Any chance of an answer, TubaDiva?
Bump.
I’m going to keep this thread on the front page until TubaDiva does her job and actually responds to it.
Or closes it, which, given her typical performance, seems more likely.
You’ve got her on the run now…
I can only imagine what people are thinking…
Not really the point. I’m not interested in having her “on the run.” In fact, that’s precisely the opposite of what i want. I’d just like a response to fairly straightforward inquiry about a moderating decision, and about a comment she made that appears to contradict the very rules she’s supposed to enforce.
Careful with that. You don’t want to overtax yourself.
But if you want to continue helping to keep this thread on the front page, i’m happy for the assistance.
Anything I can do to help, I’m there.
Can you repost the questions, for those of us who have forgotten them?
It’s in the first post of this thread.
This is the supposed question mhendo so desperately wants answered. It’s really more of an insult than an honest question, though, which is probably the reason it is being (justifiably, imho) ignored.
Well, if you can give me another explanation for an Admin advocating a course of action that would be in direct violation of board rules, i’m all ears.
But you just keep circling the wagons there, bucko.
I’ve shown your"simple question" for the insult it really is, I’m going now.
BTW, that “You just keep circling the wagons there, bucko” sthick trotted out every time some dares to defend the people that work on the SDMB is getting a little tiresome.
Just sayin’.
I hope you’re not holding your breath.
It’s obvious you’re not going to get an answer.
If I were you, I’d a send message to ED. He is a reasonable man.
So is the lack of responses regarding complaints about relevant moderator and administrator actions.
Just sayin’.
Okay, if you think it is an insult, how about this.
"[thread=556490]This thread[/thread] was closed because TubaDiva thought it had degenerated into people yelling at each other. She asked to take it to the Pit if we wanted to “yell” at each other. However, we were basically disagreeing about the application of the board rules, which by those rules does belong in ATMB. Has the policy changed, and if not, why was the thread closed?
“Secondly, can we have a clarification regarding the official reason for Xploder’s banning? Rico said he was banned for using “hate speech” and a word that is “banned”, i.e. “cunt”. However the official rules do not say that the word “cunt” itself is banned, only its use to insult another poster. Which is not what Xploder was doing (not directly at least). So was Rico accurate regarding the reason for his banning?”
mhendo, to answer your OP:
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In my view, that thread should have been left open. I agree with you that the posts in that thread would be better characterized as disagreement. Moderator decisions are sometimes subjective, and different mods see it differently.
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Xploder was banned for a pattern of behavior, not for any specific post.
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By repeatedly bumping this thread you are not going to get a response if you didn’t get it in the first place. Doing so only makes someone more unwilling to engage in discussion, and I can certainly understand that.
I hope that addresses your concerns.
-xash
Administrator
I’m not mhendo, but thanks for your response xash. It does answer my questions.
This is a silly reason, and an even sillier explanation. He was banned because someone overreacted. Then a rationale about “patterns of behavior” was invented after the fact, despite there being a posted reason of a “hate speech” post, which is utterly inane. It’s disingenuous of you to make up reasons after the fact to conceal what was, by all evidence, a mistaken overreaction or even worse, an excuse to satisfy a personal beef.
These are the sorts of bogus calls, refusals to reconsider, and obvious scrambles to CYA that get people up in arms.
Thankyou for your input.
While i recognize a certain subjectivity in the job of moderating, it seems to me, as a general observation, that this subjectivity has a certain pattern, whereby particular mods consistently and (in my view) capriciously look for any excuse to close a thread that is critical of moderator decisions, or of board policy. This isn’t the first time that the mod in question has closed a thread with some half-assed excuse about it going “off topic” or not “accomplishing anything useful.” It seems, for some moderators, that “useful” is a synonym for “things i agree with.”
Also, it seems to me that there is little or no problem of subjectivity regarding the latter part of my inquiry, in which i asked how, under the rules of the board, we might follow the instructions given by TubaDiva in her post, to wit: (a) have a dispute about moderator decisions in the Pit, and (b) open a reasonable discussion of moderator decisions somewhere other than ATMB.
As i noted in the OP, Pitting moderators for their work as mods is no longer allowed, and the rules explicitly state that complaints about moderation or board policy must be opened in ATMB. So both of TubaDiva’s admonitions are in conflict with the very rules she is supposed to be enforcing. This, in combination with her self-centered and subjective closing of the thread in question, leads me to question not only her judgment, but her motivations.
Well, for me, the whole Xploder issue was irrelevant to this thread, although i will note that, whenever a long-term member gets banned, we usually get an explanatory thread in ATMB listing infractions and making clear why the decision to ban has been made.
In Xploder’s case, we never got any such thread, or any such explanation, even though this was someone who had been a member of this board for 10 years. All we had to go on was Rico’s little hissy fit, which gave no impression whatsoever that the banning was the result of a “pattern of behavior.” Moreover, when called on it, his excuse was that “cunt” is hate speech, and that the post, which i and others saw as a silly joke, constituted “poking with a sharp stick.”
I guess it’s possible that only a very sharp stick would be able to penetrate reasoning as dull as that demonstrated in that thread by Rico.
The fact that i didn’t get a response in the first place shows what a mockery this forum has become. Mods and admins can simply ignore stuff they don’t feel like responding to, even if it is directly pertinent to their duties, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
If this “fingers in the ears, lala i can’t hear you” approach is going to continue, then the least you could do revisit the ban on Pitting mods. If some mods haven’t got the integrity and sense of fairness required to respond to criticisms of their actions, the least you could do is let us blow off steam about them.
Sort of. But not really.
All it shows is that some mods and admins have enough of a sense of professionalism that they end up cleaning up after the ones who don’t.
Thankyou for being in the former group, but it doesn’t change the behavior of the latter.
I’ll try to give a better explanation of why Xploder was banned. This is, of course, just one mods opinion/view of the situation, but I was definitely very involved the last few months.
2005–warned by moderators Giraffe and tveblen for accusing Spiritus Mundi of being a sock of Lib.
2006–Warned by tubadiva for “calling” someone stupid outside the Pit.
7-25-2009–Warned by Marley23 for linking to confrontational content on the snarkboards. Fenris, bless his heart, had posted that links were not allowed but discussion of such was.
7-31-09—Warned by SkipMagic for a personal insult in ATMB.
1-11-2010–I suspended him for 30 days for acting like a jerk. Xploder suspended - About This Message Board - Straight Dope Message Board
3-24-2010–Rico banned him for, IMHO, doing the same kind of thing I suspended him for only a few months earlier.
His excuse was usually that he was drunk. Fine. I’ve had my share of times when I shouldn’t have posted here, having consumed too much. But, when you do it repeatedly, you only get so many chances. His time just ran out.
He was a pretty good poster, nice guy, but you have to have some limits.
samclem
Thanks.
My problem was not with the banning as such, but with the way it was done. Your explanation here is very reasonable, but it doesn’t change the fact that the banning itself was very poorly handled by Rico, and that there was no such explanation forthcoming at the time. This seemed pretty poor form, especially when the Doper in question had been here since 2000.