The Conservative Advice to the Moderators/Administrators Thread

The BBQ Pit
21

This conservative agrees with the above.

I have seen a few dodgy moderating decisions over the years, in which conservatives were dealt with a bit roughly. However, it is literally only a few. In these cases I don’t think the moderators were consciously applying bias. The vast majority of the time it is not an issue anyway. The board’s liberal/left bias exists. It is real. But it is not an agenda of any sort, and is simply a product of the membership collectively - democracy in quite a pure form. I have no problem with that, and I have no complaints.

I do have a problem with the Bush-bashing reaching absolutely ludicrous levels. Anti-Bush non sequiturs seem to be sprouting up in every thread I go to. It is very heartening to see that is pissing off a lot of lefties too. Credit to them for calling out the lunatic fringe on this practice.

22

It’s not heat. We’d just like you to keep the shit in the bathroom, where we can and will avoid it. If you’d stop shitting in the fridge, we’d stop bitching about how unpleasant the kitchen’s becoming.

23

Conservative advice to the Mods/Admins? OK…

  1. Certificates of Deposit are becoming cool again, and you can find online insured ones that pay 5%.

  2. Salads can be a nutritious and healthy way to have light meals this Summer. Try fat-free or very low fat dressings, even something new. I use Tabasco as dressing on occasion - no fat, no calories.

  3. Indian buffets are almost always a MUCH better value than going for dinner. Sometimes an order of magnitude better.

  4. Always show up at least an hour early at the airport to pass through security - two hours if you haven’t pre-printed your boarding passes at home. If you’re flying Delta airlines, show up about when the flight’s due, since they’ll be about 2 hours late anyhow.

  5. Finances too tight for buying books, and don’t like the selection at libraries? Don’t sniff at the Public Domain. You can even get together public domain reading circles, like they used to do here: http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/

  6. If you have central air, make sure your filter is clean. A clogged filter can cost you its value in extra electricity in just a month.

  7. When a car pulls up next to you with stereo thumping and the driver is dangling a pistol-grip pump shotgun out their window, don’t make eye contact. Pretend like there’s something veeeeeery interesting on your stereo.

  8. You can raise chickens in your back yard, but you probably shouldn’t.

  9. It’s much better to be overdressed than under. Unless you’re at a swimming pool.

  10. Drink one glass of red wine a day, and take one baby aspirin a day. If the wine is a syrah, you might need more aspirin because it gives some people headaches. You can mix it with water like the Spanish do to extend it.

That’s all that come to mind. I know they’re probably ideas considered way out there by Liberals, but I will not abandon my ideology, no matter how crazy they will tell you I am.

24

You’re crazy. No, really. Tabasco sauce on salads?

I know there are pills for this craziness. :wink:

25

I think it’s an attempt to “game the mods,” myself – whine a lot about how po’ innocent ol’ conservatives (read: Bush apologists) aren’t getting a fair shake on the SDMB, in hopes that the moderators will give them more leeway to demonstrate their impartiality. It worked on the mainstream media in the early '90s…

26

The board is not officially liberal, though there do seem to be more liberals than conservatives. That may be because there are more loud liberals than loud conservatives, or because the current president and congress critters are just not good at making friends.

Short of randomly banning self professed liberals, there really is nothing to be done about it. This is not a liberal board and it does not have a liberal agenda. It is open to everyone and has no control over the political affiliation of those who become members.

If this sounds hostile, it’s because you are being ridiculous, not because you are conservative.

27

See, and this is where most of you screw up. A conservative is not, and should not, be considered a Bush defender by default. How many times before the election did I have to say that I wasn’t voting for Bush? I lost count. Yet somehow I was Bush’s boy, all the way to the end.

Do you have any idea how tiring that is? Any at all? Oh, of course you do, because according to you in some other post of yours I read a few hours ago all conservatives equate liberals with traitors. :rolleyes:

Extremism is the worst kind of all the bullshit there is, and I gotta tell you guys, this place is chock full of it. The sides are so defined that it’s inconcievable that anybody could change their mind or think for themselves. If someone says something stupid, call them on it (see above). But if someone has an opinion you don’t necessarily agree with there’s no need to dogpile on them bleating them out with “Bush is teh su><><0r!!!1!!one!!” crap, when they may not have said a single word about Bush. When the thread’s not about Bush, don’t bring him up. When you’re asking for a good alcohol, don’t mention that Bush was a drunk.

In other words, call off the dogs. Use some decorum. Pretend you’re enjoying yourself. Relax.

28

Doors: I may be wrong, but I read that as a statement that conservatives aren’t given shit (by the more rational members), Bush apologists are.

29

For the record, I’m quite conservative, and I have had good experiences overall with the moderating of the board.

I don’t think wholesale changes need to be made. The only thing I see is that some obvious jerks have been allowed to continue here well past the point where I believe they should.

This is a judgement call, not for me to make, so I won’t quibble with it much. And no, I won’t name names. :wink:

30

The only thing I’d have to add to that, Mr. Moto, is that even if posters are consistently jerkish, it’s unlikely that the mods will be aware of this fact unless it’s reported.

31

If I’m reading the OP correctly, I think he/she doesn’t want politics dragged into threads where it doesn’t belong.

If there’s a thread in GQ called “Please explain cloning to me”, he/she doesn’t want smarmy answers like this: “a technology that could save lives that Bush and his cronies are trying to derail”.

And I agree that this would be a rather assholish response and shouldn’t be tolerated in GQ.

I have no problem with political bashing, just not in GQ.

32

I don’t see any problem here that “Don’t be a jerk” doesn’t cover. If what you’re asking for is for some gag rule on liberals, then you’re SOL. The current mix of political opinions is what it is. If you don’t want your elected officials getting bashed for the things they do, then ask them to do different things. Or get better elected officials.

33

Airman: *A conservative is not, and should not, be considered a Bush defender by default. […] Do you have any idea how tiring that is? Any at all? Oh, of course you do, because according to you in some other post of yours I read a few hours ago all conservatives equate liberals with traitors. *

There’s a very substantial difference between those two cases, though. It is much more natural and reasonable to equate conservatives with Bush defenders than it is to equate liberals with traitors. I’m not saying it’s correct, of course—and certainly, as you note, when a particular conservative poster explicitly says they don’t support Bush, it’s not polite to keep on assuming that they do. But it’s certainly a much more logical generalization to make.

For one thing, most conservatives do in fact support Bush—at least, somebody gave him 50-odd percent of the vote, and I know it wasn’t us liberals. But the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of liberals are not traitors.

For another thing, no liberal is publicly laying claim to the label “traitor”, and vice versa. I acknowledge that some actual traitors to the US may certainly be liberal, but they are definitely not advertising their treasonous stance.

But Bush has got his paw prints* all over the labels “conservative” and “Republican”. We see the President of the United States, backed by the full might of his political and PR machinery, incessantly asserting that he does indeed stand for conservatism and the Republican Party. That’s a fairly powerful message.

So assuming that “conservative = Bush supporter”, while certainly not universally valid, is definitely much more reasonable than assuming that “liberal = traitor”. Conservatives are just going to have to accept that it’s going to take a lot of work to dissociate themselves from the “Bush supporter” label.

*Disclaimer: Not intended as a Bush-bash. I repudiate the suggestion that the President is, or ought to be compared to, any animal having paws instead of hands, and I have never made such a comparison. I just happen to like the phrase “paw prints”. Paw prints paw prints! :slight_smile:

34

Do snakes have paws?

Here, I’ll do it myself: :wally

35

Exactly!

Read my posts above and my intention become clear. I do not seek any stifling of liberals but rather making things a bit less hostile for conservatives (i.e., stop a certain minority of loud liberals from being unnecessarily offensive).

WRS

36

Excellent advice, Una Persson! :slight_smile: (Thanks for that post. It certainly brightened my mood!)

WRS

37

I’m decidedly not conservative, and I do agree that the board swings left, but asking the moderators to fix it for you is just silly.

I was, in the past, a frequent poster for over a year at a fundamentalist Christian bulletin board that was much more unfairly moderated. I wanted there to be an opposing viewpoint, and fortunately the moderator did allow me to speak my mind for the most part (because I didn’t use personal attacks, though my opponents did). When I left, I didn’t whine about how poorly treated I was; I simply said I was leaving for a board with broader interests (here).

I think that as long as nobody is getting warnings more because of one political viewpoint, this is fine.

The US government right now is strongly conservative, and the current administration is pretty much ignoring people like me. Is it that surprising that we are that much more vocal online?

Enforce “don’t be a jerk”. Discourage drive-bys and hijackings. That’s it.

38

While I often feel uncomfortable on the board, I don’t see what this has to do with the mods.

39

I think the most you could ever expect the mods to do is prevent the drive bys and hijacks. I’m no Bush lover but it does get tiring to see that stuff, and contributes to the idea that Bush supporters are unwelcome here.

If you try to support/defend Bush in GD or the Pit, you’re going to have a host of people disagreeing with you, but that is just a function of who joined the board.

40

In this post, Left Hand of Dorkness very commendably takes a poster to task for calling me an Uncle Tom.

This was the Pit. Still, my understanding was that hate speech was not permitted. I certainly regarded that as hate speech.

It would have been nice to see a strong mod reaction to that event.

And - though I’ve said it before, it bears repeating - thanks very much to the other posters who stepped up to criticize that racial invective for what it was.