It is the rough equivalent of your suggestion that we not be permitted to discuss prejudice unless that prejudice is directly stated or implied.
It depends on what criterion you use to distinguish insults from suggestions of bias or mistake. I think the relevant criterion is relevance to the discussion. It doesn’t aid the discussion if I call someone a moron or an asshole. It does aid the discussion for me to say that their opinions are incorrect because they are based on prejudice.
I acknowledge that mods obviously draw the line in a different place, as is their right. I think they use criteria that include the likelihood of the thread being derailed. But I find that to be a very bad criterion because it is predictive and I think we are very bad at such predictions.
You’re conflating what my personal preferences are with what the rules of this board are or should be. I made the comments you refer to in response to your statement about my “sensitive feelings”, and at that point I was commenting on my personal preferences.
But beyond that, I’m not suggesting that no one should characterize something as racist unless the holder of that view agrees that it’s racist (which is what you imply in referring to “someone admit[ing] to being racist”). I was just saying that the ostensible racist should at least agree that they hold this view. That’s something else entirely.
I suppose there is some very small possibility that calling someone a racist will cause them to rethink their position and retract it in a rational way. But this is drowned out by the personal attack aspect, IMO, and I think it’s more similar to just calling them stupid or any other personal insult.
No, I think that if you’re going to imply that someone is racist, there needs to be some hook in the post that most readers would linked to racism. If not, then expect to be mod’ed. If you turn the volume up to 11, by essentially calling someone a Klan member, then expect that you might be suspended. The mod action is, to some extent, proportional to the degree with which you castigate the poster.
I don’t think the “nigger” post should have gotten a warning, nor should Kobal2 have been suspended. It’s not putting words in someone’s mouth to say what you think they are thinking and/or implying. Or, if it is and if that is against the rules, a lot of GD threads need to be shut down right now.
Ok, 7 warnings. Wow. I adjusted the count by giving warnings over 18 months fewer points:
18-24 months: .9 point
and
24-36 months: .8 point
36-48 months: .7 point, etc.
These are my arbitrarily defined weights, not the mods.
Asking mods to assess whether an accusation of racism is based on sufficient evidence or not is an even worse rule than just saying no accusations of racism. At least the latter rule can be applied evenly, as far as it goes.
There are a lot of shifting rationales for why modding the “nigger” post was legitimate. Some of the rationales are stronger than others. For example, I think it is an especially weak rationale to characterize the post as putting words in someone else’s mouth, or to retroactively justify the warning by the poster’s mea culpa or admission that he was being provocative. Each individual rationale doesn’t really hold up on inspection, IMHO. But I’m prepared to concede that the whole may be more than the sum of its parts. And having learned of the other warnings, I am less surprised by the suspension.
We have elected to moderate (hah!) Kobal2’s suspension to 3 days as a means of catching his attention.
The intent of the suspension is to communicate the seriousness with which we take his post with the ‘nigger nigger nigger’ content. Use of such language - from anyone - in the future had better have a damn good reason or they too can expect to earn a serious and immediate consideration for sanction as well.
Kobal2 will return in two days, one day of his suspension having already been served.
To mix metaphors, I think you just split the baby with the bathwater after the cradle’s done gone under the bridge, Jonathan. Yeah, I don’t know what that means either.
This seams a reasonable if not ideologically pure compromise.
Haven’t looked at the warnings. Don’t particularly care, for the purposes of my post, about whether or not they were justified.
But Frank’s observation is absolutely correct. If a warning—no matter how old—is taken into consideration when suspending or banning a poster, then that warning should be included in the announcement.
If the warning is too old to post, then it shouldn’t be used in the evaluation; if it’s used in the evaluation, it should be posted. It’s pretty depressing that this even needs to be pointed out.
