Did Mod cause the collapse of evcforum?

Cave, he follows Berb into GenDiscMod11, all the time saying "what? What's the deal? All I'm saying is, there's no moral difference between gays and rapists. You must be under some kind of delusion to think I'm talking about you." Oh, right. "Berb, the only reason you're offended by me calling you a rapist horse-fucker is because you suspect I'm right."That's supposed to be moral philosophy? That's the conduct you're defending, Cavediver? We knew what was going on then and it's still obvious. Go and read Nemesis Juggernaut's posts in that thread. Smarmy, taunting bigotry.To his credit, Berb tries to disengage: But NJ can't resist one last parting shot: Playing the victim.And that's when Berb blows his stack. NJ doesn't give any indication that this isn't exactly what he was shooting for the whole time: Of course, there's the hilarious part where NJ tells me I'm gay: I mean, Berb's been banned, so he's got to identify the next target, right?I think Taz was pretty clear about what was going on here when he said:

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Remember that nem jug is a police officer of some sort. He's experienced with these sort of things. He knows how to press our buttons and make it appear that we are at fault. He has done a very good job at hiding his insults in a form of opinion.

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NJ was really good - better than I've been giving him credit for - at concealing his subtext, but if you have any experience at all with the kind of person who believes they can bait you into an emotional overreaction it's not at all hard to see behind his "who, me?" feigned innocence. It was believable the first time that NJ used the comparison and was rebutted. When he kept on doing it, and kept abandoning threads about the moral relativism he supposedly wanted to discuss, what was actually going on became abundantly obvious.

No, you just have to read it. So, if I tell you that you're wrong because you're a ridiculous douchebag, you're the one arguing the person when you take offense?Don't be absurd. No, it's just the only one reasonable. Look, it actually is possible to be too ignorant to be insulted. Sometimes insults go over your head because you don't know what they mean. If I called your mother a "round-heeled doxy", you're probably not insulted because you have no idea what that actually means. You're ignorant of the meaning, so paradoxically you're immune to the insult. Trust me, as a semi-professional insulter this is a huge problem in my field, you have to aim your insults at your intended audience - not over their heads.But ignorance is only a defense the first time. If you're not gay yourself, maybe you don't know how insulting it is to be told that, morally, you're no better than a rapist. But once you've been told that comparing gays to horse-fuckers is insulting to people who are gay, there's no excuse for continuing. Where?

Then I guess I don't know what you were saying. Usually when people say "third party", they mean "completely unrelated party." But you weren't unrelated, you were in the thick of it, having defended NJ's actions and reduced his suspension. Berberry's issues were as much with you and the rest of the moderators as they were with NJ. NJ, after all, was just being his regular self.Do you mean you were literally the third party to get involved? Again, I don't see how that's true, either; Percy was actually the third person to post in that thread. It was pretty obvious, Mod. Ringo was doing it too. The "dirty apes" thing? Like I said, I think there's much you missed on that thread that was incredibly obvious to the rest of us, and we had no idea you were misunderstanding us so dramatically because you never said so. I wish you had. It was, in fact, exactly the same - which is how I know Dan actually doesn't believe that Christians rape goats.I mean you can continue to presume that there was some kind of characteristic difference between the thinly-veiled insults NJ was directing at Berb and the thinly-veiled insults Dan was directing at you, but we all can read, too, and it was clear at the time that the only difference was that Dan's veil was a little too thin, and that the insults were directed at you and not at Berberry. I didn't see any examples of that, I guess. You'll have to tell me what you think you're talking about. And the fact that you took no action regarding NJ's disrespect of Berberry is exactly what got us into this in the first place.Are you trying to revise history again? Now you're pretending that you actually did address NJ's campaign of harassment?If that's the case, how did it come to be the subject of at least two GenDiscMod threads? How did it come to be the central issue surrounding the "Changes at EvC" event? What I meant to say was what I said, Mod, but thanks for proving yourself so willing to argue with strawmen. The truth is, I can only speculate on your mindset and motives when you ask me to. The truth is I have no interest in why you were wrong, only that you were. You were wrong then and you were wrong, now.I mean, you have to be. If NJ's conduct was perfectly allowable under the rules, why did it trigger such hurt feelings? Such controversy? Why did it become such a tremendous burden to moderation?Do you think that Berberry, Dan, Taz, Rrhain, Ringo, Paulk, Arach, Chiroptera, Omnivorous, Dr. A, and myself all coordinated behind the scenes to get insulted by one completely innocuous line of argumentation chosen completely at random? How do you explain how NJ's comments became the source of such enduring controversy, dramatically in excess of any kind of statement made either before or since, if what NJ was saying was nothing more than the regular churn of argument that happens at EvC?How can you possibly explain that? Doesn't the fact that NJ's comments ultimately degraded the board and triggered a crisis of moderation and suppression prove you were wrong about them being a legitimate feature of debate?

Right. Why else would he think he's supposed to hate me for the sin of homosexuality?He asserts that while he opposes "the sin of homosexuality", he doesn't hate me for it. "It" being the sin of homosexuality. But why would he think he should hate me for it, unless he thinks I'm engaged in the sin of homosexuality?If I told you "I believe that bank robbery is a crime, but I don't hate you for it, Huntard" don't you read that as implying that you're a bank robber? I mean, if you're not, why would it even be a possibility that I would hate you for the crime of bank robbery? What's the connection between you and bank robberies that should reasonably place you in that sentence? If I'm not calling you a bank robber who I nonetheless don't hate, the sentence is complete nonsense.NJ was saying that he doesn't hate me just because I'm gay. Well, good for him, but I'm not gay. Never have been.

Yeah, but you guys are wrong. Jesus, if it was just a matter of NJ's beliefs that would have been tremendously easier! I mean, is there anybody here who would seriously dispute that NJ had a big problem with homosexuals and homosexuality?Trying to get you guys to read in context is a lot harder than trying to get you to agree about NJ's personal attitude towards homosexuality. If that's what was actually important, that's what we would have been arguing, because it would have been a lot easier to convince you. Do you want me to speculate? Well, you're either dishonest, ignorant, or stupid. Same reasons anyone is ever wrong. You either know better and are arguing something you don't believe, or there's a critical piece of information you aren't aware of, or you're intrinsically unable to apprehend the evidence.Like I said, whenever someone is saying something wrong it's for one of the above reasons. I doubt that makes you feel any better, but, hey, you asked. I never claimed it was black or white. But honestly, the right thing to do was never a mystery. I mean we only told the moderators exactly what to do, over and over again. It would not have been supremely difficult to tell NJ "hey, stop comparing homosexuals to rapists; regardless of your intent it's really destructive to discourse." It would not have been impossible to suspend him for a week.But for some reason, NJ's conduct was the point where Mod decided to take a stand and say "you know, suspension from EvC Forum is such an unbelievable hardship that it just can't, absolutely cannot, be applied to anyone who we aren't absolutely certain has transgressed the forum guidelines."I mean, I appreciate Mod's principled stand against unfair punishment, but Christ, where was he all those times I was being unfairly suspended?I mean, Jesus, just the fact that NJ was becoming the focus of an unbelievable amount of complaining to moderators should have been reason for them to at least consider telling him to stop whatever he was doing. Shouldn't it? Well, wait now. What was my contribution to the crisis, exactly? I participated in GenDiscMod11 right up to the point where I was asked to stop, and then I stopped. I never posted in GenDiscMod14 at all. I had left the board by the time "Changes at EvC" and the Great Purge occurred, which is why I was never suspended during it.My contribution to the crisis was limited only to warning it was coming. Are you saying that it was some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy? That I influenced weak-minded contributors to keep complaining about NJ? GenDiscMod14 seems to largely be Rrhain arguing with moderators about NJ's continued acts of equating gays and horsefuckers, and he was walking that beat in GenDiscMod11 long before I got involved in the thread.Maybe you and Hyro could elaborate on the way in which you think I contributed to a crisis that occurred months after I had left the board.

I know that's what he meant. And he listed the homosexuals that he specifically doesn't hate - myself among them.But I'm not gay. Never have been. No, he does. Quote:

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The problem, as I see it, is that its all or none for people like Crash, Taz, Berberry, or Dan. For some reason, they are incapable of distinguishing that, while I believe that homosexuality is a sin, they assume that I must somehow hate them for it.

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Who did you think he was talking about when he said "Crash"? That's me. "Crash" was something people called me back then. We - that list of me, Taz, Berberry, and Dan - are the "they" and "them" in the sentence that follows. Nem never uses the noun "homosexuals" in that paragraph, so it can't be the antecedent of the pronoun "them."He can't mean "homosexuals in general" because he never said "homosexuals in general". There's only two pronouns in the English language that can take as antecedent a noun not previously made explicit, and that's "you" and "I." No, in that sentence "Huntard, Straggler, and Bluejay" can't be the antecedents of "them" because they occur after that pronoun. In NJ's paragraph me, Taz, Dan, and Berberry must be the antecedents of the pronoun "them" because they're the only nouns that precede the pronoun "them."Like I said, it's quite clear. If NJ was referring to homosexuals in general, he would have had to actually use the word "homosexuals." It's support for my contention that NJ was engaged in gay-baiting. Calling people "gay" who aren't actually gay is gay-baiting. You're trying to get them to object to the inaccurate characterization, then you pretend that their protest means they don't like homosexuals, then you call them a bigot who hates gay people.It's a pretty textbook-standard way to troll defenders of gay rights, which NJ knew I was.

Fair enough. Did he, or did he not, say that a "delusion" was the only way Berb could honestly interpret his comments the way Berb did? Did he, or did he not, say that you couldn't consistently believe that gay sex was moral but bestiality and rape were immoral? Did he, or did he not, affirm time and time again that he was innocent of what he was being accused of, that he was being misunderstood, that he was just trying to engage in a conversation about moral relativism?I'm pretty sure all those things happened. Did I make them up? I quoted NJ saying those things. Did I invent those quotes? Did NJ not really write them, they just appeared under his name? Berb was inflamed by them, as were a dozen of the rest of us. Is that not evidence that they were inflammatory?When we told NJ that his remarks were inflammatory and he should use alternate language to express the same point, he ignored us and strengthened his language. Is that not evidence that he did so with purpose? Does he, or does he not, assert his innocence? Does he, or does he not, assert that of all parties involved he's the aggrieved one? No, there's not. See my posts to Huntard. "Them" is not a pronoun in English that can take an unspecified antecedent, which is why it's weird and funny when conspiracy theorists say "they're out to get me!" and wags reply "who is 'they'?""Them" can take as antecedent only the individuals Nem had already specified, which were me, Taz, Dan, and Berberry. Berberry is gay, which supports my contention that Nem intended that as a list of persons who were gay but that he did not hate. I don't recall whether or not Taz is gay. Dan isn't and I'm not, never have been. He knows we're not gay. He's just saying we are, because he's engaged in gay-baiting. Calling straight people homosexuals is a textbook-standard strategy in gay-baiting. He doesn't believe it; he's just trolling.

In context with his months of passive-aggressive gay-baiting? Yes, of course, absolutely.Calling people gay who aren't gay - but defend gay rights - is a textbook-standard way to troll defenders of gay rights. It happened dozens of times here at EvC alone, by plenty of people besides NJ.

Of course not, Straggler. NJ's not trying to say "you stupid faggots!" like a 14-year-old 4chan member. Remember? He's a cop. All along he's trying to get us to flip the fuck out.So, of course he doesn't come right out and say it. He calls me and Dan and Taz gays in a paragraph that's written to look like it's all about how tolerant and loving he is.See how tolerant he is? Why, he loves all homosexuals, like Berberry and Dan and Crashfrog!Do you just not understand how trolling works, Straggler? Do you understand that if I were to say something like that what sounds like something innocuous is really a not-so-thinly-veiled attempt to call you and Huntard "retarded"?It's not about "grammatical inexactitude." I wasn't "grammatically inexact." I was quite purposeful about how I wrote that sentence, quite careful about the implications it contains, and so was Nem. The whole point is to write it so that people who aren't so bright, or aren't paying very close attention, won't see beyond the surface meaning and won't register it as an insult.

Are there other examples? Surely. You need only click NJ's name - I gave a link to it a few posts ago - and you'll have access to his complete posting history.In particular what I've already posted, linked to, and defended should be more than adequate. If you want more you're on your own. I'm not here to do all your homework and frankly, whether or not you think NJ was engaged in a months-long campaign of gay-baiting is immaterial to me; it's a matter of the record that he was. I don't see the paranoia. I'm not worried that NJ is going to troll me now, he's banned here.Paranoia is when you think people are out to get you. I don't think NJ is. I don't think he was anything but an occasionally clever bigot, and he's since retreated to some other shithole on the web to ply his trollcraft. Or, you're ignorant. Don't forget that possibility too! I mean, did you go through NJ's entire posting history and read it?No? Then it's actually a highly likely possibility that NJ said a lot of things you don't know about, now isn't it?

No, Straggler, based on a months-long pattern of subtly-inflammatory rhetoric against homosexuality and homosexual individuals, as identified previously by a dozen people.Like I said, whether you agree is of no concern to me, but please don't misrepresent me. For one thing, it's against the forum guidelines. Or, it used to be, anyway. Don't know as they're much followed these days. Yeah, I can, actually. It's a moderator's responsibility to be aware of what's being said on the forum and to take action when it violates the forum guidelines.If a moderator says "what, are we supposed to read every thread?" I say "Yes! Or, at the very least - you have to read the threads you want to moderate." You can't just come in at the last second, when things have boiled over due to your inaction, and expect to get an honest read on the situation.Or like I said three years ago:

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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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Do you disagree? Do you think moderation as I described it then was good for the board? Leave aside for the moment whether you agree with me that it was happening. Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, when moderators act as I described? Well, yeah, Straggler. If you weren't reading all his posts, did you think you got an accurate picture of the context of his posts? If there's a bunch of posts you've never read, isn't it pretty likely that you didn't see a very representative sample of them? If there's a bunch of his behavior you never paid attention to you, how seriously should I take you when you try to say "well I for one never saw him act like that." Well, you wouldn't, would you?Like I said, it was hardly just me. Literally a dozen people - most of whom couldn't stand each other and disagreed about everything else - popped up and said "yeah, NJ is engaged in gay-baiting."Did you think Rrhain and I arranged behind the scenes to pretend to be offended by completely innocuous statements from NJ? Why on Earth would we do that? Jesus, Rrhain and I absolutely hate each other. We've never, ever gotten along. Not ever. We can't agree on anything.For God's sake even Holmes saw what NJ was doing. Do you think I was in a conspiracy with Rrhain and Holmes? Don't you remember how much I hated that fucker? How dishonest I thought he was?If NJ acting like a total tool was the one thing Holmes, Rrhain, and I could reach agreement on, don't you think there's something there you're just not seeing? Something there that would be in NJ's posts if you had ever bothered to read them? I can keep pulling NJ's statements out of their context to highlight them, and you can keep trying to explain each new statement as an isolated instance of clumsy ambiguity and my own uncharitable interpretation, but you can do that with anything. You could disprove evolution that way if you wanted (and believe me, I've had creationists try.)It's the weight of evidence by which statements are proven or disproven. It's not by one element of evidence after another, in isolation. If you really give a shit, and you're not arguing just to argue, why don't you head in and examine the weight of evidence?

Well, then I think you've answered your own question about why Dan decided to try his "experiment" on you. Right, and then Dan proved with examples that NJ wasn't wording it that way. He was wording it in the way that would appear to be an argument directed at a member, or multiple members, of EvC.Remember? He accused you of talking about a "fictional" NJ? Who was much more reasonable than the actual one? Spectacularly. Fair enough, I'd forgotten. Yes, but that's because the US Constitution doesn't say "Always treat other members with respect. Argue the position, not the person. Avoid abusive, harassing and invasive behavior. Avoid needling, hectoring and goading tactics." At Evc Forum, the rules do say that. It's understood that the rules exist to maintain decorum, make sure topics stay more or less focused on a central point, and that debators don't have the excuse to ignore each other's points in favor of each other's ad hominems.Now, I know about the fallacy of affirming the consequent. I know that "If A, then B" and "~A" doesn't imply "~B". But switch over to Baysean logic for a sec, and realize that if the rules exist to prevent complete collapse of legitimate dialogue on the board, and then a kind of speech ultimately causes the complete collapse of legitimate dialogue on the board - as NJ's conduct ultimately did - it stands to reason that there's a pretty good chance that the speech in question was probably against the rules. If not, a rule should be made against it. But again, you're acting like NJ was on the hook for a single instance of speech.That's not what happened at all. If it had just been once, there would have been no need for moderation. We're adults, we can handle it when someone makes an unintentionally insulting comparison. And it was so handled.But NJ didn't respond by changing his language and avoiding potentially easy-to-misunderstand comparisons. He doubled-down on them, acted like the only unreasonable people were the ones who were getting offended, and started chasing Berberry around different threads to tell him that gays were just like horse-fuckers and rapists and only someone who was "deluded" (his word) could be offended by that. And then, perhaps because NJ was also a moderator, you, Percy, and Moose popped up to support him in that judgement.Oh, and then he called me gay. Fun times!Look, let me take a different tack. Remember long ago when Percy said:

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There used to be a comedian who presented his ideas for a better world, and one of them was to arm everyone on the highway with little rubber dart guns. Every time you see a driver doing something stupid, you fire a little dart at his car. When a state trooper sees someone driving down the highway with a bunch of darts all over his car he pulls him over for being an idiot.

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Regardless of whether or not you saw NJ engage in offensive gay-baiting, can it really be denied that he was driving around in a car covered in little darts? Just based on the widespread outcry, we would have to conclude that NJ was positively bristling with darts. Like a bright orange hedgehog!I appreciate that you took a principled stand not to punish someone you felt wasn't guilty of anything. (Boy, where were you all those times I was suspended...) But Percy's old comedian routine seems to indicate that's not actually the standard by which moderation should take place.Can you really assert that NJ was making an effort to "not look like one of the idiots"? Can you really assert that trying to untangle the Gordian Knot was the appropriate response?Simply on the basis of the "suction dart" standard, articulated by Percy as the central basis for moderation, shouldn't you have taken the action against NJ that might ultimately have saved the forum?

I know what his argument was; the point was, he chose examples that were needlessly offensive, and when he was politely told that, he doubled-down on them and pretended that anybody who was taking offense was a deluded queer.Like I said:

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Suffice to say, while that may have been the argument you intended to make, you did so in an offensive manner, and you really should have known better (since you've done it before to the exact same reaction.) At the very least, using trigger language like you did makes people respond to your language instead of your argument, so you should reconsider making such comparisons simply from a practical standpoint of not giving your opponents an excuse to avoid your points.

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If I say something like "a nigger leaves a train station going south at 50 mph, and a spic leaves another station 50 miles south, going north at 30 mph, how fast are they going when they drive-by each other?" it doesn't really matter that I'm trying to make a point about algebra, not about race. I've been deliberately offensive and opponents, obviously, are going to ignore my much less interesting point and react to my bigotry. Why should I expect them to do any different?

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I invite you to use other comparisons in the future, if only out of self-interest.

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I thought that was pretty reasonable at the time, and I still do. If NJ had really been interested in making and participating in arguments about moral relativism, he would have modified his language to remove the offense, which was acting as a significant obstacle to debate. Just out of self-interest.Instead he doubled-down on that language. Because he wasn't interested in moral debate, he was interested in trolling homosexuals and their allies, like myself, Taz, and Dan.

That's not my problem, no. But remember - "argumentum ad populum" forms the basis of Percy's intended philosophy of moderation:

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It really helps moderators figure out if a topic is disintegrating because of general misbehavior versus someone in particular if the originally non-misbehaving members kept it that way. When everyone is prickly and argumentative and off-topic and personal then it's just too difficult to tell. We have neither infinite time to untie the Gordian knot, nor the wisdom of Solomon.

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There used to be a comedian who presented his ideas for a better world, and one of them was to arm everyone on the highway with little rubber dart guns. Every time you see a driver doing something stupid, you fire a little dart at his car. When a state trooper sees someone driving down the highway with a bunch of darts all over his car he pulls him over for being an idiot.

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Please make it easy to tell you apart from the idiots.

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In this case, it appears that despite the fact that NJ was at the center of a substantial degree of controversy - his car was literally bristling with sucky darts - it appears that they determined he was not "one of the idiots" because NJ told them he was not, and NJ was a moderator.They closed ranks around one of their own. Given that my position now, as well as then, was simply "moderator mistakes are being made", I would say that it does, yes. I knew him better than you, which I've proved. Oh, right, that part where you stated that my interpretation of NJ's statements was correct according to grammar and logic, if that's the way you want to go, but nonetheless I'm wrong even though I read way more of his posts than you did, just because you say so.Wow, compelling. Either that's true of them or it's true of me. I'm pretty sure I proved it's true of you, when you admitted that you weren't willing to read all of NJ's posts.I've read more of his posts than you have, which is why I have the more accurate picture of his activity than you do.

Sure. I'd agree with that. I would say that your role in the collapse was limited to the chance you had to censure NJ's conduct and take steps to prevent it from happening again.In other words - you were the horseshoe nail, and for want of you taking the most minor, most trivial of actions, the board collapsed. (At least temporarily. May it rise again!)I don't see any inconsistency, either internally or with my larger theme throughout this thread, in asserting that your role was both minor and central. Well, but that was the problem. NJ was good enough at it that there would never be a single, clear example to demonstrate. That was his whole schitck - flirt around the edges of calling Berberry and homosexuals in general no better than horsefucking rapists, but never actually come out and say it - let the implication emerge from repetition and context.It was, actually, some masterful trolling, which is how he got away with it as long as he did. Recall Taz:

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Remember that nem jug is a police officer of some sort. He's experienced with these sort of things. He knows how to press our buttons and make it appear that we are at fault. He has done a very good job at hiding his insults in a form of opinion.

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There was never going to be a clear, unambiguous single example of NJ's campaign of bigotry. That was why it was so pernicious. We could never show you really compelling examples because NJ was so careful not to provide any. You had to read his posts - all his posts - in context to pull it out. Ah! Well, you've caught me out there, for sure. No doubt. Well done, to find that example. Interesting read, too.Well, for sure, let me walk back some of my criticism of you. It's not fair of me to attempt to characterize your moderation from nothing more than a single thread. Right. What I thought was weird about that is that I perceived almost all the prickliness coming from the moderators. People were raising very cogent and penetrating points, I thought, and what we were getting back from the moderators was "you idiots are whiny crybabies", "fucking let fucking it fucking go", promises of instant suspensions delivered retroactively - combined with Percy's admonitions for us to engage in "constructive dialogue."Did the lay participants start getting snippy? You bet your ass we did, because almost immediately in that thread our calm, constructive suggestions were dismissed as whining. But it's a matter of record that the only obstacle to actual constructive dialogue in that thread was that the moderator team was determined to prevent it from occurring. It was very surreal.