General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List')

I agree with nwr. If I'd been writing the post, I'd have used murder rather than sex with sheep as my example. It's not an accusation, it is, as nwr says, a reductio ad absurdum of the shifting of the burden of proof.

Possibly somewhere out there there's someone who looks at flashing things on the Internet. Once he was actually going to post here, but then he got distracted by something shiny.

I think the moderators should confine themselves to punishing actual infractions of the forum rules and leave the meting out of poetic justice to Allah.

The OP refers twice to "the ark". Subsequent posts by creationists refer again to "the ark", to the Bible, to the "Biblical standpoint", to "the Bible account", to the Book of Genesis and "the Genesis record", to Noah, to "the Noaic Flood", to Peleg (another character in Genesis); and they quote the book of Genesis frequently, giving chapter and verse.Meanwhile the evolutionists have been answering them by referring to the Bible, to "your Biblical deluge", to the ark, to Noah, to Adam, to "2 of every species", to "the Biblical Flood", to "the Noaic flood", to calculations made by "AnswersInGenesis", to "the 8 people" (in Noah's family), to the "Young Earth", to "4000 years" (since the flood), to "the mountains of Ararat", to "the Hebrew texts", to "the Judaeo Christian narrative"; and they too quote extensively from the book of Genesis.And all the posts I've cited were made without a single complaint from the moderators.And now Coyote is banned from posting in that whole forum because he posted on that thread on the assumption that we weren't talking about just any old global flood, but the specific global flood mentioned in the Bible?When Buzsaw writes: "As for the Noaic Flood, 4350 years ago is likely close", you had no problem with that, but if Coyote challenges the flood on that same assumption, using exactly Buz's figure of 4350 years ... well, that's going too far.And this has nothing to do with whether the Earth is young --- but the date of the flood is relevant to the question of what we should see in terms of geology, in terms of genetics, in terms of biogeography, in terms of archaeology, in terms of history, in terms of that hoary old creationist argument about population growth ... the date makes a huge difference.

Well, it does. Now, this is a non-negligible point. You acknowledge the merits of my post, but one of its weaknesses is that I'm giving Jbr a free pass on this --- I'm seriously discussing whether or not the frickin' Coconino Sandstone, which is 260 million years old, is evidence for Noah's flood, which supposedly happened ~4000 years ago.Coyote tells him that he should be discussing things which are actually ~4000 years old, and then tells him about some of them. It's a fair point. I am trying to think of a good analogy ...Suppose someone said that the Gospel of John couldn't have been written by St John because he gets his head chopped off in Mark 6, then it would be reasonable for a creationist (or other Christian, or indeed me, 'cos I like accuracy) to reply that he should be talking about John the Evangelist and not John the Baptist. It would not be unreasonable to follow this up with a brief life of John the Evangelist per the Bible. It would be unreasonable to reply to that with: "Didn't you even read my message, it was about John the Baptist".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But devises charged with consolidated quodwrits of quitbar or seigny-poke subsist thereafter in fee of grossplaysaunce, notwithstanding all copyholds of mesnemanor, socagemoign, interfee, mortlease, grand bastardy in copygross, subescheats of scutage quousque, refeoffed disseisor of sub-seisin in seignyfrankalpuis and vivmain of copycharged serjaunty.

Some words of advice for all readers to live by: if it ever appears that Bolder-dash has written anything whatsoever that might be considered honest ...... look out for the Four Horsemen of the fucking Apocalypse.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I don't know about "petty" and "vindictive" --- that suggests that there's something personal in it. But it does seem that Moose in particular is using his moderator powers to reprimand and suspend where he should just have voted to dislike the post or posted a response. The use of moderator powers should only be exercised in the case of a flagrant breach of forum rules or moderator warnings.

I think the problem with (some) moderators are that they can make it impersonal. It's like a fundie saying: "You're not arguing with me, you're arguing with God". Some moderators find that some people are contrary to the Spirit of Moderation, which is in fact constituted by their own decisions, opinions, and actions, but they forget that.This is just a hypothesis, and if we're talking about Moose in particular I disclaim any ability to read his mind.

Well, what is the point of the forum?Let us suppose that its function is to showcase evolutionist-versus-creationist debate. The problem is that the evolutionists who post here do not (by and large) do so because they feel some sort of obligation to the public to do that. They do so because they find the exercise agreeable and amusing. If they didn't, they wouldn't. To some extent you have to indulge the members, or you won't have any members.A further problem arises when you try to decide what is good debate. You decided to suspend Coyote from commenting on geology because you didn't like what he said. I, on the other hand, thought that his points were apt. Shouldn't a moderator stick to deciding whether actual rules are broken?Now I come to think of it, if an evolutionist comes up with a bad argument, does that not in fact gratify the dearest wish of creationists and so conform to your apparent desire to coddle them? If you "need to protect the creationist side", then you should start suspending people for posting arguments that are good.And in fact you seem to be almost fulfilling this reductio ad absurdum when you write: Well, again, I'd ask what the forum is for? Are we to display the debate, or just the bits of the debate that creationists feel comfortable talking about? Why would we want to do the latter?

Well, yes, liberals run things best. If only everything was run by liberals. That would be awesome.

Quis moostodiet ipsos moostodes?

Black people in Africa were brutalized and enslaved? Oh well, that's very different from the experience of black slaves in America, who certainly weren't enslaved, and would never have been brutalized if they were ... oh, wait.And at least the slaves in America had food, unlike the slaves in Africa who were uniformly starved to death by their owners. The difference is very clear. Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

Methinks the creationist doth project too much.

Since the moderators allow you to whine and blub about the moderators, it seems to me that a fortiori they would have no problem with you whining and blubbing about (for example) the fossil record. Why don't you give it a try?