I am so happy Dio is gone. If he wasn’t a troll he was the functional equivalent of one.
He had a way of derailing/trolling/threadshitting many threads he got interested in. And I honestly did not give a fuck that he had a different opinion than me.
But he would get on a roll with his posting style, the shit would hit the fan, and in the end the mods would close the thread.
They NEVER would just tell him to knock it the fuck off because somehow he was technically just on this side of the line. And they wouldn’t even TRY to use “the jerk” rule.
They finally banned him for other technical violations but still. It was like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Except in this case “the feds” apparently didn’t give a rat’s ass about the actual crimes.
Hell, I remember once me (or somebody else?) threatened to start posting/responding like Dio in threads and me/we were told that if me/we did me/we would get in trouble for doing so!
WTF?
Hey, I have no trouble with someone having a difference of opinion.
But, if their posting style/shtick is so bad and common that its stinking up otherwise reasonable threads the mod need to invoke the damn “don’t be a jerk rule”.
Sure, that happens. But not to the degree that Der Trihs suggests: virtually nobody secretly hates women but lies to himself and claims he opposes abortion for other reasons. People that oppose abortion generally oppose it for the reasons they claim to oppose it for. I think those reasons are based on flawed premises and lead to unethical conclusions, but I don’t think it’s fair to say they’re arguing in bad faith. Same thing applies to folks who support the Iraq War: it’s not out of hatred for brown people, but rather out of genuine (however IMO misguided) convictionsabout international policy.
In any case, I doubt anyone in history has been persuaded to stop deceiving themselves because someone called them a lying nutjob. Doesn’t happen.
Seriously, although the occasional bit of clever snark can spice up the board, too many folks use snark as a substitute for substantive argument. If your (generic your) posting strategy is to say clever things about your opponent, or to impugn their honesty or intelligence, or to twist their words into something obviously stupid, it’d be better if you didn’t bother.
I agree with this statement. The specifics of the action that is getting mod noted is a distraction. We have a situation where a single poster repeatedly gets mod notes for the same behavior. That suggests that the poster’s pattern of behavior needs adjustment.
Mostly addressed already. Mod Notes are primarily used to head off rules violations, prevent disruptions, guide conversations. However, they are occassionally used to indicate a rules violation that either in context is not felt to be intentional or very strong, or else perhaps the person was not aware or unclear of the rule. Mod notes in general are not tracked (AFAIK). However, failing to comply with a Mod Note instruction will lead to warnings. And while a mod may give a mod note in one thread and not see a different note in a different thread by another moderator*, they may still remember notes they have themselves previously given on that topic.
I would suggest that if one poster frequently posts remarks that are potential inflammatory hijacks, that the source of the problem is not with people who take the bait, the source of the problem is that poster’s pattern of behavior. Just like Ibn Warraq points out from his own situation.
I don’t have an axe to grind here. I don’t participate in GD much and do not have any history with Der Tris. This seems to me to be a somewhat jerkish pattern of behavior that is skirting the explicit rules. In the aggregate, it is still jerkish.
Wait, so you are chewing Tom out for trying to make the enforcement more explicit and transparent? :smack:
Underlined for emphasis. People may have misguided convictions about international policy that are rooted in a hatred of brown people, but it is still the convictions that drive their position on that topic. Pointing out that underlying root to their positions may be useful/relevant, but not by doing so in the most obnoxious way possible. And often it is a hijack.
Unless they bring up their hatred of ‘brown people’ in the thread, it’s definitely a hijack to just spout off about it. It’s an assumption (that Der has made in the past, since ‘brown people’ and folks supposed hatred of them is one of his often used phrases) that brings nothing to the debate but simply throws more hydrogen on the bonfire for no real reason other than to reinforce his own world view and paint all folks who oppose him as crazy, bigoted, fanatical, deluded liars. That he really believes it is obvious, but shouldn’t excuse his actions.
Back the mod truck up a bit. I posted that in response to a post that occurred well before your mod instructions (and before I read your “direction”).
But, again I will note. You mods need to actually use the “don’t be a jerk rule” a bit more often.
My impression is this:
Some new person. They are a jerk a few times and bam the fuckers are banned for life.
Somebody whose been here awhile? They get complained about to the PTB and pitted so often its a fucking joke and TPTB all of a sudden start the handwringing and freedom of speech and difference of opinion debate begins till hell freezes over.
Seriously.
Can you guy’s not actually tell a long term problematic poster to stop that shit and actually mean it?
Indeed. I try to think of calls of racism as something of a knockout punch, if the debate is on substance: rather than starting with that call, you need to totally destroy all the person’s arguments before ending with, “…and THAT’s why you’re a racist, you sonofabitch!”
Maybe the poster here that some folks are complaining about follows the same pattern of past problematic posters and the mods response is the same as in the past?
THATS my point.
“You can” yes.
You do? Some folks here seem to think not. That’s why there is this thread in the first place.
How complicated is this? The whole point of this is somebody KEEPS doing stuff bad enough that the mods have to do “something” about. But all these mod notes never seem to add up and or actually get the target of the mod notes to knock off that shit.
Wildly implausible given that their words don’t match their actions. And that they are the same people who are misogynistic in general, not just on the subject of abortion.
Because it’s not like America has any history of racism towards brown people, right?
I don’t see any virtue in bending over backwards trying to pretend that people are nicer than they are. On the contrary, I’ve seen that attitude in America lead the Democrats to disaster after disaster with the Republicans because of their long term refusal to admit what kind of people the Right are. And history is full of millions of people acting out of irrational hatred, not just being “well meaning but misguided”.
It’s kind of ironic how some people are willing to accuse me of irrational hatred for talking on a message board, but are unwilling to admit that irrational hatred might be the motive of activists who actually go out and harass & hurt people.
…except that many people think YOU are one of the misogynistic people. Are the folks who think you’re misogynistic liars? idiots? Or maybe they’ve got a different way of analyzing misogyny than you have? If it’s the latter, isn’t it plausible that abortion opponents also have a different way of analyzing misogyny?
Not relevant. We also have a history of pushing a civil liberty agenda in other nations, but I don’t accept the arguments of folks who say war opponents are fans of Saddam Hussein.
Before you sneer at the failures of Democrats, can you point to any success that you have had with your approach?
Hatred and harm-causing are realted, sure, but they honestly are not always on a one-to-one correspondence. It’s perfectly reasonable to accuse you of harmless hatred, and to accuse abortion opponents of a very harmful idea of love.
