I object to my warning in "United States and Israel are bombing Iran"

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1

In the P&E thread regarding the attack on Iran that has occurred this weekend, What_Exit issues the following guidance;

To me, this appears to be an acknowledgement that this is a general purpose thread for discussion of the attacks and matters related to it.

There are a couple of other notes from What_Exit and ParallelLines instructing posters to steer away from certain topics that could potentially hijack the thread, to wit; its effect on the stock market, ongoing peace negotiations, the history of US declarations of war, and an aside about Jeffrey Epstein, as presented below.

None of these notes resulted in a warning.

User Eric1 then commented about a recent 60 Minutes story about how Iranians were friendly to foreign tourists, which prompted me to comment on a similar video I had seen, which I linked, since I assumed he’d want to see it.

This resulted in me receiving a warning from What_Exit.

None of the other supposedly off-topic posts in this thread, several of which lasted much longer and involved several more posters, merited a warning. Why does this exchange, between the two of us, warrant one? Per your own previous guidance, this is a thread in which “discussions can range around the subject as long as it doesn’t become a distraction”. There was no previous indication that this particular branch of discussion was forbidden or that it should be avoided. It doesn’t appear to have hijacked the thread in any way since the discussion was limited to the two of us. I strongly object to your declaration that you’re “not sure how you could possibly think this was relative to the thread in any way”, as the fact that war has now broken out between the US and Iran is clearly relevant to the ability of Americans to travel peacefully to Iran, and it’s worth noting that the Iranian people are generally friendly to American travelers in a discussion of war between our countries.

I believe this warning was improperly issued and I am requesting that it be retracted.

2

What you quoted out of context was in reply to this:

I was addressing the breaking-news tag question. My statement was in no way, any hijacks are permitted. Your series of posts were way off-topic for a Politics & Elections thread.

It will not be retracted.

3

None of the other posts you noted received a warning, and they continued for several posts longer than the discussion Eric1 and I were having.

Why were they not warned? What makes our discussion “way off-topic” and worthy of a warning, when you used no such intensifier for the previous notes, and gave no previous notice that such a topic was off-topic?

For that matter, now that you’ve editied the thread to hide my post of the video, why is it that only my post with the link to the video is hidden, and not the three posts that lead up to it?

How is travel by US citizens to Iran “way off-topic” to a thread about the US bombing Iran?

4

Politics and elections are all about winning hearts and minds and that is what those quite interesting posts were about. The friendliness of the average Iranian to foreigners is extremely relevant to the discussion.

5

Maybe, just maybe, this might have something to do with it,

but, clearly, that’s crazy talk.

6

I agree with you - I thought it at the time I read the exchange. A discussion of the nature of the Iranian people, and their warmth towards foreigners, is pretty relevant to a discussion about a U.S. war with Iran.

Even if it strayed slightly, it was hardly a hijack; those usually occur when a people start to argue about collateral issues not germane to the thread. Here, it was a follow up to a relevant point, and it wasn’t a belabored one.

7

Since I prompted this thread, I think I could have easily brought up my travel ideas in Cafe Society. It wasn’t meant to be a heavy theme the way I wrote it.

8

But they all got notes, so generally a Warning comes when the guidance by the notes is seemingly ignored.

9

Speaking as another P&E moderator, we elevate to warnings when we see that our notes have had no effect on the conduct of some posters.

Some often hijack threads with little regard to what the actual topic of the thread is.

@Smapti, you are such a one.

When you do it a lot, we notice, and we escalate our corrective measures. Please pay attention to the topic in P&E/GD threads, and make sure you are keeping close to it in your contributions.

10

@Smapti - I specifically am being more aggressive in this thread as a result of the moderation difficulties in the ICE shootings thread in which you picked up the recent warning.

I don’t think I’m going to be alone in seeing the pattern: a heavily emotionally charged political thread, lots of slowly updating news, and tons of sub/side topics springing up in the lack of definitive information.

In that thread, we (the collective mods) allowed a fair bit of topic drift, which when we tried to rein it in, got a lot of pushback, and resulted in a nearly endless stream of mod notes, which were, collectively ignored or forgotten until we finally started handing out warnings.

So for this new thread, I at least have been quite active (IRL permitting) in trying to keep it on track, trying to prevent the situation in the ICE shooting thread from rearing it’s ugly head again.

As for the specific hijack, I can fully grant your intent was, as stated in this OP -

But look at that entire statement - you’re sharing something you think Eric1 would like. That’s cool, but it’s NOT about the current conflict. It’s perhaps tangentially related, in terms of general attitudes as @Moriarty asserted (though a pair of specific individuals interaction isn’t exactly a demographic trend), but what his comments miss is that we’ve had the first OT/tangential post, then Eric1’s response, then your follow up and then if unmoderated, a full blow sidetrack. I’m not ascribing any willfulness in trying to drag it off topic, but it absolute was contributing to a substantial distraction.

But this result shouldn’t be a surprise - your own cites of the heavy moderation in thread works against you. We were moderating for sidetracks, sidejacks, and hijacks EARLY, which should be a very strong indication we were taking it seriously - not getting warnings for the first few was our (more or less usual) consideration that we knew this topic would be challenging, but that you needed to stop. It should not be a surprise that later efforts to take the thread off-topic after all the mentions you cited wouldn’t pull more severe moderation.

By my count, there had already been four (!) mod notes at that point about various off-topic posts in roughly 24 hours. There’s always a tendency if we don’t @ you by name in a mod-note to think it doesn’t apply to you, but notes are frequently used to address problems we moderators see in a thread, even if we’re sometimes using specific posters/posts to emphasize the point.

Lastly - you discuss @What_Exit moderating the thread about not being a “breaking-news” thread, but seem to miss a different clause in that mod-note:

“As long as it doesn’t become a distraction” is the clause you should pay attention too. The back and forth between you and Eric1 absolutely qualified. Again, not ascribing ill intent, but it was becoming a distraction.

11

It seems to me that my posting the video was logically the end of that particular conversation. The conversation was not.at risk of being derailed, and it was shorter and involved fewer posters than the asides that had been noted.

12

I have sometimes posted a reply assuming it would end a line if discussion, but inevitably it doesn’t turn out that way.

13

It was very off topic and assumptions are often incorrect.

As someone that keeps running afoul of our highjacking rules, I strongly suggest you err on the side of caution.

14

It is very rare that “the last word on the subject” actually turns out to be the last word on the subject, though.

15

This happens a lot, I stop myself from posting barely related thoughts daily for this reason.

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I really don’t see how. As Elmer_J.Fudd points out above;

My intent in mentioning the video and then posting it was to show how the Iranian people, unlike their government, are generally friendly and kind to foreigners, including the specific kind of people their government explicitly hates (Americans and very visibly Jewish people). That seems to me to be extremely relevant to a thread where regime change and the future of the Iranian government are topics of discussion.

17

I don’t buy that argument. A video that hijacks the thread is often, almost always, a matter of further comment and debate about a side subject to the thread.

18

Back to my last reply to you, err on the side of caution. Clearly you’re out of sync with the staff when it comes to hijacks.

19

It seems to me that I must be. A hijack as I understand it is when a side topic takes over the entire conversation to the point that discussing the ostensible topic of the thread is no longer possible because it’s being drowned out. A late night exchange between two people that lasts a total of four posts, during which the larger conversation continues unimpeded, hardly qualifies. If there was a concern that it could become a hijack, then it seems to me that a note would have been more appropriate to stop it from getting to that point.

20

Which is all fine and well but you didn’t write this rule,