It appears Rrhain is at it again (
Message 31). Rather than completely derail another thread I'm bringing Rrhain's lengthy comments into this thread where they can be discussed as much as Rrhain would like to in the hopes that he will get it out of his system or better yet, find the resolution he seeks.
Rrhain has specifically said he will continue raising the issue in threads periodically and seems to have a problem with posting here so I hold that in order to contain this discussion to its appropriate place, we need raise this thread from its slumber.
I didn't ban you, Percy did.
Actually, it was Minnemooseus, so we're both wrong on that.
Ah, you meant the short 24 hour suspension. I thought you were referring to the more significant indefinite suspensions several months later, regarding the same subject matter. I tend to think of 'ban' and 'suspension' as different things.
The point is, you were part of that lovely brigade of clueless admins dropping the ban hammer (*cough*Dan Carroll*cough*). Something for which none of you have ever acknowledged let alone apologized for.
I suspended one person for 72 hours. I've acknowledged it, but I see no reason to apologize for it - with the exception of the acknowledgement that it would have been preferable to refer it to another Moderator given the circumstances.
I freely offer my apologies for suspending a forum member who was breaking a rule when that rule breaking was directed specifically at me. I don't think it's a huge deal, but in retrospect - every little would have helped. To the best of my recall, I haven't suspended any other member this way since.
As if that's all you did. Shall we quote crashfrog on the matter?
I don't really need opinion, I'd rather stick to the facts. Feel free to bring them to this discussion.
It never occurred to you to turn to Percy, Minnemooseus, or Phat and say, "No, this is wrong." And I am not the only one who noticed.
We tend to keep those kinds of discussion limited to Private Messages and the Admin Forum.
From re-reading the discussion there, AdminNem was asked to change his approach with his discussion with Berb. AdminPD was the person who raised the discussion in how we should approach the discussion since as sympathetic as she was to Berb's feelings on the matter she still felt the Administative action of staying basically hands off was right (she was the 'Admin on scene')
Percy discussed a revision of the rules, particularly rule 10 which he felt was a little too subjective and relied on judgement calls that may differ from moderator to participant - and other methods for handling the problem going forward.
Most of the discussion there surrounded proposed techniques for dealing with comments aimed at groups - with the aim towards permitting a wide range of ideas to be discussed. Thus arguing homosexuality is evil on religious grounds should be permitted, but stating homosexuality is disgusting and they should be killed probably should not.
Percy did comment to me regarding NJ's eventual suspension in that thread and my reaction to it, explaining why he felt the generally quite lengthy suspension was merited.
Even after emphatic directions to stop the discussion by the moderators - it continued and we faced a dilemma for how to deal with it. Ignoring it seemed to have no effect, suspending people made people martyrs.
Percy finally commented that the suspensions were in his opinion a mistake and removing privileges from the thread/forum the thread was in would have been a better solution - which I agreed with after one of the hardest facepalms of my life. At the time it was a function that wasn't discussed frequently and thus almost universally overlooked. After that thread, we began to deploy it more regularly. Lessons learned.
What part of "never acknowledged let alone apologized for" are you having trouble with? If you don't recognize the problems you had, you will have an exceedingly difficult time correcting them.
By all means point out the problems, I'm even less committed to the person I was ten years ago than I was when I started this thread.
It would seem that it's the exact same problem: The moderators don't pay attention to the thread and when things get out of hand, they punish the people who brought it to their attention rather than the ones that caused the problem in the first place.
It was our view that the people causing problems were the ones that got suspended.
You are specifically the problem, Modulous. You literally had someone sock puppeting on your board, spewing homophobia with aplomb, and your response was that "it didn't merit suspension." And you wonder why I'm not letting it go?
NJ wasn't sock-puppeting - his second account was created a couple of years after the incident in question.
And yes, I wonder why you are not letting it go.
You, specifically you, Modulous, said that Dan hadn't done anything wrong.
I, specifically, me, said that Dan had broken the rules in my opinion.
And you, specifically you, Modulous, banned him anyway.
For breaking the rules.
And you have never acknowledged this error nor apologized for it.
I don't think suspending someone for breaking the rules is by itself, something that a moderator should apologize for.
Not in the slightest. In fact, in your supposed "apology" tour, you specifically disrespected me. I'm a big boy. I don't actually care about your opinion of me.
Any rough from me was part of the tumble you instigated, sir. The disrespect you threw at me was orders of magnitude larger than me saying you were mistaken in a creative fashion.
But considering that you were trying to point out that people were being banned because of disrespect, because you, specifically you, Modulous, banned Dan Carroll for supposedly disrespecting you
It
was disrespect according to Dan. I gave him an out, he closed it. The chance I gave him has been quote mined by you for years ever since.
What you "analyzed" and "apologized" for was "unnecessary posting."
And for moderating against someone who was directing their violation at me.
Not for any actions you took against the members of the board. Not for the consequences of those actions.
I certainly have apologised for the consequences of my actions. I am sorry for my part in contributing to the heat in my misguided quest to bring light.
your banning of Dan Carroll for coming to berberry's defense
Nah, we've been over this a million times. Dan said lots of things in berb's defence that didn't merit a suspension.
Minnemooseus' banning of me for coming to Dan Carroll's defense
I believe Moose suspended you for continuing the discussion after receiving moderator direction to cease. In
Message 111, 19-July-2007, Moose said:
quote:
Drop it now! Maybe I'll start suspending (24 hours?) anyone and everyone who won't.
On 21-July-2007 you started making large posts about the subject, and were subsequently suspended for 24 hours, as warned. Rule number 1: Please follow all moderator requests.
The discussion continued regardless. Percy requested the matter be dropped on 23-July-2007
Message 160 - you argued that your gripe was a separate issue but regardless that's what happened.
You aren't sorry for what you did. Just that you got caught doing it a lot.
I'm not sure doing something in front of everyone, knowing it was in front of everyone, because it was in front of everyone suggests I would be sorry for being caught doing it.
In fact, you dismissed the entire concept as unimportant
I said that whether people were right in their complaints was a moot point 3 years later down the line.
oes it matter?
Again, that was your entire response to that question.
Indeed - does it matter whether any moderator admitted than their actions were inciting the very crisis they claimed justified those actions three years, or indeed eleven years down the line?
you point out that the problem wasn't that your moderator actions were wrong but rather that you gave any comment about why you did them in the first place
the role of the moderators should have been to state their position - explain it and then terminate further discussion.
As you quote me, that is incorrect. The mistake was continuing to argue the point after giving comment - not the giving of the initial comments.
It's the kind of thing that erodes confidence in your ability to be objective. It certainly eroded mine, which is why at the time I described you as being one of the worst moderators I had ever seen at the forum. Taking moderator action because someone "disrespected you", but not against someone else who had disrespected Berberry, made it pretty clear that you weren't using your moderator power to enforce respect among debators, you were using it to enforce respect for yourself.
You completely ignored it.
Actually I addressed it.
quote:
Moderators should exercise caution under those circumstances. I would point out that I was cautious: I expressed I would not suspend Dan for calling me a retarded monkey that was so retarded he'd fail the retard test on the grounds that
a) he was going to drop the subject
b) it was only an implied insult.
And made it conditional that were he to continue he'd have adopt a civil tone or he would be suspended.
Sure - I could have gone through the process of asking another moderator to make the call, as I have done in the past. But there is a system in place to correct for that - other moderators who can countermand an unfair suspension.
....
I don't have a problem with "That looks bad.", or "That could be seen as abuse of privelages." And as a moderator, I understand the need to bend over backwards to avoid bias and maintain impartiality.
...
There it is again - a perfectly reasonable point that moderators shouldn't act on offences against them.
Discussions broke down shortly thereafter. However, allow me to offer my (reserved) apologies. I am sorry for personally suspending Dan rather than solicit the opinion of another moderator. That Dan broke the rule is unquestionable, and the policy at the time was to lean towards avoiding suspending people with whom you were having a discussion - with that thread - and overt rule breaking being exceptions to this policy.
However, my unilateral action certainly contributed to ill feelings and upset within the community and, regardless of what the policy was, I had a responsibility to anticipate this possibility given the specifics of the circumstance. To my knowledge it is not a mistake I have repeated and moderator policy has undergone changes since - in part because of the events discussed here.
Where in that entire thread did you "concede points where you thought I was right"?
Name one.
quote:
you have a valid point about your initial suspension for violating the guidelines. I agreed at the time that Moose was wrong to do it, but Phat had also called for a stop. But yes, he neglected to check a box to post as a Moderator. Phat did that fairly regularly (see Message 88 where he is speaking as a moderator using the Phat account) - but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and concede that suspension was unwarranted.
Message 1
And where did you express any sorrow of any kind? Wait, you're probably thinking of that part above where you claim you have "expressed sorrow" (*snort!*) and ask crashfrog to "accept your apologies."
I thought the overall tone was indicative that I felt the whole affair was a sorrowful one, but if you want it to be explicit: The whole affair was sorrowful, and I feel regret and sorrow for the way events played out.
Except that crashfrog apologizes to you in kind and your response to him is to call it "self-serving." So while you may have decided to accept it from him, it isn't going to fly with me.
Crashfrog didn't apologize for his actions or contribution to the problem - he explicitly stated he was blameless. He actually apologized for failing to make himself understood. It does seem a little self-serving to me, akin- but different - to 'sorry you are so stupid as to not understand me'.
It's been going on for more than a decade. How many times do you need to be burned by it before you learn your lesson?
You're the only one who is still going on about it, Rrhain. You have been free to come to this thread and air your grievances and discuss it all you like in the last 8 of those years. Instead, you try to derail other threads and cause an emotional response in unrelated discussions.
As soon as you, Percy, Minnemooseus, and Phat acknowledge what you did, apologize for what you did, and show actual effort at correcting the problem, I'll stop bringing it up.
I'd rather you didn't hold other people's actions or inactions against me whenever we have a disagreement about unrelated topics on this site. if you want comment from me, you just have to come to this thread which was created specifically for you to do that very thing.
As I said - the rules, the moderation policy and culture has changed since then. Which is presumably why you need to hearken back to an incident from eleven years ago rather than anything more recent whenever you want to make this point.
For the record I didn't read the rest of your comments
Of course you didn't.
Yes, of course. They were off topic in
Police Shootings and I was trying to motivate you to raise them here as I requested you do. Naturally you ignored me and carried on the off topic derailment.
No acknowledgement of your mistakes.
No apology for what you did.
No act of contrition.
I apologized for my part in the problem and have done so again here. I have acknowledged several mistakes here, for example in
Message 17
quote:
My particular favourite "Fuck Mod, why did you do that?" was Message 125. Confrontational, snarky, passive aggressive - it has basically no redeeming features.
If there are any further things you'd like me to acknowledge, you are at leisure, as you have been for 8 years now, to post them to this thread where we can discuss them like adults.
I'm not sure how an act of contrition would work in a forum environment. Did you have something in mind?
In fact, you doubled down. The whole thread was nothing but a massive show of ego with you trying to claim you had the moral high ground.
I offered to do this privately to avoid such a charge. You attempted to reply but it got lost in the ether apparently. You didn't suggest in your reply here that you'd prefer to take it into PMs. My primary focus here initially was to address the numerous ways you were wrong because you decided to start throwing bullshit at me in an unrelated thread and I declined to raise to your trolling.
It evolved into a relatively civil discussion about the scenario, compared with its origin story. It remains a place for you to be wrong about those times, or discuss with me any legitimate gripes you may have from there - as a means to avoid new mutinies (thread derailments) breaking out over this ancient grudge.
You never apologized for actually doing the wrong thing at every turn.
Though I don't think I did the wrong thing at
every turn. I would certainly handle things better these days.
You also, have never apologized for your contribution to the problem.
Note, you're not apologizing for banning Dan Carroll.
Dan should have been suspended, and I think 72 hours was a reasonable time frame. But I should have asked another moderator to make the call. Of course, whether that would have changed things is an open question. According to crashfrog he would have assumed the Admins were circling the wagons if the other moderator agreed a suspension was warranted.
You're not confronting the banning of berberry.
Not my action. Take it up with Percy. I think it was fine and I've explained why.
You're not confronting Minnemooseus for banning me.
I did at the time. I don't think it was a terrible act to be suspended for 24 hours. You did continue to post about the debacle after he asked for a stop, even if you want to argue the specific post you were suspended for didn't meet the standard.
You're apologizing for being "confrontational, snarky, passive agressive."
Yes. Is that problem somehow?
n_j (Hyroglyphx) was spewing homophobic bullshit all over the board and specifically targetting berberry and the response of the moderators of this board was to punish berberry and anybody who stood up for him.
I don't think NJs homophobia construed a problem in the context it was being discussed as I've said numerous times. I did a review of the posts at the time and showed that in most cases it was Berb that responded to NJ first - not NJ seeking Berb out to respond to so I rejected the targetting claim too.
Berb was suspended initially for breaking all civility - his final post, as I've said numerous times - in that thread that sparked the suspension was, in its entirety:
quote:
Fuck you
Which is the kind of thing that has resulted in suspension many times. He was indefinitely suspended 6 months later after the issue raised its head again and Berb said
quote:
But I don't think Percy ever contested the point that n's comparison was insulting. He just thought I was being thin-skinned, and illustrated his feelings by portraying me as an hysterical, menstruating woman.
In any event. I believe anyone who has asked from that time has been reinstated, and I doubt berberry is remotely interested in returning. But I have unsuspended him anyway.
Hyroglyphx admitted to being n_j and he suffered no consequences while berberry is still banned indefinitely.
His account was merged with NJs. I think being associated with all that is reasonable punishment. The only people I'm aware of who have faced consequences for creating an alt-account are those that do so to circumvent suspensions.
So when you say, "I was a contributing factor," exactly what was your contribution, Modulous?
I continued to post beyond the point where it was necessary. This resulted in replies to my post that continuously contributed towards escalating the situation. Had I stopped earlier, having explained my position clearly, Dan would not have called me a retarded monkey. Had I called for another moderator to take action maybe, it would not have resulted in additional anger - though given the mood of the thread - I suspect if someone else had done it the anger would be the same though the target may have changed.
So that was my contribution - continuing to rise to the escalating anger at the moderator action/inaction. I should have at best - signed off the thread with a short, firm declaration of my position.
A lesson I think I took into account
6 months later when the issue came up again. That was on the back of you strongly insinuating that NJ was a paedophile if you recall. An incident that was a direct spark that lead to the Great Purge.
You still can't bring yourself to the idea that n_j (Hyroglyphx) did something wrong, can you? You said, "The Admin team seemed to be in consensus that whatever N_J was doing - it didn't merit suspension."
Correct. Members were given ample opportunity to present their evidence but it seems it was insufficient. I saw NJ arguing that homosexuality was a sin / immoral and presenting an argument to that effect. I thought his argument was flawed, and his conclusion wrong - including from a moral standpoint. But it didn't break the rules to argue that homosexuality was immoral so...
Well, what do you think, Modulous? What was your opinion? I presume there's a bit of a majority vote going on in the halls of moderation so that if most of the admins don't think there's a problem, then their opinion rules, but what was your opinion? Was n_j's (Hyroglypx's) treatment of berberry worthy of suspension?
No. That opinion was unanimous in the halls of moderation I believe. My opinion on that hasn't changed.
You keep harping on the fact that I only made one post in that thread. Well, did you notice that my post was #264 in that thread despite it having only been a few days between your post and mine?
Yep - you've made more posts about this topic in threads where it is off-topic than you have in here.
But you did. You all did. berberry is still banned. Dan Carroll, too.
Dan was also suspended indefinitely 6 months later by Percy for showing signs of being a 'divisive presence'. But I'll undo that suspension now too - though again I suspect he won't care.
One wonders why I let it go. Of course, I can't seem to win with you. If I bring it up, you complain about me bringing it up. If I let it go, you complain that I didn't respond.
If you bring it up in threads where it is off-topic I will complain that there is a thread about it you could use. When you continue to post off-topic about this subject I'll point out that you have posted more off-topic comments in that thread than on-topic ones in this one.
The timing was all wrong. Even if we assume that there was some admonition to me, I was banned for a post that was made *before* the admonition. This isn't a question of "benefit of the doubt."
Maybe I'm mistaken, but it was two days after the request that Moose made the request.
And even more importantly, it assumes that Phat was correct...which is part of the problem: He wasn't. The base problem still remains unacknowledged:
Well I think we had certainly demonstrated long ago that you would not be satisfied by further discussion. So I think Phat, Moose and Percy were all correct when they attempted to terminate that line of discussion. But even if they were wrong - the moderators requests to terminate the discussion should be followed.
When berberry fought back, he was punished, not n_j (Hyroglyphx).
Nah, Berb was suspended for a short period for getting increasingly pissy when the Admin team disagreed with him about whether rule breaking was occurring from NJ.
When Dan Carroll came to berberry's defense, he was banned under some trumped up charge of "disrespect" (so why was n_j (Hyroglyphx) still around?)
Because hurling insults directed at members of the board, which Dan did, was against the rules. Arguing in favour of the immorality of homosexuality was not. Dan made a dozen posts defending berberry without getting suspended. Crashfrog made two dozen without getting suspended. Clearly defending berb was not what got a person suspended in that thread.
When I came to Dan Carroll's defense, I was banned under some trumped up charge of "violating administrator directives" (so why was n_j (Hyroglyphx) still around?)
You made nearly two dozen posts in that thread too. Your suspension was light, even if was in error.
When crashfrog came to my defense, you avoided any attempt to deal with the heart of the problem.
I disagree, but still he didn't get suspended did he?
So we're back to the original problem: You haven't acknowledged your wrongdoing, you haven't apologized, and nothing has changed. And to your comment to me in that thread, I will continue to question your intelligence and intellectual honesty until you do.
Have at it. But please do it in this thread where it is at least on topic.
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