That’s because Mormons are free. They’re delivered directly to your door in pairs.
I applaud this. But using kid gloves on the poster who is perhaps THE worst offender in both demonizing his opponent and unable to see there might be a reality other than the one cooked up in his head is an odd way to facilitate the change you seek.
Secondly, as has been pointed out, you’re being unfairly harsh to John Mace.
You get a mug and a watch??
“…So then He went to the Jews, and they asked Him ‘how much are they?’, and God said ‘they’re free,’ and so they said 'I’ll take 10.”
Der Thris must have incriminating pictures of Cecil or something.
If I posted like he did I have no doubt I would be banned. I probably wouldn’t last a week.
He’s allowed to completely run amok on this board.
It’s okay because he really, really believes in the nonsensical hate he spews. That and it falls on the “correct” side of the political divide.
Just an FYI, this thread would be a lot more convincing if you weren’t posting in it.
As long as people like magellan are still on this forum, the stuff DerThris says will never seem overly hyperbolic.
Yeah? But what if it’s a LASER BEAM in my own eye? Didya think of that? Huh?
Hmmm…
Now, I’m not defending NotfooledbyW (Lord God, no), but I do wonder why Der Trihs seems to get preferential treatment. I can’t count the number of times threads have run off the track after a post by him on one of his pet topics.
Only one way to know for sure!
I think that’s true, but not (just) because of moderator bias. Other factors which are more important are:
[ol]
[li]If a RW poster regularly posted that type of thing, they would constantly be under attack from a huge number of posters. This would iteself have two effects, 1. that they would come to be viewed as problem cases, to be kept on a short leash, and 2. that under those circumstances, it’s inevitable that they would eventually commit some violation of the rules, and out they go.[/li][li]In the atmosphere which prevails here, a RW view which is roughly the same distance from center in terms of the opinions of the population as a whole will seem more “far out”, as it will be viewed against the backdrop of SDMB opinions. Since - as noted earlier - the validity of opinions is a factor in moderating decisions, it’s easier to dismiss a RW opinion than a LW one.[/li][/ol]
That said, I don’t think much if anything can be done about any of the above. Any right wingers who don’t like this and are not prepared deal with it need to find another MB.
I’m with John.
This is just simply not true and hyperbolic claims like this don’t contribute anything useful to the discussion. So please don’t do this.
MODERATOR NOTE:
Personal attack should have no place in About This Message Board.
You can disagree with someone, you can disagree about someone, but you cannot be uncivil while you’re at it. This is not the Pit.
Y’all be nice, now.
I think that this is completely unfair and, in a real sense, non-responsive. And i’m not even weighing in here on whether i think the OP’s argument is correct or not; i’m talking about the nature of your attack.
He wasn’t reading your mind, or claiming that he knew better than you what was going through your head. He was, as many people do in a variety of situations, drawing inferences from explicit statements made and specific actions taken by you. You did and said certain things in that other thread, and the things you did and said allow people to draw certain conclusions about what you were thinking when you did and said them.
Now, sometimes the inferences people draw are reasonable, and sometimes they’re not, but it seems to me that the inferences drawn in this case were certainly not wildly beyond the realm of rationality. The fact that there are others who agree with the OP suggests that, even if he has drawn mistaken conclusions from your words and actions, he’s not alone, and so you might want to consider that the critiques are the genuine, rather than simply the result of malice, as you seem to be suggesting.
Your post also serves, in my opinion, as an example of one of the most problematic aspects of moderation on this board: the unwillingness to accept that overall patterns of moderator behavior and moderating decisions can lead members to question the even-handedness of moderation on this board, even when individual decisions, taken one at a time, might not be especially problematic. Had this incident been sui generis, and not emerged as part of a broader (perceived) pattern, i doubt the OP would have thought much of it.
Posters are frequently mod-noted, or warned, or suspended, or even banned, for overall patterns of behavior. Yet every time there’s a concern about patterns of moderation, some moderators seem to want to start the whole debate de novo, and make reference only to the particular incident under discussion, without considering that the incident might, for some members, be simply another small instance in a larger pattern.
The fact that you might have “only been doing this for a few weeks and consulted no one on this” doesn’t change the fact that long-term members—quite reasonably IMO—view board moderation not merely as a collection of individuals, but as a collective operation. Yes, moderators come and go, and not all moderators do things exactly the same, but the membership has a right to ask, and expect, some level of coherence and continuity. If problematic patterns persist over time, and across moderators, then simply asserting “i’m new here and didn’t consult the other mods” is not sufficient as a rebuttal when someone makes a complaint about the larger pattern.
On the whole, i applaud your intentions for GD. And, as i said, i’m not even really weighing in on the claim made by John Mace in the OP. I’m just not sure your response to him was very fair or productive.
It does kind of beg the question: “How long have you been a member of this board that you got made a Moderator seemingly with zero knowledge or experience with the troublesome behavior of this particular poster?” :dubious:
Because that seems extremely unlikely.
You do realize how ironic it is to post something like this in a thread criticizing the mods for their inaction regarding Der Trihs, right?
No kidding.
I’m stunned.
It’s as if I’m at a dinner party. Someone is throwing food at other guests, insulting people, and pissing in the ice cube trays. After a while of this I ask the hosts if they are going to do anything about this character. The response I get is that I should stop asking that and better stop making trouble.
My post was in no way hyperbolic or exaggerated. It’s odd that anyone would even dispute it. The response I got to it proves the very truth of it.
It’s not remotely hyperbolic. Although, given that you’re talking about Der T, telling a member not to make hyperbolic claims and telling them that those claims don’t contribute to a discussion is hysterical.
I want to know if this finally means that you’re giving all members explicit permission to post exactly like Trihs does (maybe with the parties swapped, maybe not) with the stated guarantee that everyone’ll just be mod-noted at worst?
Because either you’re allowing everyone to post exactly the same sort of bile-filled, content-free spewage he does or you’re giving him special permission to post that way
And my experience, based on the answers I’ve gotten every time I’ve asked this, is “No, he has special permission”.
I’ll even make it easier for you. Can I find posts of Der Trihs’s that did not garner warnings or mod notes and repost them, rephrasing them slightly to match my own opinions without getting a warning? Because in the past, I’ve been told “No”
[QUOTE=BigT]
ThenAnd, no, it is not in any way obsessive to think that you should, a moderator of the SDMB message board, behave in a way similar to the other moderators. This isn’t the Jonathan Chance messageboard, where you get to make up your own rules and procedures. You have joined a group, and you are expected to operate in tandem with that group, and not go rogue and do things on your own.
[/quote]
That’s not what he meant at all. Rather, what he was trying to say is that he is not part of some cabal to declare one poster off limits or getting special treatment, that he would not be part of that. He did not consult others on how he was allowed to moderate DT, he moderated DT the way he felt was appropriate.
[QUOTE=mhendo]
The fact that you might have “only been doing this for a few weeks and consulted no one on this” doesn’t change the fact that long-term members—quite reasonably IMO—view board moderation not merely as a collection of individuals, but as a collective operation. Yes, moderators come and go, and not all moderators do things exactly the same, but the membership has a right to ask, and expect, some level of coherence and continuity. If problematic patterns persist over time, and across moderators, then simply asserting “i’m new here and didn’t consult the other mods” is not sufficient as a rebuttal when someone makes a complaint about the larger pattern.
[/quote]
It wasn’t intended as a rebuttal to the expectation of consistent moderation. It was intended as a rebuttal to the accusation that he was participating in a systemic plan to give DT more leeway than everyone else.
I think it’s arguable whether DT was disputing the moderation in that thread. To me, it reads that way. Jonathan Chance gave a mod note “spouting hatred and such with a broad brush accomplishes nothing”, to which Der Trihs quoted and replied “Why does conservatism get this special treatment?” That feels like a response to the note to not post those kinds of remarks, not a response to the attitude that conservativism is evil.
And that’s what others in this thread are responding to. They see DT directly challenge the mod note for the way the attitude was expressed by posting a response that the way the attitude was expressed was valid. That kind of comment is what is typically directed to occur in ATMB, but wasn’t in this case.
But the followon discussion has tomndebb replying as a poster to the type of argument, and Der Trihs’s subsequent post is a reply to that post. I’m hard pressed to see that post as arguing the moderation. While that part of the discussion does stem from the moderation, tomndebb is guilty of furthering that discussion and drawing DT into continuing the topic. However, given that the thread topic was “Liberal Mind vs Conservative Mind”, characterization of conservativism is on topic, and the approach for the restatement was more in line with acceptable means of aggressive positioning for the thread.
[QUOTE=magellan01]
I applaud this. But using kid gloves on the poster who is perhaps THE worst offender in both demonizing his opponent and unable to see there might be a reality other than the one cooked up in his head is an odd way to facilitate the change you seek.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t often agree with you, but I think there is some value to this comment.