Marital harmony rule: when deciding what to eat, you only get a veto if you make a legitimate counter-offer. Otherwise, the proposal passes.
Once we instituted this rule, these horrible conversations vanished.
Nope, the basic principles are exactly the same. Both forms of meddling seek to render meritocracy subservient to regulation intended to achieve particular goals. But one of them – federal affirmative action – seeks to do so in order to correct age-old injustices whose existence is indisputable. Yet you oppose it.
The other, proposed by you to solve your current perceived problem, seeks to use exactly the same rationale to correct perceived moderation injustices on a message board. To hell with merit, you say, just preferentially pick mods based on a desired political viewpoint to even things out. This you endorse.
Seems inconsistent to me, not to mention that few seem to agree that the injustices you imagine have ever actually occurred. For the record, I think there are sometimes inconsistencies in mod rulings, but I’ve never seen them as being politically aligned or motivated.
How many conservative mods would be necessary? Unless you made it 50/50 the conservative mods would be outvoted by the liberal mods, and there still would be complaints of bias.
And since the premise is that mods are necessarily and automatically biased because of their political views, the conservative mods would be prone to making biased decisions against liberal posters. You don’t make things fairer in total, you just make them unfair for a larger number of posters.
Totally unnecessary to chastise Green Bean. It adds nothing to the conversation and only makes you look bad.
Telling the truth is snark now?
This rule is vetoed before it is implemented.
Fine, what’s the counter-proposal? Otherwise, no veto.
This is why I don’t frequent GD. What is a liberal and conservative, exactly? How do I know what I am?
Are there, like, certain questions you could ask me that might make it more clear which one I might be more of?
Like “What is your stance on blah” or “Do you believe in blah”?
Status quo of course 
Realistically, wife always gets final veto.
Excellent rule and thank you for posting it.
What about the fact that the intended beneficiaries are different? In one, the persons being selected are being selected in order that they themselves may benefit. I make an effort to hire black actresses because Hollywood’s age-ok’d injustices are beyond dispute.
In the other, the selectees are not chosen in order to help them. I don’t audition only black actors for the role of Harriet Tubman in order to remedy age-old injustices.
Is this truly an opaque concept for you? Are you truly unable to perceive the distinction?
No, I don’t think 50/50 is necessary. I think – and I hasten to repeat again that the entire idea of balancing mod political outlooks is simply one notional option for a cure, as opposed to my firm and sole proposal – that there’s a critical mass. No mod is consciously thinking, “This is my chance to screw conservatives,” after all. The bias involved is unconscious, and arises from unexamined inner convictions that, for example, no rational person could oppose abortion rights. Snap judgements and decisions get made from such postulates. If there were even two more conservative voices in the mix, the natural politeness and collegial interactions among mods would trigger a re-examination of that thought before it went anywhere: “No rational person could oppose abortion rights,” is replaced with “John is pro-life,” and the feeling of a safe echo chamber is replaced with the more mod-appropriate, “Lots of different views on the subject.”
Exactly. What you are accusing Bricker of doing isn’t AA, so there is no hypocrisy. He isn’t calling it AA, either, only saying that if you want to call it AA, that’s fine. But it’s clear you DON’T want to call it AA.
He’s suggesting hiring conservatives because they have some skills (even if those or inherent) that a liberal simply doesn’t posses-- that is, a conservative point of view. He’s not suggesting that conservatives have been held back from being moderators in the past and so need a hand up going forward.
You said to Lobohan:
My question to you: why are you the only person to point this out? Why didn’t a mod react to this? There seem to be no shortage of them here.
+1
Precisely correct, except that “hiring” in this case is a rather generous description.
I think the only one I rejected was picking and choosing posts to indicate a moderator’s views. So it’s more like:
BRICKER: Great! How about Mexican?
MRS B: Um… nah, I’m not in the mood for Mexican.
BRICKER: WELL, YOU JUST DON’T WANT ANYTHING, DO YOU? TELL ME WHAT’S AN ACCEPTABLE DINNER!!!
Choosing posts for examples won’t work, for the rather obvious reason that a small number of posts could easily lead to confirmation bias or could otherwise give a false impression of a moderator’s political leanings. You could, for example, pick the only topic that a particular moderator has liberal views on when their other views are almost entirely conservative, or maybe their views are 50/50 conservative and liberal and you only pick the liberal ones. The only way I think you could use posts would be to go through every post a particular moderator has made on any political topic and group all of those, and that’s not exactly practical or doable.
If you want examples of what I’ll accept, look at the other folks who are already on the list. I’m open to anything that will clearly indicate a moderator’s views though.
And there’s also a point to be made here. You have stated that the moderation here is clearly and obviously liberal. If it’s that obvious, it should be very easy to fill out the list with proof of their liberal leanings. The fact that the list still has a lot of blanks on it is starting to indicate that maybe the political views of the moderation staff are nowhere near as obvious as you seem to think that they are.
Not to mention–again–okay, it is to mention–that the overreaction vis a vis moderating you is indicative of a new tendency to overreaction in Great Debates, in which posts are not read carefully nor interpreted charitably. If your theory were right, this phenomenon would only strike conservative posters, not liberal ones. However that’s not how it’s actually gone down.
Why would that require moderation? You posted:
[
](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18742734&postcount=78)
To which I responded:
[
](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18742926&postcount=80)
Then the conversation goes on and you say:
[
](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18748778&postcount=251)
To which I respond:
[
](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18748812&postcount=253)
Then the conversation went on and you had several posts about how you were being unfairly trod upon. To which I posted this:
[
](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18752641&postcount=360)To suggest that you are overgenerous in your feelings of persecution.
After that things flowed where they flowed. I’ll drop it if instructed, because I don’t like to go against the Mods, but I’m just responding to the assertions of victimhood you’re making.
Don’t worry – the hijack is one that had a good chance of being Noted if delivered in ATMB by a conservative against a liberal, but you’re undoubtedly safe.
If certain things don’t happen, that’s proof of a liberal bias and if certain things do happen, that’s proof of a liberal bias and you get to pick the certain things?
Unless you have access to a parallel universe in which this has occurred, or unless you can point to a specific example, this is just Bizarro World arguing, and it’s completely unpersuasive.