Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
M’kay.
Looked back at a few comments and it’s not particularly clear to me what you find insulting.
I see Patrick asking what is meant by “immaterial” when you or FMM use the word. I hope I’ve been clear that I use “material” in the broadest possible sense, synonymously with “real”.
As I’ve said, you are completely free to make your own choices, come to your own conclusions.
As there doesn’t seem to be any moderation issue, if I have time, I’ll pick up on the burden of proof dispute in the original thread.
Hmm. Looks like for at least two days I have been assuming as if I were somewhere else, where I could expect minimal rules of rational debate be understood and followed. Namely, intellectual insult means instances when they are not followed. But it has now dawned to me that I cannot hold you to such standards. Cancel and rewind. As you were. Alas, this also means that I will just laugh at your calls to tone down snark etc. because you don’t really know what you are asking.
Is it just me, or are nearly all the complaints about moderation coming from UD regulars?
Erik,
So long as you stay within the not very onerous site rules, you’ll be fine. And laughter is good for the soul*!
*Speaking metaphorically.
petrushka,
Erik was a strong critic of ID when he participated there.
Yes, it’s just you.
You’ve always been quite good about seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don’t want to see.
It’s been said that I post nothing but snark, and yet only two or three of my posts have been moved to guano, and not more than a handful have generated serious complaints.
This is due less to my writing skills than to my willingness simply not to read posts by people who seem to have nothing constructive to say.
Lash myself to the mast, mostly.
I’m sure he still is. I think what he is finding out is that some of the other “critics” here at TSZ can’t be trusted to be rational or reasonable or intellectually honest, which makes their criticism of ID immediately suspect.
Snark. Not addressed to anyone in particular. But certainly doesn’t contribute anything useful to the debate.
petrushka,
You have to admit, its pretty funny that any site would decide that Patrick is a good candidate to be a moderator, right?
Do we blame Elizabeth or Patrick for this?
Historically, I have moved over here from UD, but I never was a regular there, and I always was a principled critic of ID theory. Now my history here is far longer than it was there.
What’s my beef with ID? They assume that aspects of the immaterial (such as “design”, even “intelligent design”) can be detected and measured as if they were physical phenomena.
Patrick has his uses. Encouraging the vision Elizabeth has for the site isn’t one of them. The only reason Patrick is still with us as a mod is because Elizabeth has either abandoned TZS or taken a coward’s way out.
No wonder no one here can tell me how to measure the power of cumulative selection.
Math is easy. The hard part is to know whether it’s applicable. There are good reasons why statistics is considered sometimes worse than lies. One of the reasons is that statisticians relentlessly conflate causality and correlation.
Statistics does not distinguish between causality and correlation. Ontology and epistemology do.
Clearly moving a comment containing personal insults to a different part of the site where it is still readable is far worse than deleting comments, editing them to change their meaning, adding content inline, and banning people arbitrarily.
If only we could convince Barry to become an admin here.
If you have an issue with any specific moderation decisions, please raise them in this thread with any details you can provide.
Technically speaking, Patrick is an Administrator. There are no moderators of TSZ, only Administrators who do some moderation work on the side.
And, to paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan: A moderator’s lot is not an happy one.
Perhaps she just wants to irritate you, perhaps she disagrees with you about Patrick, perhaps no one else wants the job, perhaps she just wanted you to demonstrate a false dichotomy.
OK, but now that Lizzie has bolted, who has the authority to remove someone’s authority to “do some moderation work on the side”? I’m going to say No One.
True. The practical point is that we’ve got the present group until the site closes down or they decide to hang ’em up themselves.
I disagree.
1. I don’t think that remark from 2012 is anything like justification for the post you made. It’s too unclear. I sincerely hope your (entirely unambiguous) claim that mung thinks rape is acceptable behavior is based on more than that–especially since his posts are often somewhat confusingly put together. I’d give somebody the benefit of the doubt before making a such a slur.
2. That 2012 statement was not in the post I criticized. I’d never seen it. All I saw was an apparently unjustified claim that mung sympathizes with rapists. How the hell is anybody supposed to know that you think some weird remark he made in 2012 supports your allegation. (I, for one, am quite familiar with your “techniques.”)
Anyhow, are you actually ervous that he might not support your interpretation or what? You say he’s a rapist sympathizer, I say let’s ask him before accusing him, and you demur?
I mean, I know you’re an unrepentant fuckhead, but really.
walto,
It’s irrelevant anyway. Calling fellow members names is against the rules.
True, but I don’t think anybody would mind being called a rapist sympathizer if that person both (i) really were one, and (ii) were willing to admit that publicly. OTOH, if somebody is NOT a rapist sympathizer, it’s disgusting to say in a public forum that he is.
walto,
I’m not good with hypotheticals. When we have a known declared rapist sympathizer as member, maybe we need to accommodate that in the rules. Until then…
I totally agree with you. The thing is keiths maintains that we DO have a known declared rapist sympathizer as a member. I deny it, and he keeps saying I’m wrong.
walto,
Well, let’s wait for mung and/or Keiths [to take]* the opportunity to comment.
ETA*
That’s right. keiths can only get away with it so many times, with so many people, before no one will take him seriously.
Mung,
So, enlighten us. What did you mean by this?–
…And what about murder, theft, etc. All the the other things we commonly think of as evil (many of them proscribed in the 10 commandments)? God allows those too. Not evil? Even if the Bible says they are?
walto,
Is the light starting to dawn on you yet?
Mung had yet another opportunity to state that rape is evil, and he deliberately passed it up, just as he’s been doing for the last four years.
Mung,
Barry’s Purse, Mr. Judgemental.
It’s disturbing, yes. But I’ll give him another day–it’s too hard to believe. I mean, who the hell doesn’t think rape is wrong? I’ve got two girls!
I meant that keiths was being intellectually dishonest by refusing to admit that evil exists at all, much less that it exists in any particular instance of rape. IOW, it was an attempt at getting keiths to actually argue for the reality of evil. It failed. Even now he won’t say that he believes rape is evil.
And this is what often happens when you give keiths a chance to take something out of context through dishonest quote-mining and use it against you.
So now I will say that I do think rape is wrong, and keiths will then accuse me of contradicting myself. That’s what low-life scum like keiths do.
Let’s take another look at what I wrote:
That’s a pretty big freaking IF. And it needs to be understood in context. Now keiths, with his impeccable logic and prodigious mind-reading skills, manages to turn that into a claim about what I actually think about rape.
Rape is evil, so is pornography. So is slavery. So is lying, and dishonest quote-mining and intellectual dishonesty.
Ok, thanks. Mung.
Is the light starting to dawn on you yet, keiths?
Adapa made my ignore list for posting that I am an anti-gay bigot and there he remains to this day. Your actions are just as egregious. Keep it up.
I just wonder where the logic is in the stance keiths took. Mung didn’t answer my charges, therefore they must be true. How the hell does that follow?
Mung,
Thanks for what seems an unnecessary declaration.
…and failed to support his allegation when challenged.
Hey! I needed it!! X>{
Mung,
Is killing chickens evil? What about if you’re a chicken? Our shared ‘evil’ is not objective.
Mung,
That’s Mung logic, not keiths logic.
You’re trying to get yourself off the hook by saying “I didn’t actually assert it — I just said that I’d assert it if I were to assert something.”
It’s logically equivalent to this:
Mung:
keiths and others, incredulously:
[Years pass. When the question comes up, as it does repeatedly, Mung refuses to say that Trump isn’t the best candidate, engaging in word-lawyering instead.]
Then Mung says:
That’s pretty lame, even by Mung standards. It’s amusing to see Alan and walto fall for it, though.
It’s also amusing to see Alan — he of the “Mindreader!” accusations — admonishing me for actually paying attention to Mung’s words and behavior, instead of just engaging in… mindreading.
Mung,
Of course I will. Rape is evil, and that’s perfectly compatible with my moral subjectivism.
Why is that so difficult for you to understand?
keiths seems to believe that it is not possible to argue a position which one does not believe, or agree with, which is, simply, ludicrous.
It has nothing to do with “trying to get myself off the hook.” I was never “on the hook” in the first place. It has to do with being intellectually honest, and not making false claims about someone, just because you can (and are a dipshit).
See walto, the fact that I remained silent, it’s not relevant, because keiths isn’t drawing any conclusion or inference based on my silence.
It’s, like, evil*
Forget it, mung. Keiths’ just sore because he thought you weren’t going to correct his false claim and he was, as usual, wrong.
No doubt he’ll head right over to his ‘How I always Admit When I’m Wrong and No One Else Ever Does’ thread and make a clean breast of his error. Just like always.
Too freaking funny.
Further comments of mine will be in Noyau, not “Moderation Issues.”
Mung,
Of course I don’t believe that. That’s Mung logic.
You can present the argument for an opposing position without asserting its truth. Obviously.
Mung’s words, again:
Mung’s manufactured outrage is especially amusing in light of his own behavior.
From the same thread at UD in which he made his rape comment:
Mung:
And:
Mung is a transparent and hypocritical fraud.
That comment was uncalled for and I apologize.