Is there a left/right bias in dealing with hyperbolic posters?

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41

The problem isn’t that he’s being hateful, but what he’s being hateful about. One of the core tenants of American liberalism is tolerance. Intolerance is usually reserved for people who they believe are being intolerant. DT’s intolerance seems to be over actual left leaning issues.

I think what we’ve hit on is the difference between Leftism and Liberalism. He’s definitely on the left, but it’s really hard to call him a liberal in the sense we normally mean it. He crosses the line into being fascistic, which is generally held to be a right-leaning concept, despite being possible on both extremes

I think you guys are committing the fallacy of a false dichotomy. One can be neither Liberal nor Conservative. In fact, on the grand scale, I’d say both are really quite Centrist.

42

This thread is really all about Der Trihs, right raindog? I originally saw the guy as more of a leftist than a liberal. But actually I think he arrives at his positions via science fiction. His two bugbears are militarism and Christianity: he equates the latter with opposition to science. Der doesn’t draw much of a distinction between fundamentalism and Christianity.

Der is blunt, and therefore easy to lampoon. I have done that. But like most posters, “He has a point”. (Actually, it’s a greater challenge not to have any point at all, but I digress). His point is that war is an outrage and a religion/ideology that opposes science and facilitates bigotry is worthy of condemnation. Der feels these things to his core, and states them bluntly. I agree with Der, narrowly, (few will admit to liking war, after all) but find his presentations unsubstantiated (outside of physics and science fiction) and unpersuasive. That’s why as a leftie, I feel obliged to sweep our side of the ideological divide now and then.

As I perceive it, Der has a surprisingly high level of discipline: he stays within the rules with dogged determination. As I said in another thread, there are boards whose rules are stricter: I might recommend that interested posters give them a try. (You don’t have to choose just one!)

Oh yeaaaahhhh… that Collounsbury. I was making an ironic point about what I perceived to be a lot of whining and a little gaming the ref in this thread. On the substance, Collounsbury’s posts typically reflected a large dosage of contempt, though he usually was able to stay within the rules. He actually did listen to the moderators though, and expressed regret for causing them problems. He never complained about his treatment here, even after banning. More to the point, he was a bona fide expert in his area and fought a lot of ignorance. When some suggested that he should be given special treatment due to his comprehensive knowledge, he dismissed that idea as BS. Anyway, he soon acquired a blog, which perhaps is better suited to his temperance.

I don’t know the details about Satan, but frankly I trust the mods.

Oblivious post. Coll was banned and reinstated once, IIRC, following a polite letter sent to the mods. This was before the advent of suspensions, which now occur all the time.

43

No: it is false. Der’s views are not particularly popular.

Conventional wisdom in the US is that whatever you feel about our involvement in the middle east, you support our troops. Der will have none of that: he doesn’t use euphemisms like “Involvement” and he doesn’t give free passes to soldiers.

Conventional wisdom in the US embraces ecumenicism and religious tolerance, though new Atheists have gained a foothold in recent years. Most distinguish between mainline Christianity and the New Right, though this distinction is wearing thin after years of insistence by fundamentalists that they are merely “Christian”: ironically, they have eroded the brand among some members of the public. Der does not distinguish between fundamentalists and mainline Christians: he holds them equally in contempt.

Admittedly, I perceive that board has become less sympathetic to theists in recent years: as an agnostic I have pushed back to some extent.

Members of the racist right do risk banning, insofar as certain expressions violate the rules of the board. A mod might add though that there is some scope for permissible discussion along those lines, though I opine that it would be monitored carefully.

44

I may have misremembered DerTrihs position on the military, but I’m thinking that he is “bellicosely anti-war.” That’s one of the things that I meant by his being too inconsistent for either label.

I think that I have posted many times where I stand politically. I have always voted only in Democratic Primaries. To the best of my knowledge, I have never registered as a member of either party. I have voted for a Republican for the Senate twice and I still feel good about those votes. I consider myself a default Democrat but I am much further to the left than most.

I am, at heart, a socialist. I was married to an active Socialist at one time. I would like to see more socialist programs. The socialist programs that we’ve had since the days of Bejamin Franklin don’t seemed to have gotten a lot of criticism.

Generally I have no problem in political discussions with the conservatives at SDMB. (I don’t think that Shodan and I have ever had a cross word. Bricker and I have had very few. I can think of other examples.

Magellan01, despite my having voted for a Republican, I have never made claims to being non-partisan. Neither of the two main parties is my first choice. But your party of choice or conservative mindset is not the reason that you fail at debates.

You want a level playing field in GD and when you can’t earn it with winning arguments and documented reliable sources for factual information, you want to resort to a first grader’s solution of kicking and biting and throwing tantrums.

A possible alternative would be to learn to debate better.

45

We can always try a debate forum where posters are assigned one side or another – just as in regular debates.

46

This would be fascinating for angry lurking - bravo Zoe! :slight_smile:

47

Are you kidding? I cower in fear of the Stern Look!

Regards,
Shodan

48

And to keep things fair, the liberal team will get to win 1/2 of the time, and the conservative team the other half.

49

The thread that spawned this one is “Proper” use of mod powers to steer a thread in GD?

Ongoing discussion in that thread has brought up an interesting point related to the question here.

The board membership has a bias to the left. This says nothing about the position of the Board staff, merely the membership. However, there is an unintentional bias that forms because of the situations of the board, not through intent of the moderators.

When a liberal/democrat posts something contentious and inflammatory about conservatives/republicans, something that doesn’t violate the rules, it stirs up some attention, but because of the membership bias, there aren’t as many conservatives to get riled up. So if no one violates any rules, there isn’t a need for moderator intervention because the thread keeps running reasonably smoothly.

But when a conservative/republican posts something contentious and inflammatory about liberals/democrats, there is a much larger response because there are far more liberals/democrats, and that creates a train wreck. So even if nobody violates rules, moderators still have to take action to avert the train wreck or clean up the mess.

This creates an unintentional moderation bias against conservatives because whenever moderators react to avert a train wreck, they do so against a conservative poster rather than a liberal one, since it is the conservative posters who are setting up the train wrecks.

This is not because the conservative posters have inherently worse behavior, it is because the membership skew means the reactions will be far greater from one side than the other.

Is this a valid observation? Is there a way to address this concern? Discuss.

50

As inappropriate as this is in this thread, let me help you out. (I’ll leave the nonsensical first sentence alone, as I think you simply forgot a word.) You evidently operate with the notion of “winning” a debate here on SDMB. It’s a rare debate that sees any winner. I don’t expect to “win” anything, especially since I most often argue positions that are poison to the vast, vast majority of the board For instance, my opposition to SSM, or my desire to lock down the borders and control them. I don’t think Plato cold win those arguments here. I like hearing the other points of view that I might not have considered. And I think it helps the other side to hear some of the arguments from a position many have given short shrift.

I don’t go on to conservative debate boards because I’m not interested in an echo chamber. But I think you should consider doing so. Go on to some conservative board and try to argue for SSM or amnesty for illegals and see how many debates you “win”.

51

How about “they” get weekends, holidays, Saturday mornings until 10 a.m., and the graveyard shift?

magellan01, I don’t think you understand what “winning a debate” actually means. It’s different from convincing someone that they are wrong and you are right. And it has little to do with clever potshots. It is about how you present your arguments, how well you can defend them from attacks from opponents, and how well you can dismantle your opponents arguments.

The meaning of the sentence would have been clearer for some if I had substituted about for to: I have never made claims about being non-partisan.

That reminds me. You said something about one of my posts being the most partisan post ever made at the SDMB. (I paraphrase.) Are you sure you know what partisan means? I didn’t refer to either of the political parties in my comment. There are liberal and conservative Democrats and liberal and conservative Republicans.

52

[quote=“Zoe, post:51, topic:526571”]

magellan01, I don’t think you understand what “winning a debate” actually means. It’s different from convincing someone that they are wrong and you are right. And it has little to do with clever potshots. It is about how you present your arguments, how well you can defend them from attacks from opponents, and how well you can dismantle your opponents arguments.

You are the one who brought up “winning”. It appears that by “winning” you don’t actually mean winning. So maybe we agree on that. I think it boils down to you not liking how I debate. And that’s fine. You always have the option to not respond to me or put me on ignore. There are times I do lay into a poster, but the vast, vast majority of those times it’s in defense. I invite you to do a search and review. Now you might not respond the same way, and that’s fine. But I get attacked pretty regularly around here and ignore much of it, minimize some of it, and slap back when I think it appropriate. I’m just trying to enjoy myself here. I’d prefer it all be calm discussion and roses. But that is not the case. Try going on a board where you hold positions that are in a tiny minority and see how you handle it. Maybe you’d handle it better. Maybe not.

That was based on your placing DT in a place on the political spectrum, in part, other than on the left. Your reasoning was that some of his positions were “too hostile, intolerant, and simplistic”. That’s an amazingly partisan statement. It’s amazing to think those qualities arenot and cannot be present on the left. And if they are, the person really is on the right. Another poster, CircleofWillis, shared my amazement at your statement.

53

I was amazed by that statement, too. The only way I could make sense of it was to include the “regarding such things as Freedom of Religion” part and assume that phrase applied to all three words.

paraphrase:
He is, for example, too hostile, intolerant, and simplistic in his views on Freedom of Religion. Freedom of Religion is a strong Liberal position, so someone not defending it is not Liberal on that topic.

YMMV.

54

We did appreciate the positive contributions Collounsbury made to the board – a lot of the counseling we did with him was to point out that he had all this great stuff going on that was very useful but it was wrapped in not useful personal attack and abuse. We begged him to give us the goodness and leave off the meanness. Unfortunately he was constitutionally unable to do so and ultimately couldn’t stay. I believe he was meant to be a blogger from the jump and not really suited to message board life. It bees that way sometimes. We wish him the best, always.

Bannings are nearly always affairs of regret but sometimes it’s simply that the way this board runs is not a good fit for that person and they would have a better experience somewhere else. We’re not all things to all people and we don’t try to be.

55

In my view, proper regulation of the debate by moderators receives far too much attention. “Best practices in GD” is another matter: that falls under the broader discipline of Rhetoric: such a discussion even advances the fight against ignorance.

I have a couple of books on my shelf devoted to persuasion, which I haven’t gotten around to yet. But I understand that while logic and evidence have their place, traditional rationality alone seldom moves opinions. So there’s a place for mockery, tribal appeals and the like.

Hidden trick: within the realm of reason, you can get a lot of mileage by conceding vast swatches of your opponent’s argument and showing why it doesn’t matter. But that involves some empathy, some attempt to understand their underlying argument. This approach contrasts with the more primitive technique of finding an objection to every point made. “Never concede anything”, only works in puerile settings.

Still, not all or even most of the activity here is connected solely with persuasion. Self indulgence shouldn’t be ignored either. Abuse, snark and trolling can be fun, but they can also poison the well. (FTR, I don’t believe that I have ever trolled, insofar that I will provide honest clarification of my parodies/satire where appropriate.) But at the end of the day I really don’t think it’s that hard to stay within the rules of this board. Collounsbury was an exception: I believe that his banning was unfortunate but not inappropriate.

56

Partisan politics in the USA is generally used to refer to political parties. Bi-partisan refers to the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. If the group were to be divided according to liberal and conservative, the people get divided up a different way. For example, Teddy Roosevelt was a liberal. So was Eisenhower. My post did not refer to partisan politics at all.

Further, you are the source of your own misunderstanding. You have taken one of my sentences from that post and left off the last seven words – the part which gives the full meaning of the sentence. (See Irishman’s post above.) When you left off those seven words and kept only the first nine without indicating that any part of the sentence was missing, you completely misrepresented what the sentence really said. It did not mean what you tried to make it seem that it meant. Can you see the difference?

  1. He is, for example, too hostile, intolerant, and simplistic in his views.

  2. He is, for example, too hostile, intolerant, and simplistic in his views on Freedom of Religion.

That was my “amazing partisan statement”?

In your last post, you also claim " It’s amazing to think those qualities arenot and cannot be present on the left. And if they are, the person really is on the right."

What I really said was:

“I see the posts of Der Trihs to be too inconsistent to be classified as liberal or conservative.”

And at no time did I say that liberals can’t be hostile, intolerant or even simplistic.

Measure for Measure has posted some really good ideas for debating. Maybe you will be more open to those.

It seems to me that if we continue to have Great Debates where some are interested only in arguing and not in the art of argument, some will continue to see a bias in moderation. I just can’t believe that Dopers complain about being asked for to cite in a debate!

Interesting comment. It makes me wonder about the intent of Great Debates. To what extent should it be just a calm, informal discussion as opposed to the other extreme of expecting participants to be familiar with traditional debating skills and expectations?

57

This, this, EVER SO MUCH THIS!

There is a bias for posters who have, in the words of Robert Hoover, “a long tradition of existence” to the board. Why a long tradition of being a jerk is a plus, I don’t know. I would think that long-time posters should have a good grasp of the rules, and be expected to follow them. It’s my opinion that long-time posters get away with everything short of a nuclear meltdown, so a very small handful of them go around intentionally skirting that, being the ever-present burr under the saddle instead.

58

And the way to stick around long enough to be an accepted abusive asshole is to be a left-wing abusive asshole. Witness what was mentioned above - Collounsbury is counselled and reinstated and every effort is made to retain him. As mentioned, there are no equivalents on the right wing on whose behalf such an effort is made.

Assholery coming from lefties passes under the radar much more easily.

Regards,
Shodan

59

But Collounsbury wasn’t really a lefty. He certainly didn’t self identify as a “liberal” and I saw him scoff at the “false liberal-conservative divide”. As a business man working in foreign lands he seemed to have a “realpolitik” viewpoint. I think it just might be confirmation bias, whenever you two disagreed you placed him in the lefty camp and remembered it more distinctly.

60

He was of the anti-Bush, anti-Republican wing that is more or less mainstream thought hereabouts.

Name a poster who expressed even mild support for Bush who was reinstated after being banned.

Regards,
Shodan