As a serious answer, the mods are not supposed to be letting their political persuasions influence their moderating and I don’t think they do. But I think it’s clearly true that as humans, we all have subconscious biases. By themselves they are not bad or good.
Consider the example of the racial makeup of police as compared to the populace they serve. Police are supposed to enforce the law regardless of race, but in cases where there is great racial disparity between the police force and the populace, would you say it’s unreasonable to try to reduce that disparity if for nothing else than the optics? Not sure how on point this example is, but it’s the first that came to mind.
I think my answer to this question was also serious. And if you had a case where there was a great racial disparity between a police force and the populace, but every single attempt to find evidence of a disparity in treatment came up negative, there would be no problem to correct. That’s not what the real world of racial disparities in policing looks like, but it is essentially what we have here.
Let’s take the affirmative action where it will have the greatest effect: Let’s all consider their arguments as if they were 30% more credible, insightful, and relevant than they are.
I’m a conservative, and even with the friendliest moderating in the world I have no intention of participating in political discussions where I’m opposed ten to one. So I guess I vote “no”.
Where’s the poll options for more exclamation marks? Because I’d definitely vote for that!
But as to the question in the OP… sure, why the hell not? As much as the conservative posters in the thread that spawned this seem to think they’re being oppressed, censored and moderated harshly, I figure they think they need it. No sweat off my opinionated, but never warned, liberal hiney.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking for greater diversity of viewpoints among the moderation staff in theory. In practice, it’s an enormous pain-in-the-ass finding people who are both A) suited to doing the job, and B) willing to take it. The one extra criteria that’s sometimes discussed as something we should be actively looking for in a moderator is “Lives somewhere other than the Western hemisphere,” and that’s purely so we don’t have the entire moderation staff asleep at the same time. AFAIK, none of the current moderation staff meet that criteria.
Damn. You poor bastard. Did you kill a nun in a past life, or something?
You raise a good point. Clearly, we need to hire more female mods, because men are obviously going to be biased in favor of the male view point and repressive of the female view. While we’re at it, we better get a racial breakdown, too. /s
Who cares what we call it? Bottom line is - the important thing, to you, is that we should be hiring conservative mods in order to protect conservative posters.
Like Czarcasm says, above. The only reason you’d need mods with a particular point of view is if you expect them to act on that point of view. In a word: ridiculous.
*If you want this choice position
Have a cheery disposition
Rosy cheeks, no warts!
Play games, all sort
You must be kind, you must be witty
Very sweet and fairly pretty
Take us on outings, give us treats
Sing songs, bring sweets
Never be cross or cruel
Never give us castor oil or gruel
Love us as a son and daughter
And never smell of barley water
If you won’t scold and dominate us
We will never give you cause to hate us
We won’t hide your spectacles
So you can’t see
Put toads in your bed
Or pepper in your tea*
As you, and hopefully every reader, can see, your summary of my position was addressed by me earlier. In that response I explicitly said that adding more conservative moderators was “one possible cure” and I was “not arguing for it specifically.”
In this post #33, though, you again claim that the important thing to me is that we should be hiring conservative mods in order to protect conservative posters, despite the fact that I explicitly said otherwise.
Someone reading only this post might inaccurately conclude that you were quoting me, or that your summary of my position was based on a post in which I said substantially the same things you attribute to me. Such a conclusion would be wrong; that person would be reaching an incorrect conclusion about my position, based on your summary. Isn’t that right?
So knowing that this outcome is possible, even likely, why would you undertake to ignore my words and substitute your own, and then attribute the result to me?
I fall on the conservative side of more issues than not and that sums up my thoughts. It’s not just that 10 to 1 will disagree, but that you’ll get 10 times the ridicule or snark or whatever you want to call it. It’s exhausting to read, much less participate. Hence, I very, very rarely wade into these waters. I can enjoy myself in other areas of the SDMB.
I was planning to say that the best criterion for mods is that they be sane, but I see that Bricker thinks that automatically makes them liberal, so now I don’t know what to suggest.
