Moderation Issues (3)

Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.

4,124 thoughts on “Moderation Issues (3)”

  1. Mung:

    Patrick threatened to resign if he didn’t get his way without any prompting from me.

    Mung,

    Even setting aside “that integrity thingy”, do you really think that lying is a wise tactical move right now?

    Patrick did not “threaten to resign if he didn’t get his way”. Here’s what he actually wrote:

    I’m firmly convinced that the best response to bad speech is good speech. Preventing good speech means allowing bad speech an unfair advantage. I refuse to do that.

    I’ve sent Lizzie an email letting her know about the situation and offering to step down as an admin if my position is unacceptable to her.

    Leaving it in Lizzie’s hands wasn’t good enough for you, so you demanded his resignation:

    You’ve gone from moderating to advocating for one side over the other when one side is clearly breaking the rules. You should voluntarily step down. You’re clearly incapable of or unwilling to be objective.

    And:

    A moderator admitting that posts violate the rules and belong in Guano and taking no action is without excuse. It’s already been determined that accusing others of being dishonest is bad speech.

    Enforce the rules or resign.

    After demanding his resignation twice, you tried to pretend that you hadn’t demanded it at all:

    I asked Elizabeth to try to talk you out of resigning over this silly manufactured incident. It truly is a case of people making a mountain out of a molehill.

    Honesty just isn’t your thing, is it?

  2. Patrick: Mung removed everything I bolded, leaving the excerpt:

    This is false. I did not remove anything. I was watching it live. You should stick to the facts.

  3. keiths:
    Patrick did the right thing.He refused to reward you for your dishonesty, and he refused to punish others for truthfully pointing it out.He left the accusations where they belong — in the original thread.

    I agree with your comment except for this bit. I think I did the right thing based on Lizzie’s goals for this site and common standards of rational discussion. I definitely did not do the right thing based on her explicit rules. That’s why I emailed her and offered to stop being an admin.

    I have a huge amount of respect for Lizzie and I wish her luck with her experiment here. I’m happy to help out with that however I can, but I’ve always disagreed with the rule about assuming good faith even in the face of contrary evidence. Even though this is a tempest in a teapot, I’m unwilling to reward dishonesty by allowing the perpetrator to hide behind that non-optimal rule.

    Hopefully we’ll get a visit from Herself soon.

  4. I think you are / were an excellent, non interventionalist Admin, Patrick. Beers IRL at some point.

  6. Mung, you know when your therapist asks….

    Do you ever find yourself in conflict with others but do not understand why?

    ….perhaps you can relate this latest episode.

  7. Mung: This is false. I did not remove anything. I was watching it live. You should stick to the facts.

    Plausible explanation: Mung’s selective narcolepsy kicks in, he realises, uses ellipses.

  8. Richardthughes: Are you denying it, Mung?

    That should be painfully obvious by now.

    start here and then read my posts that follow.

    I absolutely deny that I was being intentionally dishonest or intended to misrepresent Krauss in any way.

  9. I did not write down everything Krauss said as he was saying it. Guilty as charged. It doesn’t follow that I did anything dishonest.

    The accusation is that I had the full text and removed something from it. That is false.

  10. Patrick: It wasn’t a “sound bite”, it was a deliberate misrepresentation of Krauss’ position.

    I’ve stated on numerous occasions that it was in fact a sound bite. If you don’t want to believe me that’s your prerogative. It doesn’t make me dishonest.

    You’ve been corrected repeatedly. So now who’s doubling down?

  11. Patrick: Even then, if he’d simply admitted it was a (very poor) joke when first challenged it wouldn’t be an issue.

    I wasn’t accused of making a poor joke. I was accused of dishonesty. And you piled on.

  12. walto: But it’s quite likely that mung deserves a spanking for something else he’s said he’s said and DIDN’T take an appropriate amount of shit for, so what the hell.

    You know I’d take a spanking from you any day walto.

  14. keiths: Yes, the context did matter — so Mung removed it. …so Mung deliberately and surgically removed the context.

    More false statements based on more mind reading. The case for my being dishonest is airtight. Not.

    When someone carefully excises the context in order to change the perceived meaning of someone else’s words, he is being dishonest.

    Listen to yourself. In a court of law you’d be laughed off the witness stand. Your evidence that I deliberately excised words in order to misrepresent is based strictly on your wishful thinking.

  15. keiths: Yeah, walto’s “team play” accusation is bogus. The fact that a group of people agree on an issue does not make it “team play”.

    Look at you trying to be the logical one.

    It’s sharks with the smell of blood in the water. One doesn’t need to reach a logical conclusion. It’s a simple observation. As such it isn’t bogus as you claim. It is in fact blatantly obvious.

  17. Mung:
    I did not write down everything Krauss said as he was saying it. Guilty as charged. It doesn’t follow that I did anything dishonest.

    The accusation is that I had the full text and removed something from it. That is false.

    What’s with you people? You think that Mung knows what the fuck he’s talking about, has a grasp of the facts, or knows what Krauss really said, rather than the bits and pieces that fit Mung’s biases?

    Of course it’s just whatever sounds good to him, never mind what the source actually said, or including a citation. What’s an IDist supposed to do, deal honestly with evidence and sources?

    No, that’s just materialists trying to keep down the good IDist, who needn’t bother with evidence, facts, or integrity. Unless you learn to accommodate people picking out just what they want to hear, you’ll be massively unfair to people like Mung who think outside the box of proper evidence and honest quotations (like if Krauss really had said that it would truly matter anyway).

    Glen Davidson

  18. Mung: You really think so?

    I honestly do. At the start I think you bought into it as science, likes how it was congruent with your religion and genuinely expected science to come from hit. So you became emotionally invested. A decade plus later, nothing has been discovered, culture war has fizzled out, Demski has hung up his oversized sweater and you’ve got Joe, Mapou and Phoodoo arguing over can angels dance on a pinhead. Deep down you know ID has delivered nothing.. but you so want it to be right. Barry Admits it privately. GrannyTard and KF keep turning the wheel but it’s just rehashes of long lost battles: Junk DNA, Weasel, Can you calculate CSI, etc.

  19. keiths: Mung got called on his dishonesty and finds it very unpleasant. That’s exactly what we want — to penalize dishonesty rather than reinforcing it.

    And it’s ludicrous and against the ethos of the site to argue that they cannot express their displeasure without violating the rules of the site. That question has already been settled and codified. That’s what the rules are for.

    Not everyone is as invested in your story as you are.

  20. After an entire thread on quote mining, anyone who quote mines is dishonest.

    Simple.

    Simple solution? Don’t quote people who fundamentally disagree with you, out of context, with ellipses, implying they agree with you. Do not do it at all, even to be cute.

  22. keiths: Patrick did not “threaten to resign if he didn’t get his way”. Here’s what he actually wrote:

    I’ve sent Lizzie an email letting her know about the situation and offering to step down as an admin if my position is unacceptable to her.

    This helps you how? If she doesn’t agree with him he will step down.

  24. Mung: This helps you how? If she doesn’t agree with him he will step down.

    Of course, you are already on record the Lizzie stays away from the site because she is disgusted with it. You made that clear some time ago.

  26. Richardthughes: I think you are / were an excellent, non interventionalist Admin, Patrick. Beers IRL at some point.

    I’m fine with non-intervention. I’ve repeatedly lobbied for it. I think Guano should go away. Patrick should have kept his mouth shut. Things would have played out quite differently.

    Go back and look at my responses in that thread.

    Do you see me crying foul and pleading for moderator intervention? No. Do I even accuse people of breaking the rules, perhaps as a way to gain moderator attention? No.

    In fact, what I did was simply invite people to defend their claims. Or to put it in a way Patrick can understand, to replace bad speech with good speech. I invited them to make their case. Patrick’s spun up a false narrative about people not being allowed to make their case. He thinks they need to be able to violate the rules to do so. I don’t.

    The fact is, he wanted his crusade and now he has it.

  28. Richardthughes: Deep down you know ID has delivered nothing.. but you so want it to be right.

    I have publicly stated that I agree with Perry Marshall that as long as ID says “therefore design” and goes no further it will not be accepted as science. I am one of the most reasonable supporters of ID that this site will ever see.

    But I don’t think it’s really about ID here. It’s about atheism. But that’s another thread.

  29. Mung: I have publicly stated that I agree with Perry Marshall that as long as ID says “therefore design” and goes no further it will not be accepted as science. I am one of the most reasonable supporters of ID that this site will ever see.

    But I don’t think it’s really about ID here. It’s about atheism. But that’s another thread.

    And an unsupported, false claim.

    Standard ID rhetoric, in other words.

    Glen Davidson

  30. Mung: You didn’t see the one letter change I made when quoting you?

    UD and ID had made him better, I think.

    Shame on me for trusting you.

  31. Richardthughes: Reading for comprehension. Not Mung’s strong point.

    If you’re saying that Patrick’s offer to step down was gratuitous and meaningless, I disagree. Why would he even offer to step down? What would motivate him to do so?

    I comprehend just fine. Others will grasp at any straw to support their untenable position.

  33. Mung,

    Since you’re trying to establish your honesty, hasn’t it occurred to you that lying is, um, counterproductive?

    As Rich points out, Patrick’s offering to resign if Lizzie found his actions unacceptable is not the same as “threatening to resign if he didn’t get his way.” That’s lie #1.

    Lie #2 is your attempt at pretending, after demanding Patrick’s resignation twice, that you hadn’t done so at all, and that it was others who were “making a mountain out of a molehill.”

    Now you’re further cementing your reputation for dishonesty by trying to word-lawyer over the word “remove”.

    As hotshoe said:

    You fucked up. [Again and again, I would add.] Try learning something from your mistakes once in a while.

  34. Richardthughes:
    I think you are / were an excellent, non interventionalist Admin, Patrick. Beers IRL at some point.

    I’m working in the Big Apple these days (no, not the one in Cupertino). Everyone comes through here eventually. Ping me.

  35. Mung: If you’re saying that Patrick’s offer to step down was gratuitous and meaningless, I disagree. Why would he even offer to step down? What would motivate him to do so?

    You could ask me….

    Lizzie’s site, Lizzie’s rules. She’s paying for the hosting. She deserves admins who are willing to enforce her rules.

  36. I see the Mung The Victim show continues on unabated.

    Can anyone explain why Mung thinks lying by quote-mining is OK? I admit I don’t get it.

  37. All this griping aside, I think the site works pretty well. More IDists would be good.

  38. I’m sure people must be aware that Mung isn’t the only one pumping oxygen into this DNR case? Yes, I’ve just let a few more molecules in too.

  39. Richardthughes:
    All this griping aside, I think the site works pretty well. More IDists would be good.

    And if they could provide meaningful answers, they’d be here.

    The sad thing for ID is that barely any of them even tries any more, rather they stick with restating old soundbites.

    Glen Davidson

  41. Rich,

    All this griping aside, I think the site works pretty well.

    It does, particularly when the moderation is light.

    More IDists would be good.

    And brighter ones.

  44. keiths: Since you’re trying to establish your honesty…

    I don’t need to establish my honesty. It is supposed to be assumed. If you cannot abide the rules you are free to leave.

  45. Allan Miller: I’m sure people must be aware that Mung isn’t the only one pumping oxygen into this DNR case?

    I admit I failed to fill out the form.

  46. Richardthughes: All this griping aside, I think the site works pretty well. More IDists would be good.

    Perhaps a list of those that have been driven away first.

  48. Mung,

    If you were actually honest, this problem would vanish. Why not give that a try?

  49. Glen,

    Brighter believers in alien abduction would be nice, too.

    There’s a problem in there, somehow…

    Not as much as you might think. Smart people are capable of believing incredibly stupid things if they aren’t armed with the tools of critical thinking or if they apply them selectively.

  50. keiths:
    Glen,

    Not as much as you might think.Smart people are capable of believing incredibly stupid things if they aren’t armed with the tools of critical thinking or if they apply them selectively.

    It’s not a matter of armament or selection. It’s a matter of Will. Smart people can misinterpret and/or ignore incredible amounts of evidence if it all conflicts with what they WANT to believe. I’ve known some genius-level alcoholics, and they employ their amazing intelligence confecting the most dazzling rationalizations for why it’s OK to keep drinking.

    Being smart is pretty much irrelevant. Morton’s Demon cannot be vanquished through sheer intelligence.

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