I am not and was not offended by the lack of the issuance of any warning, in fact I have not mentioned this idea of a warning at all, nor called for any such action. Even I have not called for an action against the comment. This is an interpolation among several you make that do not occur in my comments and I make no suggestions about it.
The unique ways in which the actual moderation has devised the ways which things become insults and not insults; and observations and requests become insulting or aggressive remains interesting to me in this evolution. A Robinson device like evolution.
I often find a condescending and snide overtone to Tomndeb’s actions as a moderator, which condescension is generally unwarranted by the actual content of his posts. To put it mildly, I wish he’d knock it off and adopt a tone similar to that of one of the more respectful moderators.
If Jonathan Chance had said that not all racism is forbidden on the SDMB, I’d understand the position–although moderators, I hope, are aware that condoning racism on the board means we lose a different class of posters than we’d lose by forbidding racism. However, he said that the comment didn’t rise to the level of racism, and that’s the view that so many of us find indefensible.
Far as I can tell racial supremacism and xenophobia has always been tolerated on this board - as long as you are polite about it. The folks that tend to get banned seem to be the ones who hurl vulgar slurs or similarly crude hate speech. The old Stf* folks for example were never able to resist for long and got picked off one by one as they lost their cool.
Or reference Lonesome Polecat who survived for years essentially arguing that white American culture would be unacceptably diluted by allowing freer immigration. It wasn’t until he finally lost his cool that that was it for him.
I think you’re right, and I have really mixed feelings about this policy, since on the one hand if you’re gonna fight ignorance you have to let it into the ring, and on the other hand it drives off some decent folk to see vile racism tolerated. My ambivalence toward the policy doesn’t keep me from accepting it or posting here.
But recognizing the policy of tolerating polite racism is different from agreeing that DingoelGringo’s post didn’t rise to the level of racist. Polite? If I squint and hold my nose, maybe. Racist? Absolutely.
You opened a thread to complain about two acts of Moderation regarding two related posts. Mod Notes and Warnings are the general methods of Moderating. If you did not want a Warning handed out or if you wanted a Mod Note to have been withheld, your OP makes no sense. If you were neither looking for a Warning to have been issued and had no complaint regarding the Mod Notes, your OP was pointless.
If you were not looking to change Moderator actions, what is the point of your thread?
No. He made an observation. I pointed out that his observation was in error. Without any actual response to my correction, he repeated his claim that he understood a particular viewpoint that has already been refuted. His persistent claim that requests are treated harshly when no serious reading of Ibn Warraq’s post would consider it a request and his refusal to address the actual issues involved calls his claim of understanding into serious doubt. I quoted the word understanding to call attention to the fact that it was an error. I suppose I could have used italics, instead. It was simply a stylistic choice.
I am not sure how you draw a conclusion of condescension from that, but it was not intended as such.
It was clear enough to many of the posters and it is quite evident many found it had a point in spite of what you say. That it is not clear to you has not surprised me, it is at the foundation of the more and more Robinson device like moderation here. You can continue to assert your view as I can as I find your thinking not to be convincing in any way, thank you, about the effective equivalencies that the actual moderation are achieving.
I of course did not say I had no complaint about the mod notes or the moderation, I said only that I made no requests or mentions of warnings. In all cases, it is sterile to discuss now such things.
We can just be in wonder how the observation that a statement is racist and request that it be kept to the pit becomes an action of equal comment. it is wonder what comment can be made, Green Bean is correct.
The change from the early days is now the baroque rules of the terrible insult and aggressivity it represents to call a thing that is racist by its name. This disrupts the conversations. It must be avoided to say this in the actual state of things. But I am certain that the reasoners will be able to explain to the posters that the perception of confusion is 100% wrong.
As long as you continue to misrepresent the situation, I will doubt that you actually understand the rules.
There is no prohibition against pointing out that a statement is racist.
Your claim that there was a mere “request” that such a comment be kept to the Pit is in error.
And there is nothing baroque about the rules, nor have they changed from the early days of the SDMB.
One may point out that a statement is racist. There is no prohibition on that.
One may not insult other posters outside The BBQ Pit, even if one thinks that they have made a racist statement.
Neither rule is new.
Neither rule is difficult to understand.
One poster said “Do you think I’m an idiot?” The second said “Um, we do now…” The second poster was not reprimanded in any way.
I could dig up more examples if you want me to, but I trust this should be sufficient evidence that the rules have indeed “changed since the early days of the SDMB.” Unless you choose to blow the above off as an isolated example of bad moderating, in which case I’ll gladly provide as many examples as you like of people insulting each other outside the Pit without reprimand.
We have never claimed that every Mod reads every line of every post and responds to it. Finding occasions where a Mod might have missed a single violation (or even ignored one) in the course of fifteen years is probably not going to be very difficult. Pointing to the number of drivers who exceed the speed limit by more than ten miles an hour would be a rather silly argument that there is no speed limit.
If you can demonstrate that insults were never Modded in the early days of the SDMB, we can consider your claim.
I did not claim that. Please do not misrepresent what I said.
Tom, it’s okay for you to admit that things are moderated differently now than they were before. Things normally change and evolve over time, including the de facto enforcement of the various rules of the SDMB. So it’s okay. Really.
You made a claim that the rules have changed, at least on insults. To the best of my recollection, insulting other posters has been against the rules at least since I joined in 2000.
The thread you linked to is an exceptionally poor example to support your statement. manhattan told the OP that if he insulted other posters he would be banned, and previous to that several other posters had already told him that if he insulted people he would be in trouble. In the midst of all that manhattan chose to let one oblique insult slide. I might very well do the same today in similar circumstances. That thread provides little evidence that the rules or their enforcement have changed.
FWIW, green bean, while I agree with you on other issues, I don’t think you’ve provided strong evidence here of a change in the rules. It’s not unheard of for insults to slide when nobody reports them even today.
It is clear it is sterile to have discussion on these applications of rules, but nevertheless Left Hand it is still useful to note that that Green Bean has identified is not a great change in the wording of the rules but in the application of these rules. This is why clearly he says not to misrepresent what he says.
What is an insult and what is language that is aggressive, this has clearly changed greatly and as they say in the law, in a material manner, and no honest comment can deny this. This baroque application, in spite of moderators saying it is an “understanding” (which of course is only to highlight the word understanding) incorrect is something that is clearly fluid and uncertain as any one reading this forum in the past months in a manner unprejudiced would admit.
the same words and the same phrases and usages are given different weights and some things that before were comments not considered an insult under the rules, now the actual moderators consider it so. But if there is any exception in the past it is oversight etc. We can ask manhattan since he is mentioned here, but I am sure it has no utility even if he accepted to say something of his experience. What is offensive is not the phrases that moderators do not consider racist, it is the uncertain silences that are imposes by standards of judgement more and more baroque. What is it that could be said to the comment of savages that is not too aggressive?
It is funny how this is so close to other evolutions I understand. The door of reasoning has been closed and there is only the true rules that have never changed, and the perfect master has established the perfect forum. Amine.
Actually, what is offensive, is your persistent claims that misrepresent facts. First you falsely claimed on multiple occasions that Mods object to one poster “requesting” that another poster take opinions to The BBQ Pit. Now you falsely claim that there are some phrases, (that you apparently consider racist) that the “moderators do not consider racist.” What phrases are those and what Mod has made the claim that they are not racist?
It is easy to post arguments when you get to invent the positions of both sides.
I have never said that the board culture has never changed. However, the rule against insulting posters is as old as the board. In this forum, not many months ago, a number of posters were arguing that we should actually broaden the statements that were regarded as insults. Had we instituted those “changes” to the rules, Ibn Warraq would have received a Warning rather than a simple Mod Note to dial back the hostility.