Here’s the post by LP: Link.
So you’re under the impression that Bricker would like to see all “homosexuals, blacks, and other undesirables” murdered?
I ask because he started the thread you took a giant shit in and he’s the only one you felt the need to single out on this thread.
I’d suggest that you tend to make lots of really irrational assumptions about your fellow posters.
For example, just a few days ago you specifically accused a poster of wanting to murder you.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16679981&postcount=227
Now, obviously this was in the Pit so it wasn’t against the rules, but in all seriousness if you think ANGWAO wants to kick down your door and shoot you to death then that strikes me as ludicrously paranoid.
I have many friends who are members of the American right. I’m quite certain none of them wish harm on anyone.
It’s time to step over all this and return to normal posting mode DT.
I’m skeptical that it’s ever going to happen, but here is a lesson you should absorb: this is not a fact. This is your interpretation of facts. You’re entitled to your opinion and blah blah blah, but that doesn’t mean you can proclaim it as a fact whenever and wherever you want.
No you didn’t. :rolleyes:
That’s not particularly out of line with other postings:
Emphasis added. “Cheerfully”, mind you!
Yes, I did think so, so you can save your rolleyes.
It is based on this thread, in which the mods stated variously that Der Trihs’ posts were often extreme nonsense, obnoxious, unsubstantiated, often leading to hijacks, and not adding to the discussion. It was also stated that he would only be mod noted for this behavior, and, as long as he did not repeat the behavior in that thread, the mod notes would not escalate to Warnings. Now we see an instance where a post of his is extreme nonsense, a hijack, unsubstantiated, and obnoxious, but not aimed at any specific poster. It was also stated in the linked thread that he would only be warned when he insulted specific Dopers, and not groups.
This is a change in the standards of moderation. Please don’t insult our intelligence by pretending it is not. What I would like to know is, why the change has come about without any notifications to Der Trihs or the board in general. This was no different from hundreds of his previous announcements that Republicans want to starve most poor people to death and then shoot the rest, or that anti-abortionists want women to suffer, or any of the rest of his nonsense.
If the standards are different, say so. If they are not, then withdraw the Warning.
As I and others have mentioned in previous threads, consistency is a good thing to strive for. Inconsistent moderation, like this, is bad for the boards.
Regards,
Shodan
As far as I know, you are the only poster who believes that’s what we said. Thus, I’m not insulting the intelligence of the group. I’m pointing out that you have drawn the wrong conclusion and repeated it over and over. I have already tried to explain to you what’s actually going on. That hasn’t worked, but it’s worth pointing out again that you’re wrong so nobody else gets confused. To that end this quote might be useful:
The post was completely off-topic and jerkish even compared to some of Der Trihs’s other posts, so I gave him a warning. And I didn’t contradict any earlier “rules” that gave him a free hijack once per thread.
It isn’t. AFAIK, you are the only person who believes it isn’t what we said.
No, I have not.
Every word of the above is the exact truth, and can be substantiated from the linked thread. And yet you sit there and stonewall.
I will never understand the moderation if I am here a hundred years. Even when you do something reasonable, you seem to do so in a way that makes you look as bad as possible.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree.
I edited the wrong part of my post. My apologies, here is the corrected quote -
[QUOTE=Marley23]
As far as I know, you are the only poster who believes that’s what we said.
[/QUOTE]
The two cites were to demonstrate that, far from being the only poster who believes that’s what you said, everyone (except, perhaps, you) knows perfectly well that is what you said.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan:
The mods don’t like to be pinned down to unofficial “rules”. It doesn’t really matter what anyone may or may not have said-- the fact is, the mods reserve the right to interpret the rules as they see them. Oftentimes that looks inconsistent, but it’s pretty clear that they’d rather be charged with inconsistency than to have hard and fast rules for everything.
I didn’t find this particular post by the OP to be unusual for him. Why this got mod’ed while other, similar posts did not is still a mystery. But I think they got it right on this one, so I guess that’s about as much as we can expect. It’s not like they get paid for doing this or anything.
I understand, but it is not so much official or unofficial rules. It is the mods saying one thing, and then turning around and doing exactly the opposite. And then telling me with a blank face that they didn’t say it.
It’s one thing to change your mind, or change your policy, or even to say “we were persuaded by the rest of the Dope that Der Trihs’ obnoxious hijacks really are a detriment to civilized discussions on the SDMB”. But to spend seven pages in a thread telling us that no, Mod Notes don’t add up, and some Dopers aren’t going to be Warned no matter how many different threads they spit hate speech into, and this policy is working as well as can be expected. And then turn around and do a 180[sup]o[/sup] a few weeks later.
And then claim ‘oh no, we never said any of those things’.
Like I said in one or another of the threads about Euthanasist being suspended - it’s not so much the fact that they contradict themselves- it’s the mindfuck they try to lay on me in denying what they’re doing.
Regards,
Shodan
Because we didn’t say it. In the post I quoted, I said that we usually mod-note Der Trihs when he makes posts that can lead to hijacks but which are not insults or totally off-topic and jerkish. I thought the post in the AR-15 thread was totally off-topic and jerkish and warned him accordingly. In several different threads you’ve said this means we gave Der Trihs permission to act up once per thread, which is a ridiculous reading of that statement. It almost makes me wonder if you started reading that sentence and then quit in the middle.
It’s true that they don’t get paid, but i can’t buy this as any sort of excuse because, basically, when it comes to a task like moderating, it takes no more effort to get it right than it does to get it wrong.
The “don’t get paid” argument works to the extent that it excuses the moderators from spending lots and lots of time on the site. They can’t catch everything, because in order to do so they would have to make moderating a full-time job. And even then they probably couldn’t catch everything. No-one expects that the mods will see every infraction.
The main question, though, is how they moderate the infractions that they do see. I agree with you that they got this one right, but too often similar stuff is allowed to slide even when we know they’ve seen the post because they’re posting in the same damn thread, or because they give minor admonitions when proper warnings are warranted, or give warnings when mere mod notes would be more appropriate.
There have been a significant number of cases where moderation appears based not on “Were the rules broken,” but on the moderator asking him- or herself, “Which side do i agree with here?” or “Has one of my own sacred oxen been gored?”
Sometimes the moderator will excuse a flagrant breach of the rules on the grounds that the breach is somehow understandable because the offender was especially angry or upset. But if that’s the standard for the rules, we might as well not have any rules at all. The few times i’ve been warned on this board, it’s for behavior that was the result of anger or annoyance. Why are some such instances moderated, and others not.
Check out this admonition, for example:
Calling someone an asshole and telling them to “Say something useful or shut the fuck up” is clearly a violation of the rules outside the Pit. I don’t think there’s a single person on this message board who would argue otherwise. It’s not a grey area, it’s not a borderline case, and the mod in question can’t use the excuse of not seeing it, or being too busy, because she did see it, and did respond.
Hell, it would have taken less effort to write “This is completely out of line for Cafe Society. Warning issued” than it did to write that poor excuse for moderation. Yet, because the mod in question “understands” that the poster was upset, it gets no warning.
Here’s an even more egregious example:
“Dial it way back”? Whoa, don’t be too harsh in your moderating there, Ms Jackboots!
Inigo Montoya’s post calls another Doper, in MPSIMS, a “collossal, mouth-breathing douche” (forbidden outside of the Pit), accuses him of trolling and stupidity (forbidden outside of the Pit), and essentially wishes death on him (forbidden everywhere on the Dope), and yet, because the moderator “understands” how upset the offender is, he doesn’t even get a warning.
Again, this is not a grey area; there’s not even the slightest question here that multiple rules were clearly broken in a single post. In fact, each of the three infractions could separately, on another day and with another Doper, be grounds for a formal warning. And here we have multiple insults and other offenses in a single vitriolic post. But again, we get the “no warning issued” cop-out because a moderator “understands,” well, something or other.
One might argue that a poster like Inigo Montoya, who had been around for a long time and had a long history of trouble-free posting, deserved a break for this one incident, but that sort of thing is, in itself, far too open to capriciousness or simple inconsistency. We all know the rules, and those of us who have been here longer actually know them better than most.
Before i was suspended last year, one of the warnings i received came with the admonition that "“been around long enough to know better.” In fact, the moderator in question explicitly stated that i was just going to get a “knock it off,” except that my long tenure on the board meant that i had no excuse:
And yet, a few weeks later, another long-term poster on the boards was not issued a warning precisely because of his long tenure:
So, depending on the mod and the offender and the position of Venus and the shape of the tea leaves, being a long-term poster can either result in being moderated more harshly than would otherwise be the case, or for getting let off with a slap on the wrist.
As Shodan suggests, there are times when this all seems about as clear as mud.
Good moderating, Marley. That comment did not serve any purpose but to inflame. The moderators should crack down harder and faster on that shit.
The only other thing to do now is ban both Der Trihs and Shodan.
I demand the moderators take a pay cut!
[Quote=Crotalus]
Der Trihs is more or less accurately representing LonesomePolecat’s posts in the Zimmerman thread, and Polecat was banned. Attributing those sentiments to anyone else doesn’t seem supportable to me.
[/Quote]
Ah, got it, thanks. Should have searched for “feral proto-humans”.
But it’s apparently perfectly OK here to call groups of people “troglodytes”, which is exactly the same thing, so better to use “troglodyte” than “proto-human”.
I’ve been pulled over for speeding three times in my life.
The first time, I was doing 80 in 55 zone. When the cop wore the ticket, he noted that he was going to mark 75 on the ticket, so my license wasn’t suspended.
Second time, I was doing 80 in a 65 zone. The cop let me off with a warning.
Third time, again I was doing 80 in a 65 zone, and I wasn’t so lucky. The cop gave me a ticket.
Despite this, I’ve never had any trouble understanding exactly what the speeding laws were in California, or how they are enforced. I’m grateful that the first two cops gave me a break. I don’t hold it against the third cop for not giving me a break, and it would never even occur to me to argue that I somehow deserved a break because the first two cops let me off.
I don’t agree with Shodan on much, but he’s right here. We begged for you to crack down on Der Trihs for saying exactly this type of crap, and you guys said you wouldn’t. While it is possible that, somehow, this is worse than the other crap he’s said in the past, I find it hard to justify that. It may be worse than what he’s said lately, but he’s said a lot of pretty bad stuff. And, as much as I support this decision, he was not adequately warned that he would get a Warning for this behavior in the future.
Still, as I said, I support the actual moderator action, as I feel it is more in line with how every other poster on this board is treated. I do think that Der Trihs has gotten enough mod notes in the past that his behavior should have escalated to a Warning.
So, all in all, the only place where I disagree with Shodan is about how important a mistake this was. As long as you don’t treat this Warning as the first of three strikes on the way to a suspension, and just keep it as a wake-up call, I’m okay with it. Since DT has gotten so many mod notes, maybe a Warning was needed to get his attention.
Still, a strongly worded PM along with a pronouncement that future similar comments would get a Warning would be better.