I did read the last discussion about this with the poster that complained, most made the point that the poster was wrong about the ignorant line being an insult and there was no mod admonishment then other than not to bring the discussion from other threads here.
I have to say that I concur with @GIGObuster. “That is an ignorant thing to say” is a phrase that clearly attacks the post, not the poster, a type of argumentation that has been an accepted part of the SDMB debating style for years.
This new style of ill-considered overzealous modding is not helpful to what should be the SDMB’s goals of encouraging healthy debate and growing our membership. It’s getting ridiculous. GIGO is probably one of our most inoffensive members. If he’s ever insulted anybody, I haven’t seen it.
GIGO does this a lot. He skirts the edges of the rules to hurl veiled insults at other posters. He has very few actual arguments to present.
I think in great debates it is a good thing to keep this sort of veiled insult out of bounds, these sort of veiled insults contribute greatly to raising temperatures and derailing threads. We have the pit for a reason. You can say almost anything you want there. If he wants to insult others let him go to the pit.
If the modding was chilling actual arguments or actual speech, then I would have a problem with it too. But what do the words “that’s an ignorant thing to say” add to the debate? If you think it is an ignorant thing to say that present an argument showing that the statement was ignorant.
What? It’s always been the policy here that calling a post ignorant is the legitimate way to express it.
If that has changed it needs to be made clearly public and stickied everywhere.
Otherwise, this is just another example of the new mods punishing the valued posters making actual contributions while passing over those posting nonsense and lies.
You guys need to go into the mod loop and get your act together. This is only one in a series of bizarre moderation decisions. Focus your attention on where it belongs, not on the reactions to it.
Ahem, I did post even a cite that showed why it was that in that thread.
You seem to enjoy skirting the line of insulting posters in GD. But I am more than willing to be overruled. You’ve been asked before to not do it and have continued.
@wolfpup, I think you’re wrong, I think it insults the posters along with attacking the post. I also found GIGO to not be inoffensive of late. And I have often debated in the past on the same side as him, especially on Green Issues. I suspect you don’t notice the insulting posts as their aimed at posters you probably don’t like.
@Hari_Seldon & @raventhief could you please join this conversation. If I overstepped, I will rescind the note, but I do think GIGO has been overheated in these discussions and often insulting.
I’ll say in my defense that I think I’m better than that. If GIGO has actually made insulting posts and I didn’t notice them, it’s likely because I didn’t see them. I’d be interested in seeing examples. I genuinely have never known him to be insulting, despite sometimes a good deal of provocation.
Sorry, @What_Exit, but you’re wrong on this one - that was a textbook example of attacking the post, not the poster. If modding on that has changed, that needs to be made clear forum-wide.
And note that the one person agreeing with your modding here, so far, is not exactly unbiased towards GIGO…
Fair enough, but I am not spending any times providing cites. Last time this came up, GIGObuster was provoking damuriajashi from what I saw and reviewed. I let it go with a modnote to both of them actually. To my eye GIGObuster is provoking posters again.
Let me try to be clearer about my views on this. The statement “that is an ignorant thing to say” is very clearly attacking the thing that was said. This is attacking the post, not the poster, and has always been allowed. What we want to avoid, IMHO, is any kind of insulting implication about the character of the poster. No such implication is present here.
Of course, a poster on the receiving end of an attack against his post may react negatively to such an attack, but that’s just part of the spirited debate that has always been allowed here. It’s not an instance of a poster’s character being impugned, such as directly being called ignorant, or being called a liar, and other such personal attacks.
ETA: I believe the judgment you’re making here is equivalent to taking a comment like “That’s not true” (perfectly permissible on this board) and interpreting it as equivalent to calling someone a liar (not permissible). It absolutely is NOT equivalent.
I can tell you with certainty that this moderation is not consistent with Board policy - precisely because I’ve always disagreed with the policy, and that’s why I remember!
Here’s my own view, which is not Board policy:
What should be barred is ad hominem, where the poster is attacked in a manner that is personal and does not engage with the substance of the post. Engaging with the substance of the post is what matters, not the superifical form of words. So I think all these are virtually synonymous, and all should be disallowed as ad hominem:
(1) You are stupid.
(2) That’s the kind of post a stupid person would write.
(3) That’s a stupid post.
But I know that SDMB policy is that it’s the form of words that matters, that SDMB rules say (3) is fine, because it’s phrased in a manner that is technically attacking the post.
So I think it’s cut and dried that this is moderation is not consistent with SDMB policy.
But even under my own preferred framing of the rules, I’d argue that what @GIGObuster wrote is fine, because he didn’t just say it was ignorant. He clearly did engage with the substance of the post, and explained at some length why he thought it was ignorant. He was not just using “attack the post” as a workaround to make a personal attack without adding anything substantive to the discussion.
OK, I will reconsider this but I am going to wait for some other Mod input.
My gut feeling is GIGO is leaning on ignorant a lot lately to skirt the rules. But maybe that is either fine or maybe I’m tired of being called into that thread (or related threads) to moderate it.
So I am saying I am not in favor of changing my modnote but accept I might just be wrong or overreacting as I dislike reading that thread/subject.
It seems to me that calling a post ignorant is generally on this side of the rules. It’s attacking the post, not the poster. HOWEVER, repeatedly calling the posts of a particular poster ignorant ends up in the insulting tone area. And calling a post ignorant without rebutting the statement gets insulting pretty quickly.
This did have a cite attached regarding whether popularity equals sound science, but this thread had already been noted AND an ATMB thread generated. A specific modnote to remain civil seems appropriate to me.
I agree, and this is the point that everyone in this thread has been making (well, except for damuriajashi, who has a vested interest in the matter). Nothing more need be said.
Given the first statement, there shouldn’t be a “however”. In general, “tone” is not something that should be moderated. And the last sentence is false, as GIGO refuted the argument with two different cites. You seem to be implying that this was an attack not grounded in factual debate, and that’s exactly wrong.
Nothing wrong with that, if that’s what this was. But that’s clearly not what it was. It was a note specifically against GIGO, with the added comment that it would be “on your user record and will be remembered”. I believe this was completely inappropriate.
I’m sorry. I missed this before.
Again, hasn’t it been board policy forever that notes are not part of any permanent record? Hasn’t the use of notes been defended over and over again for exactly that reason? What does it mean that notes will now be on one’s user record?
I’m astounded at these changes in moderation practices. They are opposite what we’ve come to know and understand and abide by for two decades. Where are these arbitrary and unmentioned radical alterations in mod culture coming from?
This is a complete misinterpretation. Notes are not part of the permanent record.
But GIGO had already been modnoted about calling posts ignorant and other related borderline hostilities on this subject and he was doing it again. So I specified that in this specific case, I was making a user note that he should stop. I could have just warned him and I guess I should have. I was being lenient as I thought it was yet again borderline.
Borderline too much on offensiveness should also not be tolerated in GD. That whole thread is a mess anyway. People are just arguing in circles and it should have run its course by now.
I don’t even agree with its OK to be borderline offensive as long as you provide cites. That logic doesn’t make much sense to me.
Just a point of clarification here.
As @What_Exit said, mod notes are not tracked and are not part of any permanent record. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Discourse has a feature that allows us to add notes to a user. This feature was not present in vBulletin. Discourse automatically adds notes to users for warnings and any automatic things done by the software. What’s new for us is that we can now also add notes for pretty much anything we want.
This feature is just another new tool in our moderator tool box.
If you get a mod note in a thread, that’s exactly the same as it has been for the last couple of decades. Mod notes are not tracked. Nothing has changed.
If we say that something is being added as a user note instead of a mod note, that is something new (since the change to Discourse), and that does show up on your permanent record.
I think GIGObuster was on the right side of the rules here, but just barely. If I were him, going forward I would probably go with “I think you’re wrong here, and here’s why”, or “You seem to be misinformed on this, and here’s why”, or “I disagree with this post and here’s why”, or something like that.
Why even skirt those lines? You can get your point across just fine, without getting close to inflammatory.
“That is an ignorant thing to say,”, is pretty damn borderline. “Ignorant” is different than simply wrong.
However, note- that was a Mod Note and not a Warning. Notes are often given for something borderline but not specifically against the rules.
So, yes, OP, you are correct, technically you can attack the post , even calling it ignorant.
But What Exit, altho somewhat incorrect in saying "calling another post ignorant is violating the don’t insult others rule." But he was correct in giving you a Note for that post, which is clearly hoeing a very fine line.
What Exit should have said something like “calling another post ignorant is not violating the don’t insult others rule, but your post is getting very close to that line. Knock it off.”
So, the wording wasnt the best but a Note is exactly what that post deserved.
On another “note” (ha ha, see funny seque) how do we see any warnings or such (on our _permanent record") we have been given on this new board?
And can we please let warnings and special notes etc not be “permanent”? That’s just childish.
Was this “new tool” something that’s been discussed here? This is the first time I’m hearing about it. And I see no reference to it in the sticky Registration Agreement, Rules, and FAQ.
So, there are now three levels: warning, user note, and mod note. Is that correct? Not a fourth one that is also new to Discourse? And user notes are no more than annotations that help memory? Or do they have other purposes?
Could these variations be spelled out and made known to posters, and also added to the Rules? How else are we supposed to understand what a mod is saying if the terminology is not mentioned anywhere but suddenly used?