“Really stupid”, you say? Is that the Voice of Calm Reason speaking? Or am I not allowed to ask such an impertinent question on this site? The friend who told me of this place warned me that this site had taken a giant and ugly stride towards “gratuitous, community-disrespecting authoritarianism” recently, and after only one post, I see that his statement was not without evidence.
That was my sole post in that thread. In fact, it was my only post until I started a General Questions thread today before seeing this authoritarian warning against “really stupid” comments. Pray tell where the Great Debate rules specify that comments critical of a political party are forbidden or are at least worthy of an insulting “warning” in a Great Debate thread in which the public statement from a major member of said political party is being directly debated and criticised? While you’re at it, can you tell me how I can determine “really stupid” critical comments from “non-stupid” or “less-stupid” ones? Can you cite me chapter and verse, please? If all you have is “don’t be a jerk”, then I submit that the same charge can be made against the originator of the “really stupid” insult against me. If the entire post was off-topic, of if I had established some long history of jerkitude that might be one thing, but that was simply not the case and Tom and Debbie both know it.
It’s a sad and pointless place to be or remain where even the very first not-unintelligent post of a potential new member receives the back of the Welcoming Committee’s hand for his trouble. I’d heard this Ed Zottie/Cecil Adams guy had suddenly decided to, say, consistently dress his torso in brown forever henceforth, but I wasn’t warned that he’d started such a trend among the rest of the moderators. Or at least the moderators who didn’t have the grace, self-honesty, and intestinal fortitude to quit outright.
Your comment, “While Grassley’s point is valid as is the anger behind it, it’s pretty ironic coming from a member of the Party of Deliberately Dubious Business Ethics, more commonly known as the GOP” was indeed a stupid potshot. However, I don’t think the board rules protect political parties from such things, only other posters, and in that, I think, Tom erred.
Board rules are separate from forum rules. The debates forum is a debate forum. If you don’t want to debate, you just want to rag on something, there’s another forum for that.
True, I don’t see that rule posted anywhere, but it seems fairly obvious just from the name of the forum.
It’s not so obvious to me. Complete outsider here, can’t remember that I ever posted in it (which may explain my ignorance of the local customs). But I swear, as Bo is my witness, I always thought one of the points of the Great Debates forum was that you’re quite free to take sideswipes at political parties there (as opposed to General Questions where I know you expressly can’t).
I thought the “long-running discussions of the great questions of our time” were mostly fueled by blaming other parties and bickering at their flaws. Like politicians in a TV “debate”. Apparently that’s not the case, but the point is that I obviously didn’t know.
May we need another sticky thread with rules?
Well I certainly think it was undignified to shout like that.
Welcome to the board, marko. I’m not sure if you read the entire thread before posting, but in posts 46 and 54 (two posts before yours), tomndebb had asked people to take the partisan sniping out of that thread because it was not contributing to the discussion. I don’t moderate in Great Debates, but the mods do that sometimes because that type of post - while it definitely isn’t prohibited - can bog down otherwise interesting discussion.
That is the case. But getting up and shouting, “Reps is doodyheads!” isn’t bickering at flaws, unless you know something I don’t. “Irresponsible with money” is a flaw. “Their mamas wear army boots” isn’t really.
Gratuitous swipes are permitted in Great Debates as part and parcel of the sort of emotional responses that arguments about politics, religion, behavioral science, economics, and other topics engender.
However, they have the nasty habit of drawing out similar emotional responses from posters on the “opposite side” of any of these imaginary lines. The topic was not, initially, “How have the Republicans or Democrats contributed to the economic free-fall or hindered any attempt to recover from it?”. Partisan shots that did nothing but display contempt for one side or the other were really not pertinent to the discussion in that thread–particularly since any rational observer would note that each party has contributed some share to the bad decisions leading to the situation.
Therefore, I had already posted that such partisan rhetoric was not appropriate to that thread. Taking cheap shots at the GOP will do nothing in that thread except bring out Republican partisans to take similar cheap shots at the Democrats without actually addressing the issues of accountability or whether an allusion to seppuku is a legitimate metaphor, (or suggestion), in public discourse.
The threat of a Warning was addressed to all participants in that thread, using the most recent egregious insult as an example. If anyone is incapble of participating without resorting to inflammatory non sequiturs, then opening a Pit thread is the better option–as I had already posted.
Naturally, I agree. " tomndebb" strayed far beyond any moderating standards I’ve ever seen on other general discussion forums (fori?). I very much contend and still believe that his referring to my remark as “really stupid” is sheer calumny that itself would warrant warnings from a just and fair moderator. It doesn’t matter whether any other posters would also consider it “really stupid”. What matters is that a moderator has no business insulting posters in his or her duties as a moderator, which the “[moderator]” notation clearly indicated was the case.
And in a broader assessment, a just and fair moderator has NO BUSINESS AT ALL interfering with a debate which adheres to the stated rules. It is not a moderator’s task to insult, attack, or condemn rule-adhering remarks, no matter how “stupid” he or she feels them to be. If he or she wishes to make that observation as a poster only, that is entirely appropriate. Otherwise it’s offensive authoritarianism, a personality trait that I understand the moderator in question, as well as others higher in the power hierarchy around here, has too often revealed. Or perhaps reveled in. I don’t know, but I doubt I want to find out.
[1] Your comprehension of my main original point is quite poor. The “gratuitous swipe” I was criticising was yours! You have no right to hurl insults as part of your duties as a moderator. You were out of line, sir or madam.
Also, I asked you to “how I can determine “really stupid” critical comments from “non-stupid” or “less-stupid” ones” and to cite chapter and verse of where the rules prohibit the comment I posted (as part of a significantly larger post), and you have failed to do so. The reason is obvious: there is no such rule. It was purely an ad hoc expression of power. It makes not an iota of difference that you had previously issued an authoritarian edict to the effect that you do not approve of various kinds of comments that nevertheless abide by the stated rules.
[2] My secondary point is that I consider it plainly unethical for a moderator to so severely restrict impersonal political speech on a web site and forum dedicated to that purpose. It is not your place as moderator to censor or threaten to censor any kind of expression at all that remains within the stated rules. You may deride rule-abiding comments you personally don’t like as a fellow poster, but it is quite unethical to do so under the auspices of your moderator assignment.
You may have the power, but you do NOT have the moral right to curtail or threaten to curtail remarks that adhere to the rules. And that remains true no matter how “really stupid” you consider certain remarks to be, and no matter how you assess the likelihood of one or another type of comment getting out of hand with the potential, but only the potential, of possible eventual rule-breakage.
The accelerating drive towards ever-more restricted “free” speech has a well-documented corrosive effect, most prominently on those who “volunteer” to police speech. To quote from a favorite novel of mine: “Who are the police these days? We need police to catch the police!”
“Free speech” only applies to government restricting speech. It doesn’t apply to private entities restricting speech (or other expression). The Chicago Reader, its owners, and its representatives have the right to limit freedom of speech on the message boards that they own.
OK, I have read the exchange in question, and here’s how it boiled down to me:
Posters in thread: Some useful discussion, some pointless partisan sniping.
Tom [modding]: Stop the pointless partisan sniping, everyone, or take it to the Pit.
marko: Pointless partisan snipe.
Tom [modding]: Stop the pointless partisan sniping, everyone, or I’m going to start warning people.
marko: Help, I’m being oppressed!!
Let me give you a hint: that thumping you hear is not heavy jackboots coming down the hall to kick your door in, it’s countless Dopers banging their heads against the wall that they wasted their time reading your weak-ass complaint.
My summary is that the thread was about 99% on track, Tom jumped in proactively to stomp on a small bit of sniping (probably because if left unstomped, the sniping might get worse), and marko took it personally.
What’s missing is that Tom did not see that it was marko’s first ever post on the board, because guests don’t have post counts. Tom might have said something like, “Welcome to the SDMB, but I’ve already warned others about sniping in this thread, and I’m asking you not to as well.” Newbies need to be welcomed here, and need to be warned more gently than us old hands, who should have a better feel for the local rules.
marko, since you’ve only been here for a couple of days, you should probably get a better feel for how this board functions before telling people, mods or not, what rights they have and don’t have.
First, I apologize for calling your post stupid. I was not happy with the fact that you had chosen to ignore my three separate posts indicating that partisan displays should be avoided, but I had no call to characterize your comment as stupid.
Whatever other message boards you may have seen; the model you propose is that of a simple rules monitor who issues tickets to people who break the rules while allowing hijacks and threadshitting and other acts to derail discussions as long as no explicit rule has been broken. You are correct that that is not the model used here. The model in this establishment is more like that of the beat cop who looks over a situation and decides whether a ticket has to be written or a person has to be arrested or whether it is a better solution to tell someone to just go home and stop engaging in behavior that is going to lead to a fight, even if no fight has already broken out.
The adjective “stupid” was directed at your decision to continue posting inflammatory, partisan comments after I had already indicated that that was a bad idea. It had no connection with the accuracy or intelligence supporting or opposing your opinions of the GOP.
I will here note an explicit rule on this message board:[Text inside
[QUOTE]
tags is sacrosanct. Normal editorial rules apply: that is, you may indicate omitted portions of a quote by the use of ellipses “…” and you may add text to clarify a word using square brackets (e.g., “her [the sister’s] friend”), but you may not add editorial comments or edit a quote so as to change the substantive meaning; nor may you substitute text such as “some blather” or “more nonsense” inside the
Actually, my comprehension was fine. Your comment regarding the GOP was, indeed, a gratuitous swipe and it was to that comment that I referred. It had no part of the actual discussion except to establish your bonafides as an opponent of that party. That you may have referred to any other comment as gratuitous does not change the reality regarding the comment that caused me to quote your post while addressing all the posters on that thread.
Since I have not curtailed anyone’s right to political speech in this or any other context, these remarks are simply a misunderstanding of the events as they occurred. You are more than free to open a separate thread to lambaste any political party or other organization (provided you couch it in the language of debate and not simply a rant that would be moved to the Pit).