I have four. The ban order must have been lost in the mail somewhere.
Wrt to the OP, other four warnings cannot mean much if the PTB did not bother to mention them in the suspension notification.
Quantity over quality, man. Worked for Stalin.
Precedent: this exact situation has come up before. Historically, people have received a warning, but not a suspension.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it a few times, I found this one on a brief search.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15413549&postcount=48
Note that jtgain was not being racist, but sarcastically accusing other people of prejudice, which is the same situation as the current one.
Actually in that case jtgain wasn’t accusing anyone of thinking or meaning “nigger”. He was suggesting that stereotypes about “niggers” were the vertoben parallel of the more accepted slurs against Southerners, and was decrying the double-standard. So it’s not the exact situation.
But I suspect that his warning was because the moderator was also confused about what he meant, and thought he was doing something similar to Kobal2. So maybe it is a precedent after all. 
It strikes me as line-drawing based on aesthetics. If I say that your opinion is wrong because you have incorrect and negative preconceptions about young black men, that isn’t semantically all that different from **Kobal2’**s rather more ribald version. It is aesthetically quite different.
If we’re saying the former is permissible (and maybe we’re not, though I think it has to be in order to have free and fair discussion in GD), then I think we have to acknowledge that we’re just modding aesthetics. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but then don’t try to dress it up as modding content or modding “putting words in someone’s mouth,” because it isn’t actually either of those.
Since I was the one who warned him, I can say I wasn’t confused. The warning was for use of inappropriate language in GQ. We really don’t want people throwing around highly offensive racial slurs lightly, no matter what point they are trying to make.
Hoo-boy. This is a tough one. Four warnings in the past 15 months and six total is getting up there. I also don’t like seeing the N-word thrown around, use-mention distinction be damned. So there’s that.
And yet I don’t see anyone arguing that Kobal2 is a problem poster. Really Not All That Bright is another example of a non-problem poster who nonetheless has racked up 3 warnings.
At any rate, the fact that Kobal2 accepted at least one of the warnings is a good sign: problem posters tend argue that the insult was accurate and therefore it wasn’t an insult, etc. I think this is a consideration in his favor. Some posters have had rough patches, then straightened up and flew right. It’s rare but it happens.
I frankly don’t have a clear impression of Kobal2 other than, “Generally sober”. If he isn’t really a problem poster, I’d like to see him removed from the ban-border, or at least have the mods consider that possibility. I have less of a problem with the one month suspension, per se.
ETA: I dunno: 3 week suspension???
Yeah, those other warning do make it more problematic.
How about Double-secret probation. 
Let me kid on the square.
Posters who are suspended for one month should be shuffled off to either the ban-border, or jackboot land. On the ban border you are one warning or maybe one serious warning away from the trap door. In jackboot land you are subjected to a 3 year sentence of mod capriciousness. Maybe you will be instabanned. Maybe you will be given a one week suspension for an ordinary warning. Maybe an instant 2 month suspension. Maybe 3. Personally I like the 1-2-3 month suspension system, followed by a formal launch into permanent residence in the remainder of the internet.
Oh but the mods are biased! Yeah, they are. If you don’t want to be subjected to such grave injustice stay out of jackbootistan or slink away from the board.
Again, there is nothing inherently racist in what the poster he was responding to said. Even if one wants to invoke “stop and frisk” as being racist, that poster was simply making an observation about cause and effect, and not endorsing “stop and frisk”. It might be that, historically, that poster had racist tendencies. I don’t know. But in this case, we have only the one post, and it is neutral.
Inferences about a racist attitude based on that post should be out of bounds in GD, I believe. Address the argument, not what you suspect might be behind the argument.
Further, I disagree that your two cases differ only in a matter of aesthetics. “You have an incorrect perception of blacks” is different, in substance, than “you’re basically the same as a Grand Wizard of the KKK”. Because that’s the image brought to mind of someone who’s sole thoughts on the subject of race are “nigger, nigger, nigger…”.
Which is an argument for Kobal2 being wrong. But we don’t mod based on whether a person is right or wrong in their opinions.
I think this is the meat of your argument, and I just disagree. We don’t apply that standard to any other preconceptions. If I think your view is based on ignorance about or bias about the Fourth Amendment, I’m entitled to point that out even if it should turn out that your view was actually about something else entirely. The nature of free give-and-take in debate forums is the ability to challenge perceived preconceptions in the other side.
There might be a line to be drawn between the argument and the motivation for choosing that argument, but that is quite different from trying to draw a line between the argument and the (incorrect) analytical premises that undergird it.
So…what? You’re allowed to say someone is a little bit racist but not really really racist? Surely that kind of line-drawing is not what you propose. I think your whole argument really turns on the paragraph before this one.
Why hasn’t anyone linked to the other warnings? Is it because, as I suspect, they were trivial nonsense?
There’s a difference between being wrong and being an evil person. Being a racist - especially of the “nigger, niggers” sort - is widely accepted as being a moral failing, not just a technical error comparable to being wrong or even biased about some other judgment. The frequent attempts to insert racial motivations into other posters’ words are attempts to intimidate or supress by means of personal attack. It’s not comparable to your other examples.
I mean, this is a tremendously ironic argument, isn’t it? You’re saying the declaration that someone has a racist preconception is, below the surface, an attempt to intimidate and suppress speech. So we can make inferences about someone’s devious censorship motivations, but not their racial prejudices. Because…it’s worse to be a racist than one who tries to improperly intimidate others?
I don’t think that makes any sense. But I think you’re right that you essentially state the implicit reasoning behind treating such claims differently, which is a pervasive fear of being mislabeled a racist. I guess I’m not as concerned about that fear as some people are.
If their existence played a role in the decision to suspend, then they should have been included in the suspension notice.
There are two separate issues. One is rules and policies of this board. The other is what’s really happening.
You can logically make inferences about either devious censorship motivations or racial prejudices. However, the second type is being used as a personal attack. Personal attacks are against the rules of this board outside the Pit. Regardless of whether an accusation of racism is specifically intended with devious censorship motives in mind, it’s certainly a personal attack. IMO you’d have to be a very biased and self-interested partisan to fail to realize that this was the motivation behind most of these accusations, so I noted this in the context of my observations about the nature of the accusation, but it’s not crucial to the specific issue of whether they deserve a warning.
I don’t know for sure whether accusing someone of having devious censorship motives is against the rules of this board (I doubt it). But it’s not relevant here, since no one accused any specific person of doing that. (I was making a general comment.)
Of course not. Your views on racial matters seem to invariably fall on the PC side of things. For someone in your position, against the backdrop of this board’s ideological leanings, this type of accusation is a very useful weapon that can be used by you or people aligned with you, with no risk to yourself at all. It’s not surprising that you would be in favor of permitting it.
Not really. I supported George Zimmerman’s acquittal on this board, for example. You just have a high degree of confirmation bias.
I do find it insulting to be told I am trying to intimidate others or suppress their speech. But I’m a big boy. I wouldn’t want mods to police that any more than I want them to protect your sensitive feelings about being called a racist.
Unless you’ve been calling people racists, it’s not about you. We’re actually discussing another poster right now. But perhaps you do it too (I don’t recall).
It’s not about me either. You can rest easy and call me a racist and I’ll be fine too.
[I do have one small request if you want to go that route: stick to insisting that holders of my views are racists, rather than assigning to me all sorts of racist views that I’ve not actually said or implied. But as long as you keep to that we’re good. :)]
Modern racists know they aren’t supposed to admit holding racist ideas. And lots of them don’t even know or realize that their ideas are premised on racist premises. So a rule that says you can’t say something is racist unless someone admits to being racist is just a rule that says you cannot say something is racist.
Naturally, you might be wrongly accused of being a racist for holding all manner of opinions for wholesome reasons. But instead of needlessly censoring both the true and false accusations of prejudice, the better rule is to let people discuss the presence or absence of prejudice (of all kinds, whether racial or partisan or economic or religious or regional), and tell people that are intimidated by such discussion that they need to suck it up and stop being intimidated.
Where does this come up? Has anyone suggested any such rule?
For that price you could tell people to object to being impugned any other way that they need to suck it up too. You can take that up with the admins of this board. But meanwhile, ISTM that calling people racists is fundamentally similar to other types of forbidden insults and not similar to saying people’s views on some issue are biased or mistaken (as you initially suggested).