Marley, if you can't moderately honestly, then recuse yourself. Or: Respect Mahlay's Authoritay!

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21

Marley has avoided most of the actual meat of the argument, and made up a definition of “moderation” that has nothing to do with actual moderation but includes anything the mod says in the course of actually moderating. If we take this bit of rationalization to its conclusion, if a mod says “Today is Friday and I’m no in the mood for this shit right before the weekend, so stop being so snarky” and another poster says “actually, it’s Thursday” he’s arguing about moderation.

Hell, it would also mean that a moderator could say “Miller said he likes to murder kittens. And Miller, don’t personally insult other posters outside of the Pit” and that both would somehow be “moderating”. And then if you didn’t insult other posters outside of the Pit but another poster claimed that the Mod’s opinion was proof that you really are a kitten killer, you’d be “discussing moderation outside of ATMB” if you pointed out that you didn’t actually say what they claimed.

There’s no definition cogent under which that sort of bullshit, post facto rationalization fits.
And I’ll ask again, if a mod moderates a thread based on content, and claims that a poster has incorrectly stated that his position has been mischaracterized, and that mod believes that something which was discussed a half dozen times never was discussed at all, and points to someone claiming that it was never discussed at all as an instance of non-mischaracterization… what does that say about the mod’s ability to properly moderate the thread?

22

It would say something pretty bad about that moderator. But I don’t think that’s what happened here.

23

Okay, we at least have a basis for discussion now.

  1. Did Marley moderate the thread for content and claim that I had incorrectly stated that my position was being mischaracterized?
  1. Did Marley, in fact, claim that something that had been discussed a half dozen times hadn’t been discussed at all? Yes. Bricker’s post 41 made the claim that I had merely intended to discuss the precedent of warning labels on cigarettes and how it applied to the current situation. I hope that you can agree that if you “intend” to do something then it is a different, opposite claim to “he did it a half dozen times”, right? Marley claimed that Bricker’s summary in post 41 was correct. That is, that I had merely “intended to say was that we could regulate warning labels because we’ve been doing it forever”, instead of actually having done so.

However, starting in my very first post, I explicitly discussed how the precedent of placing warning labels on cigarette packs applied and that there was no material difference between a verbal or a pictoral warning. In fact I either explicitly (or very, very clearly by implication) discussed that factor a total of six times in the thread by post 41, which Marley claimed was accurate when it stated that I had only “intended” to discuss that issue.

24

You know I’ve got a lot of respect for you, Finn, but I just don’t agree with you here. Marley made a solid call. Simply repeating the basis for your disagreement isn’t going to change that.

25

That’s not my basis for disagreement with his call. That’s my basis for disagreeing with him moderating the thread at all in the first place. My basis for disagreeing with his call is that I think it is jabberwockian to claim that “Bricker’s post is accurate” was moderation, when the actual moderation was solely “don’t be snarky”. Only one tells a poster to moderate their behavior. That is also why Marley cannot cite anywhere where he provided actual moderation on the fact that I must take Bricker’s claims about my own words as true, or not dispute them. One was moderation, the other was simply a comment that was made in concert with the actual moderation. And never on the Dope, ever, have we made a rule that posters are not allowed to cite their own words in order to gainsay claims that they hadn’t said something. That was unique to Marley’s rationalization in that thread. Nor has it been okay for one poster to “discuss moderation” (as Marley said, in his own words, Bricker did) but over the line for another to respond if the second commits the sin of disagreeing with a mod’s factual claim.

Hell, let’s say for argument sake that “Bricker’s post is accurate” was actually moderation. That being the case, do you have any specific disagreement with the fact that saying someone only “intended” to do something means they did not, that Marley called that statement “accurate”, and that rather than merely “intending” to do something, I’d clearly and unambiguously done so a full half dozen times before Marley posted in the thread?

26

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect FinnAgain’s point is that mods should not be in the business of deciding what is factually correct. That’s what FinnAgain is doing when he gets Warned - discussing Marley23’s edict that he is factually wrong.

Regards,
Shodan

27

Is this because determinations of fact are solely in the purview of Dopers, while determination of law are solely within the purview of the Mods? What if someone requests a bench thread?

28

Suppose there’s a rule that says “No threads about Jesus can be opened on Fridays”.
It is Thursday. Someone opens a thread on Jesus. A moderator steps in and says to the OP “Hey, no Jesus threads today”. The OP counters “Today is not Friday - this is a fact, you are wrong Mr Mod”. I don’t see how anyone could construe that statement as arguing with “moderation”. If the mod makes a ruling based on demonstrably erroneous facts, then clearly the ruling is erroneous and deserves no privilege of protection. This sounds like the situation as I read it.

29

I thought the gist of the moderation was to tone down the hostility–whether or not Bricker’s assessment was correct or not was not quite the focus of the moderation. The two issues got muddled and here we are.

30

I am not sure I agree with that viewpoint, but I understand it. We usually try to moderate the arguments rather than ruling on what’s true and what’s false. In this case I was trying to moderate the discussions between posters (especially as it pertained to what FinnAgain and NotreDame05 were arguing about and saying the other had posted). That’s separate from the factual merits of the argument, such as whose interpretational of the Interstate Commerce Clause and judicial precedent was correct.

31

I agree with this entirely. This reminds me of the recent massive argument about one of Czarcasm’s mod notes. The thing is, whether you agree with it or not, you have to follow the moderator instructions. In this case, FinnAgain, you chose not to.

Much as in the Czarcasm threads, I can see the point of view that the mod intervention was unwarranted. That doesn’t mean it’s ok to ignore it.

Also, kudos to Marley23 for taking the time to explain his decision.

32

That’s a reasonable response, whether I agree with it or not. Thanks.

Regards,
Shodan

33

I don’t think there’s any problem debating factual statements. Marley’s warning was:

So fine, if you want to take issue with the “little to no basis in reality” or his assessment of Bricker’s post as factual statements. That ultimately doesn’t matter because “your last few posts have added a lot of unnecessary vitriol to this thread” is clearly an opinion. And you argued against it in the thread.

You’re arguing against the judgement of a moderator at this point, and that isn’t appropriate in GD. Even still, you didn’t get a warning. Marley just posted:

That is clearly representing his opinion that you are disputing his moderation. The implied opinion is that you are arguing about moderating in GD. Again, that isn’t a factual statement related to the thread. It is a judgement by a moderator, and disputes about those don’t belong in GD.

34

I didn’t realize that thread was about Israel.

35

Everything’s about Israel. My cite is Finn’s posts.

36

No, I didn’t. The moderation instruction was to “restrain myself” from being “rude”. There was no instruction that I had to agree with Bricker, or that I had to refrain from disagreeing with Bricker when he claimed I had or had not said certain things. I’ve asked Marley for a cite of such moderator instruction, and he knows that he can’t cite it because he invented it after the fact. Which is why he’s dreamed up the standard that anything a mod says in the course of actually moderating is, itself, moderating.

If Marley wants to claim that his moderation instructions included the instruction that I was to accept that despite six separate cited, quoted posts I really did not say something, then surely there’s proof that he made that instruction anywhere. Nobody has provided it yet.

Kind of like " ‘Shut up’, he explained."

Marley’s dodge was disingenous and neglected to answer most of the relevant questions. For instance, even though he claimed in his own words that Bricker’s bandwagon-fallacy post to me was in fact discussing his moderation, Marley had zero problem with that. Marley even went as far as to disingenously argue that Bricker’s post was simply pointing out what my argument was, and not a bandwagon, resurrecting his claims about what I had or had not said, and claiming that since Marley agreed now there was greater force against my claims about what I’d said… even though I could cite and quote what I’d said.

And there’s also that point, that if Marley didn’t actually read the thread and instead skimmed it, at best, then he shouldn’t have tried to moderate it in the first place. Remember, Marley has claimed that something that I discussed a half dozen times, clearly and explicitly, was not something that something there I merely “intended” to discuss. That’s a separate issue from whether or not he can invent moderator instructions after the fact and claim that I’m discussing them, but it’s relevant to whether or not he should’ve stepped into the thread at all.

37

Christ on a pogo stick, are you really still saying that? You were told to take discussion of moderator notes to this forum and stop doing it in GD. You kept doing it in GD. That is all.

38

You are wrong on literally every particular. I was told not to discuss moderation. I was not told not to discuss anything tangentially mentioned in a mod note. I was not discussing moderation. Moderation has an actual definition, and the only actual moderation in that thread was that I was to “restrain myself” from being “rude”. Or are you the first person in this thread (Marley included) who can cite/quote the piece of moderation that states that I had to accept Bricker’s statement about my own words as true and correct? There sure doesn’t seem to be any moderation to that effect. So if that “moderation” didn’t actually exist, it’s rather difficult for me to discuss it, n’est ce pas? Can you cite it, then? In any case, since it’s pretty safe to assume that you can’t actually find a cite where Marley issues any moderation, at all, ordering me not to dispute Bricker’s version of my own words, or that I must accept it as true, or if Bricker were to bring it up again I must remain mute, why don’t you address the other facts at issue here?

Why, for instance, was it okay for Bricker to mention Marley’s factual claims (distinct from his actual moderation of the thread) and use them for a bandwagon fallacy, but my pointing to my own words and showing how the bandwagon fallacy was still factually incorrect was over the line? What does it show us that Marley claims Bricker didn’t take a pro or con stance on Marley’s factual statement, when Bricker used it in a blazingly obvious bandwagon fallacy? Is that a level of reading comprehension you’re particularly sanguine about when it comes to someone who has decided to moderate for content? How did Marley miss, in the first place, that something he claimed was not discussed in the thread was in fact discussed a total of a half dozen times in separate posts? Why was it okay for Bricker to argue that his factual claim was right, as evinced by the bandwagon of Marley’s opinion outside of his actual moderation of the thread, but I was wrong to point out Bricker was incorrect, by citing my own words which he’d claimed didn’t exist?

Which is worse, that Marley is covering his ass and rationalizing why it was okay for Bricker to “discuss his moderation” but my response, and as he stated, any response disagreeing with Bricker would have been over the line… or that someone is modding Great Debates who claims to have read a thread thread but somehow missed half a dozen posts in a 41 post thread and maintained that their content didn’t exist (and in fact still has not retracted that claim)? Is it better that a mod disingenuously described a post as a simple summation when it obviously wasn’t, or that he wasn’t disingenuous at all and really, honestly did not understand that a post like this is not, in fact, merely a disinterested summation but is in fact a bandwagon fallacy arguing a factual point? It is too much to ask that if someone is going to moderate a forum like GD, and moderate for content to boot, that they can cleave to a basic level of understanding of a thread which they moderate for content? Is “understand a subject if you’re going to moderate it for content” really an undue burden to place on a mod? Should we really not expect someone moderating for content to have the ability to understand that “Ah, so everybody is wrong and you just happen to be right. Kay.” is not, actually, just a gee-awww-shucks statement but an argument-by-implication so clear that most native speakers of English would have to try in order to miss it?

Don’t get me wrong, Marley is a decent enough poster, but do you disagree that a moderator in GD, who moderates for content of all things, should be expected to comprehend that content as a very basic prerequisite? And if they lack that level of comprehension, they should refrain from moderating?

39

What’s amazing is that Marley made exactly two posts in that whole thread before the warning, both clearly labeled Moderating, both of which FinnAgain argued with, and yet even that irrefutable fact can’t be conceded. “No, I wasn’t discussing those posts, I was just pointing out how wrong they were and why I thus didn’t have to follow them. You only have to obey mod instructions that you think are right.”

40

You don’t get to change the definition of “moderating” to fit your world view. It doesn’t matter if a mod’s note contains factually incorrect information. The forum to discuss that is here, not GD. That is all.