A lot of complaints take the form of asking HD a question or directing comments to him and him responding. Then people don’t like the answer and argh now are so mad must keep asking questions because if you have just the right question he will see the error of his ways, but no, argh more answers that are disliked! That must be trolling! I disagree.
People continue to engage and then cry foul when a person responds. We don’t police bad arguments, or disfavored opinions. Everyone is able to participate in discussion.
Although I won’t speak to the moderation in the political forums since I don’t mod there. To suggest that we should mod differently according to membership status is ridiculous. I’ve never even glanced at someone’s status before modding and never will. I can’t think of a worse way of doing things.
Oh, you mean like this totally reasonable non-trolling post by fellow Pinniped Octopus? Because that’s not a response to anyone, that’s just a free gift. In response to a thread about a Chinese man who was set on fire by protestors:
The behavior described, aimed at HD, sounds a lot like sea lioning, as far as I understand the term.
Persistence, asking for cites on everything, even opinions, dismissing answers as insufficient or non-responsive, following the poster around and re-engaging over and over - everything but the fake politeness.
Especially not the fake politeness. You have said (and I agree, for whatever that’s worth) that the alleged 6 insults aren’t insults. Now, in ATMB, we get people referring to him as virulently unpleasant and questioning his personhood, as well as
I don’t know how to parse this other than “Ditka, Starving Artist, and others, are assholes”.
Thank you for this. Given how often we are accused of bias by right wing posters, a post like this is an affirmation that the moderation is even handed. Being accused of bias by both the far right and the far left is a pretty good indication of a lack of bias.
And HurricaneDitka was not the first to post the name. At least three other posters posted it on 11/10. (There was a previous mention, but not directly as the whistleblower.) HD initially (on 11/13) just linked to one of these previous mentions along with other sources for the name. I do not see any reports of these earlier mentions, or requests that they be redacted. Since then at least eight other posters have quoted the name. At this point, given how widespread it is (Google give 185,000 hits on the name + whistleblower), I think we would have to shut down all discussion of the matter to avoid people becoming aware of the name.
Mods, please go back and read the OP. Closely. I’m in full agreement with you that citing ignorance is not an insult and is the proper way to characterize a post. But HD used the word “stupid.” JohnT even underlined it. Stupid is the bottom-line insult that everyone is told not to use. How are you skipping over it?
That’s the minor problem. I understand that you give right-wingers a lot of leeway to keep some semblance of even-handedness on a board that is increasingly furious at the right. That doesn’t change the rules. I’ve reported HD’s trolling several times. Other people say they reported him multiple times. Why do we keep doing so? Not because we want to purge the board of all conservative opinion but because he is clearly and repeatedly breaking the rules. You have to know this by now.
Colibri’s blithe dismissal of the complaints about trolling is badly mis-informed due to his own ignorance. I assume I can use those terms because those were also underlined and deemed passable. The question that brings up is straightforward: can I also say it was stupid and wrong? Is that a personal insult or not? We can’t know now. That’s, um, wrong.
Is it your point that maintaining a false equivalency instead of weighing the merits of each side is the way to go? If nobody disagreed with your statement would that also support it? BTW, I just noticed this:
Far left? Those are the only ones complaining?
Or do you consider all those who complain about this subject to be “far left”?
You know, when I first saw this post, it really pissed me off. “We’re losing members! We’re losing revenue! The board is gonna die unless you guys step up! What’s that? You have issues with the way things are going? No, fuck you, you’re a far left crazy radical and your criticism flatters us!” But honestly? It’s not surprising that the moderation would treat us like this here. They’ve been doing it for years. So fuck it… I don’t have the energy to be mad. I’m just sad that this is where the Dope ended up.
I will say that I don’t think that’s an appropriate response from a mod to a complaint in ATMB, but hey, I’m not a paying customer, so fuck me, right? I can’t take my $8 and go home, so no one gives a shit if I stop posting here.
By my reading, the quotes in the OP don’t qualify as warnable, except for maybe the “his own ignorance” one which might be borderline (the rest seem like characterizations of arguments, and in my understanding, negative characterizations of arguments have generally been allowed). But there are numerous other posts in that thread that did seem warnable, to me – sealioning, egregious misogyny, and what appeared to me to be blatant trolling.
But the OP’s “weak sauce” post was also, quite specifically, a characterization of arguments. So I’m not sure why that was warned but the other ones weren’t. Maybe because it was broader and not aimed at a specific argument?
I spent a few minutes last week looking through my news sources for the name, just out of sheer curiosity. To my astonishment and relief, all of the media I checked declined to name the whistleblower. Everyone was saying, we think we know who it is but cannot independently verify the identity, so we won’t report it. That’s a good thing (remember “Bag Man” Salah Barhoum?).
My takeaway from a Fox segment was that it is unethical to name the whistleblower just because, even if it is verified, and possibly illegal (libel) to name him or her without being 100% sure.
For the record, you are the first person I’ve seen “out” the whistleblower. Whether you intended to or not, it is only because of you that I have any sort of name to put on the whistleblower report.
This certainly isn’t. Care to explain why you referred to a specific post as “sea-lioning”, which goes specifically against your colleague’s instructions, but did not issue a warning?
My guess is the moderators do not see the same “sealioning, misogyny, and/or blatant trolling” that you and other posters see.
I myself rarely see the problems with a lot of posts that some people deem “trolling” or “misogynistic” or whatever because many of them are simply “that poster disagrees with me! He’s trolling!”
