Well, since I found the note in question to be neither capricious nor arbitrary, I’d say that’s a bit of a strawman.
But in broader terms, I’ve been posting in GD for pushing sixteen years. The post-to-warning ratio is awfully high. Hell, the thread-to-warning ratio is high. Maybe I’m posting in the wrong threads, but I’ve never seen enough of a heavy-handed mod presence to make the discussions less enjoyable for me. Never even close.* So I have trouble grokking y’all’s perspective, at least emotionally.
*Well, that gaudere is a taskmistress. But her jackboots are always so clean and shiny I let it go.
Sure, and I was gratified that he didn’t seem to take it personally (thanks, Omar!). But had he been someone else, he might have taken it personally. Someone else might have been pissed and insulted, and even derailed the thread into something ugly. Uglier. Yanno.
And I would have been mortified. If I hadn’t been on autopilot, I wouldn’t have gotten as close to the line as I did (which, again, I get that perhaps I found it closer than y’all did). Fortunately my autopilot, after the aforementioned 15.5 years, has always kept me on the shallow end of the alignment pool. I might be Lawful Dick or occasionally Neutral Asshole, but almost never Chaotic.
So yeah, you’re right; Omar weighed in. But I don’t think that should necessarily be taken into account for a Note. Whether or not someone minds a rule violation doesn’t change the violation, and the same goes for pushing the boundaries, however lightly.
Ah, well, there is that.
It’s not for everyone. Not everyone like the nature and/or style of the discussions in the first place, and clearly there are those for whom the enjoyment is outweighed by the rules in place (and the enforcement of same). Me, I like the format much of the time, I like the rules, and I like that they are enforced–even if it means occasional overzealousness on the part of the enforcers. Worth it to me.
He knows a guy who got one. Ruined his life. Every time he was ready to put it behind him and move on, he’d bring it up again and be back at square one. The shame of others knowing his dark secret— and judging him— was so great, he was barely able to constantly keep talking about it.
andros : “had he been someone else”, “might have taken it personally”, “might have been pissed and insulted”, “even derailed the thread”, “would have been mortified”. Are you listening to what you’re typing? You’re a stand-up kind of guy, as others have noted, and I didn’t come into this thread to defend you or anything. I did so because I was … perturbed by the moderation. I don’t intend to slam Jonathan Chance - moderators here and in that forum particularly have a thankless job. Others have emphasized exactly to whom or what it was you directed your comment. I think they’ve done a great job and I don’t need to reiterate.
As I said, you’re a good guy, so I’m not going to make any references to drinking Kool-Aid or anything like that. Still, I’ve heard of bending over backwards, but you have pushed that to an entirely new extreme in your … analysis … of my post.
:shrug: I honestly don’t know how I misrepresented you, but I’m sorry I did. I was just trying to explain why I, personally, cannot get fashed about JC’s note, even if I feel it was a bit much. The situation was such that it could–conceivably–have become a problem. JC headed that off.
I guess I generally have no problem with people criticizing specific moderator decisions, as Trin did in this thread, but find my hackles all twitchy when folks decide that’s part of some sort of pattern of jackbootery. If that’s drinking the kool-aid (a phrase which I find quite abhorrent, honestly, but that’s neither here nor there), so be it.
I don’t think that’s anything you’ve done or are doing, btw.
Exactly! My OP was really little more than “Hey, there’s a hair in my soup” and far, far from “The mods are all biased and if you don’t agree you get banned and I got warned for calling someone a fughead but that’s not really a dirty word and wah!”
And, rilly, guys, you can close this thread! Everything’s been said as needed saying!
I’ve been posting in GD for just a little less time than that, and while it isn’t quite right to say that the moderation keeps me out of it, it is true that it diminshes my enjoyment. It is more that the rationale for the moderation, the kind of thing that Morgenstern apparently yearns for, chaps me a bit. I think there is an ideal some have for GD that is both too tepid and too unrealistic to be enjoyable.
It would be one thing if the current standards led to a vigorous yet highly civil hashing out of evidence for or against a position, but that hardly happens. And not all opinions are equal. Some are stupid, some are offensive and some are indeed premised on lies. There is less and less liberty to observe such.
So, there is a bit of both the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes that diminish GD for me.
I’m sure that Trinopus is right, and there are plenty of places that are way more whippier and scornier, no doubt. I certainly haven’t sworn off GD. It just does it a little less for me that it used to.
I have no idea where you got this idea, but very few kids actually “hate” a teacher, just as I think few posters “hate” the mods. You do know what an allegory is, right?
Me too. Although I don’t have the time and energy for GD these days, I used to spend the bulk of my Doping time there. And no one would have described my debating style as calm or circumspect. Nor would people have described my relations with the mods as anything closer than cordial - and sometimes a bit less close than that.
Yet in my decade or so of active-to-hyperactive posting in GD, I got zero warnings. If anyone’s staying out of GD for fear of “capricious and arbitrary” warnings, I’d say they’re being paranoid.
FWIW, I have gotten exactly one warning during my years at the Dope, and I would regard that warning as capricious and arbitrary. The forum? IMHO. So if you’re trying to avoid arbitrary warnings by avoiding whole forums, where do you stop?
I’m sorry, andros, that I left you with the impression that I thought you had misrepresented me. I was trying to say, in my clumsy way, that in gd, you seem to have internalized cautiousness to a degree I find puzzling. Hence my listing of your choice of phrases. If that is what 15 1/2 years of posting there has done, no thanks. And I am not a reckless poster, by any means.
When I was suspended years ago it was entirely based on warnings in the Pit.
(And looking back, I was the initial test run for the suspending rather than immediate banning. You’re welcome people!)
Rune writes an OP that asks if homosexuality can be cured. That is offensive and stupid. Even though he allows that perhaps it shouldn’t be cured, the core of this post is an offensive represetation of homosexuality as a disease.
However, rather than take the OP to the woodshed, we get moderation (from tomanddebb) that orders us to pretend the OP wrote something completely different and less offensive. With a patented “TWEET”, which is only slightly less noxious than a third party throat clearing statement.
The idea that homosexuality is a disease still exists in the world. This OP gave me an opportunity to respond directly to someone who holds that idea. However, on the SDMB we have to pretend that idea didn’t exist via editorial whitewash.
Well, hold on – he doesn’t ask if homosexuality can be cured, he asks very specifically (in a curt OP which employs no pejorative language that I can see) whether gay people can be turned straight. Perhaps I’m not seeing some obvious connotation there, but I fail to understand why we should all be encouraged to ‘take him to the woodshed’ on that basis alone.
Is that supposed to be indicative the problem with GD moderation? It feels rather uncompelling, then, and perhaps a bit whiny.
He specifically asks “Can Homosexuality be cured” in the title of his OP. So yes, he asks if homosexuality can be cured. Use of the word “cure”, which requires that homosexuality is a disease, is pejorative.
The bolding is right there in the original, and the opening clause “whether it should be” grammatically can only continue from the question of “can homosexuality be cured.” It cannot link to the rest of the sentence that follows.
And that’s why I avoid GD. I actually got a warning for pointing out that the premise of a thread, which was in the title, was a fallacy. At which point ignorance has become endemic, and my irony meter broke.
