In this post I will discuss the moderator favoritism consistently shown towards Shodan and Der Trish. One of them continually distorts and misrepresents arguments and weasels when called on it, resulting in pages of nonsense (see previous page for an example of the Shodan Show), the other dispenses vitriol. And yet neither is banned (yet). Why?
It’s pretty simple really, and accusations of favoritism are ludicrous. Setting spammers aside, there are 2 main rules here:
Attack the post, not the poster if you are outside of the pit.
Follow moderator instructions, especially in-thread instructions. If you don’t like it, go to email or in the worst case take it up in ATMB.
Seriously if you can do that, you can generally stick around for years. Sure there are other aspects of not being a jerk. But the above handles 90% of the cases. It’s sort of amusing that most (not all) of the banned can’t handle those 2 rules.
90% is not 100%. There are a few problem posters that typically manage to obey 1 and 2. Der is one of them.
Weirdly, the rather mild phrase “Jerk” is seldom used on this board, as it has a special meaning here. Calling somebody a jerk on this board implies that you think they should be banned. Regardless since it is an insult, it can’t be directed at a poster outside of the pit.
Since I’m here, I’ll offer a clarification. Yes, racist is a descriptor. But in the US it’s also an absolutely toxic accusation. That’s the reality. African Americans are more than a little ambivalent about this, as it makes discussion of institutional racism such as redlining (which increases rents as it represses home prices), job discrimination (substantiated by studies using resumes) and the like more of a challenge.
ETA: Maybe we could add to the 2 rules I reported on in the previous post. Not sure.
No it’s not. A better and more accurate description would be that white Americans tend to be extremely defensive about the phrase because of the history of white people oppressing black people to the point where many on this board have insisted that the phrase “sexist” is “softer” or less of an insult.
By contrast, for American minorities, this argument is silly. For most of American history virtually all whites have been racist so we’ve, until recently viewed them all as such.
However, we’ve always graded them on a scale with lets say number 10 being the Grand Dragon of the KKK while number one being our white New York friend who practically pissed himself in fear when some blacks walk into the same subway car as him or our Minnesota friend who wants us to walk across the street when she sees a black man walking our way.
BTW, I’m not trying to be insulting or dismissive. I’d simply laugh if anyone called me a racist. If someone called me a sexist or an anti-Semite, that’s a different story.
I’ve never heard anyone on this thread suggest that the phrase “jerk” was the worst thing you could ever call someone or anything similar.
If the people who insist that term “racist” really is this “megaton insult” that needs to be very carefully used and must never be used regarding another poster then they should grow a pair and insist that the mods should also adopt as a rule “don’t be a racist” or get rid of the “don’t be a jerk”.
Otherwise, they look like thin-skinned whiners, hypocrites, or both.
That said, I won’t hold my breath.
Agreed, the darkies need to just accept the fact that it’s perfectly acceptable to insist on this board in thread after thread that they are genetically inferior but they better not call anyone who insists on such a thing “racists” or we’ll send them to the back of the bus.
This isn’t meant as an insult and I genuinely don’t think you’re a racist(not even level 1, Barack Obama’s grandmother) but honestly whenever I see threads like this I have to laugh whenever I remember one poster wondering why this board has more scientific racists posting on it than it has black people posting on it.
But there is also the idea of deliberately staying 1 inch away from breaking the rules. You know how banks have to report any cash transaction of $10k or more to the IRS so they can see if you are evading income tax laws?
We’ll DT is the guy who makes $9,999.99 cash transactions every day. But banks, unlike this board until recently, have rules to catch things like that.
The rule that you can insult groups but not the poster is frequently abused:
Poster: I am a person who believes that mopery should be illegal.
DT: Groups that advocate for illegal mopery want nothing short of the killing of all women and brown people.
Yes, he stayed within the technical confines of the rule, but violated the spirit of it. You can’t have a rule and allow such a blatant attempt to skirt the rule.
Eh. Just because you disagree with something, doesn’t mean it’s “stupid”. If you want to debate the subject, there’s an active thread in GD. Knock yourself out.
DT, your complaint about a couple of warnings is like complaining about a traffic ticket when you escaped a murder conviction on a technicality. If Jonathan warns you more than the other mods it’s because they’ve long since given up on trying to get you to observe the rules.
If someone escapes a murder conviction on a “technicality” (whether it be police misconduct, improper handling of evidence, a hung jury, or whatever), does that then give the police license to harass that person, detain him without reasonable suspicion, or arrest him without probable cause? In your scenario, if the traffic ticket is bullshit, then it’s bullshit , whether or not the murder charge was justified.
I’ve made clear that i have no problem moderating Der Trihs when he breaks the rules. I’ve also said that i believe there have been times in the past when Der Trihs has broken the rules and been allowed to slide. But none of that means that he should be moderated for comments that would, if made by any other poster, not even raise an eyebrow. He shouldn’t get special treatment, but nor should he come in for excessive moderation.
Well, riddle me this: When plenty of other posters get mod notes, mod advisories, and even mod warnings, why is that DT gets to do what he does time after time? If he’s breaking board rules, then he should get noted, advised, warned, and ultimately banned. Am I incorrect?
I’m not a lawyer yet. Anyway, it was just an analogy. This isn’t a court of law. The point is that DT has remained unbanned on grace alone, and he should just take his lumps.
I understood that it was an analogy, and i know that this isn’t a court of law.
But, for me at least, the principle remains. If, for whatever reason you care to name, Der Trihs has gotten away with stuff that he should have been modded for, that doesn’t mean that he should now be held up to a higher standard or asked to conform to stricter rules than the rest of the board.
This is not just about Der Trihs, for me; it’s about standards of moderation. The completely bullshit warning given to Der Trihs when he described Republicans as intransigent undermines the credibility of the moderation on this board. By all means stop treating him with kid gloves, but don’t hold him up to standards not required of other members, and don’t give him warnings for stuff that anyone else would get away with.
Do you really think that? Most of the mods have just given up? Really?
Also, I see things pretty like mhendo on this. If the mods missed mod’ing him earlier, they shouldn’t over-mod him now, just to make up for it, for things that wouldn’t normally be mod’ed.
The standards of moderation on this board are bullshit, IMHO. Der Trihs should have been banned eons ago. However, since his politics lines up with the board politics he gets to slide.
How many times are we going to do the Der Trihs dance? It is painfully obvious that a) he ain’t gonna change the way he posts b) he intentionally repeats behavior that he has been modded for in the past and c) he knows that he can get away with it.
IMHO, this board has gone to shit because the liberal lean has turned into chasing away anyone who doesn’t agree with the lean. There are a few conservative/libertarian posters around but the numbers are shrinking, along with the total user count I imagine, because folks like Der Trihs can run around making insane and unfounded accusations against conservatives and rarely get called on it. When they do get called on it, they get a slap on the wrist and then continue on doing the same damned thing.
If the guiding rule of the board is truly ‘Don’t be a jerk’, then Der Trihs’s continual jerkish behavior as evidenced by the continual mod actions should have been stopped a long time ago.
But nothing will happen. Der Trihs will continue on with the same ol’ same ol’ and we will be repeating this nonsense next month in a new thread.
While I agree that his behavior should have been modded long ago, at least it’s being modded now.
He’s gotten three Warnings recently. One was bogus, I think we all agree, but the others weren’t. So now we find out if [list=A][li]he can modify his behavior, and if the mods, especially** Jonathan Chance**, mean it.[/list]About the first, I don’t know. About the second, I am guardedly hopeful. [/li]
Regards,
Shodan
You realize, I hope, that you just outed yourself as a right-wing republican fundy christian, since only thooooose people could possibly disagree with DT on even a single point.
In his mind, you’re either all in, or all out. There is no ground between those positions.
That’s a pretty impressive example of ignoring how the whole issue has been treated for centuries. Quite famously in some cases. The point of drawing a line around a population and calling them less intelligent has always been to portray them as lesser beings, undeserving of the consideration given to real people. And making handwaves about your preferred definition of a word won’t change that.