I still disagree on the basis that anyone arguing well above their level of expertise will be exposed here, and pretty quickly.
From TroutMan:
It seems pretty clear that they’re saying that getting rid of those people would improve the community.
Did you notice the first quote that I was replying to?
And if they are trying to dodge such exposure by explicitly lying about their credentials to give a false impression of their expertise, then their exposure should be followed by their disciplining, and if their pattern of dishonest behavior persists, by their banning.
Why would you suggest doing otherwise? This is a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, and expertise-fakers are deliberately trying to disguise ignorance as knowledge.
I mean, we also have board rules against expressing racist bigotry and death threats, and the people who violate those rules are also pretty quickly “exposed”. But the Board still reserves the right to ban the violators.
Yes, TroutMan is saying that getting rid of people who have broken a specific Board rule against lying and faking would improve the community. I happen to agree.
What he’s not saying is that “this poster doesn’t improve the community” should be a blanket criterion for expelling any poster, whether they’ve broken any specific Board rule or not.
That is, he’s not claiming that we should only “keep people around who ‘improve the community’”, which is what you seemed to think he was doing.
I still disagree. It shouldn’t be a rule at all.
ETA: With the exception of giving a topic ban for people who have been shown to give bad advice.
How do you imagine that the rule can be enforced without that very thing happening?
[I stuck an edited addition into my previous post that you didn’t see before you replied to it, apologies for messing with the directionality of the discussion.]
Just the way it was in the case of Martin_Hyde, for example: without any off-board “snooping” into the poster’s private life, enough other posters noticed and pointed out enough obvious contradictions in his autobiographical statements in his posting history that it became very clear he was substantially lying. No intrusive Stasi-like machinations required.
The whole point of all our rules is to improve the community (or avoid legal issues). Why else do you think we have rules? So I think our disagreement is on if people who lie in order to speak from a position of authority improve the community.
To be clear, “improve the community” does not mean I like them. I most definitely do not like Trumpists, but I think opposing views improves the community and I have no interest in banning them.
I’m guessing you think lying does not negatively impact conversations here. I disagree with that. (Sorry to guess, but you won’t say why you want to keep them here).
Are you sure about that? I don’t know what the mods did or didn’t do to arrive at their conclusion.
That also bothers me. I don’t really like community moderation. How many of those other posters had a bone to pick and were giving cherry-picked examples? What was the time period of those examples? Could any of the lies have been old information, late-night sleepiness, typos, or any of a hundred other things that could make you think that someone they don’t know except through online interaction might be lying.
Note that I don’t know whether they were lying or not. I don’t really care either way. All I care about are the arguments they made and how those arguments held up on close inspection.
Note also that I am not against flagging posts or posters. I just don’t think that too much weight should be given to the flags.
If they were trolling, then ban them for trolling. If they were making threats, then ban them for making threats.
There’s no gotcha. The number one rule is here is “Don’t be a jerk.” Lying about who you are to get fake cred in arguments is being a jerk. Lying in general is being a jerk, unless it’s a small lie for a good reason. Large lies harm communities, which is why society considers is wrong. And, with this particular lie, the rules make it clear, so ignorance is no excuse.
Just because something undesirable is hard to detect doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to stop it. It just means that, when we do detect it, the punishment needs to be harsh enough to discourage others. Lots of bad things are hard to detect. Do we not stop socks or trolls because it can be hard to tell who they are?
Your take here is bizarre at best, and concerning at worst. You don’t seem to get the gravity of what MH did, or why the vast majority of people would find it unacceptable.
You seem to think it is some weird gotcha exclusive this board, rather than something society in general finds unacceptable. I hope we can fight your ignorance on this.
Please. Don’t be a jerk is, at best, a guideline. People are jerks here all the time, in and out of the Pit.
After 18 years?
Oh, I get the gravity of it. Dude lied on a message board.
Not sure what to make of your concern.
I’ve never seen it used here before, and yeah, it does look like a gotcha to me.
Disagreement does not equal ignorance, you pompous twit.
We felt it was a form of trolling.
Not sure why you’re wasting time worrying about a deep troll. Eventually we’ll probably stumble over his socks as he uses them.
This isn’t some new rule or crusade. This was about a surly poster that often lashed out at others. One that was caught in many lies by another poster. He also admitted to his trolling which made the voting very one sided to ban him.
I’ve mentioned many times we don’t make these decisions based on one post or thread but a body of work if you will.
And yes the military lies added to it, but were just one part.
Neither do I, but then, I have no inside information about any disciiplinary decisions by mods. If we as a community have concerns that the mods are abusing their privileged access to posters’ personal info (although I personally don’t know of any basis for such concerns), then we should address those concerns with the Board administration. Not just deliberately ignore the whole issue of posters’ egregiously misrepresenting themselves.
Well, AIUI, most disciplinary decisions on these boards are either launched or significantly influenced by “community moderation”, to the extent that it’s the community that complains to the mods about misbehavior.
That’s kind of a bullshit self-laudatory illusion of objectivity, though? No poster’s “arguments” exist in a forensic vacuum. Everyone’s credibility is impacted in various ways by their perceived reputation and identity/ies, and you can’t artificially strip that awareness out of messageboard discussions.
You may like to think that nothing affects you in a discussion but the impersonal objective quality of the arguments presented, but you’re not actually immune from the influences of individual persona and reputation.
Sure, why not? If it takes us 18 years to determine that a poster is misrepresenting themselves to an extent that violates the rules, then that’s when we ban them.
Like I said back in post #2101, the slowness of the turnaround and the reluctance to jump to conclusions about possible misrepresentation is a feature, not a bug.
I think I’ve droned on enough, so I’ll just say I generally like your posts and I will continue to do so. But sometimes you pick really weird hills to die on.
I think that this is likely the source of our head-butting. You’re a 99er, right? I’m a relative newbie. You’ve built up decades of biases–and there’s nothing wrong with that–that I haven’t. I don’t know anybody’s history, so yeah, those arguments largely do exist in a vacuum to me.
Same to you, friend. I’m just giving my opinion. I certainly hope this isn’t a hill. But no, I’m not likely to change my mind (though it’s not unthinkable).
You’re a relative “newbie” of some 5 years compared to my 22, sure, so you’re less familiar with the older history of some posters than I am. But that doesn’t mean that your 5 years of SDMB experience is a “vacuum”.
For the record, there are a lot of us on this board that have met others in person. I’ve met dozens and have had dozens in my home.
Quite a few of us are pretty open about who we are. I think anyone that cares at all knows a lot about me as an example. The good Doctor, QtM is another great example.
Well, there are very few posters here who I recognize, especially in a negative way. Also, I took over a year off and I don’t come here every day (though I have started to, lately).
FWIW, I just assume that anyone who really wants to find out my identity will succeed. I post accordingly. Part of that may be the privilege that comes with a level of financial security (the Navy already “fired me,” and it pays me for it still, and will continue to do so until I’m dead), and part of it may just be learned indifference as a kind of coping mechanism for having already been outed in a pretty big way on another board. Nothing too terrible came of it, but it drove home to me the importance of posting in a way I could stand by if I had to, morally at least.
In some respects, it’s kind of a blessing for me that the snopes board was “disappeared” from the internet, as about 15 years ago (give or take) I might have passed for alt-right myself (before that was a term, though, so more like proto-alt-right). Certainly I was conservative (and the worst kind of conservative: the self-identified “centrist” type), and I had not yet adopted my “just assume anyone who wants to know your name will figure it out” rule yet.
Which isn’t to say I’m always civil now, just that the things I am uncivil about are the things I would happily, publicly, defend being uncivil about. Civility is overrated. That’s something else I’ve learned since I moved past my “centrist” phase.
Definitely! That said, I’ve never met him; and if I learned that he were a probation officer with no medical training, I’d be pretty irritated. It’s not like I learn anything from him that I rely on for my decisionmaking; but over the years, I’ve really enjoyed reading about his experiences as a prison doctor, and I assume they’re true in the same way that I generally assume folks are telling me the truth about their experiences.
Martin’s just a weird dude with some issues. A twenty year troll? So weird. Hoping there aren’t others around here doing the same thing.
Apologies. I wasn’t trying to be insulting, but to make a strong conclusion and show how strongly I believe what I am saying.
I do think you might misunderstand me. My issue is not your disagreement about whether this should be a bannable offense. It is the way you keep treating lying like no big deal, seemingly not getting why others object so strongly to it that I see as a possible issue. That’s what I was saying could possibly indicate ignorance.
I just don’t treat morality as this entirely subjective concept. There are issues where the line is fuzzy. But “lying is wrong” and “you don’t go around doing wrong things unnecessarily” are both in the objective side. If you try to argue that lying with the purpose of misleading people is not a big deal, then I will consider you to be ignorant on that fact. Same as if you think that stealing isn’t wrong (except when necessary) or that 2+7=5.
I don’t think that makes me arrogant. It just makes me more consistent. If I didn’t think these things were universally wrong, then how could I justify telling people they shouldn’t do it? If I can’t believe that there are things that are universally wrong, how can I tell someone that rape or murder is wrong? And if I don’t think lying is wrong, then why wouldn’t I lie to get ahead?
To me, the fact that you don’t see this as a big deal suggests to me that you might do the same things yourself. And I don’t think you should. Not just here, but in general.
Sure, a white lie to protect yourself from doxxing makes sense. I’ve said I do that—usually by simplifying. But lying to claim expertise you don’t have? That is a big deal, and something people shouldn’t do.
Oh, and finally, I’m still trying to get the hang of how to post my thoughts in a way they will be understood without writing too much and being ignored. And I wish to thank you for actually reading my entire post, even if you disagreed with it and found the last part insulting. I hope this one is not too long.