[Moderator Warning]TWEET! Take the highly charged issue of non-believers marrying in a religious setting to Great Debates where it belongs. The OP is asking about appropriate readings for the ceremony.[/Moderator Warning]
[Moderator Warning]All off-topic posts will be infractions.[/Moderator Warning]
“I think the OP did just fine with this clarification of his initial post. I see no reason to go any further down that divisive path in this forum”
“What you need to do is take your questions to ATMB.”
[Official Moderator Warning]I gave the last word on this hijack. Infraction.[/Official Moderator Warning]
Hey, Czarcasm. Just let the nice people talk about what they want to talk about, and stop blowing your little referee’s whistle and shouting “offside”, willya? You’re slowing down the match: you can hand out red cards when they start fouling each other, otherwise the crowd paid to see the game, not you.
Czarcasm, you still haven’t addressed your warning to PunditLisa for supposedly violating your moderator injunction, when in fact she had not violated that injunction. She was replying to the main thread topic directly.
Are you even going to acknowledge that pretty much every poster here thinks you were in error?
This was directly after a couple of recent warnings to drop the religious criticism or take it to Great Debates. Too many posters look for any excuse to find offense, and I had to stop all the “Me too!” posts that would have followed. I had just stopped one hijack-the thread didn’t need another one so soon after the first.
I agree (so now it is two posters). Needing a couple of readings low on dogma does not mean someone should pick up the whole mess and read it cover to cover. I certainly read the post as someone was upset that the OP didn’t place the same value on the book as did PunditLisa. Don’t know if that was the desired effect, but that’s how I came away from it, and it fit right in Czarcasm’s previous warning.
“Dogma, hellfire, and brimstone” was the OP’s description of the material he was trying to avoid. Those were JHE1967’s words.
So I fail to see the religious criticism. What I do see is PunditLisa instructing JHE1967 to read through the Bible and find passages himself. I mean, would you have officially warned PunditLisa if instead of paraphrasing, there was a quote (like I did)? Or are you going to warn me now for religious criticism? I don’t understand your position, and you are not doing a good job of explaining.
Which I pointed out in another thread that has been ignored by the administration of this board.
And now I notice you only cited part of the statement, which emphasizes the “pick up a Bible and read it” part. I gather that you are taking this to suggest a very critical tone on the part of PunditLisa. But you omitted the rest of her post.
That seems to me to cast the tone in a different light.
What if the OP had been about selecting quotes from Shakespeare, and someone said, “You should read some of his work yourself. Something should grab you as appropriate.” Would that be taken as being contentious?
I think you are way off base on this one, I honestly don’t understand your position.
Irishman - bottomline is czar is a mod, he wanted to do what he did, he was able to, and he correctly assumed his fellow mods/admins would back him up.
I think it a (pretty minor) illustration of how things are getting watered down around here - but it doesn’t bother me enough to drive me away.
I’m a little surprised you are still posting about this as the board admin has pretty clearly indicated that they don’t consider this a big deal, and few if any posters consider it terribly important either.
The general public really, really doesn’t like atheists, and we (or at least I) tend to be defensive when the topic comes up, and it affects how I interpret posts like PunditLisa’s. I don’t know PunditLisa (nor the OP); I couldn’t pick their posts out of a line-up, I have no idea on their overall views. I hadn’t prejudged the post based on the poster. I interpreted it as someone who felt scorned because the OP wasn’t taking the book seriously. I acknowledge that it might not have been the intention. I do understand your position - I just don’t think it is the only interpretation.
I probably would have felt the same way had someone been looking for relevant passages out of The Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter books or, as you put, Shakespeare, and gotten the same answer. There’s too much to look for. I would want a targeted search, not a global “read everything”.
I dunno, man. In my mind it has more to do with what we expect/want of “discussions” around here. In whatever forum.
I think posting (and much of life) is more interesting if there is at least some element of “risk.” Risk that a thread you initiate or a post you make will be interpreted differently than you intended, and taken in a different direction entirely. Even in IMHO.
And just because people are expressing opinions about matters related to religion, my preference is that those not necessarily be relegated to GD. But I don’t make or enforce the rules.
It is like in rugby where there is only one ref. He might make a bad call, but he is the ref, the call stands, and the game goes on.
Dinsdale, I’m still posting because I’m confused, and because this event has raised questions in my mind about how this board is moderated.
I am under the impression that the moderators have a separate forum for discussion of moderation, and that if something contentious occurs, they discuss the matters in that forum. Then if there is something in error or needing reevaluation, it can be done.
Unfortunately, I am not seeing any indication of that. This particular incident was significant enough to get several posters’ attention. It has been cited in at least three threads here. We finally get some feedback in this thread after Shodan’s post, but that feedback is hardly explanatory.
And again, let me quote Czarcasm’s post :
Which hijack? The hijack about criticising an atheist getting married in the church? Her post had nothing to do with that!
I also reported the post in the thread itself, and requested review of that action, because I didn’t think it was fair. I have not gotten any feedback on whether that action was reviewed at all, or by whom.
Maybe it was ignored completely and let stand.
Maybe the review was done by Czarcasm, which is hardly a review. It’s certainly not independent, and very unlikely to identify any bias in the action itself, which was my complaint.
Maybe the mods did discuss this at length in the mod forum and agreed with Czarcasm.
Maybe the mods did discuss this at length in the mod forum, and disagreed with Czarcasm, but let his decision stand because of some sense that reversing the action would weaken his authority for little gain, since 1 warning or a few scattered warnings aren’t a big deal, it’s the pattern of warnings that gets punishment.
But the thing is, I have no way of knowing which, if any, of the above is the case. And I have received no feedback - either to the post report or in threads here - as to which is the case.
So I have to wonder, do moderators review the actions of other moderators? Or are moderators left to do whatever they want? It has not been my impression that moderators act in isolation. But here is a situation that to many of us is bizarre and no one has attempted to explain. If I were PunditLisa, I would be confused. Maybe someone did respond to her, but I can’t know that if it was a PM. And I’m still confused. So I’m asking for clarification.
I can understand that the mods want their conversations of moderation private, not in public view, so that they can be free to raise dissenting opinions without the peanut gallery. But being left in the dark as to what, if any, discussion or result has been concluded does not help. It’s more ammo to those who think the mods are jack-booted-thugs stomping all over the poor little posters. It gives them credence, when something so clearly in my mind as an unfair warning is left to stand without being defended, and no feedback to even indicate it was reviewed.
It gets back to the issue of moderation transparency. If the board is trying to advocate moderation transparency, this incident is a textbook example of a lack thereof.
D_Odds said:
A am well-aware of that. I am an atheist as well, and am somewhat sensitive myself to overbearing religiousness. But that isn’t what I see was going on.
Well certainly there is that overtone. But I don’t see the relevance. The original warning in that thread was about people judging the OP for daring to have a Catholic wedding he didn’t believe in, and thereby sullying Catholism and Catholics in general. Well, PunditLisa’s post did not go there. It directly addressed the concern of the OP, that the readings might be too overbearing (“Hellfire and brimstone” was the op’s description) by someone who feels Catholic weddings aren’t like that anyway. That part was directly on target, a direct reaction to the words of the OP, and was not judgmental about the OP being an Atheist or daring to have a religous ceremony.
“Read the book” was a suggestion, admittedly a bit defensive, to look for himself. But when has defensiveness been against the rules?
I totally agree the suggestion was unhelpful and unrealistic. Unless PunditLisa is of the opinion one should be able to open the Bible at random and find something inspirational (or at least acceptable) within a page or two, it is totally ridiculous. The whole point of asking for suggestions is that one is not familiar enough with the lengthy work to pull out material on one’s own.
It would be like asking, “What’s Hermione’s best comeback in the Harry Potter series?” and getting told “just read the books yourself, you’ll find something you like”. Not helpful at all, but how is that against the rules? How did that violate the previous moderator direction to the thread?
And in that same thread you have people posting suggestions like
Wallenstein recommending a verse about lovers with donkey genitals and the emission of horses.
Or this post by Dinsdale:
This was posted after Czarcasm’s warning to the thread as well. How come that didn’t get a warning? It is clearly not what the OP requested, and as a reading for a wedding comes off as a heavy-handed criticism of the whole process.
Now I’m not saying these deserve warnings, but they are far more disrespectful and intrusive than what PunditLisa said, and not any more helpful.
PunditLisa was unfairly and mistakenly singled out.
Yes, PunditLisa is repeating the OP’s words (fire and brimstone, etc) but she is clearly repeating them with incredulity, which is emphasized by the following words (Dude, what Catholic church were you raised in?)
How such comments can be regarded as on topic I fail to understand. It’s hardly surprising that an infraction was given after Czarcasm’s previous warning to posters to confine their remarks to answering the OP’s question.
But the OP specifically stated being raised in a Catholic church. And that comment was not a criticism of an atheist getting married in a catholic church or catholic ceremony. It was just a reaction to the idea that scripture chosen for a wedding might have that characteristic.
My comment re fire and brimstone is akin to someone from the U.S. (as opposed to Australia) asking for advice about Florida and saying, “I’m hoping to avoid snowstorms.” If I’m not allowed to express surprise at something so innocuous without drawing an infraction, then we really have gotten way too thin-skinned around here.
I had read the admonition by Czarcasm to stay on topic, and honestly believed that I was staying on topic. You can certainly debate the merits of my answer, but I don’t think anyone can reasonably conclude that I wasn’t staying on topic.
I thought, and still think, that the OPer was doing himself a disservice by not making more of an effort to choose words meaningful to him vs. just fielding suggestions from a bunch of strangers who have no idea who he is or what he’s about. And, that, folks, was my ENTIRE agenda. Nothing to do with religion, or even the Bible, except indirectly.
Finally, thanks to everyone who has come to my defense here. I truly appreciate it. After some reflection, I still don’t believe I earned an infraction, but I’m old enough to live with a small injustice here or there. The Moderators have a largely thankless job, a job I don’t want, and I appreciate the work that they do, even if occasionally I think maybe they need a beer. Or five.