You and I are just ordinary humans. Marley has those remarkable Pre-Cog abilities. Sheeze, didn’t you see Minority Report? You can’t expect someone with those amazing abilities to not use them! Perhaps he should change his handle to simply The Pre-Cog Mod. At least when a poster reads one of his moderations notes based on his premonition he’ll be reminded right there by the name and say, “Oh well, it’s the Pre-Cog Mod, so he must have a point.”
But when your moderation is the provocation itself, you’re not helping. You actually derail the discussions more than what you feel you must moderate might result in. It’s amazing that even after all the threads started in this forum calling you to the carpet for it, not to mention side discussions within them, that you don’t get this.
RE: bolded text.
So, if you’re not thread cops, you still will be pulling a poster over for doing 45 in a 45, not ticketing but merely inconveniencing him? No wonder I don’t drive in GD much.
Were the posts inspired? No. Were they insulting? No. Were they offensive to rational people who can accept that others have other views? No. Were they in violation of a stated rule? No.
Looking at Oak’s join date, he’s managed to be on here for a few years without getting himself banned. I think he can be counted on to behave himself at least as well as your “different” but harmless uncle at the family reunion without too much help. 
No–he threadshits by saying “All Christians/Republicans are evil/hate women”. Which is just as threadshitty as “boo hiss” and actually less constructive. People give “boo, hiss” all the well-deserved contempt it deserves, while the Trihs-style spewage poisons the debate.
PS–I appreciate your response here, even if I disagree with it.
Meta, breaking down the fourth wall like that.
I agree, and wish that folks like Der Trihs would be limited to participating in one thread about their weird conspiracyesque theories. If your explanation for all the world’s problems is one simple fact (REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL! or whatever), then one thread ought to be enough for you to explain it in. When it shows up elsewhere, people tend to think that the good sir posting it has made a mistake and will see the error of his ways with just a little nudging, and that gets the thread hopelessly off-track. It certainly doesn’t lead to good discussion.
Der gets a pass because he doesn’t break the rules generally. He puts forth substantive opinions (unlike most of Oak’s material from the linked thread)-- but almost always without substantiation I’ll readily concede. In fact I lampoon him for it on occasion. Still, there’s a distinction (a substantive one!)
I gotta admit though that Der has grown on me: I find his attacks on agnostics particularly hilarious, probably because I am one.
You and I have dramatically different opinions on what would be considered “substantive”.
How is claiming that “the typical American woman thinks all men are rapists and monsters” and also arguing that all men should secretly videotape their sexual encounters because women are so prone to falsely accuse them of rape “substantive arguments” and how are they not “being a jerk”?
Would you feel it a substantive argument to insist that all black men be under constant surveillance to ensure they’re not committing crimes or that “the typical Jew can’t be trusted because they’re famous for their greed”?
Would you insist that such claims aren’t thread shitting and somehow aren’t “being a jerk”?
If so, please explain.
Do you feel the same regarding his attacks on women?
That being said, while I do think that modding the “boo hiss” comment was a bit of an overreaction since the phrase “boo hiss” strikes me more as a joke than a serious attack, similar to someone typing “grrrr” in response to an argument, claiming that it has a “chilling effect” strikes me as equally silly.
Also, while I can understand why some conservatives think the mods are out to get them, I think if you step back and look at the big picture that’s hardly true.
For starters, Marley has never struck me as being all that lefty, particularly by the standards of the board. Left-of-center sure, but he’s never struck as being SDMB’s answer to Michael Moore.
Beyond that, while I can see how a lot of people feel that many like Der Trihs gets away with a vast amount of crap that others never would, this board also gives relatively free rein to a lot of right-wing posters to regularly threadshit(Starving Artist and all the scientific racists come to mind).
Hell, if one wants to be conspiracy minded, I’m sure some left-wingers would argue that the continued survival of Der Trihs is proof of right-wing bias(keeping him around to make lefties look bad) and right-wingers could make the same case regarding the continued survival of Starving Artist.
To me it’s a sign that he’s doing a good job.
Der Trihs *used to be *modded a lot more than he is nowadays, but he’s also toned down quite a bit from those times, I find.
I think the use of mod notes has helped a lot of the slightly borderline posters (such as myself) from going Full Jerk, and I appreciate the use of them to steer away from potential thread implosions.
They might be jerkish actions and/or opinions, but he’s never actually used them against posters. Every one of Oakminster’s comments was against a specific poster.
Also, he goes to great length to explain where he is coming from, which Oakminster deliberately seemed to avoid. Maybe Oakminster was just offering his opinions, but the lack of any substance in his posts gave room for doubt. He came off more like he was spoiling for a fight. Heck, if I were Marley, I’d have said he was getting close to trolling rather than threadshitting.
And that’s what substantive means. It’s referring to something being backed by argument, not your definition that seems to be closer to that of “rational,” a position a reasonable person could have. His posts are still substantial even if they are based on false premises, because at least they have premises.
Der Trihs’s opinions are offensive, sure, but that’s not what Oakminster was modded for.
The rest of your post is not really relevant. I’d suggest opening another thread if you want to debate whether Der Trihs’s posts are equivalent to your racist version. While I see where you are coming from, I definitely see flaws–the discussion of which would likely hijack this thread.
Sorry, but that’s stupid. I won’t go so far as to say it makes him a bad moderator, but I will say that the conflict is often more due to his approach. He has an “act first explain later” type of moderation. As the poster never thinks they’ve done something wrong, this often leads to them already being angry before they hear the explanation. And when you are angry, your instinct is to try to win or beat your opponent, rather than to come to an understanding. And, since the poster is already combative at this point, Marley himself also often responds combatively, which, of course, does nothing to calm the situation.
There are moderators who do a much, much better job of handling this, and are often thought of as being better at their job because of this. Ellen Cherry is often cited, for example. In fact, she’s even won an offboard poll for best moderator, with people citing that as their reason. (Offboard because I don’t think we’d allow that sort of thing here.)
Now, don’t get me wrong. I know some of the difference has to do with what forums Marley tends to moderate. And I know that even Ellen Cherry gets some threads like this, and more of them than less active moderators. And some of it does come with the job. But there’s no way that Marley’s relatively high number of times being subject of an ATMB thread is because he’s better at his job than other mods.
And we’ve heard the caged bird sing.
Did she get a cash prize with that?
He didn’t make anything up.
I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous. When those posters, or several others, post something which is either snarky crap or outright hate, they don’t get modded for threadshitting.
You said -
So you think the claim that conservatives want to sacrifice their own children to being murdered by guns is “constructive or on-topic”?
So it’s that exact phrase that is offensive? And if Oakminster had simply responded “All liberals want to kill babies”, it would have been fine? That just is not true.
Look, you did what tomndebb does sometimes - you got a report from someone you don’t like and went looking for something to use to send the message “don’t report any more posts”.
Regards,
Shodan
I can’t claim to remember how often he was mod’ed in the past, but I do note that he gets mod’ed quite often in recent times.
The only question I have, for Marley and/or Tom, is why he always gets just a mod note even though it’s the nth time he’s done the exact same thing. Seems like once you’ve been mod’ed 3 or 4 times for “doing x”, you should get an official waring the next time you “do x”.
As for the OP, seems like it’s making a mountain out of mole hill. It was just a mod note and nothing else. BFD.
No discussion was derailed. Oakminster doesn’t like the mod note I gave him, but he also stopped doing the stuff I told him to stop doing. The mod note wasn’t a provocation.
They do when it’s actually threadshitting.
I can’t see any relationship to the thread topic.
We’ve never done this, and not just because it wouldn’t work.
Who said anything about better than any other mods?
I just judge the response to Marley’s modding by the people doing the complaining - if he receives a higher-than-average number of complaint threads, and they’re all from a certain group, he’s doing a good job.
People, can Oak and I just grab a beer together and everybody else drop it? We’re getting too worked up over nothing at all, and there are more important things we could be talking about and dealing with, like whether or not this milk smells funny.