No we have not. We have said to please report as we don’t read every thread. We can act on things we see and do. We have also asked posters to try and give a little detail on their reports as again, we probably haven’t read the thread and some threads get very long and heated.
Though I know some mods have asked you to stop flagging posts as you are wrong most of the time.
One asked me to stop flagging posts for trolling, and I dont.
Huh???
That’s ridiculous.
What’s true is that we can’t do anything unless we notice a problem, and most topics are never read by a mod at all, and others might be read quickly, without a lot of thought…so we are much more likely to act on something if it gets reported.
This is absolutely not true.
Moderators are expected to participate in the forums that they moderate, and as such, we do often see things before they are reported. However, we’re human, and we don’t have the time to read every post, so quite often things can get missed if they aren’t reported. And sometimes we’re busy and don’t have as much coverage as we’d like, so post reports are very much appreciated.
That is NOT the same as saying that we can’t do anything unless the post is reported.
Given the responses, a bunch of people must have reported this post.
I still don’t see the mods addressing the actual main topic of this thread, which is specifically about whether or not what DrDeth said was offtopic, and, more generally, whether the mods have been too narrow in defining things as “off topic.”
As far as I can tell, what DrDeth argued was an inherent part of the topic. And the thread Spice Weasel addressed was another one where something that is inherently part of the topic was declared to be off topic.
There are other reasons I could see to argue that DrDeth’s posts are bad. Those arguments have been made in his Pit thread—mostly about his past behavior. But the argument being offtopic does not seem to be one of them.
I’ll also note it’s not common for so many of us from different sides on these topics to be in agreement… It’s not just the gun control critics here who are arguing that comment about how the law handles liability in other cases involving children is clearly on-topic.
My thanks to BigT, I thought I posted something here and few days back and didn’t. It was actually in a pit thread about DrDeth.
In a nutshell, DrDeth has a really bad habit of going off-topic in Gun Debate threads and in my opinion was doing so again in this one. Thus I spun his posts off to their own thread and banned him from the specific thread.
You’re welcome to disagree with my decision. But I am standing by it and am not changing it.
You’re side-tracking the discussion to be about your dealings with DrDeth. But your instructions in that thread to avoid “posts about pools and other off-topic bits” were not directed to DrDeth specifically.
FTR, the first people in that thread to - properly - attempt to discuss the gun issue in the context of potential dangers generally were DCnDC in post #3 and engineer_comp_geek in post #6.
Perhaps he does. But my post in that thread has a big warning affixed atop it instructing people not to respond. (And you intervened before that when another poster raised the question about access to firearms for suicide). There were two posts by @DrDeth before mine, neither of which seem remotely off-topic (and no posts by @DrDeth before your first intervention).
You may be right about @DrDeth. And you may have been right in your moderation of the thread. But let’s not pretend those were the same thing.
The pool stuff was off topic and the Op requested it to be dropped. If not flagged and Op requested I’m sure I would have done nothing about it.
Simple enough.
Fair enough.
At least we’ve abandoned the argument that this was a reasoned and independent moderation decision. Certainly neither “inappropriate” nor “unfair” to attribute to the decision to the OP, about whose motivation one can draw their own conclusions.
Different things.
The DrDeth ban was mainly me and his past history and more than one flag. Had little or nothing to do with Czarcasm in the end.
The “pool” stuff was simply flags and the post from the Op asking to talking about the subject of the Op.
That what I meant. If no one reports it, you dont know about it so you cant do anything- unless by some chance you were reading the thread.
There was a mod posting in that thread. Dude.
No, it wasnt off topic.
As I said before- If someone suggest draconian penalties for doing X due to political motivations, it is right and proper to ask why A, B, C etc, which kill more people or whatever, do not have the same draconian penalties.
If doing X kills people, we all know it is bad, We all agree it should be penalized. So there no debate there. But how much of a penalty and how easy or draconian? That’s the debate.
So if a OP suggests, for example, life in prison for doing X, and doing A is a minor fine despite the fact it kills ten times more Americans, clearly (at least to me) the reason for proposing such a draconian penalty is the OP hates X for political reasons. And that is the real debate. Because the debate isnt that it kills people, now is it?
Otherwise you stifle all debate but a greek chorus. “X is bad as it kills people”: then the only possible replies are “Yes”. Yep. You are right. OK. Sure. etc. 
And often, that is exactly the kind of “debate” the Op wants- none.
There can be no actual debate.
Are you saying for example, in a debate about UHC, people cant bring up other nations successes? Same with gun control, it will be verboten to mention that more western Euro states have much lower gun deaths?
Next- there isnt a rule about being “off topic”. Off topic isnt a hijack.
Now, if we had gone “off the deep end” about pools, sure, that would be a hijack.
But it was a simple comparison, showing that many other things (including pools) are more dangerous, thus why are not draconian penalties for them? And almost every every poster in this thread has said it wasnt off topic.
Nor do i have any such history. What is interesting is we will have a thread about say assault weapons, and people will point out that they are responsible for a tiny % of murders. Then someone inevitable brings in a statistic from some anti gun site show 'total gun deaths" which of course are mostly suicides. But then when i say “lets not bring up suicides”- I get modded for being off topic. When someone bring up “gun registration like car registration” I point out the two are not equivalent- but then who brought up the subject in the first place? Sure I post in a lot of gun threads, but find three where I was the one who started the hijack.
If we want to talk about posters history, everyone here knows that Czarcasm- if he starts a Op, he wants that thread to be on track- his track, his way or the highway. He even admitted that- a little up thread, saying he was 'whiney".
Face it, I was modded out of that thread not due to my posts but due to some imagined “history” and the Ops desire to not allow any real arguments.
Yes there was.
engineer_comp_geekRobot Mod in Beta Testing
I don’t think the fact that it involves a gun should matter.
There are a lot of things in a house that can kill a child. Leave medicine out (outside of its child-proof container) and a child can die from that. Leave a power saw out and a child can cut themselves severely enough that they could die of blood loss before help arrives. Remove the hand rail from your balcony and the child can fall and die. There are plenty of chemicals, especially cleaners and such, that can cause death.
I don’t know why guns should be singled out. Any weapon, whether it’s a gun or a bow or crossbow, or a sharp sword on display or whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s something that is dangerous. Guns don’t deserve special treatment one way or the other.
Only an idiot would leave a battery-powered circular saw out where a child could play with it, and similarly only an idiot would leave a gun out where a child could get to it. Same issue, same crime. IANAL, but I believe the term “reckless endangerment” applies. In PA where I live, reckless endangerment is a misdemeanor, with a penalty of up to 2 years in prison and up to a $5,000 fine. If you leave a gun out and no one even gets hurt, you’re still guilty. Just leaving a gun out where someone can get to it is enough to create a potentially deadly situation.
Lets look at that post: There are a lot of things in a house that can kill a child. Leave medicine out (outside of its child-proof container) and a child can die from that. Leave a power saw out and a child can cut themselves severely enough that they could die of blood loss before help arrives. Remove the hand rail from your balcony and the child can fall and die. There are plenty of chemicals, especially cleaners and such, that can cause death. Medicine, power saws, balconies cleaning supplies- All just as “off topic” as pools.
The same standards should be applied to someone leaving a gun out where someone can get to it as leaving out a dangerous power tool or dangerous chemicals, and if someone dies, it should be the same standards if a gun was used or if the child bled to death from a wound caused by a circular saw or was electrocuted by wires that were intentionally left exposed. Which was exactly my point about pools and other hazards.
So tell me, how was “pools” off topic when engineer_comp_geek, who was making the exact same point as I was about other hazards wasnt?
Pure mod bias and the OP being “whiney” (his words).
My posts that were moved? Not a word about pools or other hazards. They were solidly on topic.
Oh, and I will be happy to be wrong but my guess is that the Op reported my posts but not engineer_comp_geek posts.
No one is going to answer that for you. It’s really none of your business. And as i said above, the mods are responsible for moderation.
And czarcasm didn’t “admit” to reporting anything. What czarcasm admitted to is generally reporting posts all over the board. And as with your copious reports, the mods choose not to act on many of them.
Please stop harassing czarcasm about this.
The OP requested it be dropped. True. And that request merits serious consideration. But discussing how society handles and judges possible child endangerment as a general case, with what standards, is not off topic. It is rather a required part of discussion. What is the general standard? How do instances of harms from improper gun storage meet those standards? Should the same standards apply to guns as to other hazards and if different why?
How can that discussion happen without covering how it is applied to the most frequent causes of accidental deaths in children as a baseline?
@DrDeth is not the issue. The OP’s request warrants a serious look at the issue but is not the end of the process.
(bolding mine)
Post reports are anonymous. No one is going to tell you if anyone else is reporting a post. At this point, your fixation on this particular user is rising to the level of being a jerk. Any more of this and you will be warned.
If you have a problem with a particular user, you know where the Pit is. If you don’t like the Pit, tough noogies. Do not under any circumstances harass other users in any way outside of the Pit. Note that this is a bannable offense.