Why?

[earthJoker]

I generally ignore the site discussion.

Me too. But the outcome of this discussion could effect d&d so I can't ignore it.

[Khendraja'aro]

Then I also would like the moderators being held to a higher standard. Sorry Dread, but if you insist on questions being answered while you yourself conveniently evade answering questions, then I can't respect the moderators. I don't like it when those in power make up their own rules.

[Wraith]

I don't think insisting on questions being answered/evading questions should be a moderator issue. I think the rules are going to need to be amended if we want to do something like that. The mods are all users also, and shouldn't have to always wear their mod hats in everything they say/do.

[Khendraja'aro]

I don't think insisting on questions being answered/evading questions should be a moderator issue. I think the rules are going to need to be amended if we want to do something like that. The mods are all users also, and shouldn't have to always wear their mod hats in everything they say/do.

Then they are not mods and I shall treat them as such. Either they are moderators or they are users - it indeed is a binary choice. You can't have it both ways.

There are countless examples of why wearing one too many hats only creates more problems than it solves. For instance, I won't befriend my pupils.

[']['ear]

I don't think insisting on questions being answered/evading questions should be a moderator issue. I think the rules are going to need to be amended if we want to do something like that.

Totally agreed.

The mods are all users also, and shouldn't have to always wear their mod hats in everything they say/do.

Not true. Mods actually have to adhere to the rules and not, for example, create snotty, mocking posts that also happen to be based on belief in a demonstrably flawed source.

Then they are not mods and I shall treat them as such. Either they are moderators or they are users - it indeed is a binary choice. You can't have it both ways.

There are countless examples of why wearing one too many hats only creates more problems than it solves. For instance, I won't befriend my pupils.

Well, it's not black and white. Mods are certainly allowed to participate in the give and take of the forums. But they should also adhere to a high standard wrt the rules.

[Nessus]

Then they are not mods and I shall treat them as such. Either they are moderators or they are users - it indeed is a binary choice. You can't have it both ways.

There are countless examples of why wearing one too many hats only creates more problems than it solves. For instance, I won't befriend my pupils.

Why would anyone want to volunteer to be a moderator under those circumstances?

Dread can behave poorly as a poster but so long as he doesn't abuse what little privilege the moderating staff currently enjoys, what exactly is the problem? It should be possible to think of someone being a useless cunt as a person but still be doing agreeably in their "job".

[earthJoker]

Then they are not mods and I shall treat them as such. Either they are moderators or they are users - it indeed is a binary choice. You can't have it both ways.

There are countless examples of why wearing one too many hats only creates more problems than it solves. For instance, I won't befriend my pupils.

We are not professionals here. If you want someone who is mod only, you would need to pay him. A mod is more like a Vereinsvorstand (~Clubpresident) he is still a normal member at the same time.

Two things that still could be good for a mod:
- Try to live up to the values.
- Clearly stating when a post is made with the moderator hat on.

Also mods should be dedicated to forum sections. This way the mod still has a section where he can write as a very normal member.

[']['ear]

There are a couple reasons. First, and probably the biggest, nobody reported it. I'm available for modding around these times, but I still can't always read every single post that gets made. Second, it's way before the line as I see it. Trolling and flaming are already against the rules, but those rules will have to be amended before I can do anything about sarcasm. The mandate was for a forum without flamewars, not total saccharin sweetness from everybody. And if I'd had to call out everyone for things like using sarcasm, I'd have absolutely no possible justification to just give a verbal warning for your own post.

Agreed, saccharin sweetness isn't desirable.

I'd argue that Rand's post was trolling, but trolling is difficult to define. The fact that he never posts like that to me (or anybody else) was also striking. I wonder what the special occasion was?

Can't argue with your reasoning that you can only respond to what has been reported. Seeing as other forum members with an ax to grind will be aggressively reporting any of my transgressions, I'll be punctilious about reporting any offenses I see.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Can't argue with your reasoning that you can only respond to what has been reported. Seeing as other forum members with an ax to grind will be aggressively reporting any of my transgressions, I'll be punctilious about reporting any offenses I see.

Will you be doing this reporting right off the mark, or will you wait to see whether your prediction is true?

[Wraith]

If you treat them as users and what you do is appropriate treatment for other users, I think you should be fine. It's always been pretty obvious (IMO) when the mod hat goes on, and it's unfair to ask someone to stop participating just because they're mods.

[Hazir]

I think it's not necessary for Wraith, Rand or Dread to stay out of discussions. It might be wise for them to somehow make clear in which capacity they are acting. I could imagine that they don't 'mod' in the form of posts in a thread, but through PM's and/or deletion of the offending post.

[']['ear]

Impartiality is critical.

[littlelolligagged]

If someone seriously thinks a mod is acting inappropriately, take it up with one of the other two.

Privately.

I've never seen either Dread nor Rand take action based on their own disagreements;I hardly think they will start now.

I have no reason to think Wraithy would behave any differently.

[']['ear]

Rand is not a cunt. Not even close. Yet there was a snotty, arguably trolling post in the thread where Wraith told me my posting to Loki was inappropriately personal (true, by the way). So arguably Rand flaunted the new rules, and Wraith failed to call him on it.

[Wraith]

There are a couple reasons. First, and probably the biggest, nobody reported it. I'm available for modding around these times, but I still can't always read every single post that gets made. Second, it's way before the line as I see it. Trolling and flaming are already against the rules, but those rules will have to be amended before I can do anything about sarcasm. The mandate was for a forum without flamewars, not total saccharin sweetness from everybody. And if I'd had to call out everyone for things like using sarcasm, I'd have absolutely no possible justification to just give a verbal warning for your own post.

[Aimless]

I'd argue that your offense-detection system needs some calibrating

[littlelolligagged]

I can't see how RB's post could possibly be construed as trolling - you have to be seriously stretching to read it that way.

Perhaps Minxypooh is right, and you are being oversensitive.

[']['ear]

Or maybe Rand has never posted something quite like that to me.

[littlelolligagged]

Or maybe Rand has never posted something quite like that to me.

Because it's politically convenient.

OMG the rich poli's don't care about sending troops out to die as none of them served, none of their children do. Only poor black kids join the military as they have no choice otherwise they're impoverished. Stop war. Start conscription.

Your problem is that he posted something "like that" to you, not that it was posted at all? Regardless of how silly it seems to the rest of us that you are upset over something as innocuous as this comment, if it truly bothered you I'm sure you would have been better served by either sending a PM to RB telling him so, or reporting it to either of the other moderators. No one else would have reported this, because I don't actually think anyone else would have been offended by it, even if they were mentioned specifically by name. All RB did was mock the mindset.

[Ziggy Stardust]

An event in the future has already been shown to be true.

[earthJoker]

An event in the future has already been shown to be true.

Temporal backwards implication

[Nessus]

Look, we know that you're training to become a hack at one of these think tanks

The pronoun there means the comment's, uh, personal

[Ziggy Stardust]

My mistake. When you said: "will be aggressively reporting", I thought you meant in the future.

Anyway, I see that Wraith "Please calm down." even used the magic word. If you see this sort of behaviour from other posters I fully support you in reporting it

Did you get warning points or permanent infractions?

edit: I see you had problems with RB's post, is that the one lolli posted above?

[Wraith]

Somebody reported this as being too hostile, apparently. Loki lied yet again, and I told him I wouldn't respond to anything he said by link, but would require quotations from his source. This is utterly reasonable, because he frequently misrepresents or flat out lies about his sources. I was justified in being irate, too, since he once again wasted my time by requiring me to do what he should have done.

Did I call him a dick? Did I sling personal insults at him? Make some sort of slur? Where is the line? Here I thought that Cain-level activity was what was required for censure.

Fantastic, and now we're sliding backwards. Overtly hostile posts like the one you made are not continuing here, Tear. Especially when it represents as large an escalation of hostilities as yours did.

Also, please stop trying to bait Loki. He's not even in this current discussion! Please don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about either - starting another argument as an excuse to bait someone is not acceptable. I'm not very patient by nature, and I'm not going to just let people go and do whatever the maximum they think they can get away with is. I'm not an automaton, so rules-lawyering will not work with me.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Good rule to use: if you feel like attacking, attack the argument, not the one posting.

edit: Yes, that means I have to alter my behaviour as well, for instance towards Lewk.

[']['ear]

You sometimes misrepresent your own posts, but here is what you said:

Yes! Thanks! I did quote the entire thing right above!

I think the whole point is that we're moving away from using Cain as our measuring stick, maybe it's time you retire that one

How many orders of magnitude are we talking here? I was thinking that an approximation of "you contracted your potentially fatal disease as an STD by gay whoring outside of military bases" was the kind of stuff we were trying to stamp out. You know, as opposed to Dread and Rand sitting around chuckling about how hilarious Cain is when he does stuff like that. Saying "and you call yourself a social scientist?" in response to somebody claiming they proved something by linking to a scientific still birth did not seem beyond the pale to me. Nor did demanding that the poster in question quote the relevant passages in the future before claiming points, or saying "I proved you wrong." Neither of these are unreasonable statements. If I'd called him a dick, asshole, etc. I think I would have been very worthy of warning.

Was it because I used the word "fucking" as an adjective? Is that too hostile? Let's bring back the word filter debate!

Fantastic, and now we're sliding backwards. Overtly hostile posts like the one you made are not continuing here, Tear. Especially when it represents as large an escalation of hostilities as yours did.

Oohhhhkay. How are we sliding backwards? How about we define "overly hostile posting?" You know, we might all benefit from the first person being warned being treated to a little detail about where they went awry, dontcha think? Not a crazy idea. Especially since actual policing of post content is utterly novel here, and was pretty damned unusual even in CC, at least for established members. What was too hostile about it? You could have bolded a couple of things to enlighten us. You know, just the first few times? Maybe say "I'm thinking that this post was too hostile, and this was what I didn't like about it?"

Also, please stop trying to bait Loki. He's not even in this current discussion! Please don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about either - starting another argument as an excuse to bait someone is not acceptable.

I'm explaining why I was justified in being forceful. I wasn't crude or ugly. I didn't call him X, Y or Z. Let's be parsimonious, OK?

Or I'm just starting a thread to bait Loki.

Look, if you want Rated G kindergarten conduct, you're going for it. Funny, people advocating for enforcement on extreme posts were NOT advocating enforcement on posts like this. They want to cut the extreme out. This wasn't extreme.

I'm not very patient by nature,

This is becoming clear. Lack of patience is an admirable trait for a mod policing bad behavior. Excellent choice.

and I'm not going to just let people go and do whatever the maximum they think they can get away with is.

Because it is absolutely clear what I am doing here, right? And it most certainly is not trying to get at the root of why I was warned for something before I even knew we had a new mod, that this mod would be enforcing conduct rules, or what those conduct rules would be. No, absolutely not looking for clarity, just trying to game everybody and find out what I can get away with.

Say, can you warn yourself for being too insulting and hostile? Can I add defensive to that?

I'm not an automaton, so rules-lawyering will not work with me.

Impartiality is critical.

A non-authoritarian guy with people skills would have tried to establish precedents and ease the community into a new era. You couldn't even quote the post, bold it, and say "please don't do this?"

What I really don't see here is a guy trying to be fair and understanding, and trying to bring a somewhat reluctant community to more reasonable behavioral standards. I don't see a guy trying to arrive at a sweet spot of forum moderation in collaboration with other members. Hell, I don't see a guy who read this whole thread. I see a guy who unilaterally decided to come down hard, with no explanation to grease the wheels. Granted that you could have started off worse, but you could have started off a helluva lot better. If you resent it that much, don't be the mod. If you're going to be an impatient hard on, you'll damage the community, so don't be the mod. I get that you're the brains behind the forum, and you have appreciation and respect from me for that. Those sentiments do not spill over to your modding, where you start at neutral. Respect is earned or lost. Guess how you started out? Somewhat heavy handed, non-transparent and defensive. Not a good start.

I'm sorry, is this too hostile?

Look, I know you loath me. You've made that abundantly clear in the past, and I was utterly fascinated to get warned by you under those circumstances. Let's be honest: I'm not expecting a fair shake from you. So let's have an exercise. How about you strive to be fair and impartial? Because otherwise just emotionally jerk your knee and kick my ass outta here. I will stop calling people names or making nasty insinuations. I won't post stuff that I wouldn't say to somebody's face. I won't take disputes cross-thread. I won't be a pit bull about angry disputes. These are concessions I'd think you'd be happy to see. But I'm not going to stop being sarcastic or calling people out on BS. I will not stop saying "You call yourself a social scientist?" under those circumstances, especially when he knows damned well what inferior crap he was peddling and how lazy he was being. And I will not knuckle under to a martinet. If that means I'm gone, so be it. Consider it falling on my sword for the sake of the community. Or consider it catering to my pride. I don't really give a fuck.

[Wraith]

How many orders of magnitude are we talking here? I was thinking that an approximation of "you contracted your potentially fatal disease as an STD by gay whoring outside of military bases" was the kind of stuff we were trying to stamp out. You know, as opposed to Dread and Rand sitting around chuckling about how hilarious Cain is when he does stuff like that. Saying "and you call yourself a social scientist?" in response to somebody claiming they proved something by linking to a scientific still birth did not seem beyond the pale to me. Nor did demanding that the poster in question quote the relevant passages in the future before claiming points, or saying "I proved you wrong." Neither of these are unreasonable statements. If I'd called him a dick, asshole, etc. I think I would have been very worthy of warning.

You still didn't get any WL. It's been explained several times already why the post was inappropriate, and not just by me. Weaving in personal insults, and an overall hostile tone is not conducive to continued civil discussion, and I'm not going to let you try to rules lawyer your way out of it. Context exists, and everyone can see the full context of things. Even when one thing isn't too bad when taking on it's own, a whole run of things that are close can sum to something worth taking action on. Everyone else seems to have a good understanding for this.

Oohhhhkay. How are we sliding backwards?

You seemed to understand and be okay with everything before. I thought the matter was closed and everything could continue on. Then up it springs again. Backwards slide.

How about we define "overly hostile posting?" You know, we might all benefit from the first person being warned being treated to a little detail about where they went awry, dontcha think? Not a crazy idea. Especially since actual policing of post content is utterly novel here, and was pretty damned unusual even in CC, at least for established members.

Which is why I explained what the problem was when I asked you to calm down, and also why no actual warning was issued - I've been trying to give everyone a grace period here.

I'm explaining why I was justified in being forceful. I wasn't crude or ugly. I didn't call him X, Y or Z. Let's be parsimonious, OK?

Or I'm just starting a thread to bait Loki.

No. You were using something else as an excuse to bait Loki. Again. This is all the times Cain brings up Nicaragua. You are responsible for your own posts, and avoiding baiting people. I know you were trying to get this trolling through without actually breaking any rules, but I'm not willing to put up with those games. Again, Cain & Nicaragua - most of his statements along those lines, taken alone and without context, broke no rules. There'd be trolling points now.

Because it is absolutely clear what I am doing here, right? And it most certainly is not trying to get at the root of why I was warned for something before I even knew we had a new mod, that this mod would be enforcing conduct rules, or what those conduct rules would be. No, absolutely not looking for clarity, just trying to game everybody and find out what I can get away with.

Yes I know. Well, there's also a pretty good chance you were trying to a build an excuse to do, well, this, but I didn't want to bring that up just then. You were angry that Rand got away with using sarcasm while you got politely asked to stop doing something worse, so I did kinda see it coming.

Look, if you want Rated G kindergarten conduct, you're going for it. Funny, people advocating for enforcement on extreme posts were NOT advocating enforcement on posts like this. They want to cut the extreme out. This wasn't extreme.

Good thing I didn't hand out any WL for it then, eh? Waiting until the flamewars start clearly doesn't work here, so I've got to be more preventative.

This is becoming clear. Lack of patience is an admirable trait for a mod policing bad behavior. Excellent choice.

Say, can you warn yourself for being too insulting and hostile? Can I add defensive to that?

A non-authoritarian guy with people skills would have tried to establish precedents and ease the community into a new era. You couldn't even quote the post, bold it, and say "please don't do this?"

What I really don't see here is a guy trying to be fair and understanding, and trying to bring a somewhat reluctant community to more reasonable behavioral standards. I don't see a guy trying to arrive at a sweet spot of forum moderation in collaboration with other members. Hell, I don't see a guy who read this whole thread. I see a guy who unilaterally decided to come down hard, with no explanation to grease the wheels. Granted that you could have started off worse, but you could have started off a helluva lot better. If you resent it that much, don't be the mod. If you're going to be an impatient hard on, you'll damage the community, so don't be the mod. I get that you're the brains behind the forum, and you have appreciation and respect from me for that. Those sentiments do not spill over to your modding, where you start at neutral. Respect is earned or lost. Guess how you started out? Somewhat heavy handed, non-transparent and defensive. Not a good start.

I'm sorry, is this too hostile?

Look, I know you loath me. You've made that abundantly clear in the past, and I was utterly fascinated to get warned by you under those circumstances. Let's be honest: I'm not expecting a fair shake from you. So let's have an exercise. How about you strive to be fair and impartial? Because otherwise just emotionally jerk your knee and kick my ass outta here. I will stop calling people names or making nasty insinuations. I won't post stuff that I wouldn't say to somebody's face. I won't take disputes cross-thread. I won't be a pit bull about angry disputes. These are concessions I'd think you'd be happy to see. But I'm not going to stop being sarcastic or calling people out on BS. I will not stop saying "You call yourself a social scientist?" under those circumstances, especially when he knows damned well what inferior crap he was peddling and how lazy he was being. And I will not knuckle under to a martinet. If that means I'm gone, so be it. Consider it falling on my sword for the sake of the community. Or consider it catering to my pride. I don't really give a fuck.

I know this has worked well for you in the past. Building these arsenals labeled "bias" and "favoritism" by attacking mods who are good people can be fairly effective. They become overly concerned with justice, fairness, and the appearance of the two that it's pretty easy to cow them into giving you immunity by making these assaults on them. Good people are just too worried about the appearance of such things and sometimes let the worries and doubt cripple them into inaction. I am not good people. I am far too invested in this community right now to let it go down in flames to protect something as silly as my image.

If you don't want WL, all you have to do is not give me an excuse. Whether you feel or claim you're being persecuted simply doesn't matter. Just stop it.

I think I'm going to have to be done playing nice here. Stop testing me.

[']['ear]

Right. There's some nice insulting stuff in there. OK for you to insinuate all kind of shit, I see. And you still have no inclination actually explain what was wrong. "You're doing stuff I don't like" seems to sum it up, because "hostile" and "weaving personal insults" is vague BS. Brilliant.

A bit of advice: when you warn somebody, or give them WLPs, quote the text, bold what you don't like. Otherwise you're letting your whim rule us, and never defining your standards. That won't go over well.

Of course, doubtlessly you'll say that this, too, is some sort of brilliant manipulation on my part. News flash: I'm not very subtle. Stop imputing motives to me that I couldn't possibly execute.

[Aimless]

Right. There's some nice insulting stuff in there. OK for you to insinuate all kind of shit, I see. And you still have no inclination actually explain what was wrong. "You're doing stuff I don't like" seems to sum it up, because "hostile" and "weaving personal insults" is vague BS. Brilliant.

The excerpt I posted from your post was, I think, one of the hostile and insulting bits. That's why I posted the excerpt, because it seemed as if the rest of your post was obscuring the unnecessarily hostile bits. I figured you were having difficulties seeing those bits because you were saying other more relevant things as well, in that post. I didn't realise that you really couldn't see why some of the things you said were unnecessarily hostile

I say this not because I feel a particularly strong need to engage in policing, I'm just hoping to facilitate your communication. In summary: you got mad, your post was deemed unnecessarily hostile due to eg. calling another member a lazy incompetent fool, you didn't get any WLs for it, and you shouldn't feel diminished by these events in any way (I think).

I think you may be clouding the issue when you get into this business about Cain and STDs and mod-impartiality etc etc. Come on man, one thing at a time. The only reason I can see for you trying to conflate all these things is if you're feeling unfairly attacked from all sides, but I hope you can see this business in less adversarial terms. Nessie's suggestion is a good one. Maybe we all need a bit of a breather to let this settle in

[Loki]

I actually don't think people's personal lives are relevant to any serious discussion. Everyone is a hypocrite to some extent, but pointing that out in threads serves no purpose other than to inflame. Dismissing someone's argument because they don't live by the logic of that argument or because they might have some ulterior motive for making it is illogical and harmful to debate. I know virtually everyone here has ignored this line of reasoning in the past, including yours truly, but there is no reason to continue to do so in the future.

I agree with that. Hell, almost every single time somebody has gotten mad at me for the last years, they've posted some version of "but you're a confessed liar, so what you post has no worth." How many times have I had to argue that an argument, any argument, should be taken on its own merits?

Saying "and you call yourself a social scientist?" in response to somebody claiming they proved something by linking to a scientific still birth did not seem beyond the pale to me. Nor did demanding that the poster in question quote the relevant passages in the future before claiming points, or saying "I proved you wrong." Neither of these are unreasonable statements. If I'd called him a dick, asshole, etc. I think I would have been very worthy of warning.

Jesus, and you call yourself a social scientist? I don't know whether this is a commentary on your abilities, your laziness, or your willingness to lose the truth to score your precious "points."

You're being both a) lazy by making us track down the data that "supports" your point, and b) disingenuous because your links often don't even support your point you claim they do (witness the high school graduation rate).

Look, we know that you're training to become a hack at one of these think tanks