I disagree [about the moderation of this post in Elections]

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http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19737420#post19737420
Jonathan Chance
The Moderator Speaks
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrDeth View Post
Continuing your trumping for Trump, I see?
DrDeth, I am giving you a warning for this and previous posts in which you accuse Damuri Ajashi of being untruthful about supporting Trump.

I’m giving it for being a jerk - and you’ll see that on the warning - but I could easily give it for a sideways accusation of lying. When Damuri Ajashi says he’s not for Trump you should take him at his word and not continue to accuse him of doing so. Especially not in the post I’ve quoted above. That one has no content other than to make the accusation."

The forum is Elections. In my opinion, due to his constant attacks on Hillary Clinton, and general lack of similar attack on trump, it does appear Damuri Ajashi is supporting Trump.

I dont see how saying someones *posts * appear to support a opponent in Elections is “being a jerk”.

sideways accusation of lying? Since when has it been against the rules to point out that a members posts contradict his claims? Whether or not Damuri Ajashi will actually vote for Clinton on Nov 8th is his business, but his constant attacking of Clinton actually and substantially equates to supporting Trump.

The forum again is “elections”.

I protest this warning, which is unprecedented for Elections forum.

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Thread title edited to more clearly indicate the topic. Please use descriptive thread titles.

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Your portrayal here of your posts…

…does not match what you actually said in that thread.

I don’t moderate that forum, of course. But just a straight reading of your posts in that thread don’t come off as some innocent point about your perception of someone else’s posts. Your posts read to me as clearly claiming that he’s lying by claiming to affiliate himself with a political party. And not in some civil, “I want to debate whether your claims are true” manner, either.

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I read it the same way. It’s clearly an accusation of lying, not even a thinly veiled one.

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I’ve had a fair amount of disagreement with Chance’s moderation before, but this one is spot on. Instead of arguing with Damuri’s points directly, you continually argued with his sincerity, accusing him of misrepresenting his own beliefs. That sort of shit is really annoying in Great Debates or Elections. If you think someone is not arguing in good faith–which is the only reading of your words I can find–that’s what the Pit is for.

Perhaps a note would have been in order, if that’s the first time you’ve engaged in this sort of activity. Was it the first time? Would a note have sufficed to get you to knock it off?

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As I said, I awarded it for the ‘Being A Jerk’ reason, though I think I could have used ‘Accusation of Lying’.

Let’s review the timeline.

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10/26/16 Damuri Ajashi starts a thread. Back and forth occurs with posters both pro- and anti-Hillary. No real surprise, there.

10/26/16 1:30PM. DrDeth, you make your first post in the thread with post #23. You also make post #24 and #25, all supporting Hillary. Well and good.

10/27/16 Post #52. Here we begin to go off the rails. In response to a post by Damuri Ajashi in which he uses the construction ‘we’ in referring to how many congressional seats the D have to flip to take the house you go with, "What you mean “we”? You dont support the Democrats. "

10/27/16 Post #53. The very next post, one minute following post #52, you again take objection to DA’s use of ‘we’ in another post. You appear to claim he is attacking Hillary and not a supporter of hers.

10/27/16 Post #60. DA takes exception to your characterization of him. He does the same in post #61 about your post #53. He raises the idea of whether you believe that ‘you can’t be a Democrat unless you loooove Hillary?’

10/28/16 Post #72. You respond to DA with some verbage and agree that D supporters should "Sure, during the Primary you support your favorite. But afterwards, you put your big boy pants on and support the Parties and People’s favorite- like Sanders did.

**Right now, you are campaigning for Trump. **Dont give me this “we” stuff."

10/29/16 Post #75. In this post you respond to something DA said in response to Procrustus with just the simple attack of ‘Continuing your trumping for Trump, I see?’

10/29/16 Post #76. DA objects to your characterization of him as campaigning for Trump and asks if you are accusing him of lying.

10/29/16 Post #77. DA reminds you that the thread is not in the BBQ Pit. He also reiterates his position that it is possible to be critical of Hillary while not supporting Trump.

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Commentary: This was a relatively benign thread for the most part, DrDeth, until you decided to avoid addressing the topic of the thread and start discussing - one might say attacking - the character of the OP. Your posts could be considered jerkish and a hijack of the thread. In addition, you’re clearly saying that you believe he’s lying about his position vis-a-vis Hillary and Trump. Beyond that, you then accuse him of actively campaigning for Trump, something nowhere in the record of the thread.

You didn’t say his posts were supporting Trump - as you characterize it - instead you made a direct claim that he, himself, is supporting Trump. Here’s the pull quote:

“Right now, you are campaigning for Trump.” Your emphasis.

Should you believe someone is being disingenuous or arguing in bad faith you have several options. You may report their post and make the argument that they are arguing in bad faith or trolling for effect. You may also start a BBQ Pit thread about them and take them to task there with a politely worded post that points out you have done so.

You may even choose to ignore them as a waste of time and disengage from the thread.

What you do not get to do is spend several posts over the course of three days continually attacking another poster’s character and truthfulness. Such things aren’t really allowed in either Great Debates or Elections and you’ve been around long enough to know this. Multiple other posters in the thread were able to debate and participate in the thread - even in direct opposition to Damuri Ajashi’s central thesis - without resorting to personal attacks. It shouldn’t have been that hard for you to do so as well.

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I honestly don’t understand what’s so hard about Pitting someone in that kind of instance, vs. being warned, then coming here and caviling about it.

[Then again, often the Pittee will not show up in the Pit thread started in his honor…]

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Not everyone enjoys a pittee party.

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Look, if Damuri Ajashi claims he is voting for Hillary, then I believe him. He personally may be a great guy, the salt of the earth and a die hard Democrat. However, his *posts *are a different thing.

But I think we can agree this is a two candidate race, yes?

If your posts do nothing but attack candidate A, then in effect your posts are campaigning for candidate B. Those are a standard feature, they are called 'attack ads".

I wasnt attacking Damuri Ajashi, I was attacking his *posts. *

I do want to point out the first line of the OP: Hillary’s coattails suck.
*I have never voted for a Clinton in my life and I hate that I have to this time around. Sure, she is competent but that can be said for half the agency heads in government (and almost 10% of the politicians). Competnecy is nothing special. Sure she is experienced, but so was Bill Richardson who ran in 2008. So is Joe Biden. So are a lot of people. Being experienced is nothing special there are literally dozens of people who are experienced enough to make Hillary’s resume look a little weak. What Hillary has over all these people is name recognition and we THOUGHT electability. We THOUGHT she had coattails…The list of “potential” candidates was a mile long but Hillary sucked up all the oxygen in the room and didn’t leave any room for competition. She also has a reputation for being vindictive and vengeful and people backed off rather than piss off the Clinton machine…Nobody has a bigger mountain of shit than Hillary…Nah, there’s plenty of stuff she’s done in the last 20 years. That’s when she made most of her money and deleted most of her emails…Paid speeches to wall street.Deleted emails after being subpoenaed…
If being first lady is an “office” (it was certainly one of the most important parts of her resume when she ran the first time), then oshe is not always popular when in office. She wasn’t even particularly popular when she was senator of NY. Just kind of meh…People care what she said during those speeches. And it is now becoming clear that she thought that the answer to fixing wall street should come from wall street. Or at least that is what she told wall street. It is becoming clear that she wanted open borders and free trade, at least that is what she told banks in Brazil…Bernie hurt her because it revealed to many Democrats that Hillary is a 1980’s Republican. DNC hurt her because it made everyone realize that the primary process might have been fixed and everyone else was boxed out…What she did with her emails at the State department would have gotten anyone else fired, some of those things were beyond foot faults or minor ethical breaches (particularly deleting emails (or wiping them with a cloth) after the subpoena). Nothing bogus about that…Aaaand, thats not what she said to the Brazilian bank during her paid speech…She told them she wanted free trade and open borders in the Americas. Was she lying then or is she lying now?.."

**A constant steam of attacks upon Clinton. **

So, no matter who he is voting for these *posts *support Trump. That’s simply a political reality.

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Sure. Imagine if, instead, you’d written:

I’d still think this was somewhat jerkish, but the accusation of lying would be absent. In that case, I’d have supported a mod-note but probably not a warning.

However, this emphasis on posts, not person, is new to this ATMB thread. It was absent in your posts in Elections.

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I don’t like Hillary Clinton. Nonetheless I absolutely despise Trump. Attacking one candidate is not equivalent to support of the other, two-horse race or not. You should take the guy at his word rather than continually implying he’s a liar.

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You are correct that would have been better, I admit.

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I support the “don’t be a jerk” rule but I feel that there has been an unworkable expansion of the policy prohibiting calling other posters liars. The broad interpretation that occurs in some cases makes it impossible to debate an issue.

The rule used to be, as I understood it, that you couldn’t post “X is a liar.” Then it became that you couldn’t post “The claim that X posted is a lie” because while it was attacking the post, it implied X was a liar for having made the post.

Now it’s reaching the point where you have to be careful saying something like “The idea that two times three equals seven is not true” without even mentioning names. Because if somebody has made that claim, even in a different thread, then by challenging his claim, you’re implying he’s a liar for having made it.

I don’t want to reach the point where we have to write posts like “I am of the opinion that the Earth is round and I believe that’s true. But other people on this board may have the opinion that the Earth is flat and believe they are right just like I believe I am right.”

Now I realize we haven’t reached that point. But there have been instances of disquieting moderation recently. Nine times out of ten, you can just go ahead and post what you’re thinking without worrying. But on the tenth time, a moderator will decide to interpret things differently and you’ll get a warning.

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I agree. But Left Hand of Dorkness also has a point. We need to make it more clear. I thought I was perfectly clear, but apparently not.

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The idea that this is problematic is not true.

See what I did there? Report my post, let’s see what happens.

I got mod-noted years ago for using the word “falsehood.” I wrote an irritated post informing the mod that the word didn’t connote deliberate deception, merely meant the opposite of a true fact. Fortunately for me (IIRC, I may be wrong), I looked the word up before posting that. Turns out the word DOES connote deception. Which sucks, because I don’t think English has an antonym for “fact.” “Fiction” comes close, but also indicates deliberate authorship.

However, I regularly claim that someone’s statements in GD and Elections are not true, and people regularly make such claims about me, and Tomndebb makes such claims about people, without moderator action. This is not a problem area, as far as I can tell.

The problem is when statements are made about a person, indicating dishonest motives on their part. I’d be fine with stricter moderation around this issue (mod notes, natch), because speculating about your opponent’s motives is rarely productive to good debate.

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Damuri Ajashi’s posts remind me of the anti-Trump or anti-Clinton commercials. Sure they don’t support any candidate and so skirt election laws but in this de facto two-party country it’s hard to see them be anti-candidate and not think they are really pro-other candidate.

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“Counterfactual”?

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I really don’t think that’s the case. Here’s the text of the rule, first by Tom, then later clarified by MEBuckner.

MEBuckner’s clarification dates from January, 2008. So it’s not like this interpretation is at all new.

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JC, None of those things you quoted cover the situation detailed here, where someone accused someone of doing something they previously claimed they didn’t do. They all cover variations of calling something a lie or liar, just using different words.

I don’t agree with DrDeth on much, but I think he’s right about how this board used to be moderated. Warnings were for clear rule violations. Notes were used first for anything less than clear, and then a Warning for not following mod directions if that happened.

It seems to me that tomndebb’s claim that mods don’t like handing out Warnings is untrue, since you seem to jump to them all the time.

A Warning is not merely a warning. It is an official infraction. If you get enough of them in a short period of time, you will be suspended or banned. They aren’t a light thing to hand out.

Yet, it seems to me that you hand them out more than any other moderator. People who used to never have any Warnings now have them from you. And people who had Warnings but learned from them long ago have Warnings from you.

And it seems to me that this tendency to hand out Warnings in more situations is the cause of at least 50% of the higher number of ATMB threads about your moderation. (And it’s not just because you moderate GD, as tomndebb gets fewer ones.)

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No, that is not correct. First of al, how do you presume to have seen all of his posts? And even if he only posted negative stuff about Clinton, this election is, if nothing else, characterized by people who are unhappy with both candidates for whatever reason. Trump gets soooooo much criticism on this MB that it might seem redundant to add to it.

"What you mean “we”? You don’t support the Democrats. "

That is attacking him, not his posts. Otherwise, you would have said “your posts don’t support the Democrats”. Instead you said “you don’t support the Democrats”.