What is happening with this board re: modding?

About This Message Board
1

I’m really worried about how this board is going with regards to modding and would like to see if others agree or if I’m just seeing things.

First we have the whole tomndebb fiasco which IMO has never really been resolved. I’m not talking about the erasing of a post 7 hours after the fact and after being reported. I’m talking about the accusation of weasel words to call another a liar. It took forever to get a response which was basically “no comment on the accusation per se. the mods will follow posting rules. thread closed. refer to Ed’s thread.” Thing is according to Ed’s thread is unclear as to whether he is talking about mod rules or posting rules. If the latter, then Ed has said mods don’t regulate each other and he deals with it privately. So that means that if a mod insults another member it is up to Ed to mod them and we never know what happened?

Then LHoD gets a warning (since rescinded) for changing a quote when it was very clear that it did not change the meaning of the quote, actually clarified what he was responding to and may not have even been a rules violation.

Now for two people who technically deserved warnings but …
I got one for telling a person to shove their insult up their ass. Did it deserve to be modded? Absolutely but I have an issue with what I perceive as a person using weasel words to insult me and being called a sexist. Now maybe I’m reading something that isn’t there or maybe it was a brilliant troll or maybe it is borderline and mod discretion. All I know is that most of the SD disagrees with me and that’s fine, but look at this from a mod

[QUOTE=Colibri]
The word you used is regarded as sexist by some feminists. If you really aren’t sexist, you should apologize for having used it in the first place.
[/QUOTE]

WTF? Even though I made it clear in my OP that harpy referred to her voice I am being called out because it is a sexist term therefore it is acceptable to imply I’m a sexist AND furthermore a mod is saying I should apologize for using it? To whom? Hillary? The women on the Board? The women of the world next March 8th?

But Cad, you are obviously wrong because look how many people disagree with you. OK but what about Pearl Clutching Provocateur being told to stop calling Goldman Sachs “Gold Man Sacks[sic]” since

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Its continued use does appear to be an anti-semitic slur.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know about you but when I first read it I thought it was in reference to gold qua money like how they make a ton of money off of investors. I didn’t even think of it being anti-Semitic until tomndebb brought it up. PCP was later warned for not following mod instructions which is kind of like resisting arrest when you shouldn’t have been technically arrested. Yes you are wrong but it never should have gotten to that point.

Those are just from recent discussions. Has this board gotten to the point where weasel word insults are acceptable? Is it ok for mods and other posters to interpret what (they think) we really mean and attack that? And if those are true, isn’t there something contradictory in that when mods start telling us not to use terms with hidden meanings a la PCP? I know that mods as a whole have always been accused of simultaneously under and over-reacting but lately things seem … different. What say you all?

2

You’re just seeing things. Nothing is “going on” and there’s been no vast sea-change in the management. All’s well, nothing to worry about, and if one isn’t a jerk, one won’t get a note.

Imagining that something is “going on” here is a little like watching celebrity deaths for triples. If you really, really look for it, well, sure enough you’ll see it.

3

In regards to your post that triggered all this, I think it was properly modded by the mods. The rule has always been that a poster can comment about what a group does or think, and that is not considered an insult to those posters who may happen to belong to that group.

In fact, given that there are both Democratic and Republican posters on this board, it’s hard to see how there could be free-wheeling discussions if a highly critical comment about Group A is interpreted to be a personal insult to a poster who belongs to Group A. I don’t see that as weasel words; I see it as an attempt to allow free-wheeling discussion of controversial subjects, with the line drawn that posters can’t insult other posters personally.

With respect to your particular post, since you’re asking for opinions on the mods’ reaction to it, I have to say that when I read it yesterday, before all this happened, I grimaced to myself and thought “Queen of the Harpies? I would have expected better of Saint Cad to use a slur like that.”

Just my personal opinion. Take it for what it’s worth.

4

As you noted, the warning was rescinded. The system worked, so it’s hard to understand what your beef is.

That would seem to be evidence that nothing is “happening” other than your own misunderstanding about the rules.

You didn’t say her voice was a harpy. You said she was a harpy:

Emphasis added. Not “her voice”, her. And you know what? No one mod’ed you for calling her a harpy.

You’re wrong about the nature of the antisemitic nature of the post, but if you think you’re being unfairly mod’ed, you take it to this forum-- you don’t disregard mod instructions.

5

Mods are doing a wonderful job? I think they made precisely the correct calls in both the cases you are bemoaning.

6

There is nothing distinctly different about the moderation since the last moderator purge, both for good and for ill. GD moderation was ramped up, due to a more eager mod with a new goal of making the place more civil. The other forums remained the same.

I do worry that tomndebb is burning out a bit though. Still, his moderation itself is basically unchanged. He’s always had problems delineating between his role as a mod and his role as a poster.

7

A few years ago, there was a poster who in some context used the word “Hottentot.” Another poster took violent exception to the use of that term. I’m absolutely confident that the person who originally used the word in a post had no idea of its racist meaning, but I’m also reasonably confident that the person who used the term didn’t accuse the other poster of accusing him of being a racist.

The terms you used in reference to Hillary Clinton were, in my opinion, clearly sexist terms used to denigrate women. That does not mean that you are a sexist, because there are dozens of reasons why you could have used them innocently… well, maybe not so innocently, because they are insults, but you know what I mean.

I recognize that you have other matters on your mind, such as how your wife is being treated at work, but someone saying something about the use of sexist terms isn’t necessarily meant to be an assessment of your character – it’s usually meant to call out the use of language that is offensive.

The part of this I’m truly struggling to make sense isn’t the moderation on this board, but why you think you were personally insulted.

8

I’ve been seeing a slow change in the modding here, although the examples in the OP are poor ones. Perhaps this is because of what BigT commented on in the first part of his post, just a new batch of mods looking to please their superiors. Perhaps it is We the Posters who are slowly becoming more uncivil to each other.

Either way, I do sense a slow crack-down on some of our long standing rules. I think the mods are doing a fine job in this endeavor, whether by intent or not. I have a clear sense they are coaxing us to more compliance with existing rules, I don’t see any “lightening bolts” hurled. What I see is mods asking a poster to dial back a little, the poster ignoring the mod and eventually getting a Note or Warning.

That’s where I see the increase in mod activity, when posters refuse to dial the rhetoric back when politely asked to.

It wasn’t that long ago it was discouraged telling another poster “fuck you” seven times each and every sentence, as that tended to be spammy … now we can’t even say that once …

9

You completely and totally deserved your warning and PCP probably does as well.

10

Never said we didn’t. The question was about other things mods had said in those discussion like apologizing (again to who) for calling Clinton a harpy or that reference to “Gold” when talking about a securities firm being anti-Semitic.

11

You’re really not helping yourself. You were wrong in your post re: Harpy and your defense of your post because you apparently don’t see slurs as slurs. And now you’re compounding it by not seeing a different slur as a slur. I saw instantly that Gold Man Sacks was a slur. I expect most people here did.

You might want to take a step back and examine why you are not seeing slurs where everybody else does. The mods definitely do not do a perfect job but they can usually see the obvious and blatant.

12

I wasn’t planning to respond in your other ATMB thread—I fully concur with the warning you received—but it amazes me that you’re still doing this.

You’ve referred to Hillary Clinton as “Queen of the Harpies” at least four times: here, here, here, and here. Yet you insist that this is merely a “a commentary on how grating her voice is.”

Really? “Harpy” doesn’t mean “a person with a grating voice.” It has a highly pejorative, gender-specific meaning:

Dictionary.com: “a scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; shrew.”
Merriam-Webster: “an angry and unpleasant woman.”
Oxford: “a grasping, unscrupulous woman.”

Maybe you really are so tone-deaf that you are oblivious to the sexist overtones of the word “harpy.” But, from where I sit, it looks like you’re using some weasel words of your own. You can’t expect to call someone “Queen of the Harpies” and shield yourself from the predictable blowback by claiming that you were simply using your own personal, benign, non-sexist definition of “harpies.”

13

I answered that in the other thread.

14

Their secret plot is to slowly turn up the heat, hoping the frogs won’t notice until it’s too late and then they ban us all!!!

15

We did that already.

You came back.

16

Actually, the modding on this site has been going precipitously downhill since the switch from AOL.

Or so I’ve heard about every two months or so.:slight_smile:

17

Well, PCP is a helluva drug.

18

Given the usage in the four posts quoted above, I really would like to see the explanation of why it’s not intended as a sexist comment.

19

For clarification, I mean that I would like to see why isn’t not used in the sense of harpies referring to women. Saint Cad may himself not believe it is sexist but this usage seems to fit into the “shrill woman” much more than the “high voice.”

20

We always will too …