Did Mod cause the collapse of evcforum?

I was talking about siblings above the age of consent.

You mean socially repugnant.I don't know if you're still paying attention to what I'd been saying, but this is something that I need you to understand for you to even begin understand all my points earlier. Don't confuse societal rules and morality. Incest and necrophilia on their own merits are morally neutral, just like walking naked down the street and oral sex. But we, as social creatures, have made up social rules to distinct ourselves from other social groups.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Yep. Not really. You can have sex without making children. You can have sex without being married. You don't have to get children because you are married. You don't have to be married to get kids.So, no, I don't think there is a scientific reason to ban incest. There is a scientific reason to ban siblings getting kids, however. And you know what, I am against siblings getting kids. If only to "protect" the kids.

Can someone propose a new topic - that'd be swell.

Vice is nice but incest is best.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Nice to see you again, you old ape. When did you get back?

Hi Crash. You've said this several times. You have not provided the evidence to support your belief. I suspect your own biases may be coming into play. Whatever the case, I assure you that I understand your position, and you don't need to find a new way to express it.But Crash, you gave some anecdotes about abuses of authority positions. Allow me to provide another anecdote, I won't find the specific case I'm thinking of - but there's plenty of TV shows that document similar cases.Two officers walking through town one Saturday night came upon a fight. They split the two offenders up and try and determine the cause of the fight. After ascertaining it was minor scuffle and both parties had calmed down the officers sent them on their way home - in separate directions. But one of the fighters suddenly took umbrage to police involvement and started swearing and getting aggressive. One officer said "Turn around, go home, or you'll be arrested under section 5 of the public order act", or something. But he became more louder and aggressive, and got arrested.Then Crash acts as the guy's defence lawyer and argues that his client was arrested for fighting (rather than a later public order offence).Just because someone criticises moderator action in one post, that does not mean they get immunity from being suspended for breaking forum rules later. It's a classic tactic on internet forums: criticise the owner/moderators. When the criticism isn't adopted, apologies doled out whatever, the critic restates their criticism in a more angry tone, escalating until they are suspended/banned and then a claim of being suspended for criticising the moderators is espoused.You've already accepted that Dan broke the rules, but in this post you argue that in spite of that - it was unprecedented to be suspended for such a minor infraction: I did not suspend Dan because his words upset me.But your claim of "never in the annals of EvC" is a trivially easy thing to check. I mean clearly - it would be unlikely for someone to be suspended for saying the exact same things that Dan said - but the reasons for suspensions are publicly available.Have you developed an allergy to evidence?So, let's take a look through those annals: Message 184 CK suspended for 24h for posting

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ah so you are full of shit as people suggested.
Well no need to lurk on this thread any longer - you've got nothing.

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Message 70 RAZD and contracycle suspended for 24h for posting a 'thread reopen request in the wrong thread. Message 100 earned PecosGeorge 24h Message 82 Eta Carinae 24hours for posting "ID=Creationism=Bullshit." Message 300 resulted in 24 hours for Percy. Message 90 CK gets 48 hours for

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Wow - the rage combined with the hair shirt must really itch. I can't for the life of me see why you keep coming back. Is it like an S&M thing? you whack one off to the threads?
I'm truely baffled what your actual purpose is here.

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Message 81 Jerry Don Bauer gets 24h for

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Then I demand you stop trolling me idiot! Do not post to me further if you are going to get pissed at my responses to you. You are obviously abusing your position as a moderator as you want to interchange ideas and if you don't like my responses to them, then bye bye baby. LOL

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Message 70 is deemed worthy of 24 hours suspension for edge:

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You are a troll, PH. Nobody is this stupid.

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For fun, Message 222, Rrhain is suspended indefinitely for not following moderator instructions in a general discussion of moderator therads:

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So, to Rrhain and anyone else involved in the posting of so many words and messages about this whole affair - DROP IT; LEAVE IT BEHIND.

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Message 112 where hitchy gets 24 hrs for

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You follow the principles of St. Augustine when he advocated the suppression of truth that is contradictory to the faith. In other words, you lie in order to get people to support your subjective "truth". Hmm, I smell hypocrisy!

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Don't worry, I am having a good day! Smiles all around. I hope you have a good day as well. Or, barring that, make up a good day for yourself. You seem to be good at making things up

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Message 12 contracycle gets suspended for talking in a disrespectful manner to Percy and having an 'attitude'. Rrhain responds with a classic "Realizing that this will get me suspended...." criticism in Message 30 and Percy replies with a familiar "Lol! You'll have to do better than that to get suspended." Message 276 is enough for 24h against roxrkool:

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You are a joke. An absolute joke.
I gotta hand it to you, you may not know squat about the sciences of geology, chemistry, biology, or physics, but you are most assuredly an expert in the science of shit-flinging.

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When you fail to convince anyone with your tripe arguments, you start running away. Well run, chickie, it's that time again.

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Message 213: Crashfrog got suspended for a few posts, including such things as,

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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?

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Message 220 NosyNed gets suspended for 48 hours after criticising Randman the person, rather than the content of his posts. Message 236 brenna 24h:

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thanks for the vote of confidence asshole.

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Message 75Evopeach suspended for 24h for saying "What an idiot" and a few other less direct insults such as "there is no hope for your intellect" Message 203 Nuggin For the title "From Stupid to completely Retarded" in reference to a specific member. Message 105 Ray gets 3 days for "You are unread and completely ignorant."So, no - I don't think suspending someone for calling another member a retarded monkey that is too retarded to pass a retarded monkey test is all that unprecedented.Having read through all that (or just skimmed it), I'll save you the trouble of constructing a response. Your confirmation bias will see this as evidence of the capricious unfair cruelty of the moderators that is endemic and since that was your central thesis you have been vindicated after all!If so, and that's what you call capriciousness et al, then you are entitled to believe so. But as you say:

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I'm sorry, Mod, if you chafe under the constant assumption of bad faith in your administrative duties. But that's what comes with authority. The constant assumption of bad faith is the only reasonable stance in regards to authority, because regardless of the level of power - forum administrator to elite law enforcement - all of the incentives run precisely the opposite of acting in good faith.

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I will endeavour to ignore your criticisms, as I would anyone else that admits they are deliberately interpreting my actions in the worst possible way. I will continue to reap the incentives of receiving angry emails from barely coherent creationists, and public accusations of lying for having the audacity to suspend someone from posting to an internet forum for less time than this thread has been open after they seemed intent on getting themselves suspended one way or another.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I don't have to provide evidence to support a belief. The point is, it's the appearance of corruption that corrodes confidence in authority, not the actual existence of it.You can't just take actions that appear corrupt, and then expect us all to ignore them when you insist that no, you had only the purest motives at heart. That's what the corrupt say, too.If it feels like you can't win - yes, you're right! That's been my point the whole time. That's the terrible burden of authority - we can't just take your word for your pure motives. Everything you do, as a figure of authority, has to be interpreted from an automatic suspicion of bad faith.If you can't handle that, a position of authority is probably not for you. Of course, but my bias is the most reasonable one. Being biased against authority is the only reasonable stance in regards to authority. The presumption of good faith gives authority too much leeway to exploit it, and the incentives for someone in authority always - always - run in that direction.Authority must be constantly under suspicion because the incentives for authority always run towards the abuse of their power and the exploitation of those they're meant to regulate. But again - similar to how moderators shouldn't moderate threads they participate in, moderators should exercise extreme reticence to take action when they're the target of a rules infraction. A policeman shouldn't investigate his own home invasion. Dan's behavior may have merited suspension under a strict reading of the rules - although you were certainly being hypersensitive - but you shouldn't have been the one to deliver it.To every extent it has the appearance of acting in bad faith. Well, here you are, to say that you acted in good faith.Not good enough. Everyone who acts in bad faith says they act in good faith. Moderator actions need to be above reproach if people are to have confidence in moderation. Your actions sapped moderator confidence, I think we've both agreed on that. I never said that you did. Indeed I'm fairly certain that his words didn't upset you.What they did, to all intents and appearances, was give you the excuse you were looking for to stifle dissent. Hey, maybe that wasn't your intent. Who cares? That's what it looked like to me and to Rrhain and to a dozen others, and that's the appearance that it's your job to avoid. You failed. It doesn't matter what your intent was. Well, but technically speaking, he didn't call you a "retarded monkey." I mean, he never even said that banana-eating was the retarded monkey test. He told you how to eat a banana, and you made an inference. You asked if he was being "disrespectful" - unspecified, how - and he confirmed.Making inferences was why Berberry was accused of being "oversensitive", in that thread and this one, so it seems fair to level the same accusation at you. I don't see how this triggers anything. You don't specify the individual targets of each of these examples of abuse; were they directed to moderators? Then you're not fit to moderate, I'm sorry to say. Authority is a responsibility as well as a privilege, and it's not one that should be allowed to be bestowed on those who will ignore reasonable criticism. It's not one that we can afford to bestow on people who think that skepticism towards their actions and motives is an unfair presumption of bad faith, when in fact the presumption of bad faith is the only reasonable stance to take towards authority.You should step down from your moderator post immediately, as you've made it clear in this thread you're no more fit to moderate now than you were, then.

Crash, you've fuckin' lost it mate. This is a fuckin' internet debate site. I may be pissed at the moment (in the British sense) but you need to take some time out. Three years doesn't seem to cut it...

So you have said already. And Dan had only the purest motives at heart right? People who are not moderators never break forum rules during moderator criticisms and then hope people so inclined will interpret moderator reactions as evidence that moderators are silencing criticism. If that had been the criticism levelled at the time - I would have agreed. 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. And there was ample motivation to do it - imagine the praise any moderator that unsuspended Dan would have received! I appreciate that for someone such as yourself you can fall back to circling the wagons as a reason no reprise for Dan came. I wasn't responding to the claim you made in this message, I was responding a claim you made in Message 302.

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After all, never in the annals of EvC had telling someone how to eat a banana risen to the level of meriting a suspension. Berberry was repeatedly accused of "oversensitivity" but nobody seems to have a comment on Modulous's oversensitivity. And what is it but oversensitivity to react so strongly to being told how to eat a banana? Or even to being called a "retarded monkey", which on the Triumph-Black Scale of Comedic Insult is about 1.21 mili-Mahers?

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And I never said it was about retarded monkeys until after you did. You were the one that said that in Message 34:

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For some reason, when Dan implied you were a retarded monkey..

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I have never said it was about retarded monkeys before, and was just using your understanding of Dan's disrespectful comments that you entered into discussion. You presumably inferred that because he mentioned 'the test' - and there was only one test that might have anything to do with bananas he had previously mentioned.Even if Dan had not said anything about the retarded monkey test it was clearly indicating that I needed instruction on peeling bananas which is itself disrespectful. Dan confirmed it was. He was suspended after he admitted to breaking the forum rules to a moderator. Kind of like admitting to breaking the law to a police officer might get you arrested."Looks like you are trying to break into that house, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt if you come down here.""No, officer - I am breaking into this house and I'm not coming down.""You're nicked."Now granted - it would be perfectly fine for someone to suggest that a personal grudge between the particular criminal and the police officer might mean the police officer would lie about what the criminal said and did. But on these forums - the words are preserved. Ultimately - unless you dispute he broke the rules, it fails as a dispute. The fact is he did break the rules, you can question my motivations for wanting to suspend him - but he did break the rules, and did so under warning of suspension. He was either terminally stupid, or he wanted to be suspended as a martyr.As I said - and I appreciate you won't believe me as per your stated policy - Dan didn't upset me, offend me, make me cry or feel embarrassed with his cutting wit. He just became uncivil, went off topic and ignored moderator requests and so I acted on that. I agree.It was the unreasonable criticism I was going to ignore. The ones that come from people that are determined to assume all authority is always acting with the worst possible motivations as a means of defending themselves against having their compliance exploited.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. But if another moderator had suspended Dan - by your own principles you would be forced to have interpreted that as 'circling the wagons' syndrome. That's the nature of your unfalsifiable position.

Er, I think you've maybe misunderstood me, because this emotional (and apparently drunk) reaction seems dramatically out of proportion to the restrained and deliberate post to which you were replying.I'm not involved in any kind of three-year vendetta. Like I've repeatedly said I'd given this matter approximately zero thought between when it occurred and now, when Rrhain brought it up and Mod opened the thread. Indeed I'd completely forgotten all about it.I mean, I was never under any kind of suspension, Cave. Had I been seething with hatred, eager to rake Mod over the coals for perceived slights, wouldn't I, you know, have done so at some point? At any point in the last three years? That's the question AZPaul could never answer, and I doubt you'll be able to, either.This has nothing to do with my personal feelings towards Mod, which let me assure you are the height of respect, admiration, and gratitude for participating in this discussion with me for as long as he has. I have every reason to believe that Mod is a great guy.Unfortunately he's just not cut out to be a moderator, in my opinion. That's not something I consider a personal fault, any more than I would fault Mod for not being able to perform bariatric surgery or compose concertos for the monovalve b'rugalsec. It's really not meant to be a personal attack nor the result of any sort of vendetta, and there's no basis for construing it that way.And, jeez, it's not like I have any say as to who should be a moderator around here.

Who cares what his motives were, Mod? He wasn't a moderator. You are.That's what I'm trying to get across. You have a different responsibility than Dan or the rest of us do, because you're the authority and we're not. Well, it's certainly the criticism I leveled. Remember when I said:

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What I have a problem with - what, indeed, everyone should have a problem with - is a set of unwritten rules that privilege moderators. Rules like:

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1) Moderators can not be criticized.
2) You must do whatever moderators tell you, even if they're wrong.
3) You can be suspended for not doing what a moderator wants even if they haven't told you what they want.
4) You can't make too many good arguments in a thread against someone who's also a moderator, or else they can suspend you.
5) Moderators don't have to read threads or follow discussions before they come to snap judgements over who is in the wrong and who is not.
6) Moderators can ignore civil requests and admonish the frustrated for not being civil.

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That stuff is bullshit. It's endemic to power. Moderators should be making every effort to avoid those "hidden" guidelines - not, as they appear to be, cleaving to them religiously.

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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. 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. 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.Look, I get what it meant. I'm not an idiot. But the operating standard at EvC was largely one of plausible deniability and indirectness. Calling someone a "liar" is out. Calling their post a "lie" is in, or was in at the time, even though someone who lies is by definition a liar. And, of course, different moderators had different philosophies about to what extent insulting inference was or wasn't allowed.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. And it's the place of moderators to be less sensitive to disrespect, not more so. Otherwise they make it look like the only disrespect they care about is the disrespect directed at themselves, the way you made it look. Er, ok, that is without question being oversensitive. I'm sorry but it absolutely is. You had a case for suspending Dan when you were allowing people to think you thought he called you a "retarded monkey." Now that you're denying that, you have absolutely no case whatsoever, regardless of what he subsequently said to you.He was confessing to calling you a "retarded monkey." If you don't actually think that's what he did, then you had an obligation to disregard his "confession." I'm sorry but you've just destroyed your own case for his suspension. Being told how to eat a banana doesn't rise to the level of violating the forum guidelines under any circumstances. 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.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. They're not asking for a suspension, they're predicting that one will be unfairly delivered despite them not actually having broken any of the rules. They're predicting that they won't get a fair shake, and in Dan's case, he was correct.At any rate, asking to be suspended isn't against the forum guidelines, so it can't be a basis for punishment. But, of course, that's the point - whatever criticism you would like to ignore, you can simply assert is "unreasonable."None of this behavior is a new way for authority to act, Mod. 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.But that's not true. Rrhain told the moderator team that it wasn't true then, I told you it wasn't true then, and I'm telling you now it wasn't true.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. Instead you and the moderator team viewed the issue as one where the participants refused to see reason and had to be crammed back down into the hole with brute force.Don't play it like Dan gave the moderator team no choice. You always had the choice to do the right thing, we even told you what it was.

Na'er be concerned, Hyroglyphx. I'm skeptical. Nobody but nobody here approaches NJ's style.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Hi Crashfrog. By and large, the present team of moderators is better for all than it's ever been. Mod and the others have, for the most part, moderated moderately and even handedly.Stick around and see how it goes for you.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Ok, I am wiling to test that theory. I shall start a new thread and see if it is as evenly handed as you suggest.That was certainly not the case in the past, and for modulous and others who want to make the fairly outlandish claim that creationists and others who held opposing viewpoint to the norm on this forum got the greater benefit of the doubt from moderators, I challenge them to back that up with facts. Such as showing the number of people who were suspended or banned the last two years who were pro-evolution and those who weren't, and their respective duration of bannings. I think you can take it as a total number, or as a percentage of users who fall in either category and you will clearly see that creationists and the like get banned at a much higher frequency on this site, than do the evolutionists.(I hope I don't get banned for being off topic while others are talking about incest.)