And this probably needs to be put out there. Your primary role here is as a member of this community. You’re not part of some elite club. Just a community member like anybody else.
Moderators are community members. As community members, their primary role is to post about whatever they want so long as they’re following the rules. They are also part of a formal organization whose primary role is enforcing rules and board standards. Their power is derived from the owners and operators of this board, whose control over what happens here is dictatorial and absolute. Two separate positions. Two separate primary roles.
I agree that it’s not an elite club, though. More like a self-imposed sentence.
That doesn’t need to be put out there, so no, you’re not doing the needed thing. Of course @Aspenglow is primarily a community member; but we’re not discussing roles as community members, we’re discussing mods’ roles as mods.
As ridiculous as you think this ruling is, I think your complaint is ridiculous.
Exactly.
Could be I took their final statement wrong.
So just to be clear: a discussion or debate about what rights a father should have WRT abortion is a banned topic on the board? Wow.
Pretty much as soon as it wanders into Men’s Rights type debates.
Those are the rules established by the late Jonathan_Chance back in January of 2020. I quoted the rule in my post about the closure.
Here are the full rules for GD and P&E.
That really doesn’t answer the question. Would someone be permitted to start a thread titled “If the father does not want a child, but the woman chooses to have it, the law should say that he does not have to pay child support. Discuss.”?
It seems that under this new interpretation of the rule many topics will be banned.
The truly frustrating thing is that, if they’re banned here, two things will be true:
- There will not be any other topics that can be discussed.
- There will be nowhere else on the Internet to discuss those topics.
If #1 and #2 weren’t true, then it’d be a nothingburger, of course.
Yes, that would be closed. That was answered above.
Okay, I’ve been trying to avoid posting to this thread, but I don’t think @What_Exit owes you yet another explanation on how he’s not “interpreting” anything or how any of this is “new,” a claim you’ve been making since the OP.
Let’s look at the exact text of the MRA in the rules:
Men’s Rights Advocacy . This can include threads about how men are somehow disadvantaged in society, women are somehow genetically inferior or have a predisposition toward specific gender roles and other threads about the ways in which men are somehow naturally entitled to be in charge
Just like most of our rules, it is trying very carefully to avoid bright lines, so it doesn’t spell out exact strokes of argument that would fall under the heading, but the last line, “threads about the ways in which men are somehow naturally entitled to be in charge” to which I would add “such as examples in which they make a decision while not bearing any of the consequences of said decision.” Which I think is clearly where several pieces of the thread were heading, and which the mods shut down.
FOR THAT MATTER, under the same heading of ‘thrice told tales’ you CAN request a specific and narrow thread on these matters from the Mods, with the given that it would likely NOT be approved unless you had some novel or specific nuance that hadn’t been done to death.
The mods ruled in a timely manner a thread which was already hydra’ing off into a number of subtopics should have additional review, issued zero warnings, but closed off subjects that infringe on the existing rules. Sure, in a perfect world (in which the mods were paid and not victims, I mean volunteers) they’d be able to page each other and reach a consensus in an hour or less, but we don’t live in such a world, or we wouldn’t even have had the debate.
Okay, now as to if you feel the existing rules from 2020 (just shy of 3 years ago as pointed out earlier) should be modified, or interpreted in your favor, that is what this forum is for. Just don’t expect a quick turn around, or for it to be for your interpretation of what the rules should be.
I am saying it is an absolutely absurd interpretation of the rule and heretofore not remotely enforced in that way. It is a reasonable debating point. Sure, get rid of the “Hitler had it right all along” threads and garbage like that, but this is a rather reasonable issue to talk about.
The implications are far reaching and will only be known once a warning is handed down. What if, in a thread about child custody, a poster says, “Notwithstanding modern sensibilities, women have a built in advantage in family court because of the old fashioned belief that young children should be with their mother.” Off limits?
I mean, this isn’t complaining about some off the wall thing. The people who say that men should have no choice are affirming in this thread that they believe that men should have no choice in the abortion decision. Why is it MRA stuff to say that maybe they should? I guess you can say that men shouldn’t have such a choice (not MRA) but if you say that they should then that’s MRA and banned. All about fair and open debate, ey?
This board has really, really lost its way.
The problem really lies with the MRA folks who have made such topics so toxic. In the absence of them, we could probably have an interesting discussion on that.
If one were to give the benefit of the doubt as RitterSport did, it seems very similar to arguments about transitioning individuals in sports: 95% of the people (percentages open to debate, but large majority) use the arguments against in bad faith, to support their own absolutist judgement.
Sure, there are that 5% that see there may be some areas of concern, and want a nuanced answer/solution to the small-scale problem, rather than blanket yes/no. But the 95% taint almost all the arguments.
Which AGAIN is why there is the option to petition the mods to open a thread on these subjects, no matter how tired, if you can show the result is worth the effort, including the effort to have the mods dedicate their time and energy to managing the inevitable flood of flags.
This statement however, does NOT speak to that remote possibility.
I think you’re wrong.
I don’t think it has lost their way, but it seems a lot of moderation has been jumping directly to Plan D without going through Plans A through C first.
In this case, the plan was to confer with the mods of the forum. What letter would you assign that plan?
D
Plan A: Remind people of the rule (I honestly didn’t know that rule existed). Warn people to keep the thread civil and limit it to a very narrow focus. Which was the state of the topic at the time and in fact we had moved on. Given that, maybe say, “OK you’ve covered men re: abortion rights. Don’t revive that line. Have a good day.”
Plan B: Note or warn posters that do not follow the above warning.
Plan C: Ban posters from the thread that can’t follow the warning. Maybe this flip-flop this with above.
Plan D: Close the thread as a last resort because there were other topics being discussed as well. Why go nuclear regarding those conversations as well? Reopen after talking with other mods if appropriate.
What is wrong with that? We see that spectrum of modding all of the time even in threads more off the rails than this one was.
The thread is now open, discussion is again flowing. I fail to see the damage done by using plan… Sorry, D, was it?
That’s the one thing about this moderation that bothers me. We still don’t have an answer from What_Exit on why he went right for Plan D rather than the standard protocol we see everywhere else. I know he claims it is about violating a rule … a violation so nebulous that he had to talk to other mods and other members said, “Yeah I don’t see it.” Why was it immediately close the thread and not guide the thread as we see everywhere else? Remember the whole abortion/support issue was a small part of the thread and had already been passed.
What_Exit amputated the leg to fix an ingrown toenail which I feel you would agree with as long as he later reattaches the leg.
And this is not the first time What_Exit has had a knee-jerk reaction to close a thread that was later reopened after consultation. I for one would like to know if that will continue to be their standard operating procedure: See something wrong, immediately close it, consult with other mods, reopen it with mod notes as necessary.