General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures 11.0

Well that's a matter of taste I guess. I found his point sufficiently clear, he claims moral relativity cannot differentiate sexual immorality from morality. I don't understand -who is replying to who here? That doesn't make any sense as a reply to nemesis's point or the other way around.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

No. Losing your temper and making insulting comments directed at a particular member does stand you a good chance of getting suspended. Your chances increase in a discussion with several moderators since it is obviously more apparent. You've not explicitly broken any rules Dan, but my best judgement is that you just disrespected a member of this forum, namely myself. Right now since you have stated you are not going to continue with the discussion I am going to make a judgement call and not suspend you for 24 hours. If your tone continues on this forum, my best guess is that my judgement call will be to suspend you to cool down.

What is true, is that nemesis' claim is that moral relativity cannot differentiate sexual immorality from morality. Whether the claim is true or not is not really relevant to this discussion - if you are prepared for the firestorm, you can try proposing a topic dedicated to it. NJ finds something wrong with bestiality and he finds something wrong with homosexuality - I'm not sure how you concluded I thought otherwise.

It is my judgement you almost want a suspension and I don't want to disappoint. Take a few days off. For the technical minded who would want more than a judgement call: violation of rules 1,2 and 10.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

I'm sure there are other examples, but there are lots of threads that discuss morality and homosexuality and homosexuality is a debate point separating nemesis from most other posters. Nemesis' point is that there is no valid objection to either, from the point of view of moral relativism. Nemesis' moral framework obviously objects to both homosexual marriage and marrying other species and he can provide what he believes validity for this.

If you find anyone that suggests that homosexuality leads to bestiality let me know - I could do with a laugh. I think Paul Cameron probably said something like that but he's not a member here so I can't moderate him. I'd appreciate a link to someone stating that there is a causal relationship between the two.You go to some length to advance that theme, so I can't respond to any of it until I know what comments specifically you are talking about. This is the central problem I'm having. Here is nemesis's viewpoint:1. Heterosexual sex is ordained by God and is generally moral.
2. Homosexual sex is forbidden by God and is completely immoral.
3. Sex with other species is forbidden by God and is completely immoralHere is what he thinks his opponents is:1. Hetero sex is moral
2. Homosexual sex is moral
3. Bestiality is immoral.Nemesis was asking for justification for drawing the line somewhere between two and three, using the moral system of moral relativity.This has been hashed out to complete death now - if you feel I have missed something in my rather long and numerous posts about it, that is one thing, but I feel I have covered your second main point extensively already and I have not seen an example of your first.

berberry was suspended after he started calling an admin childish names (rule 10).Dan Carrol was suspended for being disrepectful to the moderators (rule 10 but 1 and 2 were also cited)You were suspended for failure to follow moderator requests (rule 1).Any other queries?

Phat:STOP! Lets move on to other things.
Moose:The Berberry/NJ homosexuality/morality issue should have been its own topic somewhere else, a long time ago.
Moose: Drop it now! Maybe I'll start suspending (24 hours?) anyone and everyone who won't. It wasn't invalid when we've done it in the past. Randman seems to spring to mind. Discussion can only continue so far before everyone is just repeating themselves. As Percy said to Dan:

quote:

---

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.

---

We cannot allow for moderators to get bogged down in repeating themselves in this thread. Sure: everyone is permitted to voice their concerns about an issue - which had been done. There was simply no need to continue with the discussion: everybody's finest points had been made and it was just getting bitter. Further discussion of it was requested to take place on another thread so that new issues would not get swamped by it. Well - I suppose we can hardly expect people to follow moderator requests they never bothered reading or those requests which they felt like ignoring. For the record: I am defending the integrity of the Admin team and I do so because it seems to be under question. I cannot state the system works perfectly, or that all of the mods act exemplerary. However, I've seen much worse systems, systems where questioning the moderators was enough to earn a lifetime ban. So I feel people might at least question moderators with courtesy rather than ire.Still - that's probably naive. Keeping the forum from degrading into a terminal flamewar is worth suspending people, even if they are suspended a little longer than might be deemed fair. After all - it's just an internet forum.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

The evidence speaks otherwise crash - I'm not sure how you managed to conclude this. Phat made his declaration in Message 97. Rrhain continues talking about NJs comments in Message 107, Message 110. I'm sorry Crash, I thought when you asked, "Which request, specifically?", you were asking for me to show moderators making requests, not to give you evidence of dispassionate moderation. And if you put forward your best reasoning for it, and the moderators don't do it, what do you do then? The mods get pseudo-final decision on how to keep the place running with Percy as the final arbiter. Obviously that means that sometimes we have to suspend people like randman, no matter how much they insist they did nothing wrong. Sometimes we have to stop with 'did' 'did not' kind of gainsaying about whether Faith should continue posting. The moderators have to do a job, and that job isn't just beard stroking. We have to engage a course of action, and we don't expect everyone, or even the majority of people, to like all of those decisions all of the time. I wouldn't dream of defending someone because they were a moderator.Moderators do not do the same thing - there are schisms and arguments that can be quite passionate. I have found myself at odds with Percy over how long to suspend nem and for why which is a public example. That the majority of moderators generally agrees with each other over this issue (which they don't btw - it's just that we don't bicker incessantly over it - argumentativeness not being a trait selected for in a moderator (goodbye Rand)) does not mean they always do.The issue becomes - what is the right thing to do? I think there are a number of right ways of handling a situation, and I don't think humans will ever execute any of them perfectly. The debate becomes - what is the right thing to do, here? Who has been given the unenviable responsibility of making the final decision? It is easy: the moderators. I am happy to hear constructive criticism; a criticism that takes the writer more than a few moments to think of, but gainsaying: I'm not a fan. "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."I don't think we need implore God - but the sentiment is good. You've demonstrated courage in questioning authority, but there is also a time for wisdom. I cannot change what you find abundantly clear. I am sorry if your polite and well thought out requests have gone ignored. I will endevour to watch myself on that - us humans have a tendency to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the disruptive and not on the meek. That's why the thread was closed, incidentally - to allow space for other moderator requests that wouldn't get drowned out by the other stuff. Once again my apologies. I tried to get to the bottom of the current debate, knowing that people would get very emotional about it after the admin team was indirectly accused of being so heterosexual they couldn't see the problem. Not being hetero I thought my services would be handy - and I was quickly called an insufferable nitwit and a self-hater.What did I do? I gave my reasoning as to why I was not going to penalise a member based on the evidence I had seen. I stressed that I was happy to see further evidence to continue making an informed judgement. That my judgement was not to the liking of certain people was not my fault.Just telling me that I am doing all these things, does not help. Just telling me that I am wrong does not help. I'd dearly love for you to spend some time composing a well thought out criticism of my moderation so that I might consider it and perhaps change - then I'd be in your debt. I honestly think I was being fair. I honestly think people had misunderstood. People who misunderstand will obviously not think what I am doing is unfair. I asked what it was they thought I was doing was unfair, but I did not get any responses that seemed to mesh with what actually happened, so I thought the misunderstanding was continuing.If you look at my posts you will see I have spend hours upon hours trying to clear up the misunderstanding. After a while, it becomes clear that minds cannot meet. I know of no way to satisfactorily resolve these kinds of issues. The problem is intractable. I don't think we should suspend people in a cruel fashion. What specific action has been cruel - if you'd like to discuss that we can do. Suspension is a last resort for me, I rarely do it. Any examples?

As an addition to the longer post I made: I'd be interested to hear what you think the right or correct action here is/was?

I asked this at the time, but nothing was forthcoming. Can you link to where NJ directly insulted Berb? I'm happy to increase nem's suspension if I see it.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

I posted the posts, in chronological order that contradicts this claim. Do you care to speak on this, or are you just gainsaying me? This is meant to be a discussion. The other alternative is that they understand your point, and disagree with it. If yours was the only possibility then we'd still have randman since we continually did the wrong thing by him. I have spent hours doing this very thing. I did not feel any need to suspend nemesis for the reasons given to me. I am not going to suspend someone if I don't see a reason! The fact that I am spending so much time and effort to discuss this with you leads you to conclude that I am pretending you don't have a problem. I am trying to resolve this issue with you now. If you have some specific criticism that you haven't brought up, then do so, if not then I am not changing my mind based on the issues you have put forward so far. I hereby retrospectively pardon Rrhain admonish Moose and suspend Rrhain retrospectively for continuing to discuss the bestiality issue after the request was made for the participants to stop. Is that better? Could be, I continue to await anybody who wishes to make some specific criticism to explain what exactly I did or didn't do that was wrong. To save you the time, the arguments put forward so far have not convinced me. Sorry about that - I'm only human crash. I try to remain open minded about it though and will continue to solicit help in pointing it out. Granted - but I have to see that it is the wrong thing first, no? I cannot just bow to the most vocal people on the board can I? Do you honestly think I should simply do whatever people tell me to? What would be the point in entrusting me with the responsibility ot make these kinds of decisions? Should I, in future, just do whatever anybody says if they tell me I'm doing something wrong? How many people should I wait to complain before doing so? And what of those that believe I am doing the right thing? How should it be weighed? The point is this, crash - the original issue was that I did not think there was any reason to do anything except explain why I saw no reason. The only other thing I could do was nothing whatsoever. No doubt there would have been bitching at the lack of moderater intervention That's fine, it really is. I cannot say that I always take good actions - the debate did get rather heated with people saying rather unfriendly things so I can openly admit that I might not have acted in the perfect manner. At first I did not believe action was necessary. I thought action was only necessary when the debate about the debate was getting too heated and people started calling the admin team childish names. OK - let's start here. When did it become clear his comments were intended to bait Berb? Let's dissect this thing so that I might learn for the future what was best to do and apologize for acting incorrectly.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

All are possible. Or perhaps it is you that have one of those characteristics? Neither of us is qualified to know which one that is though, and if you pretend otherwise that should probably disqualify you from moderating right there, but that's just my potentially flawed opinion. It was PaulK that managed to explain that one of NJ's comments merited a suspension and upon him doing it I immediately acted. I saw no other comments by NJ that would merit his suspension - except for the Austin Powers puerility. Berb's frustration was certainly legitimate, but I'd rather the forum did not have name calling no matter the frustration. Message 37 is where I entered. Berb asked if he should accept being insulted in a vile fashion, and I replied that no he shouldn't and that I didn't think Berb had been insulted in a vile fashion but that I was investigating the issue further to be sure. Berberry responded that he had been insulted in a vile manner with no specific reference. I admitted that calling homosexuality immoral was insulting to gays - but that cannot warrant a suspension in a discussion about the morality of homosexuality and Berb called me a nitwit and I think implied that I was racist. He then got suspended by Percy. Given that that includes Faith and randman that is a harsh criticism I'm sorry if I came off as wanting to win some debate. I was trying to explain why I did not suspend nemesis and got a load of grief for doing so. I could have just ended it there, but I doubt that would have been popular either, once I was in I thought it prudent to explaining why I was not taking action and continue soliciting reason why he should in case I was getting it wrong.If I am as selfish as you think I am, I urge my privelages be removed immediately. I suppose typing out thousands of words to try and explain myself could be seen as trying to 'win' a debate but I honestly saw no alternative but inaction. Towards the end, I was in two minds as to reply with a curt "Thank you, your comments have been noted" or to drive forwards to resolve the schism forming at EvC. In retrospect, I think the former might have been wise. Perhaps I should think about this further if I see no new criticism coming forward, that might be the best piece of advice I could take away from this thing.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

Can't let this one drop. It's off topic and disrespectful to a particular member. I'm sure a warning should suffice here, and I really don't want to add to the pile of suspensions we've had here.This applies to everone else - no banter in this thread please.

---

I have already answered this question several times. Please refer to the earlier posts. I honestly don't see it. If I did, I would have acted. You may visit the Suspensions thread were this information can be found. I'll even link to it: Message 220Apologies for the communication problem. That is my fault. I reduced nem's suspension to 1 day for Austin Powers and gave him a further day for the inflammatory offtopic remark regarding rape. I agree. That is why I had to act and not remain silent. I got involved where I could have just not bothered. I knew that by stating that I would not suspend nemesis I would be criticized but did not allow the fear of losing credibility in other's eyes prevent me from doing my job. I have taken your comments on board. The case has been put forward as to why nemesis should be suspended. I have explained why I don't think certain comments merit it. You disagree and call for my removal as a moderator since I am wrong and unsuitable to the task.Thank you for your time in expressing interest in keeping EvC running smoothly. If you have any further specific criticisms about any specific action taken by any specific moderator then I welcome your input as long as I remain a moderator (and probably afterwards).