No bone to pick

About This Message Board
1

The post is here.
Listen, dude, I ain’t white. If I insult someone, I don’t need to hide behind coded language like urban, inner city, sketchy, inclusion or diversity. I say it just like it is. If I insult someone, I’m open about it, like here. You accuse of me calling another poster a coward? I never called a poster a coward, I said that the statement was cowardly.

You win, though, bruh. I’m going to self-segregate myself to the BBQ pit water fountain. So, you don’t have to worry about me posting in Great Debates or another other folder than the BBQ pit. Ever. This is your house. If you don’t want me in it or you’re going to accuse me of doing something I didn’t do, I’ll leave your house. Both you and I would do the same IRL. That’s the respectable thing to do.

Can I give some unsolicited advice? You should endeavor to hire people of color as moderators of the SDMB. You guys actively get liberals and conservatives to join for “equity” (which is funny because political affiliation is NOT a protected class in the United States) but it’s very clear the moderation is from a predominately white (male) point of view. For example, in my posts in elections, I wrote “Negro, please…” and you respond, in part, "Calling people “negro” in this context is not okay." If you were a person of color, you’d realize that “Negro, please” in our jargon would be translated to roughly “I disagree with that comment” or “Yeah, right”. Your white frame of reference blinds you. You even labeled the post as “anti-white” (yes, you actually wrote that); it’s that bias which likely drove you to warn me rather mod-note me about the issue in the other thread. It would be analogous to me labeling the SDMB as “anti-black” because you deliberately allow threads and discussions labeling blacks as shiftless, violent, and dumb. And, you do. I’m new, I don’t know all of your lawyerly like rules (can’t call someone a liar if they lie because lawyers believe lying is intentional and we can’t determine intention over a message board, etc etc).

I’m not going to engage in whataboutism but I will say that the search record shows quite a few posters calling other posters cowards (outright). No warnings were issued. Again, I won’t engage (unless you want me to bring up the posts) but I will just say that you guys should make sure that the** rules are consistently followed and applied**. I also think it’s pretty cool how the other guy accuses me “claiming my victimhood” but you only deigned to give him a moderator’s note. That’s fine. Again, this is your house. I’m just in it.

TLDR: I am* not* arguing for the warning to be rescinded (This is your house, you do what you want to do); I can only do me so I will drastically cut down my posting on this message board and I will only post in the BBQ pit. This should make you happy. Thanks.

To UltraVires: I do apologize to UltraVires if you truly believe I called you a coward. That was not my intention. I thought your statement was cowardly. I’ll repeat that. I thought your statement was cowardly as fuck. I believe if you’re going to use urban as a synonym for black, have the balls to actually say black rather than hide behind coded language.

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I would like to see you continue to contribute in Great Debates. You have a lot to offer. “Negro please” doesn’t bother me. Maybe a poll about the usage, if the mods are open to it?

Regarding your valid point about uneven moderation about name calling, political affiliation, and race, I’ll make a few observations: as a community, we don’t support that. We’re trying to do better. The way we do better outside of the Pit is to report it. Realize that our Mods are volunteer and cannot be everywhere at all times, and that the same Mods do not work on the same forums, which means that not everything is seen, and not everything is replicated identically. Again, reporting things is critical.

Finally, on a personal note, you have valid points, but you do your argument no service when you drop in terms like “hoes”.

Speaking as a female, I have seen you use that particular term in other posts and had to back out. I’m sure it has all kinds of different uses, but it has no good use for me. Offensive doesn’t even start to cover it. If you want to use it as a rhetorical flourish, then we aren’t going to have a conversation and that’s a pity.

3

I’m sorry. I can do better. Oftentimes, I use “hoes” to mean “people” but I understand that this more a Huey-style than anything written in a textbook or AAVE. I apologize for that.

4

So, to briefly recap, you started a thread in ATMB to announce that you were only going to post in the Pit.

Does anyone else see anything wrong here?

Anyway, I look forward to your continued participation, especially in the Pit.

Regards,
Shodan

5

Bone told me to take it to ATMB to make a comment. I followed instructions. Isn’t this what we’re supposed to do? Follow the moderator’s instructions?
(emphasis mine)

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How many people of color are currently mods here, would you guess?

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I’m curious. I looked at all uses of “coward” in Great Debates going back to last October. With the exception of one post–which Bone moderated today, as soon as you brought it to his attention–no uses of the word were directed at other posters.

I’d love to know which specific posts you’re looking at. Did I not go back far enough? Is it a variant of the word that you think was modded inconsistently? Was it in a different forum?

8

No, you didn’t say that. Here is what you said, without paraphrase:

Even “the poster doesn’t have the courage” is an insult. Afterwards, when you say “the cowardice” the natural way to read that would be as a repetition of the charge of lack of courage, which was directed at the poster, not the post. But anyway, even if you delete the “cowardice” part, your post was insulting towards another poster.

9

nevermind

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Asimovian’s the only one I know of, at least in the forums I frequent. How many are there, do you know?

Never mind PoC mods, what we need is some non-American mods (including Canada and American ex-pats in there). I don’t think we have any, do we?

Errm, that wasn’t an unsubtle ploy for a mod slot for moi, BTW, *no one *wants that, I think we all agree on that.

11

Again, I’m not a fan of using whataboutism to deflect responsibility or blame butI bring it up because you specifically asked(don’t want to get this person trouble nor do I want them to receive some ridiculous retroactive warning). Thanks.

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As soon as a Moderator found out about it, he took care of it here.

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Yeah, I saw that one, and mentioned it in the bit you quoted. At the risk of noxious nitpickery, is that single post what you meant when you said “the search record shows quite a few posters calling other posters cowards (outright)”?

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Colibri lives in Panama, I think. I’m not sure if he is native to the country or an American expat. We used to have Xash (India) and Coldfire (The Netherlands.)

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Yes, I just saw this. This is to Bone’s credit. But keep in mind that this was done only after I brought it up in the other thread. When this stuff happens, it makes people of color think, “Hmm, are they making new standards or rules on the fly?” I assume good will because I’m conditioned to. But it hasn’t escaped my noticed that Bone mod-noted only after that I brought up this post in the other thread. Further, a moderator, RickJay, posted in that thread several times after the coward comment was made. If cowardice, cowards, or lack of courage was an egregious insult, why didn’t that moderator move to squash it? My* hunch* is none of these words in isolation are sufficient to trigger moderation but that it was my “anti-white sentiment” that pushed it over the edge. That’s fine, I can accept that as the hazards of speaking truth to power, but I just wish it could be said upfront. Again, that hunch is IMO.

And again, I’m not assuming some Bolshevik plot here - people make mistakes, we are human - but try to understand how it can appear from another person’s point-of-view. I write that another poster doesn’t have courage, and that’s an insult worthy of a warning; but an ostensible white guy can write that his opponent is an outright coward, and that was OK *until *I brought it up earlier today. Now, you’re like, “See, Bone fixed it!” and, yeah, he did, but try recognize (or imagine) how strange this can appear to someone who isn’t you. That’s all.

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Not only is he a Yank, he’s a born New Yorker. Brooklyn, IIRC.

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A couple points to clarify:
[ul]
[li]My esteemed colleague, **RickJay, **is not a moderator of Great Debates. In general moderators limit their moderating activity to their assigned forums. In cases of potential rule violations outside of our assigned forums, we use the report button just like everyone else. The report button causes an email to be generated to each moderator of the assigned forum. That means that I get reports for Great Debates and Elections, but I do not get reports for ATMB or any other forum. I can look them up manually but do not get the alerts. There are times where we act outside of our assigned forums but it is rare.[/li][li]I looked at the log of reports for that post and note the post was not reported until today after you mentioned the post, and it wasn’t reported by you.[/li][li]As highly compensated as we are, moderators are typically not able to read every post in their assigned forums. We rely on reports by posters to alert us to potential rule violations. I did post previous to the one you identified in that NATO thread, but really, it’s not a strong interest area for me so I stopped following it. Typically I do try to read all the posts in a thread, but for those I’m not invested in as a poster I’ll mostly skim, but I do wait until the thread has mostly died so I can go back and read it only one time. I’m sure there are instances of rule violations that are not addressed because they are not reported. We do what we can.[/li][/ul]

You raised a single example which as clarified, was not reported, and was addressed once it was reported. If you are aware of other examples, feel free to bring it up as it may shed light on potential blind spots. I am trying to isolate your actual complaints/questions in the OP from the other commentary parts. Here is my understanding:
[ol]
[li]You believe moderation is impacted by racial bias or lack of certain racial perspective.[/li][li]You believe moderation is not consistently applied.[/li][/ol]
Is that a fair summation?

18

See that little ! in the red triange in the right hand corner of your posts? The next time you see a post that you think breaks the rules, click on it. There! Now white people* can no longer get away with breaking the rules, and everyone’s happy!

*Although, I didn’t see anything there to indicate that Happy Fun Ball is white. That’s an amazing talent you have, being able to tell someone’s race across the internet. Wherever did you learn it?

19

And RickJay is from Canada.

20

I think you’ve misunderstood my me entirely. First, if I saw a post that I thought egregious or a virus-laden spam post, I would report; but it’s not my job to roam around the SDMB looking for posts to report. Frankly, I think that would be a rather sad and miserable existence. Second, I said ostensible white person, the word ostensible doesn’t have the certitude you think it does. Lastly, you can drop the condescension (“See that little red triangle?”) and white solidarity. I get it. You’re offended that I say white folks and white people. Really, I get it. I understand.