Me, too.
Anyone happen to recall what reason he gave for leaving?
This is a great fair and balanced suggestion. However, I think we need to add an wacko moderator to protect the occasional wacko member, and a troll moderator for the occasional troll member, and a [del]sheep loving moderator[/del] n/m we have that covered… and a sock moderator to protect the socks and…diversity man, it’s far out.
Isn’t that reply ALSO “my words?”
Why is that post action and my other posts words? Do you believe I emphasized that particular post with interpretive dance?
Girl? GIRL!?!?!?!?
We need more womyn as moderators!
The mods can be taken down by no man…
Hmmmmm
I was curious about the exact course of events. So I went back and looked it up. Here’s what he said in 2005 -
Thread link:
Direct link to manhattan’s post:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6082809&postcount=4
Lobsang, in post 4 suggests that manhattan stepped down for political reasons:
manhattan, in post 5, immediately steps in and sets the record straight:
Here’s a link to manny’s relevant retirement thread, from 2003, started by Ed Zotti:
And here is manhattan’s actual ‘Farewell post’
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=3871771&postcount=107
So the “poor manhattan chased from the board by slavering Liberals” thing … doesn’t really check out.
PS - Bricker, you actually posted in manhattan’s retirement thread, Post 61. You just said that the board would be poorer without him. Unquestionably true, but nothing to do with politics.
Man, I love our “no deletions” policy.
Hell, the OP might as well propose an affirmative action policy for the Nazis while he’s at it.
Oh, wait.
It’s a problem. 
Intelligent, thoughtful conservatives, in point of fact, really do have a problem. Conservatism and liberalism used to be just different value systems. Today conservatism in the US, at least, is so dominated by strident extremists that moderates are either identified with them or drowned out by them. “Conservative” pretty much by definition is supposed to mean traditionalist and restrained, a Father Knows Best type who always wears a (conservative) suit and tie, has a house in the suburbs, drives a station wagon, and votes for Eisenhower. Yet today it seems to denote rabid anti-government anarchists, warfaring advocates of global hegemony, deniers of facts and science, and theocratic zealots with contempt for any civil liberties except their own. “Conservative” media are now outrageous outlets like WorldNetDaily, Washington Times, and Fox News; “conservative” spokesmen are the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Joseph Farrah, Ann Coulter – not one of whom ever met a fact they couldn’t twist into a lie.
So in a way I feel sorry for conservatives today. I feel bad when an intelligent poster like Bone has to say to a certain colorful new arrival, “please don’t be on my side”! It’s a sentiment that I think many thoughtful conservatives wish they could say to many of the prominent spokesmen who today presume to represent their cause.
But this isn’t a problem that afflicts this board, IMHO. It’s not a problem that this board is going to solve, and it certainly doesn’t (again, IMHO) require any changes to how this board is moderated.
To be clear, I voted for this is ridiculous.
I was reacting to that thread I linked, where something like this came up. Maybe not in so many words, but something similar, more or less asserting that the modding here is biased because all the mods are liberals. Bricker says it crimps his style. What to do, what to do.
Before any form of affirmative action can be tried, you have to first establish that conservatives are unfairly moderated. Doing it just because the board culture itself is harsh to conservatives is not possible.
Plus we already have one conservative in the form of Loach. That’s basically proportional representation.
And we know that all mods have to agree before a suspension or banning. So, if you’re getting Warned for being conservative, he should be there to help.
No. This is a privately-run site. The First Amendment doesn’t apply.
Here’s the thing. Some posters here, I know their political leanings. elucidator is a liberal; Shodan is a conservative. That’s easy to tell from their posts, because they participate in a lot of political threads. But there are a lot more posters who don’t participate in those threads, and for those posters, who make up perhaps 80% of the board, I mostly don’t have any idea which way they lean. There are enough of them, in fact, that I’d be quite uncomfortable about extrapolating out from those whose leanings I do know, and to the point that I would be reluctant to even say that this board is majority liberal. Further, there are a number of moderators in that category, too. Would it help to have a moderator who was conservative, if nobody knew that e was conservative? Would it even matter?
One thing about this place that bothers me immensely is the refusal of posters to concede factual error and the lack of social consequence (note that I am not speaking of moderation here, but board culture) for such refusal, when the poster so refusing is a reliable liberal.
So I could point out that I was only “asking” why Manhattan left, and didn’t make any claim, so how could I be wrong?
But of course that’s not the case – I had intended to imply that one reason for Manhattan’s departure was political disagreements. And because I don’t have any rebuttal to what’s been posted above, I must concede that my memory in this instance was evidently wrong. So I am explicitly saying: I was wrong to imply that Manhattan’s departure was a result of political views mismatch.
That’s nice. Next time you want to apologize for being wrong, could you do so without prefacing it with a swipe at liberals?
I don’t know.
I’m apologizing for being wrong, which means that I made a claim that I recalled as being accurate, but was then showed evidence my recollection was in error. It’s not clear to me how to reverse the process: how can my error be tested without making the error in the first place?
And while I obviously did not try to deny my implication, I think it’s fair to now point out that my claim was not exactly carved in granite. The error I am apologizing for is saying, “Anyone recall why he left?”
That’s not what he’s talking about.
Sorry Ms IvoryTowerDenizen but I never knew you were a Mod I guess that cancels that out (I don’t get around much anymore).
From when I first started reading the board (around 1999) it has been left leaning. There is an ingrained capacity to influence mod notes and warnings. Is it prevalent or disturbing?
I wouldn’t think so.
This paragraph, Bricker, is a swipe at liberals, and it pretty much robs your apology of any redeeming quality it might have. “Y’all are pretty shitty, but I’m better than you because I apologize,” it implies.
Next time you can leave out the accusation at the beginning of your apology.
(Deleted)
That your apology started with an insult, specifically at liberals. Guts the apology a bit, don’t you think?