General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures 11.0

suspended here. i'm not sure that's totally fair. to be honest, it's sort of insulting. and i was trying to help him, or at least get him to explain his point (while struggling to stay on-topic). it's also quite possible that english is not his native language -- he got insulted enough when i tried to decipher his grammar.do we suspend people around here simply because we think they're crackpots, or speak poorly? i could understand if it was for being off-topic.Edited by arachnophilia, : accidentally condescending, again.

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well, agreed -- had the suspension been for being off-topic, i would have totally agreed with it. though it probably should have applied to me as well, but i was at least trying to drag it back on topic. kicking and screaming.i'm just not sure that suspending the opposition is a good debate technique.i know you and i have talked about this before. it's been a point i've argued for a long time. i think i figured out what bugs me so much, last night. look at a forum like uncommondescent. basically, and ideological wankhouse -- if you don't toe the religious line, or you dare to challenge to the "goddidit" consensus, or you have any scientific credentials at all, you're banned. for life. you end up with all creationists nodding along, and nothing actually going anywhere.i don't want us to be like them, not even in the slightest. but it seems like we suspend and ban an awful lot of creationists. yes, i know, at the heart of it all, our rules are fair. sometimes i'm not so sure they're applied in an even-handed way. but mostly, the fault is in the rule-breaker. and the lack of creationist content on this site makes questions like IAJ rather difficult. do we suspend him for not following the rules of debate? do we let him continue, because he's obviously trying to say something?from a strictly ideological standpoint, it might even be better to let people like IAJ just go off on whatever. if there's 20 or 30 people on one side that sound rational, and one on the other that sounds incoherent... well maybe suspending him is the best thing you can do for him.i don't know.

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just a clarification.does every post here need to be a lengthy, well-reasoned formal argument? is there a minimum post length i should try to adhere to in the future? and is quantity the same thing as quality? i thought my points were precisely on-topic, and sufficiently, not to mention effectively argued the point (singular) that needed to be addressed.i'm not upset, i just don't totally understand. there are other posts in that same thread where i practically asked to be suspended in fairness, and i'm not exactly sure any of the line of discussion i started was on-topic for your thread. even if it is my post in objection in this thread that started the whole thing. basically, of all the things i thought i might be suspended for, i wasn't expecting punishment without warning for a short, on-topic discussion that had already ceased, for reasons of quick response time and minimum post length.Edited by arachnophilia, : typographical error

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we have been warned on previous occasions, but this wasn't an instance i was expecting to be punished for -- all the posts were precisely on topic, just short logical arguments. they weren't wasting thread space with off-topic banter, in-jokes, or any of that sort of thing. they were just on-topic arguments. albeit short ones.

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well, yes. what happens when you or i post one-sentance replies to little one-sentance snippets of another post, such as right now?is it better when there are more snippets per post? why?

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.Edited by arachnophilia, : moved to new thread

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