Der Trihs has had eight warnings for similar behavior since early December 2012, or 26 months, or an average of a little over once every three months. The longest stretch he’s had without a warning during that time is 11 months.
The most important criterion with regard to what we do about warnings is whether they result in a change in the poster’s behavior. While he’s sometimes improved over short periods, Der Trihs has pretty much always resumed the same kind of behavior eventually. This kind of long-term pattern of bad behavior which doesn’t respond to correction is what got him suspended.
In addition, Der Trihs’s response to warnings has almost always been to claim bias against him on the part of the mods, and refuse to acknowledge that he might have done anything at all wrong. This doesn’t suggest that he’s ever going to change his behavior.
To expand on this, warnings don’t expire, and we have no internal rule about how many warnings you have to get in a certain period of time to get banned or suspended. Usually we give a lot of warnings before tossing anyone, but that’s a practice, not a policy. Our policy is that, except in extreme cases (as we define them), we’ll warn you before revoking your posting privileges, full stop.
It’s one thing to rack up a lots of warnings for different things over a long time, but lot of warnings for same thing every time, even if it’s over a long time period, is very different (and deserving of a suspension).
supporters use them to show that you’re holding old grudges
You can ban or not ban with or without warnings.
They annoy the posters who have them.
I dont think, for example, that if someone had four warning from five years ago, then a period of Ok postings, then another warning- that those old warning should be “held against them”.
In this case, I agree- pretty much a pattern of warnings.
The modding on this board is very arbitrary. Also you are allowed to be an asshole, you just have to act like a cunty, passive aggressive teenage girl. Being direct backfires and gets you a warning (sometimes).
So for anyone listening here is how to avoid warnings:
Be popular
Be a cunty, passive aggressive asshole instead of a direct asshole
You are factually incorrect, regardless of how you feel. Every single time the topic has been raised, the actual administration of the board (moderators and admins) and the SDSAB folks involved in the discussion have made clear that “SDSAB” designates people that sometimes contribute columns to the main website. This confers no moderation privilege, no special role, no unusual status, “higher” or otherwise, with respect to the message boards.
I can no more issue you an effective warning than I can control the Fed’s interest rate. I have “SDSAB” under my name because I research and write answers to semi-obscure questions submitted online and via e-mail in a pale imitation of Cecil Adams’ inimitable style.
I agree, I have left many a thread because I can’t be bothered with someone who paints everything black and white and wont consider there are grey areas in life.
Warning number 1, Jan 2015: Der characterizes this claim…
and this claim
…as follows:
Der presented a straightforward attack on a fact-free argument via analogy. The “Stated desire for them to starve”, is referenced above. I should post the moderator POV though:
Warning 2, Oct 2013:This one is more interesting, as JC states his POV:
What’s interesting is that no SDMB poster was mentioned in the post. Basically Der was called out because of presentation:
Not so.
I’ve accepted for a while that Der was on a ban-train. But he typically doesn’t engage in direct insults, which is why he has been here for so long. What he usually does is put the motives of conservatives and theists in a bad light. And he occasionally does the same for individual posters. This isn’t a case of stepping over bright lines. It’s a case of, well, overheated rhetoric x300.
Hey, the standard here is jerkitude: attack the post and not the poster is just a helpful guideline. Personally I’d rather have Der around for longer rather than shorter given that he’s generally stayed close to the line rather than over it. But hey again, he’s been here for almost 10 years. Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment/amusement.
More:
OBTW: A time out isn’t going to work. Der has basically always been this way, though to be fair he’s dialed it back some in response to moderator instruction.
Grey? What is this thing you call grey?
Clearly the jackboots have it in for staunch liberals.
FTR, Der has 7 warnings over a number of years. Generally speaking, suspensions last 1 month. Then it’s one strike and you’re out. This policy bums me, but I don’t make the calls and frankly I can understand the basis for it. I just prefer rinse and repeat. Or maybe round numbers: 10 sounds ok for consistently borderline calls. To me, not to TPTB.
I’m really unclear as to how telling Sage Rat he wants poor Greeks to starve isn’t an insult.
I’m pretty sure if I told another poster they clearly fantasized about lynching blacks or firebombing Mosques I’d be immediately warned and quite rightly so for insulting another poster.
Frankly as someone who’s fairly liberal I’ve always found it odd how many other progressives choose to defend his posts when he’s made extremely misogynistic comments about women and expressed views about women I don’t see how any progressive would want to be associated with.
Exactly. It really isn’t any more complicated than that. It’s the same as what I noted in the Pit thread. He claimed that Bricker, since he was a right winger, would support anything that harmed people and oppose anything that would help them.
How is that NOT an insult, unless you are so blindingly partisan that you actually believe it to be true yourself? Maybe that’s what people mean when so many here claim that DT just says what so many of them think, but are reluctant to say. If so, that’s quite an indictment of a certain prevalent mentality on this MB.
Few, if any, poster here get banned because they “typically” do something*. That is, the offending posts are a small fraction of their total. And when you do something “occasionally” over many years, especially when it’s the same thing(s), you rack up quite a history and it’s clear that warnings aren’t doing the trick. I that case, it make sense to step things up a bit.
I know we tend to just bad posters outright, but it seems that if further action needs to be taken, simply banning him form GD (and maybe Elections) might be the way to go. I’ve not encountered him if forums like CS, but he only seems to rack up warnings in the debate forums.
*Those that do are almost always newbies who come in hard-charing to tell us how stupid we all are, and they flame out in a few days.
They have? <checks front page> Holy crap, THEY HAVE! Why wasn’t there an announcement? I stopped checking the front page ages ago. I get the weekly email, click on the link to the main column, and rarely even look at what else has been posted, since I’ve read it all before.
A bit of confusion about SDSAB. SD Staff AB? or SD Science AB?
I always thought it allegedly meant Science, yet we see some SDSAB columns on other-than-science topics. In particular, for example, Bricker and gfactor typically wrote on legal topics (although Bricker has some some science topics lately that I’ve noticed); and Dex wrote a lot on Bible studies. So “SD Science AB” seems a bit insufficiently inclusive.
It still means Science, it always means Science, but the point was that it doesn’t mean ‘staff’ and that people with that title under their username have no more standing with the board than someone with ‘guest’ under their name (or Member/Charter Member for that matter). They just happen to write articles once in a while.
It seems that once every few years we have this discussion. Especially when someone who’s title is SDSAB gets confused for a mod.
