Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions. This thread has been reissued as a post rather than a page as the “ignore commenter” button does not apply to threads started as pages.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
keiths,
Focus. Do something positive.
Any volunteers to help out as admin? PM me if you prefer. I’ll pass on your offer to Lizzie.
Vegetarian?
You don’t contribute much anywhere.
Glen Davidson
I really love life, especially when people, grownups one would think, behave like little children in a sandbox, arguing over who’s sandcastle is better…
Allan and Neil are in charge of moderation, like it or not, so if you have a beef with the way they do their volunteer job, let them know once and move on… Don’t be a crybaby! Children are watching you wondering what’s going on…
BTW: Moderators took my publishing privileged away (OP needs to be censored first before publishing) because of the holy trinity of regulars here who couldn’t take the heat; their feelings were hurt… pathetic but true… the indicators of the fabric of a society we live in… Everyone has rights but nobody wants to take responsibility… My teenage kids can and do a much better job at that…
Alan:
You and Neil repeatedly complain about being unpaid and about your workload. It’s so hard reading through threads looking for comments to guano, and you don’t get a dime for it.
Easy solution: Relinquish your guanoing power and just be admins. Problem solved. Your workload decreases dramatically. You’re no longer obligated to read through threads. You no longer have to guano comments. You no longer have to deal with moderation complaints or issues. And as a bonus, TSZ benefits.
You’d be admins, not moderators, and your job would be much easier.
What’s not to like?
We don’t know about that!
Oh, I know that so well.
Glen Davidson
Payment is not the issue. Time is a far more valuable commodity. Deriving pleasure by providing a service that I hope is useful to the many people I like and admire who contribute here is what matters.
To a problem I don’t have?
I can’t believe you did the your/you’re thingie 😯 . This is all moot. We have Lizzie’s personal blog without Lizzie. There are options:
1. Carry on as we are. (We’ve done it for two years apart from one comment from Lizzie about racist material so I guess we can keep carrying on until something unfixable breaks.)
2. Contact Lizzie regarding her intentions. (Already done, awaiting a response)
3. Make contingency plans in case Lizzie neither returns nor cedes her blog. (A back-up is stored every four hours off-site so there need be no concern over lost material.)
None of these are mutually exclusive and there may be others to think about. As I said to Patrick, I will give it a few days and then open a discussion so we can hear ideas from all interested parties.
Anthropomorphism. I doubt there’s a one-size-fits-all solution
If the change in approach is genuine, that’s to like.
I’d really like to see you support THAT assertion.
No.
I don’t think you have ever been censored.
And that reminds me. I noticed a pending new thread of yours, that you have never asked to have published. Do you want it released? Actually, there seem to be two of them with similar titles, and from November.
Alan:
You and Neil mention it again and again. If it isn’t an issue, why do you keep bringing it up?
My solution addresses that directly:
keiths:
Alan:
Alan, a few sentences later:
To the problem whose existence you just denied?
Neil Rickert,
No! My kids must’ve been fooling around when I was away… I deleted them…
Exactly, you may know it and just be unaware of being unaware of it. Luckily presuppositionism is the sword which cuts the Gordian Knot.
You deleted your children,you unfeeling bastard ?
But you take no pleasure from it?
newton,
It’s possible … if one has the power over quantum mechanics… not that I would do it… 😉
Alan,
You say you’ve been trying to resign for two years, but that you can’t do so until Lizzie “relieves” you.
Yet when you disappear, as you did during your recent trip to England, TSZ runs smoothly — far more smoothly than it does when you are here. (I even commented on it at the time.)
There’s no need to wait for Lizzie to relieve you. Your poor moderation is not, by any stretch of the imagination, something that we rely on or that we can’t afford to go without (as your trip demonstrated). It’s a liability to TSZ. Just go, already. Or relinquish your moderator privileges and content yourself with being an admin, performing functions that are genuinely useful to TSZ.
In the meantime, why are you so resistant to my solution, when you are the one who keeps complaining about being unpaid, and about the workload, and about trying to resign but being unable to until Lizzie returns?
Why cling to a power you say you don’t want? (Rhetorical question.)
Are your complaints genuine, or are they just posturing? Are they lies that you thought would be useful to you, like the one you told about me above?
I ,for one, appreciate it.
From their suffering? No.
Just the fruits of the tree.
Neil, to J-Mac:
No, but he was inappropriately singled out and subjected to a censorship scheme. Alan tried to whitewash it just as you are:
keiths:
Two separate problems. I don’t have a problem with not being paid for what I do.
There is an imminent problem with the future of TSZ. To which there are solutions but it may be that different solutions are preferred by different people.
I hope that clarifies.
newton,
Thanks (really!). One of my selfish reasons for looking at a “like/dislike” buttons is it would make a little appreciation almost effortless. (I confess chuckling at several of your dry witticisms that I ought to have “liked”). 🙂
*suppresses the urge to add paypal account details*
Alan:
No. In both cases you were referring to my solution. To the same problem.
It’s a typical Alanism. Deny the existence of a problem, and then acknowledge its existence a few sentences later.
Dishonest people often have trouble keeping their stories straight. No surprise there.
Several? I feel for you, I used to manage a sports team by default and had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of many suggestions.
keiths,
Again, moot. Save your powder.
newton,
🙂 I’m old.
Alan:
It’s not moot. Censorship schemes are out of place at TSZ and should be actively resisted.
There was a much better solution on the table — one that was in line with the TSZ ethos. You opposed it, of course, despite being unwilling and unable to justify your decision.
You have enormous trouble admitting and correcting your mistakes, especially your moderation mistakes.
Alan:
Then why not answer my question?
And since you say this…
…then why are you so resistant to my solution, which addresses that problem?
More whitewashing by Alan, in response to J-Mac:
keiths:
Ahem. My theory:
That is my theory, it is mine and belongs to me, and I own it and what it is, too
As for the history of all this, I encourage you to re-read this page of comments.
True, but I think I’ll respond to you anyway.
The issue, for me, isn’t fifthmonarchyman’s rudeness so much as it is the uneven enforcement of the rules and the impact that can have on the quality of the site. Wouldn’t you rather participate somewhere you were treated fairly?
Great question. I’m not asking for permission to reply in kind. On the other hand, if I were to respond to fifthmonarchyman’s repeated distortions of my views with something like “I’ve told you a dozen or more times now that I don’t believe or know what you say I do. Are you a liar or just stupid?” then I don’t think it would be reasonable to Guano that comment. It would be against the rules though and I suspect that Alan or Neil would move it.
That’s the problem I’m trying to address. I think it’s wrong that comments like Glen Davidson’s are moved while those that prompted his perfectly accurate response are not. That lowers the quality of the site.
Would a free-for-all environment be worse than unfair rules? It could be. Personally, I think the quality is determined by the people who participate. If you encourage more participation by people like fifthmonarchyman, phoodoo, and J-Mac, you lower quality. If you encourage the DNA_Jocks, Glen Davidsons, Joe Felsensteins, and John Harshmans, you improve quality. (Neither list is exhaustive.)
Perhaps the moderators could learn from After the Bar Closes at The Panda’s Thumb. Disruptive commenters get their own thread, where anyone else ventures at their own risk. They are not allowed to pollute other threads. That approach would have fixed the Frankie issue that Alan mentioned without making him a martyr (in his own mind).
Just a thought, spurred by your question. There are probably problems with it, but it seems better than letting those who constantly demonstrate bad faith control the discussion.
Or maybe forcing the discussion about how the rules are enforced unfairly is a good thing?
That dodges the issue I’m hoping (but not really expecting) to see resolved.
I was asked to move the original discussion out of Sandbox, quite reasonably I thought. If fifthmonarchyman can’t comment without breaking the rules, that’s his issue, not mine for creating a new thread.
Yes, it is. It also violates Elizabeth’s exhortation to park your priors at the door. If someone can’t do that, even for the sake of discussion, it’s not likely they are going to improve the quality of the discussion.
Did it? That would be an interesting flaw in the system.
ALurker,
Moderators, this whole thread is a distortion of this website. Can this, and other comments from this poster be moved to a different website?
I think it is entirely against this sites mission to park your priors at the door, when this poster shouldn’t park here at all, with his priors.
I am quite sure that is a theist had made the kind of accusations about distorting, that Alurker has made about FMM, that poster would already have been banned here by the atheist moderators. This is totally unfair.
By the way, am I the only one who suspects Alurker works for the CIA, with his sneaky tactics of trying to infiltrate fake news by making more extreme fake news to discredit the fake news accusers?
In other words, ALurker’s idea of “quality” participants is inescapably related to those participants who write what he wants to hear, especially those who relief him of his insecurities, such us that atheists, like him, do exist…
Well, ALurker, it’s not quantum mechanics…We get it!
Neil galumphs in and provides us with more examples of useless and incompetent guanoing.
Whew! TSZ just dodged a bullet. Thank God we have Neil to protect us from such dangerous comments.
Here’s the first dangerous comment that Neil guanoed, in his great wisdom. It’s from ALurker:
Pretty scary, huh? Our Protector Neil has saved the day again.
Neil,
It’s interesting that you can find the time to guano ALurker’s innocuous comment, but not to respond to his or her direct question, posed in the Moderation Issues thread. Despite repeated reminders.
Lizzie created this thread for that very purpose. But screw that, right? Who cares what she wanted her moderators to do? If Neil don’t feel like responding, Neil ain’t gonna.
DNA_Jock, to ALurker:
Jock,
What Alan doesn’t want you (or anyone else) to know is that he already ran that experiment.
The results didn’t come out the way he wanted, so he swept them under the rug. He’s pretending it never happened, and now he wants to run the experiment again, as if for the first time.
But don’t worry. When Alan lies to you or hides things from you, he’s doing it out of the utmost respect:
Underhandedness is a service that Alan provides. Isn’t that what everyone wants in a moderator?
keiths,
Not sure what I’m doing that is hiding anything from scrutiny.
I’d like to emphasize again that there are separate issues here.
The future of TSZ is uncertain as Lizzie has not been actively involved for two years (other than one intervention regarding racist material). I have had some private communication with her and she assures me that, as long as people find the site useful, she is happy to finance it.
But Neil and I are the stewards of Gondor. Whilst we could, in principle, make policy changes we cannot (should we even wish to, a separate point) make such changes without agreement from Lizzie. My worry for the future is that some future event could put it at risk (exceeding permitted bandwidth, for example) which needs input from TSZ’s owner. But there is certainly no need for immediate panic. TSZ could carry on as it has done indefinitely, so long as there is someone able to do the odd bit of housekeeping.
But we are stuck with what we have and neither I (nor Neil I assume) are authorised or prepared to make major changes until the King should come again.
But…
Thanks to ALurker and phoodoo for some positive suggestions.
I particularly like the example of the symbiotic relationship between Pandas Thumb and ATBC. A blog format with contributions from a number of knowledgeable contributors with threads that are intended to be pertinent to the topic backed up by a forum for general discussion with more relaxed style.
All that’s needed for an experiment is a venue. I have used the analogy of Field of Dreams before. Lizzie built it, she owns it, people come. But they play by her rules. That doesn’t stop us making a bit more space. A practice field, perhaps. Here’s one I made earlier. It’s straight out of the box and I invite anyone interested to have a look. I’d set it with open registration but Russian spammers managed to post over a hundred comments in a matter of hours before I switched it to registration by email.
It’s an experiment. If there is zero interest, tant pis.
If there is at least some interest, I hope others would have ideas on how to run it and take an active part in how it is set up and run. I don’t intend it to be a dictatorship. I’m setting no rules, no topics, nothing other than the venue and heading up one forum for input from anyone interested.
*waits for sound of crickets while watching tumbleweed roll by*
ETA clarity
I still am against the idea of allowing the CIA to infiltrate this site. I mean he doesn’t even try to hide it.
Alurker? Yeah, I get the pun.
Dear moderators,
The “do atheists exist” OP is about presuppositional bullshitologetics. As such, it’s bound to the presuppositionalist tactics wherein the presuppositionalist will avoid answering questions and pretend to “win by default.” It is therefore in the nature of that bullshit to invite others to ask the presuppositionalist too stop avoiding, and thus, at least in that case, there should be no guanine of a request that has to be done: namely, that the presuppositionalist should support her/his claims.
Sincerely,
-me
The new thread magnified the discussion and whatever inherent problem that concerns you. It does relate to epistemological notions, though.
That’s rather the point. No finite system rules can encompass a continuum of thought. Some give and take is required. You could simply ignore fifthmonarchyman.
Except that it is not even possible for a presuppositionalist to support his or her claims. If he or she could support his or her claims, then those claims would not be functioning as presuppositions.
The deeper problem here is that the rules of TSZ require everyone to pretend that FMM is arguing in good faith, whereas in fact he is fundamentally incapable of doing so.
I would like to hear Neil defend moving that comment to Guano. It does not violate the rules, unlike fifthmonarchyman’s behavior.
Alan Fox: Please review this complaint and reinstate my comment, since I don’t expect Neil to treat my concerns fairly.
Notwithstanding your expectations, I’ve agreed with Neil that we henceforth treat the “Do Atheists Exist” thread as an extension of Noyau. Consider it another experiment. I’ll move comments back. If there are some I’ve missed, PM me with links.