Here, a mod admonishes (not warns) a poster about going off topic, characterizing the post as “attempt[ing] to derail this thread.”
UltraVires’s posted seemed to me to be courteous, very much on-topic, and very much in the vein of what had been discussed in the thread from the beginning.
In fact, this very same mod had, upthread, before engaging as a mod, engaged in the exchange (not as a mod) about whether or not the rightness or wrongness of a given war has any bearing on the rightness or wrongness of evading or avoiding the draft for that war.
It seems borderline. The OP was basically asking about the draft assuming the war being fought was immoral. UltraVires wanted to start a discussion about “well, what if the war is righteous?” and/or “if you want conscription then you can’t let individuals decide the morality of being drafted”.
It was not in the slightest bit a hijack or an attempt to derail the thread. UV made the point that if you allowed for the unjustness of the war to be a valid determinant of the morality of evading the draft, then every draft would be subject to avoidance by people who decided that they personally considered this particular war unjust.
Personally I think you can distinguish between individual morality and what society enforces. But that doesn’t mean that the post was a hijack.
In general, mods have become much more interventionist of late, which is a problem in general but in particular where the mod in question is highly vested in the topic at hand, as indicated by the number of his posts in that thread.
Simple, the thread was specifically about draft avoidance/dodging during Vietnam.
Part of what mods do in GD is to try and keep threads focused on the Op. He started talking about WWII. Thus the intervention. Also, only a note.
Here is the part from the GD rules:
If I felt he was trying to derail the topic on purpose, I would have given a warning.
I see no reason to believe that and so just a note.
As I got ninja’d let me add. We are enforcing rules more that in the past as there is more coverage now. But these rules have existed for the last year.
This is not rational, is not the way the rule has ever been enforced, is not the way it should be enforced, and is not the way it will be enforced going forward. Not by you, not by any other moderators. This was completely arbitrary, and WRT a matter you have strong feelings about.
Even if the discussion is about a specific instance, testing out how principles applied to that situation would apply in other situations is a valid and necessary part of that discussion. That’s how courts work in deciding legal principles, that’s how rational people work in discussing matters IRL, and that’s how people discuss things on this MB. No way around that, if you have any hope of discussing things rationally.
The discussion of the Vietnam draft could be illuminated by comparisons and contrasts to other wars. I don’t generally care what the Mods do around here, (and I mostly agree with them), but this is insanity.
I read his post one more time. Looks like the start of an interesting thread. It doesn’t fit in the one he posted in. The thread in question has a narrow focus. That should be respected.
Your opinion can vary of course. But that’s how I see it.
You’re the mod, you spoke as a mod, it’s a done deal. I get that.
That said, certainly the thread in question has a “narrow focus,” but it seems to me to be self-evident that a thread about the morality of draft avoidance in one war cannot exclude thoughts and questions and references to the morality of conscription in general, and of conscription and avoidance of such conscription in other wars.
I think you’re defining “narrow” way too narrowly.
The thread in question was about whether it was moral to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war. That invites conversation about whether it is always moral or avoid the draft, never moral to avoid the draft, or sometimes moral, depending on factors.
It is impossible to keep the discussion focused on only one war. As seems to be implied in the OP of that thread:
It’s really hard to tell what is thread-derailing and what is simply a relevant prior example or cousin of the thread.
For instance, suppose there is a thread about “Why did U.S. intelligence agencies fail to prevent 9/11” - is it appropriate or not for a Doper to bring up how U.S. intelligence failed to prevent Pearl Harbor, as a way of illustrating why 9/11 also wasn’t prevented?
If you quote a post, then copy-paste the quote to a new thread, the two will automatically link to each other - one of the many wonderful benefits of the move to Discourse. That seems like a particularly elegant way to handle this sort of situation.
It’s more elegant than that. No need to copy and paste. Make a reply that quotes the post, then click the right pointing arrow above the post box, and you can choose the option “Reply as linked topic.”
Agreed. I’m just scratching my head. Back less than a week and I get this ridiculous pile of moderation.
Remember back during the gay marriage debates and people would say something to the effect of how banning gay marriage was like banning interracial marriage? Should those comments have been modded because the topic was gay marriage and not interracial marriage and thus a hijack?
It is a perfectly legit form of debate, to compare and contrast similar things to see if the proposition holds water. The OP in that thread stated that he/she was not opposed to the draft in general, but thought it was okay to skirt the draft for Vietnam. In what universe is it not then okay to point out that if we are going to have a draft, you cannot leave it up to individuals to choose to comply based on their own subjective view of the propriety of the particular war?
IMO, nothing remotely close to this has ever been modded before.
I…agree with Ultravires. Examining the morality of avoiding a draft in general is an appropriate response to examining the morality of avoiding a draft in a specific case.
I suspect Ultravires and I disagree on the outcome of that examination: I think it’s never inappropriate to refuse to take up arms on behalf of a government, when you consider that government’s demands to be immoral. But it’s definitely okay to ask the more general question as a way of addressing the more specific question.