General discussion of moderation procedures: The Consequtive Consecution

Percy, I tried again using the "new message" mode from my email rather than the forum button and got the same message.

You presumably had an emotional involvement in correcting what you saw as misrepresentations of your position.Yes, sure, judging what is of public interest is uncertain. But the more it becomes a dispute between two people, the less public interest. From a moderators perspective, these problems are difficult to do with. There is usually some fault on both sides, although it might be predominantly from one side. If the moderator takes sides, that only causes increased argument. So the best choices for a moderator are either to do nothing and hope the problem solves itself, or to attempt to stop it without giving any appearance of taking sides.There has been a suggestion that we set up a conflict resolution process, where we would setup something similar to a great debate between the two parties, but with a referee. If both parties agreed, the dispute would be transferred to that conflict resolution thread. We don't have any experience in how well that would work.In retrospect, we possibly should have stepped in and stopped the disputes between Rrhain and you, and at a relatively early stage.

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buz, thanks for posting the contents of the bounced message. It is very important for you to understand.The message means that (which is your ip address) is listed as a spammer on one or more "black lists", lists of known spammers.

I do not think you're a spammer.There are other possible reasons.

The most likely cause of this is if your computer has been infected by one of the many viruses going around. You can contact the blacklist folk using this form to see about getting your ip removed from the list.Since it appears that you are on a dialup account, the problem may not even be on your computer, but rather on a computer of someone else. ISPs assign ips dynamically and that ip may have belonged to someone else. You can test to see if you can get a reassigned ip address, and if you are interested, I can walk you through the steps.I would take a few measures right now just to be safe. I would make sure that my virus definitions were up to daate. Then I'd run a full virus scan to check for infection.Let me know if you want to go further.Edited to change to jar and to mention that nwr (see below) may also be correct.This message has been edited by jar, 01-05-2006 11:41 AMThis message has been edited by jar, 01-05-2006 06:51 PM

This might not be correct.That IP address is listed as buzsaw,When you click on the "MAIL" button, that uses Outlook Express to send your email. Possibly your Outlook Express is not setup properly.I suggest that you send the email using the regular method that you use for email. That might be a different email client, or it might be via webmail. Manually enter the adress that Admin gave you.

I feel I am not getting real answers here.A person violated forum guidelines. He then went on to essentially call me a liar. I did not ask for admins to jump in, but it has been done before for others. Ironically, he had been sanctioned for calling people liar before, apparently having personalized it by using the euphemism "Holmes-speak" makes it appropriate behavior?What I am suggesting is that it is not clear why it posed a problem for moderators as it could have been done without "taking sides". It had nothing to do with who was right in the argument but rather what is not allowed as conduct.When admins did nothing, I wasn't going to cry about it, but rather found a solution I thought would be best to both address his accusations and minimize OT discussion... only to find that I got sanctioned.Having asked why I was sanctioned, I have not been told why my solution would not work, only that (apparently) I share some blame for what was done by the other poster, and am potentially causing problems via this method (though what these problems are I still do not know).Having asked the more practical question of what I can do about the accusations, I have gotten an explanation of how hard it is to be a moderator and maybe what might happen in the future... as well as a slightly ironic remark about how my conduct should have been addressed sooner**.Really, I need an answer. What am I supposed to do in the meantime when someone accuses me of doing something wrong, or in some way misrepresents my position? Jar's current recommendation is that I cut and paste links within OT threads to redirect further OT debate in the original thread. I don't see how that is any better than my solution and he appears unwilling to explain himself. You have given me no recommendation at all.I honestly don't want to keep arguing the "case", but I do want to find a practical solution.**Note on ironic remark** You personally replied to my post which showed he had plagiarized, not to recognize what had occured, but to "side" with Rrhain's position on another issue by stating that Wiki's definition was inaccurate. IIRC it was in a reply to that post of yours that he began his accusations against me. I am a bit curious why you did nothing given that you were directly connected to BOTH activities. For a guy who claims not to take sides you have only been consistently critical of me, and given passive assent to him.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

My advice is to let it go. The moderators don't seem to see it your way, and they're not much interested in putting more time into this. You can continue pushing on this, and maybe you'll find a sympathetic moderator, but maybe they'll just find it increasingly annoying. The plain truth about moderators is that are unpaid volunteers, they have limited time, and they're just imperfect people like everyone else.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Someone here asked me to be a moderator more than once, so I'm aware of the nature of the job and what it pays and that they can be imperfect.I don't understand what you mean by let it go and they don't see it my way. If you mean about reopening the thread I get by now that nothing I say is (or ever was) going to be listened to on that subject.I am asking for an answer of what I should do in the future. If I can't do what I did, what am I supposed to do instead?At this point I have been given one suggestion to post links in an OT thread, and another that maybe sometime in the future I can take part in a "resolution thread" (ironically enough what I essentially had created, only without moderation).Since you are owner can you tell me?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Despite my recent Festivus grievances against you, I find myself siding with you in this situation, holmes.You didn't just randomly accuse or belittle Rrhain, instead you provided extensive documentation of what you saw as dishonesty, and asked for a rebuttal. I'm not sure how you could have dealt with the situation better, and it seems like the admins can't come up with anything better, either.I've found myself in similar situations as you did with Rrhain - even if you choose to "walk away", it is more than frustrating to later come across said poster repeatedly using the same evidence and tactics that were clearly demonstrated to be unethical. When these issues aren't resolved, they can seriously impact the forum as a whole - for example, a couple of weeks ago, it seemed randman brought up the same (repeatedly refuted/unsubstantiated) Haeckel's embryos arguments in every thread he could find, dragging multiple threads off-topic at the same time. I believe admins admonished him in some of those instances, but it simply continued elsewhere, or at other times. In many case suspension doesn't seem to help, as the unethical behavior simply resumes post-suspension.Sometimes people need to be called out for unethical behavior beyond the thread where it occurs - especially when they use the same unethical tactics across multiple threads.One common criticism in this forum is that the "evos" don't call each other out for such things as faulty arguments, failure to provide evidence, and dishonesty. In some cases these criticisms are valid. If these faults are seen by admins and they choose to censure the "victim" in the situation, or the person that points out these faults, then something is obviously wrong. Perhaps the thing I find most inappropriate about the closing of your thread: Rrhain was never given a chance to defend himself. Quite unfair to Rrhain, regardless of whether or not he was very much in the wrong.The thread could be reopened at least temporarily as a Great Debate between you and Rrhain - if the issue doesn't clarify itself in the first dozen posts, then shut the sucker down.Hell, repost it in the Festivus Grievance thread - seems very on-topic there.

pink, there is a significant difference between me and RhHain. I view my situtation more as Holmes see his on the issue you raised up.Every single thing I've been posting about Haeckel and the history of embryonic evidence is true, and frankly it is annoying to see people that have never done the same amount of research to pretend, just out of sheer bias, that I must be wrong, and furthermore to pretend that their merely stating that is evidence.The simple fact is I wanted to get some conclusion on Haeckel and many of the other basic evidences that have been used to teach evolution because I think any honest person would admit that a lot of these things taught for generations were wrong, and moreover, there was never any real reason to believe them in the first place.The fact that just as evos kept on using Haeckel and for 60 years even maintained the Biogenetic Law, and similar items represents a mindset committed not to facts, but to doctrine, and imo, your insistence on defending such practices is indicative of the same.In no way have I been remotely dishonest or any such thing. If you take off the blinders and just look at what has occurred, just look at the false things taught as facts, even if you continue to believe in evolution, you would have to admit that such practices by evos are morally and intellectually reprehensible.

They constantly make personal attacks and nothing is done. They rarely get warned. Admins are so quick to jump on people that make off topic complaints about them, but Rand and Faith continue and continue their BS.This is why I left this board in the first place a few months ago. Admins need to quit coddling the creationists. If they break the rules treat them like you treat the rest of us. I go to 4 or 5 forums regularly and this is the only one where I have to subject myself to personal insults and name calling. I am beginning to think it aint worth it. I can't even respond to a Rand or Faith post anymore, because whatever I say is followed with an insult or attack. God forbid I use reason or facts in a response to them, because they dont need to reason or facts in their posts.

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Barb's Site
Exposing the radical right with facts

Theodric, tell you what. Pick a thread, and have someone that is not an evolutionist review the numbers and levels of insults directed at me or Faith or any other creationist, and then the vice versa. I think if you take off your rose-colored glasses, you might see that, in reality, the virtiol, insults, personal attacks, smears, etc,...are far, far more coming out of the evo camp directed towards critics than vice versa.

Hi randman,I'm sorry - I should have been more clear:I did not mean to claim you were being dishonest, or compare your behavior specifically to Rrhain's alleged tactics.I was trying to give an example of a poster's recurrent behavior that impacted the forum as a whole. I do believe that there was a time you disrupted a significant portion of the forum by repeating the same Haeckel arguments in several threads at once, all threads where they where inappropriate and off-topic. (In fact, you just presented your Haeckel arguments in this thread, in the post that I am responding to.) Hopefully you recognized that your behavior disrupted more appropriate discussions going on.Thank you for defending yourself so I could make this clarification - my apologies for the misunderstanding (it sucks to be called a liar).

Randman,Have I ever insulted you or your religion? NO.
Have I questioned your beliefs? Yes. That is the purpose of this forum.
Have you been rude and insulting to me? Yes.The difference is you dont see the that questioning a persons beliefs is not an insult. Any questioniong of what you believe you take as a personal attack. Then you lash out with actual personal attacks. You see there is a difference, whether you see it or not.

Where are your references? This time you are complaining about an ADMIN ACTION you ascribed to me. You didn't even notice the same Admin action on a Brennakimi post two or three posts later, or make the mistake of accusing HER of passive aggressiveness. Speaking of insults, how about your accusation of me for passive aggression in that case? You owe me an apology. As does Brennakimi for her rude remark about my not studying Calvinism enough when she was the one who got it wrong.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-05-2006 06:07 PM

Yeah, but you owe me one, which you've never delivered, so I wouldn't go around expecting people to take you seriously about things like that.