Please use this thread for (and only for) alerting admins to moderation issues and for raising complaints arising from particular decisions. We remind participants that TSZ is a benign dictatorship, the property of Dr. Elizabeth Liddle. All decisions regarding policy and implementation are hers alone.
Or in soccer and rugby, to stop play because the ball has gone out of play, or because there is a player down injured on the field and play must be stopped while the player is removed from the field.
For safety reasons.
Their safety.
I like this analogy.
I’m always concerned about keiths’s safety. Can’t we just send all his posts to Guano?
Mung:
Heh. That is funny. And by Jon Garvey, of UD fame, no less.
I’ll respond. This should be fun.
Fun. Right.
I’m in favour of suspension for persistent rule offenders.
It is a cautionary tale. No good deed goes unpunished. No reason to be sad.
With increasing length of suspension if it continues. I really think that’s about the only way things will change. But some people might think of that as a reprimand. And we just don’t do that here. lmao
Mung,
You’re right to laugh, since it’s been done to J-Mac and phoodoo. The problem is that the ‘no moderation’ wing sees those actions as confirmation of their position, when really the problem is that the rules are insufficient to prevent chaos, so the mods have to act under cover of night–and in violation of them–to prevent the whole place from going any farther down the toilet than it already has. And you and phoodoo and fmm are also right to point out that these actions have only been taken against theists. So, where the rules blow, as they do here, it’s even more important to have a diversity of mods.
But this is all old news, hashed out a million times already. There will be no changes. Lizzie will not strengthen the rules when/if she comes back, and she will leave in disgust again a couple of weeks later. That’s life around here, I’m afraid.
I thought we were going to let the matter drop?
😉
peace
There you go. There is no better example of why we need more diversity in moderation.
I have no idea of the incident that caused phoodo to be blocked but I being a normal person automatically assume he was not given the same latitude that someone who agreed with the moderators on other issues would have had.
I would feel a lot better about it if I knew someone from my general side of the debate was in on the decision.
That is not a dig against any one its simply an observation about human nature.
We are all biased
peace
Just a reminder, you are a complete liar Neil.
The posts you objected to I made no mention of moderation whatsoever. I quoted others, plain and simple. The fact that you interpreted that as a post about moderation is irrelevant. Quoting others is not against the rules.
Furthermore, where in the rules does it say that is someone does something you don’t like, you get to block them?
I can go back and show you the posts Neil. You can’t lie your way out, because the posts are all sitting there in guano. Not a single word about moderation in them.
What does a site do when a moderator is an abject liar, and there is no one to admonish the moderator for lying and making up rules?
Nothing, that’s what.
Like my father always used to say, “The only thing worse than a sniveling feckless weasel is a lying sniveling feckless weasel.”
Or maybe it wasn’t my father, I can’t remember.
They seem to think you flounced away and curled up into the fetal position.
Hahaha. I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
So apparently the mods were letting rule violating comments go and phoodoo was quoting those comments and the moderator response was to ban phoodoo. lmao.
In other words ,the purpose of the phoodoo’s quoting of other’s comments was for the purpose of a discussion of unfairness of moderation.
If phoodoo is banned how is he posting right now?
Because a moderator who is a theist would naturally give phoodoo a pass because he is a theist as
Here is a bit of the flavor
“Oh no, I think you misunderstood, I wasn’t discussing moderation, I am of the belief that moderation doesn’t exist on this site, so I wasn’t discussing that. I was discussing your intellect. So please restore my comments, they were about your inability to understand. A concept which you find perfectly reasonable to discuss, as I have just shown.”
A bit about strippers, a bit about Neil’s children and wife.
Now I am not sure exactly where he was required to have comments approved before publishing after this meltdown but since he has other posts after it seems this was not sufficient.
How about now as a normal theist, would insults to your family be ok as long as he believed in the divinity of Jesus? A refusal to use the moderation thread because of his sincerely held belief?
Then go to the guano thread and give us the decision
peace
And this is why those posts should have been in the moderation thread.
As best I recall, he was never banned. He was placed in moderation, so that his posts would not show up until approved.
The restrictions were lifted, once he appeared to have stopped that kind of disruptive posting.
Nope, I would say that a moderator who agreed with someone on most things would be more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt.
That has been my general experience from both theists and atheists
by the same token he would more likely to listen to calls to knock it off if they came from a moderator who he usually agreed with.
Insults to anyone’s family would be beyond the pale IMO.
I would be curious if everyone here would agree with you that there were insults to someones family involved.
Are you saying that he sincerely believed that the moderation thread was no longer a viable option for theists here?
Was there evidence for that belief according to a good number of folks?
peace
newton,
Listen, I’m uncomfortable with this entire discussion. I’m not trying to make this an us against them thing or run down the present moderators.
I am only making a suggestion that I believe will make it better.
I don’t frequent UD because I don’t like the way that the minority is treated there.
I’d hate for that sort of atmosphere to dominate here as well.
peace
I don’t frequent the moderation thread very often precisely because I don’t like the trash talk that goes on here.
I expect it would be 100 times worse in guano.
peace
Jock is being an ass again and refusing to link to guanoed comments.
You have to marvel at how quickly he has begun abusing his moderation privileges.
1: I have changed keiths to Contributor status. He can no longer start new threads. Or, more accurately, he can start a new thread but it will need approval before it is published.
2: A recent post by keiths clearly violated site rules. That post has now been marked “Private”. I think that means that only administrators can see it. This should be considered a temporary response, to allow administrators time to review the situation.
3: Keiths can still post comments. However, if he abuses that ability, then he will be placed in moderation. In particular, a burst of moderation complaints will be considered abuse.
Wow, Neil. Everything you just did is not only against the rules, it also promotes censorship.
You have become Barry Arrington. Congratulations.
I see Neil is still continuing to make up any new rules he wants, even in complete opposition to Lizzie’s stated goal of the site.
One promise (fingers were crossed) was that all posts would be visible on the site. How can people know what so called rules keiths has broken, if we can’t even judge for ourselves the level of lying Neil is doing?
I guess once Neil got a taste for breaking the sites owns rules and making up whatever he wants, he just can’t get enough of the power trip.
Thankfully I don’t contribute here anymore-but piss off anyway Neil.
Understandable, however “but I being a normal person automatically assume he was not given the same latitude that someone who agreed with the moderators on other issues would have had.”
No need to automatically assume , it is in black and white. It might give you pause before making phoodoo the poster child of religious discrimination hereabouts.
If he was , we would not be reading this. You know that, right?
You got what you deserve…I hope you push further, as you should, as a typical narcissist, and get your comments moderated…
TSZ would be a much better place then…
Just show us all you got, keiths…We all know you can do it! 😉
TCZ — The Censorship Zone.
At his age, I think that’s allowed.
The light dawns.
phoodoo,
keiths posted a potentially libelous OP here in retaliation after he failed to stick an attempted flounce and subsequently got his account suspended at Peaceful Science.
These sound like punitive measures.
No mention of guano though.
That’s some pretty interesting reading.
“This should be fun” – keiths (apparently quite a jovial & confident attitude going into the debacle yesterday evening at PS)
All of those nice things Joshua was saying about keiths the angry apostate, not angry at God, of course, but at “anybody who doesn’t ‘play fair’ who is not an openly and self-declared atheist”.
It is the emptiness not of minds, but of most hearts at this site, along with pride at being able to do it ‘alone in the universe’ that makes it so hard to stay here for prolonged periods anymore.
All that keiths would need to laugh at his own distortions, disfigurations and exaggerations (“failed to stick an attempted flounce” – bang on!) would be to take himself out of the centre of his universe. Could that be so hard, while shaking an angry fist at ‘Christians’ all along the way?
I notice that ‘Mung’ has just joined PS a couple of days ago & made his (this is confirmed) first post there.
My advice: Mung should leave TSZ & join PS, not looking back for a second.
It’s such a sink hole of potential & talent to ‘debate’ & try to ‘persuade’ atheists, especially those like keiths & alan. Vincent knows this too, he just doesn’t have the words to properly say it. TSZ is NOBODY’s mission & it never was anything special except for a stick in the eye of Barry Arrington & the strange folks at UD because Elizabeth Liddle already had a kind of fanbase or at least loosely coupled community.
Beyond that, there’s nothing ‘worthy’ about a place for skeptics filled with scientism & philosophistry. Go to PS, try out Joshua’s “Science of Adam” for yourselves. Figure out if you really can ‘get along’ with the evangelical attitude there.
keiths obviously couldn’t get along with Joshua (well, that’s not hard to figure out – the ‘confessional scientist’ has proven to be a regularly self-deceptive woolly communicator); maybe others here would try? There’s some strong voices, including scientists there. It’s a much more uplifting cast of characters than those cowering or shouting from the dark doldrums here in a forum abandoned by ‘Lizzie’, now fetished apostate mother who simply hasn’t delivered.
And miss Lizzie’s return?
Mung,
Yeah, what’s the impetus there? Give peace a chance? Ah, yes, PS – the self-proclaimed ‘5th voice!’ = P
That’s why Joshua’s place would be great for you AND Lizzie too (& if keiths can overcome his tantrum, then atheists are even allowed to be talked to privately in a special Atheist Backchannel by Dr. Swamidass too; what a smarmy treat!). Joshua might even make Lizzie a Moderator there, while he works on a paper about Roman Catholics with Vincent Torley, which would be Vince’s first actual scholarly publication, and as such, Torley likely just doesn’t have the time anymore for lower priorities like TSZ as a predominantly apologetics venue. Joshua’s opening up doors and closing others (except for when naively opening every window & door) for people there, so maybe you should promote the Mung-IDT there that you find so precious? Surely you’ll be able to educate Joshua with your IDism, Mung, or is that what might dissuade you?
Must not be very fun being you.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you. It’s not like you will ever be him.
Never occurred to me I could be. Not smart enough and certainly don’t have the stamina for that level of indignation.
keiths:
Mung:
It dawned a long time ago. Remember, I’ve been on record opposing every dipshit censorship scheme that Alan and Neil have come up with. I was against the ridiculous censorship of phoodoo, by which all of his comments required approval before being published; and I am against the ongoing censorship of J-Mac, in which the moderators reserve the right to delete his OPs based on content, allowing them to be seen only if and when the moderators approve. Both of those are censorship schemes, pure and simple. And both are ridiculous and inappropriate at a website that was founded largely in response to the rampant censorship at Uncommon Descent.
As is the current censorship scheme being imposed on me.
It’s amusing that after hysterically rushing to “disappear” my OP, Neil has tacitly admitted the ridiculousness of his action by backing off and making the OP visible again. But the comments still aren’t.
The sanctity of comments at TSZ — the idea that they will never be deleted or hidden, but will at most be moved to Guano — is being violated by rogue moderators who simply can’t abide by this obvious principle.
And so the folks at Uncommon Descent, who have been bristling for years at TSZ’s (once-correct) assertion that TSZ is a better place because comments are sacrosanct — can now point back at TSZ and rightly say “Hypocrites!” The moderators are indeed hypocrites, and it’s bringing shame upon TSZ.
Thus my larger points about moderation are once again demonstrated. Moderation isn’t needed at TSZ, and in fact it’s harmful. Putting power in the hands of immature folks like Alan, Neil, and Jock is a bad idea, because they are inevitably tempted to abuse it and they don’t have the decency or strength of character to resist that temptation.
As I said.
Mung, to Neil:
They are punitive, of course. Alan, Neil, and Jock all know that; they also know that moderation isn’t supposed to be punitive. They simply can’t do the right thing.
This is what happens when you hand the keys of a blog to a group of spiteful and impulsive boys with bruised egos.
walto, to Mung:
Yes. Pitiful, isn’t it?
That’s just not true. Take the J-Mac situation, which you and I have already discussed at length. The censorship wasn’t necessary. There were perfectly reasonable alternative solutions on the table, including rate limiting (which you initially proposed). Those solutions would not have required the mods to act “under cover of night” or to violate the rules.
The moderators chose to violate the rules and ignore the spirit of TSZ for one simple reason: ego. It would have been humiliating for them to back down and reverse their censorship scheme, even though they knew it was the right thing to do. So they put their egos ahead of TSZ’s best interests yet again.
It’s been a longstanding and familiar pattern for Alan and Neil, and now you can see Jock doing the same thing. His silly refusal to announce and link to guanoed comments is nothing but adolescent rebelliousness. It’s against TSZ’s interests, and Jock knows that. But he does it anyway to show that he’s a big boy. No one’s gonna push him around. You think he should do his job? He’ll show you by refusing to do it.
He thinks that demonstrates strength. In reality, it just shows that Jock is a weak guy in thrall to his own fragile ego.
I don’t see it.
Do you think he forgot to mention that on his application?
I’ll need to remember to put it on mine.
It certainly deterred you from authoring posts.
No need.
keiths:
Mung:
You’re right. The comments are visible once you click on the OP itself. It’s just that the comment line (saying “Posted in Uncategorized: 27 replies”) isn’t accurate. That is, there’s no longer an indication on the home page that there are any replies to the OP.
Let’s see if it gets updated once I post a new comment to the thread.