Replying in ATMB so the discussion can continue without hijacking the thread.
But why did you do that? My understanding is that mods are not supposed to judge the factual accuracy of posts. @Ed_Zotti even said that recently in the new transgender rules. He says it is up to the users to point out flaws in the argument or citations of a post.
Surely it’s not expected that the mods will be experts (or even motivated enthusiasts) on the topics at hand, capable of verifying information. You couldn’t be an expert on everything. And those who are not an expert can’t be expected to verify information on their own.
I am not surprised that @JohnT was insulted by your moderation. Even if you aren’t calling him a liar, you are in effect using your moderator powers to tell him he’s wrong—based on two minutes of Google searching. And it was above and beyond what mods normally do.
I know you’re just feeling things out on how to mod, but I think you hit a huge dud here. It might make sense to moderate content if someone has a history of making misleading posts and is arguing in bad faith, but that clearly wasn’t the case here.
It seems to me that the moderation choice here was more disruptive than helpful.
It’s absolutely inappropriate for a mod to edit a post in order to break a link just because he doesn’t agree with it. If the link doesn’t break any rules, this takes us into the realm of arbitrary and direct alteration of a poster’s content without good reason.
WhatExit, you state that “[the] picture was suspicious and possibly wrong”. I’ll point out that @JohnT is a respected and informative poster who recently made some very valuable contributions sharing his expertise about Medicare. This is not a poster who should automatically attract suspicion. It’s a poster who should be encouraged to continue being a valuable member of the community. Nor was there any reason to believe the graph was in some way “suspicious” or “wrong”. And as it turns out, of course, it was perfectly legitimate.
The principle of posting images from Flickr or Imgur or other image hosting sites is now well established here. There’s nothing about that to attract suspicion – we have to do it since direct posting of images is not allowed, and sometimes it’s impractical or impossible to link directly to images on another website.
Regardless of any of the above, the image could have been confirmed as authentic in literally two seconds just by typing some variant of the title that was in it, like “FRED total money supply”, which is what I did. The referenced image turns up immediately, on the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis website.
All in all, this was frankly very inappropriate moderation, IMO. I’m now concerned that @JohnT, having been twice burned by questionable moderation, may no longer be willing to put up with it, which would be a terrible loss to the community.
Yeah, this is way out of line. Everything said by @wolfpup above is right on mark. The last time @What_Exit went to his own style of modding we lost three very long time posters. Posters are falling off as it is, no point in driving them away.
I also think it’s past time to use the “still learning” as an excuse. I could see if it was some nuanced rule that needed guidance on but this is not that. Finally, the posters here are not children. If someone posts something amiss they are more than able to figure it out themselves.
I’m just cannot see a reason to break that link even if it was from a first time poster, much less someone who has been here 20 years.
I am merely proving my expertise to the person who not openly cast doubts as to my expertise, but modified my argument to fit their preconceptions, in the venue in which I was originally accused.
If a mod thinks I am so uneducated in a subject that my arguments need to be modified, then I fully expect my response showing my expertise, if any, should be in the same thread. Since @What_Exit hasn’t bothered to come here to explain their actions but has still seen fit to throw around their unchallenged thoughts in the original topic, what am I to do? Just take the hit to my reputation and walk away with no response?
No.
It wasn’t a comment on his moderation, it was me repairing the reputational damage WE caused. Everyone in that thread saw me get kneecapped - I can’t just hope they make their way here, sorry.
Repairing the “reputational damage” you may have suffered as a result of moderation is still arguing that the moderation was wrong. If you were concerned that not everyone would see it in ATMB, then link to it.
This still doesn’t speak to the fact of having this kind of moderation at all. Why did a moderator, acting in that role, see fit to challenge material presented by a poster? Whether the challenge was valid or not is beside the point, as correctly raised by the OP of this thread and others.
I hope this was a one-off error of policy, and will be acknowledged as such, and that this is not the direction that moderation is going to start taking on this board.
And then there’s the apology that’s not an apology.
So what? It has never been the moderators’ role to take action, as moderator, for something that is clearly nothing like any kind of rule violation. I think it’s time for this moderator to take off his training wheels and go home.
This is an important point which seems to have become lost in all the kerfuffle: even if the graph had been wrong, it’s never been appropriate to use moderator powers to break a link that doesn’t violate any rules, or to otherwise meddle in someone’s post. Questioning someone’s data is part of the debate, not a moderation activity. The rest of us can’t argue with someone by crippling their posts, and neither should a moderator. The fact that JohnT’s graph was right all along is just the icing on the cake here.
I will say this is 90% true, with the exception that if a person is in the habit of posting very bad data, it should be a moderation issue, not simply a matter of debate. We do have posters who tend to post highly misleading summaries of their links, to the extent that it should IMO be modded.
JohnT is not, in any of my experience, one of those posters.
Sure, I agree – the implicit assumption in my statement is that the person you’re debating is posting in good faith, rather than trolling. The way I would put it is that it’s true 100% of the time that a moderator should not use their moderator powers to engage in debate, and is moreover a very important principle here in supporting the perceived objectivity of the moderation staff when acting as moderators. Moderating trolls is a different matter. For that very reason, such moderator intervention should only be in very clear-cut instances of bad-faith posting.
Really, how can you “slam” Obama for something he actually did? Terrible non-apology apology. Apologizing means admitting your mistake, not admitting your mistake and then listing reasons you think explains away the mistake.
As I said above, stop using the “learning to mod excuse”. You have all been here for over a decade you should know the rules just from that.
And honestly, the explanation that you recognized the poster should mean you have some idea of his posting after 20 years and 25000 posts. How is this a community if you do not recognize long term posters? But instead of looking at his profile for 2 seconds, you chose to google a photo for 2 seconds. Bad decision.
Some people just aren’t cut out for moderating. Besides @What_Exit 's bad modding, you also have have a mod that still can’t figure out how to navigate the new board after 8 months, another mod that is so humor impaired he gives out mod notes for jokes he doesn’t understand. Maybe it’s time to consider new mods again.
I will not be breaking any more links, pictures or otherwise in the future. (Obviously not spam, obscene images, NSFW direct links, etc.)
We’ve had very clear instructions on this from the Admin, Ed Zotti.
I won’t be doing it again and I’m pretty sure no other mod will make the same mistake.
The issue in that case, though, is whether the poster is wrong, or whether they are trolling. Preventing trolling is an appropriate act of moderation; preventing someone from posting inaccuracies isn’t moderation at all, it’s being a judge at a competition.
If someone’s just wrong - even if it’s not the first time they’ve been wrong - correcting it is the point of this place. If they bullheadedly spew bullshit and disrupt threads, that’s trolling, and is moderated on that basis.
That’s great and all, but I still think you owe @JohnT an actual apology. It doesn’t need to be public but I still feel it should be made.
I am also surprised this had to go all the way to Ed. This seems like such a clear cut overreach all the mods should have agreed on it. Did some mods actually think it was okay?
I said almost the same thing. No one reads my posts. Sad.