Who cares what his motives were, Mod?
The moderator team. If he was driven by a motivation to prove the moderators were evil, and was going to stoop to disrespect in order to do that - that's a problem. It's not difficult to criticise moderators without disrespect, keeping it on topic (about procedures, not people) and while following moderator requests to keep the tone civil. You managed to do it within acceptable limits.
Well, it's certainly the criticism I leveled...The criticism was always about how moderators were behaving, but that was the single issue that moderators in that thread were singularly unwilling to discuss.
At least keep the goalposts fixed down, moving them around all the time is just not cricket old chap. The criticism I was talking about was 'moderators should exercise extreme reticence to take action when they're the target of a rules infraction.' Your quote was about moderators having unwritten rules of ignoring civil requests, and that members will be suspended for raising good arguments against moderators.
Did you raise the point that "moderators should exercise extreme reticence to take action when they're the target of a rules infraction" in that thread?
He was only being uncivil to you, though, which should have been a basis for you to recuse yourself from taking moderator action. If someone else had suspended Dan it would have gone a little further towards confidence in the moderators, but ultimately if you had just done your job in regards to NJ, Dan (and Berb) would never have gotten uncivil in the first place.
There it is again - a perfectly reasonable point that moderators shouldn't act on offences against them. That was the one I didn't see raised at the time.
But you would have interpreted other moderators acting here as circling the wagons - by your own admission...so I fail to see how it could have increased your confidence in the moderators. It was a post in which Berb insulted me (insufferable nitwit! etc) that seemed to inspire Percy to suspend him...but that act of impartiality didn't raise confidence in moderator actions did it?
I did my job with regards to NJ. I read a crap load of his posts and didn't see an infraction. That they disagreed doesn't give Berb and Dan a free pass to break the rules.
You gave me pretty direct examples of people being called "idiots" and other names, being directly sworn at, and the like. You didn't give me any example of the kind of very indirect inference involved in perceiving the insult in being given advice on how to eat bananas.
But you interpreted Dan's words as being more than 'advice on banana eating'. And Dan confirmed it was not just friendly advice on banana eating (and if it was, it would still have been off topic). You were the one that interpreted it as implying I was a retarded monkey. I'm fairly sure there were examples amongst that list that beat
your interpretation of what Dan was saying.
Anyway - you said "Hey, if someone like you tries on the shoe of an arrogant, baboon-faced, smelly, sycophantic, drooling mouth-breather and finds that it fits, what can I say?". It wasn't that you were calling EltonianJames "an arrogant, baboon-faced, smelly, sycophantic, drooling mouth-breather"...just that he fit the shoes of one. You still got suspended. Percy implied that Faith was stubborn and thought her critics were all idiots. He got suspended for it.
I get that. Nonetheless, to be insulted by the prospect of being told how to eat a banana certainly rises to a level of sensitivity.
I keep saying I wasn't insulted. I guess you are in 'la la la I won't believe an otherwise nice person who has been potentially corrupted by the power of being able to suspend people and edit their posts!" mode. As you agreed "Indeed I'm fairly certain that his words didn't upset you." so why are you now claiming that I was being sensitive? Which is it? Am I hypersensitive or are you fairly certain I'm not?
Now that you're denying that, you have absolutely no case whatsoever, regardless of what he subsequently said to you.
I think "Yes -your judgement that I was breaking the forum rules is accurate" should suffice to settle the case as to whether or not a forum rule was broken. And I'm not denying anything. I was merely pointing out that it didn't need to be about retarded monkeys for it to be disrespectful.
Given that it might possibly have been viewed as friendly advice on eating a banana by someone who was trying to be a pedantic asshole (such as you are being with this line of argument) - I didn't suspend Dan (You haven't
explicitly broken the rules Dan) because as you say, he could have been just posting info on fruit eating. He didn't need to confirm it was in fact disrespectful. He didn't need to post an off topic post. He didn't need to continue posting with a crappy tone after being warned to keep it civil.
He did do that. He got suspended for so doing. And your criticism was that he shouldn't have got suspended for criticising moderator's actions -
not that I shouldn't have suspended someone who was directing a forum rule breach at me.
But you didn't suspend him for ignoring moderator requests. You suspended him because, in your judgement, that's what he wanted you to do.
It was my opinion that he wanted to be suspended, yes. But I wasn't going to suspend someone based on that, not really. That's why I cited 3 forum rule violations - at least one of which he admitted. If you dispute the other two let me know.
I tried to explain to you, that's not what he was saying - that people don't say "Oh, I know you'll suspend me for this" because they want to be suspended, they say it because they're observing a situation of fairly predictable injustice.
You don't need to explain it again because I'm not stupid. But I keep explaining that saying "I know you'll suspend me for this" doesn't give you immunity from breaking the rules. Some people are often saying "I know you'll suspend me for this" and they don't get suspended. He wasn't suspended for saying that. After all - he said it and we didn't suspend him for the post in which he said it.
Sometimes those people will continue to become less and less civil until they are suspended which then makes them feel vindicated because they 'predicted I'd be suspended for criticising the moderator'. You were one of those that said something along those same lines. Difference is - you didn't become particularly uncivil in so doing.
Some people people use the tactic to try to
avoid getting suspended too. If they post that, a moderator might be afraid to suspend someone where they might otherwise have done so without hesitation. "Come see the unfairness inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"
At any rate, asking to be suspended isn't against the forum guidelines, so it can't be a basis for punishment.
And being suspended isn't just a penal thing.
But, of course, that's the point - whatever criticism you would like to ignore, you can simply assert is "unreasonable."
Well, when a person admits their criticism is unreasonable - it makes determining that a whole lot easier. At the time, I didn't realize your posts were stemming from the fact that you were of the position that you would simply believe the worst possible interpretation was true.
That's unreasonable - because it cannot be reasoned with. Whatever is said against the criticisms is assumed to be a lie, wagon circling, authority bias etc etc etc.
But again - you're acting like there was literally nothing else anyone could do but suspend Dan, and then suspend Rrhain from complaining about it, and then ultimately demand that criticism of those actions come to an end or else more suspensions would follow.
Well sure, we could simply have let members say and do what they like to whom. We could let the discussion of moderator procedures thread become the 'flame the moderators thread'.
All you had to do was the right thing, and neither Berberry's, nor Dan's, nor Rrhain's behavior ever would have become an issue.
And Percy said back then
quote:
Back to suspensions. I think both you and Berberry have to ask what you want out of this process of discussion with moderators. If there's only one outcome acceptable to you, and if you post more and more strident messages each time your request isn't granted, then it isn't really a discussion. Put slightly differently, if you'll only relent when you get what you want, and if there's nothing moderators can do or say to get you consider other alternatives or perspectives, then there's no point to the discussion.
Before your suspension we'd about gotten to the point where I was already going to raise this issue. Are you posting to this thread merely to make clear your dissatisfaction with board moderation? If so, then once that message has been communicated there's no reason to continue. And if you're trying to make clear to moderators where they went wrong while learning more about the rationale behind moderator actions and working toward a common understanding and mutually agreeable solutions, as time went by and you posted more messages that seemed increasingly unlikely.
You thought one thing was 'the right thing'. The moderators disagreed. That's fine - post your criticism. We were fine with that. Which is why we let Dan post a dozen messages that were critical of moderator action.
Don't play it like Dan gave the moderator team no choice.
I didn't. I was addressing the reasonable criticism you did make - so I'd appreciate it if you responded in kind. You argued that another moderator should have stepped in. I suggested that if they had, and had they agreed with me and suspended Dan - it would not have changed your views on moderator impartiality at all. Nor anybody else who has chronic suspicion of anyone with a even a modicum of 'authority'.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
can you not see how unbelievably OTT you are? Restrained? FFS Crash, your inability to recognise any chance of being wrong is as frightening now as it was when you endlessly "debated" Holmes. Much of what you have brought to bear in this thread has been exposed as false, and the rest as debatable. Many have stood up and said that we don't agree with you and Rrhain's interpretation of events. But here you are, acting as if there has been zero opposition and claiming right to sentence on the back of a unaminous jury. The jury wasn't unaminous, it's not even in your favour.
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