All the Mods here are unpaid volunteers; naturally, someone picked to moderate Great Debates will be someone who already spends a lot of time there–in fact that would be kind of a requirement. People who spend a lot of time in GD tend to be people who have clear views on at least some hot-button GD topics, since otherwise why would they be hanging around the place to begin with? Unless you think we should go with paid moderators (and just how much are you willing to pay to post here?) I don’t see that changing.
It’s the typical bullshit projection that some have. If they were a moderator, they would of course use their power to repress those who disagree with them. They simply cannot understand that anyone would do anything else.
It’s a rather limited understanding of what people are capable of, in my view, and demonstrates perfectly the attitude of fundies of all stripes that people are inherently bad and require strong guidance to lead them to the light.
Merry Christmas Everyone!!!
I think if you reviewed a few choice longish threads in which Tom has moderated with his heaviest hand, you might come away with the impression that maybe I’m not totally insane.
Or maybe that impression would be re-inforced. I’m not prepared to say. But if you like, I will waste a little of my day tomorrow searching for those threads where I think overall Tom’s modding is biased against atheists and in favor of Xians, if you’ll agree to review them in their totality. I really dont want to get into “This post was biased” or "this word was inappropriately harsh’ or “He should have told Polycarp to cut it out here” because I agree a few posts don’t prove anything. And maybe a few threads won’t either.
My own position, if you care, is the exact opposite. I would insist on disquaifying myself from any position where I held strong views; if I stayed in the position, I would bend over backwards to favor the position that I do NOT hold, as a check against possible biases on my part.
I do this all the time in the classroom, btw. If a student is taking a position I disagree with strongly, I take special care to see that he’s not being persecuted by other students who agree with me. If it’s a political discussion, or an interpretion of a religious text, or a controversial issue in literature, I will always defend those students’ p.o.v.s that offend me most deeply. A while ago, I recommended this policy to Tom, who blustered past the point I was trying to make to him and he assured me that his modding was just perfectly fine, thank you.
I can’t respond until I know how you mean “defend”. Do you (pedagoguically) espouse their view, or do you merely ensure that they may state their point of view?
And seriously, he wasn’t banned or warned for this jerkish stalking? Does he have pictures of the Staff in compromising sexual postions with ManBearPig in a safe desposit box or something?
I don’t get it. Anyone else would have been warned and then banned for this sort of behavior. Why does he get a free ride? 
Mostly the latter. I do make devil’s advocate arguments from time to time. More than anything else, it’s clarifying their positions, making sure that their opponents are asking sensible questions, etc. I do this for all my students, but I just take special care to be sure I’m doing it for students I disagree with, and not doing it unnecessarily just because I agree with someone. It’s just common sense, to ensure that if I show bias, it’s against the position I tend to favor myself.
As I’ve said here once or twice my favorite moment as a classroom teaher ever came when two fundamentalist Xian young women in a course I taught on Blake (who was an Xian whackjob from way back) thanked me for teaching the course as a true Xian would. Hoo boy, did they have the wrong vampire, bubbie.
How come I never get any of these emails attacking me for not believing in God? It’s so lonely here in unpersecuted atheismland.
You mean “lying down on the job.” You need to find a good “No Professor Left Behind” program. You have your doctorate in writing? You are the chair of an English department of over sixty or seventy university teachers?
Irregular verbs should have been mastered by middle school at the latest. Your charade was over long ago. What was it you said about trolls interrupting honest discourse?
Did Ammonius Saccus ever pony up the $15 to be a member? If not then:
Seems pretty clear to me.
And even if he did become a member,
(bolding mine)
Looks like the mods hold all the cards. The fact that bannings require overt proof of jerkitude and also a moderator consensus is simply a show of good faith on the part of the mods. But this forum and its members are still maintained out of the goodness of their heats. Don’t like it? Tough toenails. There are plenty of free messageboard hosts that you can host your Oh woe is me, I’m too perfect for their feeble minds pity party on.
Heathen scum! You’re going straight to Hell! Repent! Repent, you sinner! Fly from the wrath to come!
…Glad I could be of service. 
sigh. Too bad Santa forgot that copy of Previewing For Dummies. :smack:
While I doubt that tomndebb and I will ever be buddies, I just don’t see a pattern of discrimination by him when modding threads involving atheists. The few times I recall him intervening in a thread I was arguing in, it was to slap down the other guy.
And “virulent defender” of Christianity ? Unless he’s posted some extreme stuff I’ve missed, no.
Then again, maybe he’s just too sneaky for me, eh ?
I think every future GD thread about “Why don’t Americans trust or like atheists?” needs to be linked to this thread.
JC, Atheist
No, I honestly believe that if he hasn’t actually busted your chops personally, you’d never have a reason to notice this tendency. I never even noticed he was especially pro-religion until after I had a few weird encounters with him, so it’s not too surprising he’s been able to fly under your radar.
But in my (rather mild, until recently) dealings with him, I progressively found myself thinking “Hey, what the shit? Tom is busting my chops on an issue that people get away with every day on GD, like Polycarp, and that other Xian apologist what’s his name–hey, is this anything like a pattern?” and I started looking for the pattern, and I found it. He’s not nearly as accepting of minor violations of GD protocol with those who take an atheist position. He seems to delight in making atheists who take him seriously answer his catechism of legalistic points that he lets slide from Xian posters routinely. It amounts to an official hijack of atheists’ OPs, and probably because I’m such a wise-mouth, I catch a lot of this chops-busting.
Maybe I’m over-sensitive. Maybe the stuff that annoys me rolls off your back, Der Trihs. Maybe I should let it go, and simply roll my eyes when Tom does it again.
It’s impossible for us to gauge whether or not you’re being over-sensitive unless you point us to the threads where you believe that Tom has treated you unfairly.
I might send a few of the more blatant examples to some other Mods, but I sense the general defensiveness and skepticism on the boards in general would result in a lot of arguing and trainwrecks without much change of positions just now. You all seem a bit too hostile to the concept for me to try and persuade people in droves, so I deem it sufficient to state it as my opinion for now.
I’m not blaming you for your defensiveness–I’d probably be the same in your position–but it seems like a lot of work (argung about the interpretation of the threads, not just searching for the threads, though that’s a little bit of a chore too) for what looks like very little reward. Maybe some other time. For now, I’m just raising the issue, and accepting your skepticism.
An important part of being an adult is admitting your mistakes and apologizing for them.
I am sorry I said you weren’t trolling.
Regards,
Shodan
What? Intolerant of me expressing an opinion I allow will be a lot of work to support properly and which might even be mistaken? Who’da thunk it?