I think that is a pretty unfair assumption. Did any particular past threads and/or moderation give rise to this?
I commented on the absence of moderation in certain circumstances, so you’ll appreciate the difficulty in picking out every case where I reported something that wasn’t acted upon.
If I did choose to open a MPSIMS thread entitled “Positive liberal news”, I expect it would be instantaneously overrun by right-wing trolls. There would be no moderatorial reflection on whether a particular post was really, truly positive toward liberals, and thus fitting the spirit of the OP. Most likely it would be locked, and I’d be warned not to make further bad-faith posts calling out mod inconsistency. Am I wrong? Any mods want to take me up on starting a controversial pro-liberal thread, and assiduously policing the spirit of the thread with warnings and/or bans? Holding my breath here, please don’t delay.
But guns? Yeah, thread on that all you want, you’ll get white-glove concierge assistance on preserving that safe space. Somehow that’s special.
Why not try it? Do put in your OP that you’d appreciate it being limited to Positive News about the Progressive/ Liberal movements in the USA.
I think the Positive Gun News thread would benefit from a more specific title, like “Instances of Successful Defensive Gun Use,” which would get away from judgment calls of what is, or isn’t, positive gun news.
(Though it might be harder to exclude manson1972’s example given such a title: it’s closer to qualifying as two instances of successful DGU than to being ‘positive’ news of any sort, unless one starts from a really macabre frame of mind. That would be the tradeoff: some instances of successful DGU are not going to be happy stories.)
“Some?”
I think there’s some sort of rule or precedent about starting threads just to prove a point about moderation. It would be kind of a jerk move. Besides, it wouldn’t be a truly blind test because you’re all now tainted with foreknowledge.
I suggest you go back to the gun thread in question. Look at all the posts by the OP in that thread. If you can truly look at it with neutral eyes you could see that there were multiple times he could have been modded but I let it slide. There were many reports that did not act on. That happens every day in many forums. We make judgement calls whether to mod to the strict letter of the rule or let it go in the interest of keeping conversations moving. It is certainly not by political lines. I think there is a bit of confirmation bias happening here.
I would strongly oppose it if the moderators were saying only positive gun news was allowed on this board. But they haven’t said this; they’re only saying this particular thread should remained focused on its declared topic. As others have said, there are other threads on this board which present opposing views.
Again, after three years, 1500 posts, multiple mod instructions… if you can’t figure out what the thread is about by now a change in title won’t help.
There is a thread on negative gun news but it is in the BBQ Pit, and people with the opposite view are allowed to post with little to no moderation, so claiming that this thread on Positive Gun Use is a counterpoint is just a joke.
My understanding is that it was intended as a safe space for pro-gun posters. I could be wrong, but that’s certainly my recollection, and nothing on the first page of that thread seems to contradict it.
:shrug: I’m ok with providing people safe spaces if they need them.
And the moderation staff agreed that such is what that thread is. It shouldn’t be hard to observe that restriction.
It isn’t. We should just make it clear that that’s what the thread is: a safe space for people who hold a particular view. I think you guys have made that perfectly clear by now, and I don’t think it was particularly confusing before (and I’m not going to defend the OP or argue that his post was in good faith).
To be fair, the OP on that was pretty ambiguous. You even have people arguing in this very thread as to whether legal issues should or should not be included, even thought the OP of that thread included one.
Through several heavy handed mod instructions, which said that that thread was a place where nothing resembling an anti-gun thought could be posted, that part of what the thread about is clear, it is solely for pro-gun propaganda for pro-gun advocates. This, unlike the other meanings the thread now has, was explicitly stated by the OP.
It’s arbitrary, but clear. There is to be no questioning or debating as to whether a gun use was positive or not. Well, unless it is decided by the pro-gun advocates in the thread that the gun use was not positive, in which case, it is a thread bannable offense.
While Manson’s example was probably easily shown to be more negative than positive, there have been stories posted by pro gun advocates that others felt were more negative than positive, but we were given explicit instructions to not express any sort of negative reaction to such a story.
I would suggest posting an updated thread title, just to make it clear, “Only pro gun advocates may post to this thread.”
Are there any other recent threads which have been officially decreed to be safe-space echo chambers for holders of a certain view, rather than fighting ignorance? If there’s a problem with authoritah being respected there, maybe it’s because authoritah is being misused.
Not so. I myself admit that it’s not funny.
And yet in that thread there is plenty of discussion whether reported uses were positive or not. You are simply not correct. What is not allowed are hijacks or threadshitting. Just like in every other thread in that forum.
Since I got a warning a few years back for posting a statement by the NRA to the thread, yes, as a matter of fact, the boundaries of acceptable speech in that thread have been quite unclear to me. Because if the NRA isn’t pro-gun, who the fuck is?
I’ve dealt with that lack of clarity by simply staying the hell out of the thread, because if you can’t understand the rules somewhere, your best bet is to stay clear. So I’ve missed most of those three years and 1500 posts. I’ve not made further study of it.
But still, someone posting to a thread for the first time, one they have never read before, should be able to post there without getting into trouble there, if they consistently stay out of trouble on this board. It shouldn’t be up to each poster to figure out for him/herself whether a thread has special rules, and what they are. If a thread has different rules, they should be clear up front.
All NRA monthly magazines contain a compilation of stories about guns allegedly used for self defense. They invariably fail to consider the idea of a scientific control: they don’t consider what would have happened if the user has not had a gun. By way of example, a burglar was in the process of climbing into my neighbor’s window when she… stumbled downstairs and looked at him with bleary eyes at 5:30 AM or so. He waved and ran away. If she was packing heat, she could have starred in an NRA column.
Anyway, the thread is a version of that column, which is ok. If it was in IMHO, the particulars of each example could be dissected. In the pit, uncritical compilers of dubious anecdotes could be mocked. But in MPSIMS, the expected response differs.
Looks to me that you along with mason1972 and ElvisL1ves are some of the most prolific posters in that thread so that’s obviously not true.