The first of the list is true, especially the latter. To the second point, I know where this will lead: I’m not gonna engage in whataboutism. I’m not going to wander in the dark forests of equivocation. I only did it because a poster asked. Now, he wants me to do it some more (and then again and again and again). I said my peace, you said yours. Nothing will change. I heard you, and I hope you heard me.
And you’re telling her to drop the condescension? Huh.
Yes, along with the white solidarity. You get what you give.
I’m hopeful that, since I think you’ve got a valuable perspective, and I want to hear more about what you have to say, you’ll decide that coming into a new place and antagonizing people whom you don’t really know is counterproductive, and you’ll change your approach a bit with regards to how you communicate. Every place has a different vibe/culture. And I’m not sure if the approach you’ve chosen will mesh well with the culture of the Dope. But I hope you’ll get the hang of it and stick around.
This was from the OP (my italics in each of the quotes below):
This was posted in the thread in question:
Initially you were willing to bring up evidence to support your claim of inconsistency, but now you are demurring. That’s fine as this is the appropriate forum for complaints. If however, you wish to have that discussion, feel free to engage at your leisure.
You appreciate forthrightness, so lemme give you some: your claim was bullshit. I believe that, contrary to what you said, there’s been exactly one instance in the past year of someone calling another poster a coward in Great Debates and getting away with it. I believe that you’re declining to offer more examples, not because you believe it’s a lost cause, but because there are no more examples to offer.
Imputing motives to someone is not cool, but as far as I can tell either you were being hyperbolic and hoping nobody would call you on it, or you were being sloppy (did a search for “coward” and reported the first result that came back). Maybe there’s another reason you posted something so straight-up wrong. Ultimately, though, your motives don’t much matter.
I appreciate forthrightness, too. In this case, that’d consist either of your saying, “Shit, dude, I messed up,” and owning your error without any backhanded slaps at me in the apology; or it’d consist of your offering enough examples of your claim to support the “quite a few” that you said.
In college I took classes with guys who would cover up their lack of evidence by making huge, loud claims, in an attempt to intimidate other people into not calling them on their lack of supporting evidence. Later in life I ended up with a president who used the same strategy. I hope that’s not what you’re aiming for.
If you don’t want to report troublesome posts, that’s fine. Nobody’s forcing you to. But it’s a bit odd to complain about moderators not taking action if you’re going to also choose not to report.
A black president? That’ll be the day.
First, Why would I apologize to you if I haven’t offended you? You’re not trying to prove a point, you’re just trying to prove me wrong. You employ white solidarity to shift discussion toward from the uncomfortable (racial bias) to the comfortable (the person of color putting out deliberately misleading statements to white folks). You ostensibly believe that as long as Bone intended that the post be moderated (and did so post hoc after it was brought up by* me)* that his impact of uneven moderation is minimized because Bone’s intention was pure. I get it. Second, I assumed that the search engine went back to 1999 (the search engine only goes back 12 months). I **assumed **that there if the very first post didn’t agree with the metric, there would be others. I saw 500+ posts with the word coward and assumed there would more examples. From what I see, yes, you’re right, I can’t find any other examples in the last 12 months. ** I shouldn’t have written that because it was based on an assumptions that were wrong. Therefore, I was wrong. ** I would formally apologize but because we’re emphasizing intention over impact, you’ll have to assume my intentions were genuine.
Yeah, I hear you. I’m just having difficulty internalizing the idea that in order to expect that rules are consistently followed and applied, it’s my responsibility to report posts. Frankly, with no disrespect, I think it’s the moderator’s job to ensure that his or her moderation is consistently followed and applied evenly. Not mine. I also don’t think it’s the moderator’s job to impugn my posts as “anti-white”, either. Further, I find it bizarre to debate on the opposite of the spectrum with a moderator on the forum, then several posts later, I get a warning for something unrelated. Bias is real; humans are incapable of being 100% objective. How can you objective and moderate the same conversation you’re temporally invested in? I get a warning for telling a poster lacks courage and that a remark was cowardly but the very first post with the word ‘coward’ from the search engine shows a poster using one the words much, much worse than mine. It’s all good because Bone didn’t intend for it to happen. It doesn’t matter that another moderator, RickJay, commented on the thread multiple times after this terrible comment because “he is not a moderator of Great Debates.” Yes, I get that. But what’s not clear is why didn’t the moderator report the post? This is a rhetorical question, there is no need to answer. We already know why.
(emphasis mine)
Dude, one example was too many. As I stated this morning, the rules should be consistently followed and applied. And they weren’t. Period. You’ve made it clear that rules are only consistently followed and applied* if *you receive a report. I get it now. Really, I do. You didn’t receive a report for the post, therefore all responsibility for fairness and consistency in moderation is abdicated. All that you can do is employ post hoc magic to address the issue ~3 hours after I brought up the discrepancy.
You do the Lord’s work; but I don’t know dude, this shit is getting kind of cultish. This may not the be the best place for me (and that’s cool), but I’ll continue reading as I enjoy reading different perspectives. I was reading for about 4 or 5 months before I joined and will continue to read even if I don’t post on the those folders. I’ll still be around. It’s probably the best, tbh, while fun and engaging this place has been a drain on my free time.
You got the admission that you were wrong, but goddamn did you ever preface it with a lot of white solidarity nonsense, as though I only called you out like this because of your race. Okay, dude. So much for forthrightness.
Oh, and that “I get it” that you keep posting? You really, really, REALLY shouldn’t be so confident in that. Two ears, one mouth, and all.
Dude, the civility rules here have nothing to do with being white. Not all of us are white, and those of us who are also sometimes want to just say exactly what we are thinking, rather than just have to be civil. But that’s why this board has a Pit forum. Outside that forum, you’re expected to attack the post, not the poster.
This rule has nothing to do with race. It’s the same on most moderated Internet forums. You’re not being asked to give up your blackness to post here. You aren’t even remotely the only black person on this forum–though you do have a perspective that we currently seem to lack.
In fact, it seems to me that posters here are being much more accommodating than usual because of this. This is not how an ATMB thread where everyone disagrees with you usually goes. Even Bone is pulling out his diplomatic shoes a bit, even though he’s usually pretty diplomatic anyways.
Since you say you value forthrightness, I will offer this advice: We are not big Whitey. I get that you have hostility towards how white people have treated you. But you’ve got to not see us on this board as your enemy. You said before that I am a “minority of a minority” for my progressive, anti-racist stances. But on this board, I’m most definitely not.
And I say this as someone who often pisses people off because of how earnest I get. (People will agree with me but say I come on too strong and hurt their side.) Don’t think I haven’t wanted to violate the civility rules on many occasions. It’s just as constraining to us white guys as it is to you. But it also helps keep the conversation flowing. It helps us maintain a community.
And, as always, this is my opinion–albeit what I believe is an informed one. I do think it might be helpful, though. I do very much want people like Huey to stick around, so helping them acclimatize to the new community is a good idea, I think.
I don’t think this is what Bone is saying. He may disagree, but I don’t think so.
What I would say, and I believe the rest of the staff would agree with, is that you have that ability to report posts. We don’t expect you to browse around looking for rules violations. But if you see something you believe does break a rule in the normal course of your reading, by all means report it. Don’t go out of your way to do so. For us to think that would be ludicrous.
Now, we do have some posters who report posts a LOT. Sometimes it seems like they go our of their way to do so. Others only report spam or other obvious things. I’d wager - but have no interest in figuring out - that the majority of posters never report a post.
But the simple fact is the system doesn’t work unless posters report out of line posts. There’s simply not enough of us - or hours in the day - for us to read everything.
In terms of consistency…welllll, we strive for it. But the nature of moderating, and the way the system is set up, makes it difficult. In addition to different moderators in each fora, which means the rules will, by necessity, be enforced differently across the fora, we have multiple moderators per forum. Because of that, sometimes how something is enforced can vary. If two moderators see a problem post and vary in what they think should be done it’s generally the one who acts first who carries the day. If one thinks a note should happen and the other a warning the first to get there and respond is the one on the record.
Occasionally we’ll disagree and discuss it behind the scenes. If it’s before an action is taken we can try to arrive at consensus. This can take some time. If it’s after, generally we’ll let the ruling stand - not always, but generally - and discuss more fine tuning behind the scenes to try to move forward on the same page. Even then, though, that’s not always possible.
I want you to believe - all of you, not just Huey - that you and your posts are respected by the moderation staff. We pay attention to reports and treat them with the seriousness they deserve. You can go ahead and report in confidence that at least one, and frequently several, sets of eyes will review it.
He’s the reason I put ex-pats in there.
I included Canadians.
First, this assumes facts not in evidence wrt uneven moderation. However, given the nature of subjective judgment, it’s fair to assume moderation is not perfect. That’s why in part, we have this forum - to discuss moderation and shed light on potential areas of improvement. Thus far I haven’t seen evidence of what you’re describing.
Second, the search isn’t actually limited to 12 months. It does limit results to the first 500 hits though. Changing the preferences like oldest first, or searching by thread rather than by post, or isolating specific users, etc. can cull the results to go back further than 12 months. You are also limited to 1 search per 120 seconds so that’s a hurdle. You can also search with Google and that has both advantages and disadvantages.
I did conduct my own searches and didn’t find instances of what you describe. I could have also missed them, but I think the chances of that are low.
JC already addressed this but I’ll chime in too. Your phrasing interpreting in the most negative way possible while there are more reasonable charitable interpretations invites defensiveness. I decline the invitation. Posters can expect rules to be consistently followed and enforced even without reporting, as much as is reasonably possible. Reporting helps the process. A frequent response to the charge of 'why wasn’t this moderated is that it wasn’t read, wasn’t reported, etc. It’s not reasonable for mods to read every post so when things are not reported there exists a higher chance of it being missed by the highly compensated mod team.
This is one of those oddities where in order to properly moderate, mods are permitted to do things that are otherwise prohibited. For example, there is a rule against accusing ither posters of trolling outside the Pit. We do occasionally warn other posters for trolling, and necessarily we have to indicate that when the warning is issued. It would be quite silly to prohibit moderators from accusing posters of trolling while they are moderating because it would handcuff them.
We do the best we can do and it is the nature of the role. Mods are chosen based on a number of factors and sound judgment is one of them. We also have this forum to discuss moderation as a way to call attention to issues.
We don’t know why actually. Why do you think that is? Why didn’t you report it? Why didn’t any other single reader of the post report it up until this morning? I don’t know, and I’m not interested in speculating. For me, I often don’t report posts that I see because I don’t have time. We all have other things that occupy us.
Do you have a suggestion how this could be avoided? It did take a bit of time to be thorough. I searched and read a history of all reports with various word combinations. I searched and read a history of all warnings issued with various word combinations. I also read sections of those threads around the warning and offending post to gain understanding of context. I also searched through mod communication history to explore other background. So yeah, I’m pretty comfortable with the position I’ve staked out, but if you have results to the contrary fell free to introduce them.
It’s true though that things can get missed. That’s why we ask that if posters see instances of potential rule violations they report them. We do the best as is reasonably possible.
Then don’t complain when moderators miss them.
Not offended. Just amused. 
You’re equating perceived anti-White bias in an apparently Black American with trolling.
Was that really the equivalency you wanted to make?
Bone wasn’t equating the two – he said he was merely using it as an example of what mods are allowed to do that other posters can’t.
Besides Huey’s pretty much accused anyone who remotely disagrees with him of “anti-White bias” (despite not even knowing what race any of them are). The guy’s pre-disposed to assuming the worst no matter what. What else do you suggest?
He was equating them as things mods can do that ordinary posters can’t - accusations of trolling, and accusations of anti-White bias. But one of those is an accusation of a rules violation and itself a rules violation if a non-mod did it; whereas the other is just what would be a personal attack in a ordinary poster, but is not a rules violation in any way on the part of the person holding the bias. One could straight-up say one mistrusts and dislikes all White people in GD, (as long as one did it politely :rolleyes:) and it wouldn’t be a rules violation by current standards. Or shouldn’t be.
So, false equivalency.
He can tell by their surnames. Or something. I agree it’s silly. Let’s not fight silliness with more silliness.
Huh. A paranoid American Black man - what are the odds?
I’ve made my suggestion (more multicultural GD moderations) but I don’t hold out any hope.
As for Huey? If he plays in GD, he’ll have to play by GD rules. Which is tough when some of the GD mods are openly and admittedly unsympathetic, but that’s the non-White Person’s Burden in that forum. I certainly think some of the mods are better at understanding than others.
It’s worth pointing out that, except in the relatively rare cases where people have met off of the board, none of us here actually knows what race anyone else is. Not only does Huey Freeman not know what race any of us are, but we don’t know what race he is, either.