I’ve been busy pokering the past few days (got back what I lost in Vegas and more), so I haven’t had time to really address this thread with the depth I want.
I’m not surprised this thread exists, but it makes me sad.
Sabo’s attack on Jmakin was unwarranted and inappropriate and easily deserved to be punished. And I’m not saying I would never attack someone like that, but I would do so with the knowledge that I’m eating a temp-ban for it and that I think the price is worth it. I’ve always been in favor of this punishment taking the form of escalating temp-bans rather than a perma-ban, unless there is repeated and prolific offenses of sufficient severity that justifies community discussion about ostracizing the offender.
Bad posting should not, in and of itself, be punishable. (And whether Sabo is a bad poster or not is a separate discussion that we need not have here. I don’t mind him, but I know he annoys a lot of people.) Being wrong should not be a punishable offense, unless it veers into the territory of repeated advocacy of debunked conspiracy theories.
Sabo has been referred to in this thread as a troll and a shit-stirrer. And maybe he is. But maybe he’s a non-troll shit-stirrer. That has value. If we think that complacency in the Democratic establishment is a problem, then we should guard against that here. The participation of people like Sabo in this forum help with that. I include someone like Victor in that. I don’t always agree with Victor and I believe he sometimes attacks people in a way that justifies being given the night off, but his point of view deserves representation here.
I’ve got more meta thoughts about the purpose of this forum, which I might gather together for a separate thread.
Ok, ty. Missiledog was 100% a troll on 2p2. Cant recall his posting here and have no idea.
Before I’m asked I’ll just explain my reasoning. MD would never actually engage in someone else’s point in good faith. If he found something that could be rhetorically attacked he would do so. If the other person made a logical point then he would ignore it, strawman and continue having a conversation with himself. He would post very long diatribes and when the other person gave up conversing with them, he would declare victory. In his defense, this was the form a lot of posters at the time I interacted with him, so maybe he changed his posting habits. It was absolutely intolerable at the time.
Hey everyone! Clovis said a thing I considered a bit silly but he has subsequently deleted it. This being a matter of world-shaking import, I have deleted the quoted post and edited this one.
I think this year long strategy of bending over backwards for trolls and driving away posters who really gave a lot to the community has been one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in my time on the internet.
I think the community has a responsibility to be tolerant of posters, but that individual posters also have a responsibility to be respectful of the kind of posting that the community wants, a good guideline to which is to write posts that you think other people might find enjoyable to read, for whatever reason. It’s the role of the moderator to balance these two competing responsibilities. I think where content is concerned, it’s the community who should bear the burden of the tolerance; my pet example there is raradevils on 2+2, who while kind of an idiot with dumb opinions was also unfailingly polite and reasonable in his posting. When it comes to posting style, I think it’s sometimes the responsibility of posters to not post in a way which makes the forum unreadable. I think this emphasis on “was individual X hard done by” and “are they REALLY a troll, actually” and “did they violate THE RULES, there are rules Dude, this is not Vietnam” is just a way of systematically de-emphasising this idea that posters have a responsibility to the community as well.
I also think that if moderation decisions appear to be line-ball, with some in the community opposed and some in favour, maybe consider the possibility that you’re just wrong? Like maybe there are really such things as close decisions and it’s not so clear what the right thing to do is.
This is not me “taking sides” because I’m still not clear on what the sides are here. I don’t read any of this crap normally. I think it would be a good idea if the forum had representative democracy in moderation, like maybe there were three monthly elections of mods, and then in the interim we just accepted their decisions, maybe with de-modding of individual mods by unanimous consent of the others. I think if your position on any of this is “we need more community discussion of moderation” you are out of your mind, look around you. It serves to rile people up and exacerbate differences. It is impossible to reach consensus since people have fundamentally different ideas on what the purposes of moderation are and what emphasis should be placed on each aspect.
Yeah, me neither. Part of me is hurt but part of me is just ruefully amused that a bunch of regs are sneaking off to set up a secret clubhouse instead of working things out here.