I was given a Warning for alleged hijacking in the Leave the Birth Rate Alone thread, which I find nonsensical and hypocritical. In a thread about attempts to change the birth rate causing harm, the fact that the white nationalists are very prominent in being among the pro-natalists is very relevant. At the same time the attempts of Romania and China to shift the birth rate were also brought up as negative examples without being moderated.
It follows a pattern of what I can only interpret as politically biased moderation, given that my previous Warning was for “saying mean things about Trump”, and now it’s “saying mean things about white nationalists”. Criticisms of the far right getting infracted while criticisms of the left (like of Romania and China above) being let slide are IMHO examples of the board’s longstanding tendency to shield the Right at the expense of everyone else, rather than any attempt at neutral moderation.
I will repeat what I said to you in the PM you sent to us, making the same objections:
Your views here are not objective. You drag your hobby horses into nearly every topic you reply to. They are frequently not relevant to the topic at hand.
In the instant moderation, it’s quite a boot strap to attempt to tie white nationalism to actual national policies for controlling birth rates. You offered not a single citation, just your opinion, and expect others to simply accept it as true. To discuss it further would absolutely have been a hijack. Again.
You make many good posts, but too often, you pay zero attention to the topic to which you are responding. It’s become a real problem. We have come to feel your efforts to hijack threads now are deliberate. We aren’t going to tolerate it.
Not to junior-mod, but when I made that first initial post, Der Trihs, I didn’t mention race. I was only talking about how widespread euthanasia of old people would be the only way the pro-natalists could get the contradictory young-and-high-birth-rate-and-small population they demand. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t a good angle for me to delve into, but it wasn’t racial or political, only age-centered. I think when you mentioned genocide of race, that’s when the mods thought you were taking it off-topic.
Nobody asked, presumably because it’s a well known issue that’s come up before, including in the older thread about increasing the birth rate. A few seconds of google and there you go.
As was pointed out by @ParallelLines in the PM exchange:
The OP is trying to have an accurate discussion about birthrates including internal and external (often governmental) efforts to influence the birthrate.
What White Christian Nationalists want or are trying to do is irrelevant to the thread topic as it was posed. If you feel this effort is being successfully sponsored by the US government, perhaps you should have included the cite, not expected everyone else to find it. Your cite may have changed my mind about whether to moderate your post. But based solely on what you posted, it just looks like another one of your many tangents thrown into whatever thread you happen to be posting in. It’s not for us or anyone else to do “a few seconds of google” on your behalf.
Again, nobody asked, and it’s a well known issue and even talked about in the related thread. And it didn’t even occur to me that anyone could consider it off topic when it was so very much on-topic.
I didn’t account for motivated reasoning on part of the moderation.
The SDMB has always been notorious for bending over backwards to placate the Right, which both drove off a lot of people and even failed at that. Since right wingers demand complete submission and nothing short of the forum going full Nazi would make them happy, all it does is alienate both sides.
The SDMB has always been notorious for bending over backwards to placate the Right, which both drove off a lot of people and even failed at that.
I don’t see that at all. On the political right, I can think of Starving Artist, ClothaHump, LinusK, WillFarnaby, TimRMortiss, Scumpup, etc. who got banned. HurricaneDitka, octopus, Shodan, Steophan are gone too. Bone quit and left. We don’t see OMG A Black Conservative staying here either.
The only people on the political left I can think of who got banned were Budget Player Cadet and Chingon.
I don’t think the moderators are modding in favor of the right; they’re pretty evenhanded. And it’s largely been conservatives leaving.
But anyhow, I digress, probably getting off topic. Just replying to the last post.
People less right wing would get banned long before them.
I don’t think so. Budget Player Cadet got 17 warnings and 2 suspensions before being banned. That’s a pretty long leash for a liberal-progressive Doper.
There was asahibanned as well on the left; particularly for making very inflammatory statements about right-wing folks (including right-wing posters).
He’s still around, as @John_DiFool said, though he posts pretty infrequently. His last post was 2 months ago. He’ll often be gone for months, pop in on a topic where he’ll post some replies, then vanish again for weeks or months before reappearing. He’s been doing that for the past few years.
We can take Starving Artist and ClothaHump off that list too . . . unless dismissing child rape and using racist slurs are a recognized part of the definition of conservative.
I’d add Shodan but the “He was banned because he was a conservative!” dead horse needs a break.
A reminder - I addressed this the last time you made the same assertation in ATMB.
If I applied your “Everyone should read every thread and know every post” logic, then please consider that every active P&E mod has participated in one or more threads, often in the Pit, expressing contempt of Trump ranging from exhausted disbelief to outright searing rage. We make a strong effort to indeed keep our moderation as neutral as possible. In fact, we (moderators) often end up here if we let too much of our personal feelings show up in our moderation.
Continuing on your mischaracterization of our moderation, I note that once again you did not link to the actual moderation of yourself, exactly as in the link I provided above. So I will do so:
You are once again leaving out all the context, including this is the second time you’ve done this in a MONTH. That there had been a moderator request to stay on topic less than 3 hours ago in thread. And that to try to make sure that it wasn’t personal, that @What_Exit requested a review by all active P&E mods after he originally noted you.
I won’t bring up the language of the many notes and Warnings you’ve accumulated on these habits from all the P&E staff as well as other mods, but consistently mis-representing our moderation and ignoring it it is a serious problem.
For the record, you can (and have) disagree with an individual ruling. We make mistakes. I’ve acknowledged it before. I had a discussion about this in a very recent ATMB thread where I made a judgement call recently where posters made good points about how it could be on-topic and I explained how and why the call was made. We still didn’t agree but we were able to discuss it without making unsupported accusations.
Another post DM’d me about the Warning that spawned this thread, and I took the time there to explain as well out of courtesy.
@Der_Trihs - you take every one of your notes, and certainly all of your warnings as attacks when they’re meant to allow the topic to follow the questions framed by the OP. You have a tendency to rant on your (in my opinion heartfelt) concerns in any tangential thread, and we try to direct that to the appropriate forum (often the Pit), or otherwise source and cite. In all examples, your apparent feelings of righteousness means you tend to flat out ignore moderation. So you’re being moderated in the exact same way other frequent offenders are.
“Done this” meaning “being insufficiently deferential to the Right”. Not being “off topic”, because I wasn’t. I’m still reading that thread, and if what I said was off topic then probably two thirds of the other posts also deserve to be infracted.
One last time, and quoting actual moderation (in part) from the thread:
For emphasis : “replying to someone else edging off-topic is not an excuse to go off-topic.”
And my followup linked above:
@What_Exit had noted the thread only three hours prior about staying on topic, and while the post you were responding too was headed off topic, you chose to continue and greatly amplify it.
Yeah, claiming the SDMB caters to, or placates the Right is probably the most absurd, out of touch, and laughable thing I’ve heard all week, and I’ve been paying attention to the news and what Trump’s been saying.