Agree.
<tongue in cheek>
What did tomndebb know, and when did he know it?
And does this mean Peter Morris is Deep Throat?
</T I C>
It’s gonna take a good amount of low-grade whiskey to burn that image out of my brain. 
Honestly, you have the highest boiling point of any of the mods here. You are the least likely to issue a warning, and that’s a great balance for the mod crew. My only question is whether or not Tom’s status as a mod has played a part in your POV? Can you honestly state that a less than popular member would have received the same treatment had he posted something inappropriate and self edited it, albeit within the mortal edit window time frame?
If another poster called someone stupid, and then edited it out five minutes later with an explicit acknowledgment that they’d posted in the wrong forum? Unless there was some history with that poster of doing this a lot, or some other reason to doubt their sincerity, yeah, I think it would be very unlikely that they’d get moderated.
I for one would be all for this. It happens on other boards and it makes those boards more fun and less stuffy than here. But since we lowly peasants aren’t allowed to even insult each other, let alone the mods, then the mods shouldn’t be allowed to either.
And like John Mace said, it’s the cover up.
And for me tomndebb saying he should be warned and then JC saying, “Well, um, er, um, well, er, um, uh, well, um, I’ll defer to you fellow moderator.” then tomndebb should have said, “Ok, I’ll give myself a warning.”
What if a poster contacts a moderator seven hours later and asks that the moderator remove the offending comment?
Didn’t Tom do this once before (warn himself)? I know one of the mods did, if not Tom, so it’s not crazy-talk.
Yep. That’s the whole thing right there.
I don’t know if Tomndebb warned himself before, but Twickster did it once and embarrassed the hell out of herself by laughing and joking about it.
That said, even she didn’t go so far as to try to cover up and delete her original insult.
I was going to add this to my earlier message, but…gosh…it was outside the 5 minute window so I was unable to make the edit. How 'bout that?
That’s a note, not a warning.
:smack: So, because I wrote “warned”, rather than “moderated” herself, the entire point is completely irrelevant. :rolleyes:
I forgot I was on the SDMB.
Is it too late for her to go back and change it?
Yeah, maybe it was her.
Yep, I’ve said that several times in this thread, including the 2nd part of the post you just quoted.
I think the message that we can take away from this is as follows:
[Pretend Generic Mod Hat On] Most of you have been here long enough to know that the fundamental rule of the Straight Dope Message Board is that we will do as we see fit, circle the wagons and obfuscate when wrong, hand wave all arguments to the contrary and insist that you recognize our unwavering rightness in all things.
To sum up… you can all go jump in a lake.[Pretend Generic Mod Hat Off]
Sorry I didn’t get back to you on this … no, none of my requested edits had anything to do with personal insults or any rule violation for that matter.
However, I still maintain that our moderators here should be allowed some wiggle room, and for the most part because I myself will not be volunteering to replace them. Talk is cheap, maybe those who think tomndebb should be punished should also step forward and dedicate some of their free time to helping with the moderation activities here (unless you already have of course).
I personally don’t care if he is punished, if the rules aren’t going to apply to mods then so be it. If they game the system to suit themselves then so be it.
I just think its a shame that such hypocrisy exists, and think any future modding will have the shadow of “do as I say, but clearly not as I do”.
I’ll do it as long as I get to insult people and not get warned for it. You know, some of that wiggle room you’re talking about.
Then do what it takes to join the privileged class around here, it’s not hard and AFAIK open to most anyone. If you pay the price and give up some of your free time, then you too will get a pass here and there for bad behavior. I’ve learned in these ancient of years that one takes damn good care of the volunteers. They help you for nothing in return.
Tomndebb made a mistake, and he’s learned his lesson … time to move on. The way this thread is carrying on it smells more like revenge, less about correction.
Learned his lesson? Where has it been stated that Mods will no longer edit posts that they made as a poster outside of the five minute limit when those posts contain rule violations?
Maybe when you come back and actually apologize for all of this, you could drop the pissy little attitude. If a suspension of mod duties isn’t what comes out of this as a reprimand, I’d suggest self-imposing it, Tom.