Fair enough. If he agrees this is just an honest difference of opinion, I’ll certainly retract my post.
Pretty much any post with actual content, that is even tangentially related to the subject, is not disruptive in a debate.
My point, though, is that restrictions on disruptive behaviour should not include restrictions on the content of posts, just on the way it’s presented. So, you can say that people cannot call others idiots. You can say that people can’t discuss politics. But you should not say that only one side can discuss politics, or that only one side will get banned for insults - and yet that is what has happened here.
I’m not sure if I should reply to this here as its ATMB or start another thread, so I’ll do it here. Calling someone hypocritical is based on their actions and posts, it’s not an insult. If that’s going to be a banned word going forward, please make sure it’s a clear rule that applies to everybody.
Just to make it clear, pointing out facts is not insulting.
Calling someone a “hypocrite” is not a fact.
I’m struggling to see how you could draw this conclusion. If we were doing what you are alleging then I’d be opposed.
He was guilty on the followup, but I think it’s ridiculous to say someone can’t bring their own personal political orientation to bear in a debate thread. My perspective is pretty much the opposite of his on those topics, but I don’t like this idea on principle.
You attacked the person (hypocrite like you) and not the post (that statement is hypocritical) - them’s the rules.
There’s more to it than that. See my post #12 above and subsequent comments. He had been barred from interjecting his hobby horse into “unrelated” threads, because he used to do it so persistently. So the initial warning hinged on whether this thread was unrelated. That’s a judgment call, Bone obviously thought it was unrelated, I personally thought he should have been given more latitude because it was close enough.
I am aware of that history, and I feel those earlier warnings and instructions were bogus also. It’s not like he came into a CS thread about Jeopardy and started randomly blathering non sequiturs about “statism” and libertarianism. Every example I have seen is of his interpreting contemporary issues through that prism, which is just what you would expect someone with that ideology to do, and to argue for. The fact that Bone or anyone else may get tired of it is irrelevant.
Since Will had a minority viewpoint I’m sure he also had a disproportionate amount of reports about his posts while similar quality posts from those that align with the majority point of view probably have no reports. It’s sort of funny how that works.
People aren’t allowed to hijack threads over and over. That’s the principle. What principle are you basing your objection on? Do you think people should be able to hijack threads?
He was given instructions and did not follow them, was suspended for excessive warnings, including not following that instruction less than a month ago. When a moderator gives instructions, they are not optional. This is how topic bans work. See here:
If a person valued their posting privileges, it would stand to reason they’d be weary of violating those instructions going forward.
We have a system much like progressive discipline systems that exist across many businesses. The suspension is supposed to serve as very strong notice that unless behavior is changed, escalation will occur. The behavior did not change.
The first part of this hope was realized, though probably not in the way you were thinking. The mod team votes on suspensions and bannings so the second part, not so much.
In light of the proposed reduction of the number of Bone Moderators to zero, I feel that Bone should take it as a vote of confidence that the number of Bone Moderators instead doubled recently!
You are making an argument about process, while mine is about principle. What if you gave someone an instruction that they are not allowed to bring their religious beliefs into a debate? The subject is abortion, and they say it’s wrong to even conduct very early abortion because the fetus has a soul. You tell them no more talk about ensoulment and they bring it up again anyway. Every bit of the process you are describing would be in play there, but the real problem is that you started out saying they could not apply a personally deeply meaningful ideological belief to their argument. That’s absurd.
Therefore what you are really doing is banning certain ideologies from the debate.
But to do a reductio ad absurdum, what if one of the cranks who thinks relativity is wrong comes in starts spamming every GQ physics thread with their “perspective”?
I think if you have a view that is generally held to be extreme and unconventional in some way, you have to accept that if you constantly raise the issue it will annoy people. Your voice can still be heard, but you have to be reasonable and diplomatic about it, you can’t insist on going over the same ground repeatedly when people sometimes want to talk about other issues.
In general I favor broad latitude for people who I think are sincere, even if I find them a bit weird. And as I’ve said I personally would have made a different call on whether Will was off-topic in this instance. But I do see it as just a judgment call and a matter of opinion, not a matter of absolute principle, on where you draw the line with this stuff.
Bone (one of them, at least) was removed as a mod, so I guess Steophan got his wish. 
I’m not opposed to rules, whatever gives you that idea? I love rules.
I’m opposed to rulers.
Try calling racists racist in GD…
The issue wasn’t the specific views he held. We have (and have always had) plenty of posters here with minority views. The issue was the way he expressed those views, the way he shoehorned his personal agendas and petty grievances into other threads regardless of topic, the way he accused everyone who didn’t completely and immediately buy into his worldview of supporting oppression, and the way he repeatedly ignored the rules even when specifically instructed not to do so.
Funny how that works.
And now he’s banned over this ticky-tack BS? Jesus. :smack: I have said the moderation here has been on a worrisome trajectory, but this is moving way faster than even I had expected.
He’s banned for racking up 8 warnings, 5 in the past year, and blatantly disregarding them and snarking at the mods instead. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.