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Author | Topic: General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures 11.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
berberry writes: There was never any doubt in my mind, but I'm glad to have it thus noted that many posters do perceive the same insults I do. Yes, though of course they have no immediacy for me. But the Christian presuppositions recently expressed about gays are as puzzling to me as those about atheists. Why they think any large group of people could be legitimately stereotyped is beyond me. I think AdminPD may have already said this, but even if not then let me say that at least for me the issue with your recent posts is that they're not consistent with rule 10 of the Forum Guidelines, which concludes with this quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica:
Usually, in a well-conducted debate, speakers are either emotionally uncommitted or can preserve sufficient detachment to maintain a coolly academic approach. Moving on:
Do I take it that if my insults are sufficiently veiled that they might at least escape the notice of some posters, then they would be acceptable? Or is it the rule that thinly veiled insults against the character and morality of other posters are only acceptable when they come from bigoted xians? I guess I'd have to judge every case individually, but in general my own feeling is that the more veiled, subtle and *dispassionate* the insult, the more likely it is to be consistent with rule 10 and fly under the radar. I'm not good at this myself, but just as a poor example, instead of saying, "Stay the fuck away from me," you might try, "Could you try silence for a while, because when you speak it only serves to remove doubt." That might be too obscure, it's a veiled reference to, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt," but you get the idea.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Dr Adequate writes: There's no need to suspend him on my account. I kind of agree with you. Those of us who have been here a while and are familiar with Ray just roll our eyes and think, "There he goes again!" and ignore the outburst. I guess the problem is that people unfamiliar with EvC Forum might think the behavior acceptable and be encouraged to try it themselves. So I guess you could think of it as not necessarily being on your account, but just for the long term good of the board. Trust me, we're under no misimpression that you need coddling, which would be counter to board policy anyway.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
berberry writes: I don't see any real difference, except that one is more straight-forward. Both are equally insulting. Well, if there's really no difference it wasn't for lack of trying. What I was trying to do was construct a reply that was *dispassionate*, i.e., contained little hint that it was motivated by anger, hurt and frustration. Without actually reviewing the thread again, I'll just say that something like "Stay the fuck away from me" is kind of blatantly angry, plus it's confrontational and can lead to escalation. Speaking for myself, vocabulary is almost never an issue with me. For me it isn't the words you use but how you use them.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
The time I have to devote to EvC Forum issues is considerable but finite, and a lot of it goes to coding for dBoard 3.0. I'm sorry I wasn't able to deliver more satisfactorily, but I have to move on.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
I'd like to request that members keep discussion here focused on issues related to moderation, not on their own interpersonal issues. But I will add one note.
Rule 10 includes harassing behavior among those that are discouraged. While I don't believe that no always means no (as in "leave me alone"), I believe an interpretation that no must mean the opposite is an example of poor thinking. The assumption that someone else would behave by one's own mores, as is the assumption that someone else who is upset would behave by one's own standards of rationality while calm, seem brazenly perverse. I realize I'm speaking in an indirect fashion and may not be understood, so perhaps it would be sufficient to just further request that members not throw gas on the fire. Berberry, one final thought occurred to me later, so let me express it now. If you want to take insult at the expression of anti-gay attitudes that is your business, but I also believe you have a thin skin that is exacerbated by a history with certain people. If anti-gay attitudes upset you, you should avoid participating in threads with members who have anti-gay attitudes. All that getting upset does is weaken your ability to place such attitudes in the intolerant and bigoted light they so obviously deserve. One of the great social errors of the 1990s occurred on a number of college campuses, and endures still if I'm not mistaken, where efforts were made to insure that no group was offended, turning campuses into bastions of political correctness, one of the worst examples of hypocrisy in my experience. EvC Forum will not be following this example. Members should not conclude that EvC Forum is therefore a bastion for hate speech. Purposefully inflammatory and derogatory speech is a violation of rule 10. But saying something like, "Gays should not be allowed in the military," is a position that can be rationally and dispassionately discussed, in the same way that "Women should not be allowed on the battlefield," is a position that can be rationally and dispassionately discussed. Those who find upsetting the mere expression of such opinions, and much, much worse ones, might want to be more circumspect about which threads they participate in.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Obviously I'm just making a bad situation worse. Sorry I couldn't help. Take care.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
That's a pretty nasty subtitle, not to mention misleading in the extreme. Subtitles are listed in most message lists. You might want to consider changing it.
Your response to Ringo, and I'm talking about the entire message now, not just the subtitle, raises a good point about the importance of maintaining civility, but it probably isn't a good idea to use EvC Forum as a testing ground of people's ability to maintain equanimity in the face of inflammatory or frustrating behavior. It would be better to see people trying to set examples as facilitator and communicator rather than instigator.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
I don't have infinite time to deal with this issue, nor the wisdom of Solomon to untie the Gordian knot of whatever's going on, but I sense things spiraling out of control, and if this continues then I'll have to get actively involved, which I'd prefer not to do, since I only have time for actions that are rather short and sweet.
nemesis_juggernaut writes: As long as you understand the premise of the test, I'm happy with that. If you're purposefully instigating, then it's against the Forum Guidelines. Please make it easy to tell that you're operating within the Forum Guidelines.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Hi Berberry,
I'm going to suspend you for a week in a way analogous to protective custody, because I'm guessing you're saying lots of things right now that you'll later regret saying. Hope to see you next week, I mean that.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
You are hereby not suspended until further notice!
Three moderators have tried to talk Berberry down, and he's ended up getting even more angry and more insulting each time, and so I suspended him to prevent him from saying even more things he might later come to regret, e.g.:
berberry in Message 53 writes: It goes just a teensy bit beyond saying it's "immoral", you insufferable nitwit!
quote: Thank you for telling us about yourself. I understand he's upset, but this can't go on for days and days while moderators trial-and-error their way toward the proper words but in the meantime just become substitute targets. If you'd like to take responsibility for coaxing him back into a realization that we're not his enemies and into conformity at least of a sort with the Forum Guidelines I'd be more than happy to unsuspend him.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Dan Carroll writes: I understand he's upset, but this can't go on for days and days while moderators trial-and-error their way toward the proper words but in the meantime just become substitute targets. Yeah... in this vast, complex tapestry of trial and error, that has no doubt taxed the cunning and ingenuity of the moderators to their very limit, you know what hasn't been tried? The statement, "NJ, stop being a prick." Do you follow the NFL at all? If so, you might know that the NFL rules are formulated so that referees never have to make judgment calls. A player either violated a rule or he didn't, but his intent is never an issue. Hence, a "roughing the quarterback" call does not depend upon whether it was intentional or not, only on whether it happened or not. Similarly, a face mask violation is strictly a function of whether the face mask was touched (minor penalty, 5 yards and a 1st down) or grasped (major penalty, 15 yards and a 1st down). Intention to rough the quarterback or grab the face mask is never a factor in making the call. As the Forum Guidelines have evolved over the years we've tried to keep this in mind. As much as possible we want to avoid making forum guideline enforcement a judgment call. I don't think we've done anywhere near as well as the NFL in this, but that is our goal, to never make judging a member's intent part of the assessment. Your view of NJ's behavior is a judgment call. Further, political correctness seems a philosophy best viewed askance. I'd prefer that EvC Forum not serve as a haven for those who are easily offended on some topic or another. The censoring of minority or offensive views is anathema to open discussion.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Dan Carroll writes: Wouldn't want to go thinking about the reasons for the rules or anything. We think about them all the time.
Treating Berberry with a little basic decency is not something I'd refer to as "political correctness." Inability to give your opinion because someone might be offended is the definition of political correctness. "Basic decency" is a judgment call.
He hasn't. It's not censoring of offensive views. It's smacking down someone who's acting like an ass. Instead, you chose to smack down the person to whom he was being an ass. Berberry's in protective suspension to prevent her from further saying things she may later come to regret during a period where being upset has affected her judgment. And acting like an ass isn't against the Forum Guidelines. If it were we'd have few members.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Dan Carroll writes: The moderators don't call him on it, because that would require some sort of judgement call, and we all know how scary those can be. It isn't that judgment calls are scary. It's that they're so unreliable, error-prone and subject to individual biases. Right now you want a judgment call to sanction NJ for non-existent guideline violations, but judgment calls are subjective and can go both ways. If guideline enforcement were up to judgment calls then we'd be open to situations where a moderator might consider that you're actually motivated by a desire to make trouble rather than from a sincere belief that an unfairness has been committed, and that you're not interested in constructive dialog but just in complaining ad infinitum to waste as much moderator time as possible because you're angry at their handling of NJ. Participants in threads cannot exert control over what other members say just by claiming offense. Berberry cannot prevent NJ from presenting his homosexuality/bestiality comparison just because he finds it offensive.
Then, after a couple months have passed, NJ shows up and repeats his opening, insulting version again, as though nothing was ever said. Somebody points out why he's mistaken. So wait a little while more. Then he starts up again, with the same insulting version. Somebody again points out why he's mistaken. So he waits a while more. Then starts up again, with the same insulting version. Every time somebody points out why he's wrong, he not only completely ignores it, he pretends next time that nothing was ever said to him. If this is true then it does constitute a guideline violation, since one of EvC Forum's guidelines requires participants to constructively move discussion forward by offering supporting evidence and argument for positions, and by forthrightly addressing rebuttals, but when spread across multiple threads over weeks of time they can be incredibly hard to detect. If you can document this with links I can take a look.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
In the case from a month ago, NJ appears to be arguing that if bestiality (I don't believe beastiality is an accepted variant, but maybe someone knows for sure) is judged acceptable, how does one know where to draw the line about anything else.
In the case from a week ago, he appears to be assigning to others the view that it's not possible to reject as wrong acts to which we have not been subjected ourselves. I can't see how these are the same thing. Can you find a case where he repeatedly ignores the same rebuttal of the same point? Sort of like Randman used to do with Haeckel's drawings?
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Hi Dan,
Sorry you got suspended, more on that later. I read your message yesterday and still couldn't see how they're the same thing, so I waited till today and read it again, and I still don't see it. Sorry, but I don't see it. I recognize the two arguments share similarities, and I realize you think the common issue of nonconsensuality is key, but there were also key differences, and the fact that neither of NJ's arguments made any sense at all, combined with the fact that illogic and simple error always cause me to try to figure out what someone really meant, further clouds any attempt at comparison. And spending much time analyzing poorly constructed arguments is a waste of time anyway. 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.
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