If this was a proper analogy, then you would have no problem pointing out liberal transgressors that are getting away with things that you are warned for, but instead all you’ve given us is a “feeling” that you are being unjustly punished.
OK.
Let me add a wrinkle, then. Let’s assume our cops are zealously neutral. They issue a ticket regardless of what stickers a car might have. But they respond to reckless driving, and the respond to citizen complaints.
Now let’s assume I live in Dallas.
In Dallas, many people are around who dislike the Redskins and are willing to report me for minor speeding violations. In response to those reports, I get ticketed. But the Dallas Cowboys fans, driving around in Dallas, are not at the same risk, because there are so few hostile Redskins fans to report them.
So the police, here, are acting without bias. But the environment is biased.
Ah. I have responded, as an equally disinterested observer.
We have all seen an example of a liberal post that was not modded, even though it contained a political claim advanced as fact in GQ. It was the example that started this thread.
In post 31 we all saw two more examples. Not sure why you’re not reading what the rest of us are.
Is that genuinely how you think it works here? Because I don’t.
Here’s why: while there may be more liberals than conservatives on the board, every GD thread debating liberal/conservative opinions includes at least one conservative, or it’s not much of a debate. If there are insults against conservatives on the board, there are necessarily conservative posters in the thread. And at least some of those conservatives, and I feel confident the mods will back me on this, are comfortable clicking the “report” button. I’m further confident that the mods don’t count the number of reports of a post before deciding whether it needs to be moderated; the threshold for examining a post is a single report.
There may be more liberals. But there’s always at least one conservative who can report the offending posts from liberals.
Those are not the things you were warned for.
And, yet again, if you could actually show that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were speeding and not getting fined for it, you would have a case…and, yet again, if you could show that liberals were getting away with things that you cannot get away with, you would have a case.
- I guess there is no problem with the use of “us” and “we” when you do it.
- Would you say that the cases you pointed out are equivalent to the one you say is biased against conservatives?
The issue is inconsistent modding. Now pair that with the fact that most posts here are of a liberal bent and you have the appearance that the liberals are given breaks conservatives are given. Let me give you an example.
A mod told a thread to cut out the anti-Trump posts. 14 minutes later a poster made an anti-Trump post and I reported it. Nothing was done and I made an ATMB thread on it. The answer was that that mod thought 14 minutes was insufficient for the poster to see the mod note. So I have 3 questions:
Doesn’t it have the appearance that a liberal got away with breaking board rules.
Did any liberals on the board report it or did they let the violation slide because it was anti-Trump?
Then was it unfair to people who got modded for violating mod directions less than 14 minutes after the mod note.
As to Bricker’s point this inconsistency leads, intentionally or unintentionally, to the liberal posts getting more freedom than conservative posts. This is a case in point. At the basic level, Hari’s post as the 2nd reply in GQ raised the issue of voter ID, a contentious issue on this board and one that has nothing to do with this board. e-c-g said he was willing to let it stand unless it causes a hijack although I know I’ve seen posters modded for lesser of a political hijack in GQ. And to prove Bricker’s point that the hijack standard is biased we have people in this tread saying voter ID laws were made to disenfranchise Blacks is the truth.
Which people are you referring to in your final sentence? Names and posts, please, unless you’re just imagining the unfairness perpetrated upon poor imaginary posters; if the latter, I’ll join you in the imagination.
I’m at work and don’t have time to respond to a lot of this stuff, but this really stuck out and I feel I need to comment on it.
This is a case where liberal or conservative had absolutely nothing to do with the moderation, and yet you have turned it into a liberal/conservative issue for yourself. I think things like this are a major part of the problem of folks thinking that there is a huge moderator bias. If you are constantly looking for bias, and you are interpreting things like this as proof of the bias, then you are going to be constantly reinforcing the existence of a bias that does not actually exist.
The political affiliations of the person reporting the post are not included in the post report.
I don’t understand the “rule” (guideline?) to be threatening moderator action against the opinion-poster who meets the other criteria. I expect what would happen in that scenario is that the posters engaging in the hijack are told to knock it off. Big whoop.
Huh? I’m merely summarizing what you’ve now been told the rules permit. So your recourse would be pointing to this thread, no?
In any event, it’s not like the punishment for a dubious warning is that they cut off your hand, and you’ll forever have to harangue us with your hook. In the highly unlikely event that such a dubious warning was used as any part of the basis to take action against your posting privileges, a big chunk of this board would revolt, and I suspect a fair few moderators would be among us.
Lots of the rules on this board chill speech and have disparate impacts. It’s the nature of policing discourse, which is the express job of the moderators. A more categorical rule in GQ doesn’t fix that problem, and just unnecessarily inhibits fruitful discussions that might follow a well-answered GQ query.
OK.
Bricker v. 2008 would have continued posting even as he kept getting more and more irritated, and ultimately said or done something that would legitimately draw a warning, mandate an apology, or both.
Bricker v. 2017 is going to avoid that fate by withdrawing now. I’ve added my observations; take them for what thou wilt.
I’m going to step away from this thread.
No one accused you otherwise. The issue isn’t any allegation of ulterior motives, the issue is just that you hold beliefs about inherent unfairness on the board that continue to be totally unsubstantiated and, in my view, are wrong.
That is certainly an option…but I fear it will reinforce this notion you have that you were stifled from posting by outside forces, and used as an example of such in a future posting.
Not at all. In fact that is why this is a great example because the modding was originally to keep out the anti-Trump hijacks.
But the people in this thread keep missing the point Bricker is making. Let’s say 80% of the political posts on this board are liberal. That means that out of every 10 posts that should be modded and are not for whatever reason 8 will be liberal and 2 will be conservative. That doesn’t mean that the mods are biases, it just means the posts that slip through relect the bias of the board.
Bricker raised a similar point too that if the mod uses the criteria that a political post will be modded only if it hijacks a thread then that is biased - not because of the bias of the moderator but the fact that if in a GQ thread on Thomas Reed I put in that the Dems should filibuster everything the Pubs do then most of the board will agree with me and no hijack. If I instead put down that Trump is a better President than Obama ever was I guarantee it will be reported and hijacked and somewhere along the line I will at least be modded as in “no politics in GQ”.
So I don’t think most of the mods here are intentionally favoring liberal posts over conservative posts but I do think the inconsistency of modding favors the liberal members of the board. And as much as people think this is about reporting a liberal post it was about injecting voter ID into a discussion about 1876.
I got the point Bricker was trying to make-I just think he failed to make it.
It is possible to fully understand a point of view and still disagree with it, you know.
Consider the OP of this thread. Under your proposal, he would not report the post since it would not be moderated. But, if he really thought it SHOULD be moderated, he could get it moderated by engaging with the poster and hijacking the thread to discuss the political point. Which is exactly what we don’t what to happen. So it would seem that rule or guideline you are proposing would have the effect of making the situation worse by encouraging the very behavior we want to discourage.
Let’s be clear about something. I just summarized the moderator’s post. I might have summarized it well, or poorly, but it isn’t something I’m “proposing.” It was the explanation of the rules offered in this thread by staff.
That said, I think you are misreading that explanation to suggest that engineer_comp_geek would have issued a warning if the comment had led to a hijack. Instead, I think the point was that there was no need for moderator intervention because it didn’t lead to a hijack. If there had been, then presumably the intervention would be a mod note to knock it off, as with any other hijack. That seems like a perfectly fine and workable rule for me, and it does not create any kind of heckler’s veto.
If I’m wrong, and what engineer_comp_geek is saying is that a warning would have been issued if it had led to a hijack, then I agree that would be a problematic kind of heckler’s veto.
Here’s what you posted, emphasis added:
If “proposing” isn’t the correct descriptor, then “endorsing” is. But that’s not really the point. It matters not whether you are proposing it or endorsing it. It only matters if that is used by the moderators, and that is the explanation we are given by ECG. The only point I’m trying to make is that, IMO, that policy will lead to more hijacks than if we had a policy of simply moderating political commentary independently of whether it led to a hijack or not.
I’m not suggesting a warning would be issued if a hijack ensued. I’m just suggesting that some moderator action would be taken.
I thought this thread had pretty much wound down, but just one more response to the latest:
Your logic is faulty. Whatever the ratio of liberal vs conservative political posts, in the absence of bias one should obviously expect all categories of good and bad modding to reflect the ratio.
Instead of a string of wild speculation like that leading to highly improbable conclusions, I would recommend applying Occam’s Razor to suggest that the mods are actually just trying to maintain discussions within the appropriate bounds with the least possible drama and disruption. And since all the evidence seems to support that, it seems like a good bet.
I don’t see that as an ongoing problem. Someone who habitually hijacks threads to attract attention to a post he’s all hot and bothered about and feels should have been moderated, or to score political points, would be dealt with on that basis.