You may well be right. I really only know mswas from the past few days. Sad to say, most posters kind of blend together for me until they establish a pattern of amusing and/or annoying me. No doubt the mods are more aware of his posting history and perhaps that’s what earned him a suspension instead of a banning.
I expected him to be banned, and I wouldn’t have considered it an injustice, but I wasn’t calling for it and I’m not sorry it didn’t happen, if that makes sense. I think it should take a lot more to get banned, but I think I’ve seen people banned for less. In any case, under current board rules and practices as I understand them, disciplinary action was certainly warranted, and therefore he makes a poor candidate for martyrdom.
Suspended, huh? My plan worked perfectly. You know, that systematic pattern of harassment that mswas recognized but was unable to prove, or even point to specific examples?
Errr… uhmmmm… suspended, huh? How shocking and unexpected.
Just to clarify I do think he should of been suspended. I however think a week is more then adequate. I do see the personal insults, however I frequent GD and The pitt and to see someone get admonished for using the word “ass” and “moron” every few thousand posts when goaded in the wrong forum doesn’t get me feeling like I need to grab a pitch fork.
Oops, missed he showed up. But your other issue is irrelevant. The thread is discussing the exact same issue mswas was trying ineptly to raise multiple times. The difference? Unlike the threads from mswas, it hasn’t been started for picking a fight, nor devolved into one.
So, if you were to start a thread in MPSIMS, not looking to pick a fight, but simply to make a mild comment, and the thread managed to stay out of Pit territory, there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t be acceptable. Try it and see.
This notion that people who don’t toe a certain line around here get treated differently from those who do makes me laugh. One of our most notable conservatives here, Bricker, has so far as I know never been subjected to official moderator action (perhaps he has, but I’d guess it’s very, very rare). Why? Because he acts in a respectful fashion. He doesn’t break the rules.
By the same token, there have been plenty of banned “liberals”.
As someone who’s opinions tend to inhabit the middle of the spectrum, I’m well aware that there are more here who are vitriolically liberal in their leanings than those who are outspokenly conservative. But when it comes to moderator actions, I have seen little reason to suspect that the moderators are biased in what they do, either by politics or “friendship.”
But one thing some people around here might try to do is obtain some currency, as it were, stacked up against the future, by acting respectfully on a regular basis, rather than regularly pushing the limits. I do believe that, in my own case, the fact that moderator action against me has tended to take the form of non-formal admonishments instead of formal warnings has something to do with treating people around here civilly, and not trying to see how close I can get to a line without someone having to slap my wrists and say, “no, no!”
I don’t think the difference in treatment is even debatable. Even taking the recent threads in the worst possible light, they are no worse (actually much nicer) than previous threads in the same forums celebrating the death of Republicans and trashing their memories.
The question is… is the difference in treatment justified?
Does the fact that this is mainly a liberal forum mean that celebrating the demise of conservatives is to be applauded, but “disrespect” to the memory of a liberal is “trolling”? Objectively, the latter is much more likely to cause trouble.
The Danish Muslim cartoons are a decent analogy. Were they “trolling”? Well, the offense was very predictable. The magnitude of the anger probably went beyond expectation, just as the actual thread closing here was probably unexpected. It just depends what you want the forum to look like. Bowing down to the delicate sensibilities of the irrationally enraged in order to keep the peace may be the move the majority want to make.
No, because it’s not really relevant. In the situation we were discussing, mswas rather clearly admitted that his goal was to piss off people in such a way as to get banned. We don’t need to debate subjective opinions of his actions, because he told us in his own words why he’d done it. I get that the Dope is an argumentative culture and all that, but I’m not exactly advancing a hyper-controversial hypothesis here.
Mswas said he was trolling, mswas was suspended for trolling. That doesn’t mean he’s a diehard troll or what have you, but it does mean that he admitted to trolling on that occasion. Are you arguing that point?
Have you gotten any support for this thesis of yours that being deliberately provocative is the same thing as trolling? I’ve seen you float it all over the place, but I think you would find far from unanimous support for such an idea.
I haven’t followed this drama in great detail, but I strongly suspect that the suspension is for his own good. It seemed to me like mswas could use a breather.
I like the guy. I hope he sticks around. I’m also guessing that if he loaded some of his more inflammatory material with hedges and softeners that he would avoid problems. But I have not looked at his most notorious threads. So he might well consider a more cautious stance.
Admittedly, I often agree with his POV, though not necessarily in its expression or all of its particulars. But that’s just a bias. At any rate, communication is hard and those wanting to explore inflammatory ideas would do well to present tight arguments. Among other characteristics such presentations actively anticipate and address some of the more likely responses of the audience in question.
OBTW: mswas denied being particularly conservative in one of the threads. Accurate or not (for these are questions of calibration) I think its fair to say that during most of his tenure here he hasn’t been especially aligned with the usual suspects, as it were.
Finn can you show me what you are talking about with mswas. I have a feeling his admission was directed only to the people he was actively disagreeing with who responded in kind. If you provide me a cite to a pitt post you point is totally moot.
In my first post to you, which you read and responded to, I provided the direct cite for the fact that mswas’s previous month long ban was, in fact, explicitly due to trolling.
You could be right, but since the OP typically does not control the thread, I’m not sure how you could keep it from ending up in Pit territory. All it would take is a few snarkers to ruin the thread and push it out of MPSIMS.
You keep accusing the moderators of being biased, but you have yet to offer proof of this.
(And drop the “Usual Suspects” schtick, wouldya? It makes you sound like you think there’s some kind of conspiracy against you, or something. At least stop typing it with caps.)
Topic? Dude deserved to be suspended – if not out-right banned. There.
Kimmy_Gibbler, I believe that being deliberately provocative for the express purpose of PISSING PEOPLE OFF is the definition of trolling. Not trying to provoke a debate. But trying to be an asshole on purpose. How would YOU define trolling?
It’s always possible. But I think that the tone of an OP often sets the tone for a thread. Again, the current discussion of the cartoon about Mary Jo Kopechne and the refusal of the media to discuss her when talking about Ted Kennedy is an example. It’s not posted as an attack on either “side” of the debate. As a result, the discussion has remained very even-tempered, despite the fact that people with opinions on all sides of the question have checked in.
If, by comparison, you publish an OP in which you are already half frothed at the mouth, there’s no shock when the rest of the thread careens off the road. :smack:
Wikipedia has a definition: “In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[2]”
I think that makes sense. I must say that you’ve convinced me. Thanks for hanging in there until I understood what you were saying. And I agree. The tone of the OP can greatly affect the tenor of the thread in general.
I do hope that you would agree as well that even the most quiet, mundane discussion about an issue like the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne can easily morph into Pit material due to nothing but interference from people whom you go on to define as “trolls”; that is, people “otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion”.
This hasn’t happened in the thread you refernced, I must say in large measure to Dex’s stern hand and clear rules and guidelines in Cafe Society. The odd thing, though is that remarks like thisare being made in the thread:
As a big fan of Ted Kennedy, and a die hard liberal Democrat, I say let the pubbies have their happy dance at the news of Kennedy’s death. Nobody said Ted was a saint, but I truly liked him and thought he was doing everything he could to get a decent health care package passed, right up until the day he died.
My guess is when Cheney, Rove or Bush dies, there will be some happy dancers on this side of the fence as well.
It is odd because Cafe Society threads are supposed to be about the arts aspect of a topic, not the political aspects. Dex must be absent, or else I would expect the thread to be moved. See Dex’s rules sticky: the section titled Entertainment vs Politics.
Discussions about arts and entertainment are acceptable in Cafe Society forum. Discussions about political satire, so long it is about the satire, is acceptable. Discussions about politics is not, and belongs in Great Debates.
He gives examples. I hope you would agree that by that rule, given the example post I provided to you, the thread does not belong in Cafe Society, but belongs in Great Debates.