forgot the one other part - in one of the posts of yours that I cite, you specifically comment about long term posters progressing from mildly jerky to full out jerkdom, then banning and specifically comment
which is odd, because that’s exactly what you’re doing wrt **Ace’s banning (looking at his last defense of Joe, threads re: gays and asserting that is the ‘sum’ of why he was banned.
Of course I can’t “prove” it. Bias is not something that can be proved directly - it is only by looking at larger patterns that it can be demonstrated. Obviously no liberal is going to directly say “I think you’re a jerk for going against liberal dogma”. Just as no judge is going to say “I’m ruling against you because the plaintiff is my brother in law”. It’s absurd for you to be asking for direct statements in which people declare their own bias, and it’s not something that I’m going to bother trying to provide.
Similarly wrt moderator enforcement action, if in fact they are influenced by bias, it is not something they are going to declare outright, and it is ridiculous to infer that bias doesn’t exist because of the fact that they haven’t done so. (On the same note, I thought Dex’s denials added nothing in the case of december - obviously the mods had made a judgment about december that they believed to be unbiased, but to the extent that one had previously considered the possibility of bias, a mere denial by the players themselves means nothing).
The only things I am willing to support wrt Ace are that he tangled bitterly with gays & their sympathizers on many occasions and that he was ultimately banned in a fight over JC/JD. I’m not going to find any cites for anything more, because I’m not claiming any more. These suffice. I am not claiming that I can prove that liberals were influenced in judging him to be “flat out jerky asshole” by the fact that he was considered somewhat homophobic, although I think it is likely the case. But I don’t have to prove it. All I need is to note the fact of these tangles and Ace can no longer be used as an example of a liberal who attracts antipathy from liberals. You can’t prove that liberals get treated equally roughly if your example is a liberal who offended liberal sensibilities. (See Trion’s post above).
I’m sorry that you don’t seem to be able to understand this, but that’s the best I can do for you. Sorry.
Izzy, lemme put a couple things out for you, then ask a question.
I honestly only noticed Ace in a thread about cats, an issue that has professional interest to me. Although other pro-outdoor-cats people don’t earn my disdain (indeed, my sister is a pro-outdoor-cat person, and I’m very good at being in the same room with her :), Ace pissed me off by being a jerk to me about the issue, countering my cites from HSUS with cites from some crazy British cat-lady and implying that my cites were lies put up for selfish interests. His first banning was soon after the cat thread; I believe it was for intentionally misquoting someone in an effort to satirize them. I applauded the punishment (a temporary banning) at the time. You can go look all that up, if you want. I didn’t read his homophobic comments until after his second banning, in one of the train-wreck threads surrounding it. So you have here one liberal who despised him based on factors other than his viewpoints.
Second, I want to lay something out very honestly. When there’s someone espousing an opinion I disagree with, I’m likely to step in and argue. When they’re posting respectfully, I try to respond in kind; when they’re posting disrespectfully, I don’t try so hard to respond respectfully (although I do try to respond honestly even when they’re being dishonest).
When someone posts an opinion I agree with, I’m much less likely to step in and post anything. That’s whether or not they’re being respectful. If they’re being disrespectful (either by insulting their opponents or by being dishonest toward them, or both), that means that I’m a lot less likely to call them on it.
To the degree that my posting is motivated by my wanting to argue with someone, and my calling them on their sleazy posting tactics only occurs when I’m posting in the first place, I end up calling folks on sleazy tactics only when I disagree with their content. Would you call that bias? Would it help you if I went into threads I agreed with and said, “Reeder, yes, Bush is a dangerous fool, but quit posting that in a manner disrespectful to conservatives and/or dishonest”?
It would mean reading Reeder’s threads, which frankly doesn’t appeal to me. But I’m interested in knowing whether that would make you less likely to consider me biased in how I call people out.
Daniel
“can’t understand”???
I am suggesting to you that you’ve got blinders on the size of the grand canyon. I have no doubt that there were occasions that Ace was a jerk about homophobia.
but, it is absolutely ridiculous of you to assert (as you did)that was ‘the’ cause of liberals despising him. and just as ridiculous to ignore the fact that he was a jerk in many ways to many people caused his banning, vs. the specific instances that you recall of him defending Joe. Please, address my last post to you where you specifically point out that in long term jerky behavior by long term posters, we shouldn’t just assume it was the last few instances that caused the banning. (ie, like you asserting that Aces last few homophobic type posts in the Joe threads that was caused his banning vs. the long term jerky behavior to many)
I am suggesting to you that it is your biases that are at work here - you see and remember the posts that support your thesis, and don’t see any others. That’s a normal tendancy.
where you are excelling is in your absolute black/white vision that **only ** what you remember can be evalutated. That other people suggesting , well, gosh, no, there were other instances of him being a jerk that also occured, has apparently no merit to you. that you apparently are free from bias, and are able to see and evaluate w/o prejudice.
It’s presumptious, arrogant and, well, flat out wrong.
and interesting, too, because in your stance, you can never be proven wrong, because even if every single liberal poster came in here and said “nope, that’s not why I despised him”, you’d be able to sit back and smugly assert ‘well, of course they wouldn’t admit their bias’
and if you can’t see that your stance is a self fufilling one, that it allows for no other interpretation, no additional data to be considered, well, that’s just sad.
Daniel,
I don’t disagree with anything in your post (unless I missed something). In answer to your final questions, it would not make you (or me - as I am the same way 
) biased. But what it does mean is that if the board as a whole has a disproportionate amount of people who happen to share your viewpoint, the board as a whole will have a bias against people that you disagree with. And there will be an increased likelihood of board opinion coalescing around the notion that your ideological opponents have sleazy tactics than it will around the notion that people who agree with you do.
wring,
My remark about the final infraction was not stand-alone - it was an accompaniment to the part about his run-ins with the gays. If all I had to go by was his final infraction it would in fact be a very incomplete picture, as I said.
Of course. And I would be right, too.
In the other thread, I linked to a poll of the results of a Bush/Gore debate. Bush supporters thought their guy won by a 72-8 margin. Gore supporters thought their guy won by a 86-3 margin. If every one of those Bush or Gore supporters came and said that they were not motivated by bias in their judgment that their candidate won, I would “sit back and smugly assert ‘well, of course they wouldn’t admit their bias’”. Or even recognize it, FTM.
That’s the way the world works.
This does not follow.
(BTW, I shall shortly be offline until Monday, so any future responses will likely have to wait until then).
don’t bother. Your mind is so closed you cannot even see it.
Another uninvited liberal popping up…
Wow. I’ve been off the boards for a while, and I hadn’t even realized that december finally fell through that thin ice he’d been skating on for so long. It’s a pity that he so consistently misused his considerable talents in such banworthy ways, but I think his absence is definitely going to advance the cause of fighting ignorance.
However, fear not, conservative friends, you haven’t lost anything numerically (and I agree with Scylla that you haven’t lost that much in any other respect by losing december, either). To keep the teams even, I’m withdrawing from these boards for probably at least a year.
Well, to be honest, it’s not to keep the teams even, it’s because I’m going to India next week on a one-year fellowship and I don’t expect to have reliable internet access. All of y’all have a great and mutually respectful time in GD, and look me up if you happen to be in Jaipur!
Love,
Kimstu
Huh. Have a terrific time over there, Kimstu!
Although I have to say… it doesn’t really seem like a fair trade, conservatives dropping december and liberals dropping you… 
No, I wasn’t accusing you of employing personal insults in GD - that was another poster.
You called (IIRC) december a “liar” and “worse than Bush”. That was in the Pit, where personal insults are allowed.
My objection to your post was the double standard. Al Franken lies/misrepresents his sources in order to get his political opponents to say something which will embarass them. december lies/misrepresents his sources in order to get his political opponents to say something which will embarass them. You apparently think this is OK for Franken, but not december, and I cannot see any basis for this beyond that you fell for it and Ashcroft did not.
I have already cited Polycarp using direct insults in GD.
Regards,
Shodan
FWIW, it was Scylla who made me rethink what up until that time had been a fairly innocuous view of december. I have no idea exactly when or in which of the numberless pit threads devoted to the dearly departed that this happened, but he made a post that was less than flattering towards him by a wide margin, and that stopped me short. Made me go back and reread a bunch of things by december to see what was going on with him.
So AFAIK, Scylla was on to him for quite some time.
Pantom:
It would be fair to say that I have been somewhat schizophrenic in my feelings towards December.
I would be pissed when he was arguing well an idea that I shared, and was getting laughed at and piled on beceause he was December
Usually this would be followed by a “dirty rotten liberals” post of some kind from me.
Then I’d be shamed when he was making a foolish mockery of Conservatism with his disingenuous, and I’d hate him.
In the thread that Izzy cites where I defend him, Wring, MTGman and a couple of others illustrate several examples of asshole liberals who got banned and my feelings started to gel, and I felt that I was wrong.
Then about a week later he starts those two horrible misattribution threads and my feelings went from Gel to cement.
Well I have reread several (as much as I am gonna ) recent threads where** December** offered comments pivotal to the discussion.
And by any logical streach of meaning I can find no way that his words or behavior could be interperted as being “troll-like”. This; no matter what “trolling” is chosen to mean.
I experimented with derivitives…
Troll = ill-tempered dwarf lives under bridge = poster whose posts snare others unexpectantly.
Troll = as in a boat going 'round and 'round. = poster who is fishing for compliments by outlandish posts.
Naw, didn’t fit.
Finally I clicked on this site [ usenet ] in order to discern some message board types as they had them pegged. They said…
A Troller:
_______Troller is looking for a response…ANY response, and he will chum the waters with complaints, insults, compliments, and inflammatory tidbits hoping that someone…ANYONE, will take the bait. Generally quite harmless - practices a form of catch and release. Nonetheless, he can upset the delicate ecology of a discussion forum. Once a forum becomes aware of his presence, however, all feeding activity ceases and Troller must move on to more promising waters.
…chum the waters with complaints, insults, compliments, and inflammatory tidbits? No. That’s not December.
Once a forum becomes aware of his presence, however, all feeding activity ceases and Troller must move on to more promising waters. No. That’s not December. Never did the carping of his detractors cease and he did not move on to more promising waters, he was banned.
And so now I move on…
Well, buh-bye. Don’t let the screen door hit you in the butt.
Milum:
I’m guessing you missed the long series of threads in GD that go something like this"
“Are liberals traitors?”
“Do liberals want to destroy the world?”
“Are liberals evil?”
“Did liberals kill Jon-benet Ramsey”
“Should Israel destroy all the liberals?”
and such.
(obviously I made those titles up, but you get the idea)
Wouldn’t you concede that he had a history of provocative and outlandish threads that he started that really served no other purpose but to piss people off?
I mean, I used to cringe.
Nit-fucking-pick on this one. I rarely tangled with december, but when I did, I was not unfairly jumping on him for being conservative. I challenged what I believed were errors in fact, false conclusions, and insulting assertions. I can remember him once claiming that Black Studies classes were deliberately made easy and simple so minority students could get better grades.
My reaction to that wasn’t favorable, but I don’t think it was me jumping him on the one-sided principle of “Let’s attack the conservatives.”
Cranky:
Of course what I’m describing was not ubiquitous. And, you can do no wrong in my eyes.
yeah, but doesn’t it make you sad we’ll never see:
" Liberals don’t want to Fight Ignorance, they’d rather listen to how its parents beat it and get it government housing." 
Excellent. Can you turn your efforts towards getting the rest of this board to adopt this sound philosophy?
Once again, Shodan: you started a perfectly good thread to debate this point. I stand by my judgement in both cases, but I’m not going to hijack this thread to discuss it. If you want to discuss it further, please bump your old thread on this supposed double-standard – as I recall, you never responded to my last post in it, and I’m disinclined to defend myself again here when you haven’t responded to my defense there.
However, I’ll point out one factual error, specifically, the last clause of the quote above. I didn’t “fall for it” when december posted his lies; indeed, I didn’t run across his thread until it was locked (I was rubbernecking); by the time I got to it, his lies were exposed.
Daniel
The last two are, so is the second one to a certain extent.
You expect everyone here to stop feeding trolls? Not gonna happen.