I’ve had a continuing problem with a particular mod who demonstrates little or no grasp of what I’ve been trying to explain to him for weeks now (because he kept PMing me over and over about it). It very much seems to me to be the result of poor reading comprehension, for I’ve explained it perhaps a dozen different ways without success.
That leads to a broader issue, which is what this OP is all about: Is there any recourse for a poster when a mod demonstrates that he or she is not quite cut out for moderating a particular forum because the topics there seem to be a bit out of his depth? In other words, if they can’t quite grasp an only slightly subtle explication, should they be moderating the most intellectually demanding forum here, GD?
The mod in question has demonstrated clear bias against me as a result of his lack of understanding, too. There are few things more irritating than the uneven enforcement of rules such that one poster (myself) is issued a (fully justified) warning for something that another poster gets away with nothing more than a “head’s up”. What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander, but when that’s not the case it will usually bring on dissatisfaction and justified fear of reprisals and unfair judgments in the future.
On a separate issue about a separate moderator, I was told I had to post the following here. So here it is:
By that reasoning, your judgment is that criticizing a poster’s racist views as infantile, immature, and childish is equivalent to calling the poster a racist! I didn’t merely “toe the line”, let alone cross over it – in fact, I explicitly asserted in that post that my opponent was NOT “infantile”! And I genuinely apologized for my earlier behavior!
If a poster can’t even correctly and accurately and fairly and with perfect justification characterize someone’s views as infantile, immature, and childish – while taking pains to openly note that the poster him- or her-self is not infantile, immature, and childish – what other draconian restrictions on intellectual honesty are secretly in your rulebook? One seems to be related to the length of a post!
I’ve avoided criticizing mods for the most part because of the fully justified fear of biased treatment in reprisal. I know the mods are human, too, and that they’re volunteers – and I respect them tremendously for their voluntary service. But they also have the power where we do not. Power imbalances always invite abuse. That, too, is human. So I can’t help thinking this complaint will end up hurting me far more than helping me…