In the most recent AI thread I told Liberal that he had a bug up his ass and was being combative. The post was reported to CK and I got a warning. Fine, telling someone they have a bug up their ass was too harsh for Cafe Society-- I can dig it.
However, I e-mailed CK the thread in which Liberal fought with just about everyone (not me, btw) , turning a light-hearted thread into a battleground. CK e-mailed me back, here is what he had to say about my report:
The thread in question (assuming you mean the other American Idol thread) was six pages long, and made references to other threads on earlier shows. I do not have time, or energy, or inclination to go back and read six pages to find out wo started the personal insults. And, I don’t care.
I went to the post the someone reported, because that’s how it came to my attention. I therefore took action at that point, and I did read a few posts beyond.
You may think it’s “cavalier” for me not to care. OK, I accept that. Frankly, I don’t really want to spend my time reading through a boring, uninteresting, long thread on a topic that I have zero interest in, to find out which child started a pissing contest. It takes two; if one person indulges in name-calling, and the other person reports it, then my position is clear. And my assumption is that’s what happens.
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Holy shit, did this pisses me off. He can’t be bothered. He doesn’t care. Now, if he had done his job, read the damned thread and then went on to say that I’m a child in a pissing contest-- well, not much I can say to that. But that’s not what happened, is it.
So, sorry Liberal for telling you you had a bug up your ass and a good and merry screw you too to CK Dexter Haven.
Did you report specific posts which you thought violated the rules? I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask a mod to slog thru a 6 page thread to untangle a pissing contest. If it can’t be nailed in just a handful of posts, then I think it’s best to just let it go. However, I do think you should’ve been able to get one of those general mod warnings in the thread that asks all posters to tone it down. Would that have satisfied you?
If you want to resolve it to your satisfaction, make your case. Just don’t expect someone to wade through 6 pages about a dumb TV show to make your case for you.
Just like a cop, he’s not obligated to nail everybody else who speeds just because he got you. Suck it up, or make your case.
I’m not upset about being warned. I acknowledge that telling someone they have a bug up their ass in CS may have been over the line. And yes, I do expect mods to slog through threads because that is what they are supposed to do.
Anyway, I asked for this to be closed as Dex has showed me it was just a misunderstanding.
Am I typing in tongues or something? I’m not mad at the warning, I’m mad because it appeared that other people get to report posts and when I did it I got a big shrug and a can’t be bothered.
But did you report a post (or posts) within that thread, or did you report an entire 6-page thread? I can understand CK Dex not being willing to wade through the whole thing to find out who wronged whom.
Since the combativeness started in the beginning of the thread and escalated all the way through, I thought that perhaps a mod would like to read it all in context. And no, I don’t think a mod should read all the long boring threads but if a thread is reported to them, then yeah, that’s what they are supposed to do.
And if the I reported thread had been read it would be obvious that I was not involved in the nastiness. At all. I was just trying to head-off a second thread of poison. Next time I’ll know better.
It occurs to me that if you really want this thread closed, you’d stop posting to it. I know from my mod days that if people continued posting to threads they’d requested closed, I was reluctant to do so.
Overall it depends on who the Mod is and who the Doper is. There isn’t a lot of moderation being dispensed in many cases. There does seem to be some animosity from some towards others. The thing is, Mods can hand out warnings that pile up into bans. They hold all the power.
If we’re supposed to fight ignorance here, may I propose a simple change to policy that would help clear up the balance of power?
Replace the “Moderator” tags with “Arbiter”. Seems more honest in the structure of the place.
I’m a moderator on a medium-sized message board (probably about half to a third the number of posts this board gets). And having had exchanges with members that almost exactly parallel your exchange with Dex, I’m 100% in his camp.
There’s a mechanism the mods have put in place for reporting a thread: you click on the specific post that you think violates the rules. If you can’t be bothered to fulfill your part of the arrangement and use that function, you can’t legitimately protest when they don’t go beyond their part of the arrangement and read an entire tedious thread to parse out the troubles.
It’s a volunteer job. Make it easy on them: do the footwork for them so that they can see where the specific problems are.
Did they ever! You should have seen some of the meltdowns in the Letters to the Editor, every Monday morning, in newspapers across this great land of ours!
