No single view is dispositive. I myself am anti-death penalty, a position that places me at odds with most conservatives. But I provided a list of issues in post 344 that, taken in the aggregate, seem to me to paint a fair picture.
Here are the issues:
1. one’s position on the ACA, 2. abortion, 3. gun control, 4. control of government over individual enterprise, 5. federalism, 6. textualism/original intent, 7. military spending, 8. taxation, 9. environmental issues, and 10. the intersection of religion in the public sphere
What’s the “conservative” position on 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10?
It’s not 100% obvious to me what the answer to that is.
Yep, that is certainly is a list of subjects:
But you stopped just a wee bit short of actually giving us what you think is the “reasonably conservative” response to any of them. Pretty much everyone thinks that their own personal opinion is reasonable-just saying that the answers are “reasonable” doesn’t tell us anything.
I would prefer that they leave aside their personal politics. Whic IME, by and large they do, with some exceptions noted above.
Since the position as expressed in the thread is that diversity is a worthwhile goal to pursue, it must be the opinion of the mods that diversity would add something. Well and good - the question remains why political diversity is the only kind that doesn’t add anything.
Racial diversity is good, because it brings a different point of view. Gender diversity is good, because it brings a different point of view. Religious diversity is good, because it brings a different point of view. Political diversity, however, is bad. Because…?
Regards,
Shodan
Consistency is good. So far, it doesn’t seem like they’ve given a damn about a moderator’s gender, race or religion, so why should politics be the exception?
Martin Sheen is strongly pro-life. Does that make him conservative?
This game is called *Being a Husband *in my house.
Creating Charlie should have cured him of that.
Mine too.
You people do realize that you are putting more effort and litmus tests for a Moderator than Congress does for a Supreme Court nominee, don’t you?
But what is a fair way to determine a person’s overall political leaning? Self identification? I consider myself a moderate, but conservatives would probably call me a strong liberal on social issues and an ambiguous ambivalent on economic issues. I lean more toward government oversight than libertarian freedom from such oversight. Is it fair to call me a moderate or am I a liberal, and most importantly, who gets to decide?
If you run a list of people putting a label on themselves, that’s one means, but it’s not the only means to tell. Getting a sense of their positions from a number of topics, not any one topic, is reasonable, but that kind of data crunching is going to be prohibitive.
Which leaves us with no good method.
But all moderators contribute to the discussions about significant events, like banning. They also review each other’s actions, if Colibri is to be believed (and why wouldn’t we?). So the overall makeup of the board is important because any inherent unconscious bias comes when decisions are made from a perspective of “that’s just stupid” rather than someone seeing the value in that opinion.
At least that’s the argument for why different perspectives matter.
Again, that’s misstating the intent. If different perspectives matter to ensure there isn’t an unintentional bias, then they matter on political issues too. If different political perspectives don’t matter, then different demographic perspectives don’t matter, and there’s no need to think if any moderators are gay, or Jewish, or anything else.
Okay, but I gave a specific list of 4 items, and am told all 4 are already in place. If you’re not arguing specifically for adding more conservative moderators, what do you suggest? Is there any other way to eliminate this systemic bias you believe is in place, but can’t provide any strong evidence to support?
Why are you trying to make this thread about Bricker and his motives rather than the original topic (imbalance in the moderation of Terr vs BrainGlutton) or the follow on topic (the board moderators have an inherent bias against conservatives)? What value is added by your last comment?
Totally unnecessary remark, adds nothing to the conversation, and only makes you look bad. This seems to be a pattern with you - snarking about BigT in ATMB.
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Conservatives want less government control over individual enterprise. They want less regulation, lower taxation, fewer restrictions. They oppose anything that constrains individual enterprise, like higher minimum wage, a strong EPA, etc.
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Conservatives want the Federal government restricted to the Constitution, not the powers that it has grown to have. Like the Department of Education directing schools to all meet the same standards and teach the same curriculums. The EPA once again is here.
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This is a topic about the Constitution and interpretation. I’m not certain on this one, because I don’t know this topic.
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The standard Conservative position is a strong military, so military spending should be fairly high to ensure we have a large military with the top technology and weapons. We should be a force that makes our allies quiver in fear and our enemies dead.
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Conservatives tend to feel that there shouldn’t be government regulation and oversight over the environment. Stop regulating businesses to death. That tends to mean the environment gets shafted. And drilled, and fracked. (Why do all the descriptions for exploiting the environment sound like euphamisms for sex?)
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Conservatives want to protect Christian privilege. They want Christians to be able to insert their beliefs and practices into all aspects of public interaction. Refusal to accept same sex marriage, prayer to start government meetings and school activities, Ten Commandment displays in court rooms, etc.
Just because I don’t identify as conservative doesn’t make it hard to know those positions. Only one of them was difficult, because I don’t follow those discussions.
I fully endorse this post. I’ve never noticed a bias in moderators or moderation of this board except, perhaps, that old timers to the board seem to be given VERY slightly more slack than newbies. Politically, many of the mods are more left leaning then, well, I am, but I’ve never noticed that affecting their moderation one bit, and to me the quality of the mods on this board are over all very good. When I’ve been modded in the past it was because I was being an asshole, not because of my political leanings.
I don’t believe that anyone in this thread has argued that political diversity is bad. I don’t believe anyone has argued against letting conservatives be moderators. They have, in fact, stated that they have given requests to conservatives and been rejected.
What is being argued against in this thread is that the moderators are allowing their personal politics to affect their moderating, and that the staff is entirely or overwhelmingly or liberal.
But more is expected of the moderators here so that makes sense!
I don’t believe my understanding is flawed. Your current example seems to me to be entirely pointless: you say you have no problem with “affirmative action” in cases where a black man (if we’re talking about AA for racial issues) is, one way or another, the only possible candidate who can fulfill the role. Congratulations, but that isn’t AA. That’s called “filling the job with the only possible candidate who can do it”. It gains you exactly zero points for either promoting racial equality or promoting a sound argument.
Let me highlight the argument that you say you disagree with. The non-example you gave dates back six years, you say. I can give you an example that dates back almost exactly ten years, wherein you said, in describing AA as it’s generally understood – an effort to correct racial inequities by advantaging blacks – and I quote exactly:
Affirmative action program such as this discriminate on the basis of race. As such, they should be illegal.
I hesitate to provide a link unless someone demands that I do so as it’s in the Pit and that particular post contains some Very Bad Words (said by you) and it really is quite honestly unfair to dredge up such a Pit post in the present context, except insofar as you presumably meant what you said in the quoted text.
Not trying to give you a hard time, Bricker, honestly, as I respect the kinds of literate and intelligent posts that you make. I’m just trying to point out an apparently glaring inconsistency between you on one hand objecting to meddling by official powers in private institutions’ rights to select candidates on the basis of merit in order to balance racial inequities, which you deem “discrimination” and “illegal”, and then on the other hand demanding that the SDMB powers meddle in the process of selecting mod candidates on the basis of merit in order to balance your perceived political inequities.
It’s an interesting point because at least some number of major conservative views are not inherently political at all, but for various reasons of historical accident have come to be associated with them – like denial of climate change, a skeptical attitude to evolution, the claim of absolute knowledge – transcending that of medical science and philosophy – of exactly when human life begins, a peculiar view of what Planned Parenthood actually does, and lots of other issues that can pretty much be resolved by looking up the facts in an encyclopedia or a newspaper, and are not a matter of values and beliefs.
It’s virtually inconceivable that personal politics would not affect moderating, and those who protest the notion are probably vastly overestimating their own abilities.
Though IMO, the primary impact is not “I don’t like this guy because of his politics so I’m going to sock it to him”. It’s more that a sharply worded statement or forcefully argued position is more likely to be judged as “jerkish” and less as factual/relevant if it’s seen as a highly opinionated departure from reasoned rational thought than if it’s not, and that judgment is heavily colored by one’s own opinion on the subject.
Most people tend to think their own opinions are what’s reasonable and rational, and judge other opinions as being illogical and foolish by the extent to which they vary from that center point. (Along the same lines, to think of themselves as more-or-less moderate and judge others as extremists by the length of the disatance between that person’s positions and their own.) So if you’re on the left (in terms of the country as a whole) you might judge an extreme leftist (again, in terms of the country) as being a bit too far to the left but still reasonable, and a centrist as being too far to the right but still reasonable, but a true right-winger as being crazy (as is shown repeatedly on this MB).
I don’t see any way around this.
[This is besides for the poster-driven dynamic, in which any member of a minority viewpoint who unapologetically advocates for his viewpoint will inevitably get into a whole lot more personal slugfests than a parallel member of the majority viewpoint, and will thus be perceived as more of a problem case who needs to be kept on a short leash.]
And yet it seems to happen, because if this were that great a problem y’all would have no problem showing declared liberal mods doing this to conservative posters, and vice-versa.
It’s far too subjective.
If there is inherent bias affecting moderation decisions, one way to measure it would be to examine disagreements between moderators on particular incidents. If a more conservative moderator is consistently disagreeing with more liberal moderators, and there’s a correlation to the politics of the poster in question, that’s certainly indicative of bias on one or both sides.
I’m not going to put the mods on the spot and ask if this has happened, but it’s worth watching for this if you are interested in identifying any bias that might exist.
Good luck “watching for this”. Ringside seats are not available.
Perhaps James O’Keefe will sneak in an undercover mod and expose something, but until then …
Do you not comprehend any difference between the following:
A: “We should get more conservative mods, because conservative mods need these kinds of opportunities and haven’t had them on this board due to liberal bias.”
B: “We should get more conservative mods because having conservative mods would lessen the instances of slanted moderation in favor of liberal posters.”
See the difference there?
Which one am I doing here?
Which one was I doing in 2009?
And which one was I arguing against in what Pit post you found?