Yes. Reasons are a hijack here, however.
And I believe that you believe I have a liberal bias even though you don’t have a freaking clue what my political beliefs are.
I can’t see that a simple note like: “Please, let’s keep politics out of GQ” could be perceived as either draconian or harsh. And just to be clear, It’s not a big deal; just my opinion.
It should be noted, however, that that particular political opinion spawned this Pit Thread which spanned 4 years and 209 pages (so far). It’s a pretty touchy subject around these parts.
Personally, I would accept the warning if it were true and not offer up “They do it too!” as a defense, and if I found that someone was “doing it too” I would report it to the Moderators.
But that’s just me.
I think reasons are a main part of the topic here, unless you think the Mods are making their decisions sans reason.
Good, and while you watch the sun rising, consider that something else that’s just as reliable is incessant complaints from certain right-leaning members about politically biased moderation, and yet no persuasive evidence has ever been presented. This would be an example.
The complaint here is that the statement “That’s what all the voter ID laws are about …” should have been pounced on and rebuked, whereas in fact just a slight rewording to “There is a large body of opinion that that’s what all the voter ID laws are about …” is so indisputably factual that it could have come straight out of an encyclopedia. It is, in short, a factual statement that bears on politics, not a political opinion, and the poster’s statement is its very close cousin. If that’s to be considered a “political jab”, it’s very weak sauce indeed. A political jab in this sort of context would be making insulting remarks about the character of individuals who promote such laws, and I’m sure that would have been appropriately moderated. I’m sure you can see the difference.
This is the wrong place to debate this, but I’ll just say that I doubt that is true for all voter ID laws. Some, maybe even most, but not “all”.
However, if such a “large body of opinion” does exist about that, it exists entirely on one side of the political spectrum, which is the kind of stuff that doesn’t belong in GQ.
The salient point here is that there is a world of difference between a factual statement about politics and a political opinion. The latter doesn’t belong in GQ, the former does. Recall that Hari Seldon was responding to the preceding poster who had just finished saying “there is no doubt whatsoever that Democrats achieved that result … only through sickening, brutal, wholesale massacre and intimidation of African American would-be voters” – a statement presumably backed up by the historical record. It hardly seems out of line to comment, as Hari did, that the same kind of voter suppression is going on today in the form of voter ID laws. It would be quite a stretch to classify this as a “political jab” of the kind that sometimes appear and are duly moderated, mostly consisting of gratuitous insults against political figures. And yes, I’ve seen these insults on both sides of the partisan aisle being moderated.
But what you’re missing wolfpup is not that I reported it because it was liberal but rather a political opinion in GQ. That is not allowed by the rules. The whole liberal issue was brought up by silenus in that he equated the opinion as a fact. Add to that that the current debate on voter ID has nothing to do with the 1876 election and the post should have gotten some attention from a mod if even a note saying “Hey, let’s stick to 1876 issues.”
I think the argument is that, while it may have been political, it wasn’t necessarily an opinion.
I don’t know what your politics are. But I believe you are well in tune with the board culture, and regardless of what you feel about the merits of Voter ID, you’re well aware that a comment suggesting that Voter ID is intended to suppress the black vote has very little chance of igniting a firestorm, because most people that read it will simply agree, without even thinking it’s a contentious claim. “Of course that’s true,” says their Inner Critic, “and not an opinion, but a fact.”
So you make the moderation decision to leave it be, not as an expression of your political leanings but as an expression of your understanding of Board culture.
ETA:
-and-
Q.E.D.
See. . . no. I contend that voter ID laws are a permissible method of ensuring voter confidence in the outcome of ultra-close elections, and I absolutely reject the claim that their primary intent is suppression of the black vote.
Now, I know that you disagree, but you don’t get to elevate your claim to fact and relegate mine to opinion in GQ.
Except, of course, you do.
I don’t think I’m missing anything. I read all the comments here including the rationale that engineer_comp_geek provided and it sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If one poster can describe Democratic voter suppression in 1876 using a veritable torrent of heated adjectives, it’s not entirely unreasonable for another poster to say, “yeah, but you know what? Now the other party in their own way is doing something similar”. Not directly on topic? True, and that’s been acknowledged, but it’s also hardly a big deal and not in any way a gratuitous political jab.
If every post that wasn’t strictly and directly on topic in GQ was disallowed, we’d probably lose the majority of the posts, and the place would be far less welcoming and informative. There’s a thread there now about weather satellites in which, like this one, the question was duly answered, and now it’s veered off into a discussion about TV weathermen and chalkboards. Nobody is complaining.
I agree that the preface “…there’s a large body of opinion that. . .” transforms many claims from opinion to fact.
But sadly, it does not, as you pretend, clothe the unedited statement with the finery of its edited cousin. Accord: “There is a large body of opinion that childhood vaccination causes autism.” Inarguably correct. A large number of misinformed people do in fact believe this.
“Childhood vaccination causes autism.” I hope this statement, offered in GQ, would be subject to attention.
Why is no one objecting to the original statement that “there is no doubt whatsoever that Democrats achieved that result … only through sickening, brutal, wholesale massacre and intimidation of African American would-be voters”? Surely there must be at least some historians who believe that “sickening” and “brutal” here may not be justified – which in any case are value judgments, or that there was no “wholesale massacre”, or that there is room for at least some doubt, so that the entire statement constitutes “opinion”. How is Hari’s response materially different?
One has to apply some modicum of reason to refereeing these discussions. I am not a scholar of American history but I presume there is reasonable evidence to substantiate that statement, so there is no reasonable basis for insistence that one must preface it with “Many believe that …” or words to that effect. One could make the same argument about the response to it. And even if not, then at most Hari was remiss for omitting those qualifying words, or for momentarily straying from the strict subject of the thread. To claim that either of those rises to the level of an offense seems to me to be a symptom of extreme hypersensitivity to the subject of voter ID or some kind of paranoia about how things are moderated.
And I hope that such attention would not come from the mods, but from other posters citing evidence that would refute this statement. If the statement is given as fact, not opinion, then it is proper even if said “fact” is incorrect.
I beg to differ. When we preface an argument with a claim about supporting opinion, it is presumed to be a reference to informed opinion on the part of those who have studied the matter and to whom we look for guidance, not the results of a poll of uninformed yokels. The statement in your example would be extremely misleading, and if appearing in GQ I’m certain would be challenged. The correct version would be “The overwhelming majority of opinion rejects the allegation of any link between vaccination and autism, and such claims are considered fringe and promoted by groups that have been largely discredited”. Would you be able to make the same kind of statement about voter ID? In-depth discussion and cites about it are inappropriate here, but you and I both know that a great deal has been published about the ulterior motives of such schemes.
What I’d be able to say about Voter ID is: “Any insight into supposed insidious racial motivations is speculative and likely services the desired political goal of upending Voter ID laws.”
A great deal has been published on both sides of the issue. The claim I have is that Voter ID laws are not primarily motivated by racial animus, and that is NOT a “fringe” or “largely discredited” claim.
It’s almost as if human motives are harder to pin down than observations about the direction from which the sun rises.
I don’t know why people are giving you grief about this analogy, because it’s spot-on. The sun doesn’t actually rise in the east; it’s just the common assumption that everything revolves around us that leads to this misconception.