > This is flat out false not just in one ways, but two: > > 1. Most of the old accounts on this board are not banned, you’re wrong. > 2. Posters are banned for many reasons, usually because they actually break rules (although it’s possible an old account was banned because they spammed, trolled, or socked as well). Claiming we ban posters just because we don’t like them couldn’t be farther than the truth. If we were allowed to ban posters just because we don’t like them, I didn’t get that memo (and I really wish I had… a ha ha ha…get it? > Just kidding). Can I dig up an old thread and you explain why specific posters were banned? I’ve literally seen it dozens of times. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/42 "2015-12-09T04:59:23Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > Then why do most Zombie threads have intelligent, coherent posters in them where it says BANNED on their names? Your staff has clearly nailed an incredible number of innocent posters. Only way I can see this is if you gradually accumulate negative marks on them. > > Like my case. I genuinely did not have the slightest idea my post would get warned. Yet you claim that I’m a career criminal poster and “this close” to getting a ban. (paraphrasing). That’s because you don’t like me and are itching for an excuse. One thing that many posters who end up being banned do have in common is that they claim that they don’t understand why they were being warned (although most other posters do). They also consistently claim that they are being warned because “the mods don’t like me,” or are biased, or something. Whatever it is, it is never their fault. I can explain the rules to you, but I can’t understand them for you. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/43 "2015-12-09T04:59:58Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Maybe you could explain the substantive difference? I already have. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/44 "2015-12-09T05:00:00Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > That’s because you don’t like me and are itching for an excuse. I don’t have any history with you on here that I know of, so what’s your reasoning to why I disagree with you and also think you deserved the warning? It can’t be because I don’t like you, I don’t even know you and I’ve only seen your posts around a few times before. Could it be, maybe, that you’re in the wrong here? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/45 "2015-12-09T05:03:00Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I already have. No you haven’t. You referred to **Habeed** ’s warning, explaining that you had prior conversations with him about political potshots in GQ. I am not talking about **Habeed** ’s warning. I am talking about **race\_to\_the\_bottom** ’s warning. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/46 "2015-12-09T05:03:08Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > Can I dig up an old thread and you explain why specific posters were banned? I’ve literally seen it dozens of times. Yes, I’m sure you can dig up a few threads that has banned posters in it. But you’re still wrong in the regards that most older members are banned. I know of at least 50 people from 1999 who still regularly post today, off hand. As for me knowing why they were banned, I registered in 2003 and I only became a mod in 2011, so I’m probably not going to know why a majority of posters were banned in any old threads…however, since you seemed convinced Colibri is just warning you because he dislikes you, I’m pretty sure that nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise if you’re having thoughts that far stretched. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/47 "2015-12-09T05:03:15Z")
> [@Idle\_Thoughts](#): > > I don’t have any history with you on here that I know of, so what’s your reasoning to why I disagree with you and also think you deserved the warning? It can’t be because I don’t like you, I don’t even know you and I’ve only seen your posts around a few times before. > > Could it be, maybe, that you’re in the wrong here? Referring to Colibri. I made a previous post where I said, in response to a question about “how to get a gun in the USA.” Paraphrasing, I said “Got money? Can you read? Find a sign that says “gun show”. Look around for a shady guy not at a table. Offer money. Make sure to grab ammo and magazines before you leave”. I had specific information (both a television program and a friend personally did this) verifying this was factual, exactly like I said. I was trying to be a little funny in indicating that “anyone in the USA, and I mean just about _anyone_, can get a gun if they want one” Anyways, Colibri slammed me up, down, and sideways for this. And now he’s threatening to ban if I make just one more “political” jab, when pretty much any post he doesn’t like that contains any topic related to government or public policy is actually “political”. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/48 "2015-12-09T05:06:47Z")
As for wrongfully banned posters, why did you ban Ryan from this thread : [Semi-Trailer Trucks Cruising at 120 MPH: Myth? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=97985) Or Otto, SingleDad, Satan [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18868510#post18868510](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18868510#post18868510) How many people out there make insightful, intelligent posts then turn around and troll or shill or sock-puppet? I frankly don’t believe you, I think you the moderators have a broken scheme going where you ban a ton of quality posters. I just don’t think anyone would purposefully make good posts, probably thousands, then deliberately do something ban-worthy. Hence I’m sure you’re going to ban me eventually, once I hit the magic number of “warnings” for posts I had no idea were bad before I made them. A bad post would be “hey buy shit at my store selling counterfeit purses” or “Donald Trump is the best candidate for president who ever lived, click here to give him more money”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/49 "2015-12-09T05:09:03Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > Referring to Colibri. I made a previous post where I said, in response to a question about “how to get a gun in the USA.” > > Paraphrasing, I said “Got money? Can you read? Find a sign that says “gun show”. Look around for a shady guy not at a table. Offer money. Make sure to grab ammo and magazines before you leave”. I had specific information (both a television program and a friend personally did this) verifying this was factual, exactly like I said. I was trying to be a little funny in indicating that “anyone in the USA, and I mean just about _anyone_, can get a gun if they want one” > > Anyways, Colibri slammed me up, down, and sideways for this. And now he’s threatening to ban if I make just one more “political” jab, when pretty much any post he doesn’t like that contains any topic related to government or public policy is actually “political”. Your post says: “It’s too easy to get a gun in the US, and I think that’s bad.” It’s not even “thinly veiled” as the saying goes. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/50 "2015-12-09T05:18:23Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > No you haven’t. > > You referred to **Habeed** ’s warning, explaining that you had prior conversations with him about political potshots in GQ. I am not talking about **Habeed** ’s warning. I am talking about **race\_to\_the\_bottom** ’s warning. RTTB didn’t get a warning because he quoted a part that was a violation - he got a warning for independently violating the rules. That he quoted the post that got warned means that he knew of the violation. Maybe if he didn’t quote it, he still gets a warning for the violation because he should have known. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/51 "2015-12-09T05:19:02Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Your post says: “It’s too easy to get a gun in the US, and I think that’s bad.” It’s not even “thinly veiled” as the saying goes. There’s an elaborate scheme of background checks, federally licensed vendors, state laws, even talk about integrating mental health records and domestic abuse accusations. Whether or not you agree with those laws, they cost our society millions, probably billions of dollars to implement. My _actual_ “thinly veiled” point was that if guns are supposed to be restricted to people who are allowed to have them by all these laws, what’s the point? I was actually pointing out it’s like a bank that has a massive intimidating looking vault door and then a thin screen door around the backside nobody is guarding. It was the moderator injecting their own opinion into what they thought I meant and then coming up with an excuse to dun me. I think the real truth is Colibri believes the USA justice system is good. He doesn’t listen to mere “facts” like incarceration and crime rates. So he disagreed with my post and found a way to dun me. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/52 "2015-12-09T05:23:35Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > That he quoted the post that got warmed means that he knew of the violation. Facts not in evidence. The post he quoted was Post #6. The post with the warning was Post #16. We know that he read Post #6 because he quoted it; we have no evidence one way or the other about whether he read Post #16. If he read Post #6 and immediately hit the quote button in order to respond to it, without reading the rest of the thread first, then he could quite easily have missed the warning in Post #16. I’ve done it plenty of times. I don’t always read the whole thread before responding to a specific post. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/53 "2015-12-09T05:25:14Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I think, actually, that the most problematic warning in the thread you’re talking about wasn’t the one given to you; it was the one given to **race\_to\_the\_bottom**. Emphasis mine. > > If the post deserves a warning by itself, that’s fine. But the highlighted section is completely unfair. I have, on literally hundreds of occasions, been reading through a thread, come to a post i wanted to respond to, and hit the “Quote” button without reading the rest of the thread. _Ignorantia juris non excusat_. So it goes with moderation. Yeah, if you don’t bother to read the whole thread, that’s on you, or what’s the point of moderation to keep threads on track? Anyone can come in a day later, reply to an inflammatory early post, and claim not to have read the rest of the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/54 "2015-12-09T05:27:31Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Facts not in evidence. > > The post he quoted was Post #6. The post with the warning was Post #16. We know that he read Post #6 because he quoted it; we have no evidence one way or the other about whether he read Post #16. > > If he read Post #6 and immediately hit the quote button in order to respond to it, without reading the rest of the thread first, then he could quite easily have missed the warning in Post #16. I’ve done it plenty of times. I don’t always read the whole thread before responding to a specific post. Possibly. That’s how I interpret Colbri’s description. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/55 "2015-12-09T05:35:44Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > _Ignorantia juris non excusat_. So it goes with moderation. Yeah, if you don’t bother to read the whole thread, that’s on you, or what’s the point of moderation to keep threads on track? Anyone can come in a day later, reply to an inflammatory early post, and claim not to have read the rest of the thread. That’s precisely why, if the post deserved a warning by itself, as **Colibri** claims, he should have just given it a warning without the useless addendum about the poster having seen the prior warning. Anyway, as i’ve made clear, the biggest problem is not the warning itself, but the arbitrary and capricious nature of **Colibri** ’s inconsistency from thread to thread, within a small space of time. But _sic semper erat, et sic semper erit_. See, i can insert pointless latinisms too! ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/56 "2015-12-09T05:38:46Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > 1. I’m saying that a cop stating a defendant committed a crime is usually all the proof a court needs. This is a fact. It is not a fact. It’s not even in the same zip code as correct. There has to be evidence presented. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/57 "2015-12-09T05:39:25Z")
And _my point_ is you shouldn’t have a scheme where you silence people who run slightly afoul of arbitrary and capricious rules one too many times. It has a chilling effect on the whole community among other problems. None of the moderators have gotten back to be to justify why they banned the 4 names I came up with. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/58 "2015-12-09T05:44:01Z")
No one owes you an explanation. And if it chills off topic political commentary and editorializing in GQ, wonderful! ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/59 "2015-12-09T05:44:42Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > It is not a fact. It’s not even in the same zip code as correct. There has to be evidence presented. The testimony of the officer witnessing the crime _is_ evidence. Modern judicial theory says the “finder of fact” (usually the jury) can weigh how much they “believe” the testimony given, discounting all of one party’s testimony pretty much on a whim. So if you have a case where the officer says, in that matter of fact tone that cops use, “I’m officer Jenkins and I saw him (points of the defendant) commit the crime on (checks his notes) this date and time. I specifically saw (gives his account).” The accused says, looking stressed and flustered as he is facing losing his freedom, “I didn’t do it, here’s what actually happened, \.” The jury can and usually will dismiss everything the accused said (he’s lying, he has an incentive to lie) and generally will trust everything cops say (they are paid to tell the truth, honorable, a cop saved me from a car crash once, etc etc etc). They will vote guilty and the justices will uphold this conviction as being “beyond a reasonable doubt”. From a scientific perspective, this isn’t beyond a reasonable doubt. The cop could have just lied or been mistaken about what they witnessed. Happens a huge percentage of the time, some studies suggest it happens 40% or more. But this is how it is. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880/60 "2015-12-09T05:48:18Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > No one owes you an explanation. And if it chills off topic political commentary and editorializing in GQ, wonderful! They owe the community an explanation. I am not the only poster who has noticed a large number of banned individuals in old threads. Kind of like if you were in a government bureau in Stalinist Russia and noticing that hundreds of people used to occupy the place where you work and have been executed in various purge waves. You might question the state’s account as to why they were executed : it’s one thing to find a few people as traitors, it’s another for there to be hundreds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colibris-political-moderation/739880.md?page=4)