Moderation Issues (5)

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.

2,097 thoughts on “Moderation Issues (5)

  1. Talking about “repetitive”, I’ve been working my way through the old “Moderation Issues ” threads. RL intervenes and I’m on page 7 of moderation_issues_2 so please bear with me.

  2. Maybe this is relevant:

    I have closed comments on a number of threads that have been created about moderation at TSZ.

    The place to discuss moderation is in Moderation Issues. There are two reasons for this:

    The first is that the game-rules do not apply in Moderation Issues – there, commenters can complain as much as they like about any lack of good faith they perceive in the way the site is moderated.

    The second is that the main page is for discussing stuff other than the site itself, and I do not want it dominated by meta-threads about the site. If all you want to talk about here is TSZ, there is no point in having TSZ.

    I would also point out that closing comments is NOT “censorship”: ou are free to say what you like in Moderation issues – you actually have more freedom there; nor do I delete a damn thing. Everything anyone posts on this site remains visible to read.

    Nor is stickying non-meta threads to the top of the front page the equivalent of covering cat-shit. It is simply a way of making sure that the front page “features” actual topics for discussion, not discussion of moderation that belongs in Moderation Issues.

    If people want to ask questions about moderation, or discuss moderation actions, or the rules, then do it in Moderation Issues.*

    From here.

    *My emphasis.

  3. DNA_Jock:

    I understood Alan’s comment to be drawing the post/poster distinction.

    Alan:

    As if Lizzie, myself and other admins have not made this point many times since the inception of this blog!

    The problem is that you can’t keep it straight, Alan. It’s too confusing for you.

    PS @ phoodoo

    “The stupidity you continually write rarely has a point.” is not guano-worthy. There is a distinction between a general accusation of stupidity ( e g “God, you’re slow!”) and pointing out a claim or assertion in a comment is “stupid”.

    As walto correctly noted:

    Your comments about general v. specific just confuse the issue. It doesn’t matter at all whether an attack is “general” or “specific”–what’s relevant is its target.

    And as I commented:

    He was confusing general/specific with post/poster. It’s a continual problem for Alan, even after years as a moderator. The rules, simple though they are, overtax his cognitive abilities. (And that’s setting aside the immaturity, the dishonesty, and the moderation abuses.)

    The job is simply beyond you, Alan.

  4. Alan, if you are going to say that when Lizzie wrote:

    Do not regard having your post moved here as a reprimand, merely as a referee’s whistle. 🙂

    Feel free to comment on them at any other peanut gallery of your choice.

    she really meant”…leave this site and go elsewhere”, then you are simply the biggest dam liar on this site; besides being an absolutely horrible moderator.

    Furthermore, any decline (as it were) in the quality and repetition of this website, is squarely on yours and Neils shoulders, when you make the painfully tortured rationale for how you have handled the moderation. You let pure vacuous horseshit comments proliferate throughout the site, and then you selectively chose to intervene in the most inappropriate and biased ways possible.

    I am perfectly happy to no longer contribute any more posts to this site, and let it decline even further, but don’t act as if you aren’t to blame. I am sure Mung had similar feelings.

    Ban me for simply quoting what other people said (posts that weren’t even in guano!)… Fuck you.

  5. Alan Fox: Again, I’m mystified how people can misinterpret that. Lizzie is saying in a polite way – “If you don’t like my rules, fuck off elsewhere.”

    Is that clear enough?

    I suspect some American readers may not have picked up on the tone present in “Feel free to…” : in the UK, those three words are generally followed by “..go fuck yourself” or similar.
    phoodoo, unsurprisingly, has failed to notice the sentence preceding ” Do not regard having your post moved here as a reprimand, merely as a referee’s whistle.”, which states

    Comments that seem to me to be in violation of the game rules will be moved here, and closed to further comment.

    Given that context, it is pretty clear that “Feel free to…” is not an invitation of shit all over the rest of TSZ.

  6. DNA_Jock: I suspect some American readers may not have picked up on the tone present in “Feel free to…” : in the UK, those three words are generally followed by “..go fuck yourself” or similar.
    phoodoo, unsurprisingly, has failed to notice the sentence preceding ” Do not regard having your post moved here as a reprimand, merely as a referee’s whistle.”, which states

    Given that context, it is pretty clear that “Feel free to…” is not an invitation of shit all over the rest of TSZ.

    This was certainly the way I understood the statement. “Other peanut galleries” never struck me as referring to other threads here, but rather other sites (like UD.)

  7. DNA_Jock,

    At Guardian Careers, we’re always interested to hear from people with something to say about careers. Whether you’re a journalist, a jobseeker, a careers adviser, a manager, employee or graduate – feel free to pitch your ideas about possible blogs and articles for the site.

    In other words, fuck off. Who asked you?

    The Guardian, opinions:

    Vegans, carnivores, whatever… feel free to just eat in peace …

    Fuck off vegans. Eat meat or don’t read the Guardian, snowflake fuckheads.

    Matthew Stadlen: Men should feel free to talk about their mental health. This is my story

    I said its MY story not YOUR story. Go kill yourself already, willya?

    Teaching mathematics says:

    Dear Parent/Guardian, I am excited to have your child in ______ grade! … Feel free to inquire about your child’s progress or let me know of any problems as they arise.

    If we wanted you to know about your child’s progress, we would have already told you by now. Fuck off already, whose the teacher here?

    The Daily Telegraph wants you to know:

    Feel free to enjoy a family day out. If you need cheap and fun things to do with the kids, Emma Lunn has all the answers.

    …that Emma Lunn doesn’t give a fuck about your kids. What is she, your therapist? Piss off!

    Feel free to enjoy Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Churchill but don’t forget his problematic past.

    He’s Churchill douchbag, are you? Shut your trap.

    BBC.co.uk Learning English › Grammar and Vocabulary:

    Oleg from the Ukraine asks: Could you please tell me the rule for using should in questions like this: ‘Should you have any problems, feel free to contact me.’ What does it mean? And how does it differ from: ‘If you have any questions, please contact me?’

    Oleg, thank you for asking. The first one means fuck off don’t ask. Does that help? If it doesn’t feel free to ask another way.

    Hello, welcome to WikiProject BBC! We cover all articles that are related to the BBC and over time we aim to make all BBC related articles among the best that Wikipedia has to offer. We always welcome new members to assist us with this task, and so if you would like to help us with this, please feel free to add your name

    Why the fuck do you think we would want you to contribute to Wikiproject BBC, dumbass? Fucking Morons.

    Feel free to respond Jock, and have a nice day, won’t you!

    Feel free to block me, Alan.

  8. ROFL phoodoo, one of your quoted examples is actually sardonic. You can’t even cherry-pick competently.
    Feel free to comment at any other peanut gallery of your choice.

  9. I don’t know what Lizzie intended, myself, but this sure does seem like a stupid thing to fight about. Keeping moderation kerfuffles in one place seems a sensible idea to me. What I guess rankles phoodoo and keiths is the tendency to sometimes hide behind Lizzie and sometimes do…whatever.

    Why not just get a blanket ok from her to…i don’t know…make any rules changes that walto would like and be done with it? She hasn’t been back here in, what, 3 years? And the last time she made an appearance was for something like 2 days. Enough already.

  10. walto,

    Keeping moderation kerfuffles in one place seems a sensible idea to me.

    Not having moderation kerfuffles seems like a better idea to me.

    I think we need to tape fake ‘guano’ buttons to Alan and Neil’s keyboards, and a fake ‘Nuke’ button to Trump’s desk in the Oval Office. Something for the undisciplined man-children to play with, when they want to feel powerful.

  11. I think she still pays for the site.

    I don’t know how much.

    I post at a site with equivalent software and a similar number of members. It’s hosted by Amazon for about ten dollars a month.

  12. keiths:
    walto,

    Not having moderation kerfuffles seems like a better idea to me.

    I think we need to tape fake ‘guano’ buttons to Alan and Neil’s keyboards, and a fake ‘Nuke’ button to Trump’s desk in the Oval Office.Something for the undisciplined man-children to play with, when they want to feel powerful.

    So important to you to have unfettered insult rights.Maybe you need a fake insult button on your keyboard. Come to think of it, that might be good for Trump too.

  13. petrushka:
    I think she still pays for the site.

    I don’t know how much.

    Enough to provide (at the moment) plenty of bandwidth.

    I post at a site with equivalent software and a similar number of members. It’s hosted by Amazon for about ten dollars a month.

    The latest thing seems top be “cloud computing”. I was looking at forum software and “Discourse” really only works on the cloud at 20€ per month. Plenty of deals and offers around at the moment for less than half that expenditure.

  14. walto: What I guess rankles phoodoo

    Well, that’s only one of the things that rankles. What’s really bullshit is that Neils and Alan have blocked ALL of my posts and make them wait in a moderation queue, because I had the audacity to quote posts THAT WEREN’T EVEN IN GUANO!. And why exactly have they done that. because they know it makes them look foolish to show what they actually allow and don’t allow here. No rule broken whatsoever, I just quoted what someone said and let people make their own conclusions. For this I am essentially block banned, whilst the ACTUAL guano worthy posts and posters, well they are fine. The important thing is we don’t embarrass Neil and Alan, because then of course they will take decisive action! Brave fuckers they are.

    Alan knows full well this was never Lizzie’s intention, so using that as an excuse is just him being a pussy. Feel free off Alan, douchebag.

    I don’t really care, I am done with the site, but I enjoy showing what hypocrites they are.

  15. phoodoo,
    It’s true your comments are currently held in moderation prior to publication. All your comments will be published as soon as Neil or I see them. Any that break site rules will appear in guano. Actually it just now occurs to me that we should nonetheless flag the fact you have made a comment. I apologize for overlooking that. Anyway, this situation can be remedied if you’d just assure us you’ll try and abide by the rules in future. I’d much rather you weren’t restricted.

  16. phoodoo: , because I had the audacity to quote posts THAT WEREN’T EVEN IN GUANO!

    You were asked to put those in the moderation thread. And if you had done that, you would not have been put into moderation.

  17. Neil Rickert: phoodoo: , because I had the audacity to quote posts THAT WEREN’T EVEN IN GUANO!
    You were asked to put those in the moderation thread. And if you had done that, you would not have been put into moderation.

    Wait, let me get this straight.

    In order for me to prevent being banned by you, I have to first acknowledge that you get to decide what my posts mean, and thus you get to move any post you like, because well, you can make up a reason why you “feel” it is against the rules, even if it isn’t?

    You moderators, who use every perverted twist of the rules to come up with some bizarre technicallity for why you can move one post that is supposedly insulting, but not another (that just so happens to be by an atheist whose views you share) because the other insult, well, you see, it had other substance as well. Or that insult was not specific enough. Or that insult was an insult directed at the future actions of the person being insulted not the present actions,. or that insult was a general insult as to the abilities of the person, but not the person themselves. or well, you see, if we removed that insult it would have interrupted the flow of that conversation, so it was best to leave it. Or this response to an insult warranted being removed, because, well, you should be able to accept that without replying, so you see, its you who is to blame. Or, yes, well, I see they called you a moron, but they didn’t mean that, they were being emotional, which is understandable given that you continue to write things that aren’t inline with our philosophy, so of course they will be frustrated and reply that you are a fucking idiot, but that’s not really an insult, that is a response to YOUR post…so in the case, I am just going to give you a warning, don’t incite the insults, and you won’t have a problem, see?? So I am giving you a warning this time for making the athiest use an insult, and next time try not to make them do that. Ok, you are on notice, do make them use insults any more, got it?

    You expect me to say, Oh, ok, I will follow THOSE rules, sure! And when you say, Oh, you can’t quote someone, because we know why you are quoting them, you are qutoing them because its a statement about moderation see, so that’s against the rules. We KNOW your motivation, so we get to rule based on our perception of what you are posting. Forget the actual rules, allow us to decide when we feel like interferring, then maybe we won’t ban you. See, if you quote someone, that is not acceptable-we know you are just mocking us. So we don’t like being embarrassed, so we make new rules. Why not, because we can do whatever we want, you already said so Neil. You can kick cats, and lie, and do whatever you like. Don’t like it? Want to complain? Sorry, as Lizzie says, well, you go fuck off somewhere else. Ha. Gotcha!

    So I should just say, oh ok great Master, ok, let’s play by these retarded rules that have no rules other than what you feel like. Great idea.

    Again, go fuck yourself.

  18. Another censorship fiasco, thanks to Alan and Neil.

    Who seem to have learned nothing from their J-Mac screwup.

    ETA: And of course this is even worse, because it affects every comment that phoodoo makes.

  19. keiths:
    Another censorship fiasco, thanks to Alan and Neil.
    Who seem to have learned nothing from their J-Mac screwup.
    ETA: And of course this is even worse, because it affects every comment that phoodoo makes.

    Not if you don’t read them and don’t care.

  20. keiths:

    Another censorship fiasco, thanks to Alan and Neil.

    Who seem to have learned nothing from their J-Mac screwup.

    ETA: And of course this is even worse, because it affects every comment that phoodoo makes.

    petrushka:

    Not if you don’t read them and don’t care.

    Your logic needs some work.

  21. Isn’t the time to remove the 4 Fisher OP’s from the featured OPs?
    It seems painfully obvious the Joe Felsenstein and Michael Lynch are either unwilling or unable to respond to Basener and Sanford last response… The latter seems more like it…

    BTW: Tom English was cooking some math that was to kill their system… apparently.. but since that claim we have only heard his sobbing about how ID is religion and his religion is not…

  22. keiths:
    Yet another moderation fuckup, courtesy of Neil: closing comments on a thread.

    What is wrong with you, Neil?

    Hmmm… I too am dissatisfied with Neil’s decision.

    I requested he either guano the objectionable posts or delete my OP altogether.

    Perhaps the suggestion that neither side found Neil’s intervention entirely satisfactory, would indicate that Neil indeed took the correct action.

    FTR – Jew baiting crosses any line from uncivil to uncivilized behavior. Ditto Christian-baiting.

    Don’t get me wrong – if certain religious beliefs cross their own line into political indoctrination or if certain religious beliefs cannot withstand the scrutiny of historically informed cynicism – then by all means – parody and satire are fair game. For example, Danish newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist with a bomb to Charlie Hebdo’s repeated similar lampoons of Islamist extremism are spot on. (or at least used to be until self-censure took hold)

    IMHO – that is not what happened in response to my post of Nina Palley’s efforts.

    A line was crossed which deserved censure or deletion. That again is my opinion – which I recognize is not unanimous. Neil took a polite middle course and yet again, that is my own opinion.

  23. Tom:

    Perhaps the suggestion that neither side found Neil’s intervention entirely satisfactory, would indicate that Neil indeed took the correct action.

    No, it was clearly a fuckup on Neil’s part. He is entitled to guano rule-violating comments (though he does it far too often), but he is not entitled to close comments. Having taken such an extraordinary step, he is obligated to state his reasons.

    A line was crossed which deserved censure or deletion

    No. Mockery is perfectly permissible at TSZ, but the deletion of OPs and comments is not. You may wish it were otherwise, but that is irrelevant.

  24. TomMueller: IMHO – that is not what happened in response to my post of Nina Palley’s efforts.

    Unfortunately, folks tend not to follow links. Paley is making more nuanced points than some of our members. With hindsight, a post in Sandbox might have been less provoking.

  25. A good moderator would step in and reverse Neil’s action.

    What does Alan do instead? He circles the wagons and uselessly guanos a critical comment, despite the fact that his action does absolutely nothing to make TSZ a better place.

    TSZ is a valuable and interesting site. How did we end up with these two useless fucks — Alan and Neil — for moderators?

  26. Still no explanation from Neil for why he closed comments, or from Alan for why he failed to challenge Neil’s action.

    Pitiful.

  27. Alan and Neil,

    The user nomenmeum has alerted me that he has tried to post regarding Kondrashov’s paper. Do you see his comment in the mod queues?

    Sal

  28. It’s Alan and Neil’s job to explain their moderation decisions when questioned. No surprise that they’re refusing to do it, though, as usual.

    They know they can’t justify the closing of comments on the Paley thread, so they don’t even bother trying. And of course they don’t even consider correcting their mistake.

    TSZ deserves better than these fuckwits.

  29. The thread was complete garbage of no value other than to demonstrate what jerks some people can be.

  30. keiths: It’s Alan and Neil’s job to explain their moderation decisions when questioned.

    So you claim. I disagree.

    Mung: The thread was complete garbage of no value other than to demonstrate what jerks some people can be.

    I think you might be right about that. It was not conducive to raising the general tone, building bridges, promoting the goals of this site, … that kinda stuff.
    OTOH, I found it rather funny, for meta-reasons.

    keiths: Your opinion is noted, but that isn’t a valid reason for closing comments.

    And your opinion is likewise noted for what it is.

  31. DNA_Jock:

    So you claim. I disagree.

    You haven’t done your homework. Lizzie wanted the moderators to be answerable to the commenters, and it’s one of the reasons she created the Moderation Issues thread.

  32. keiths: You haven’t done your homework. Lizzie wanted the moderators to be answerable to the commenters, and it’s one of the reasons she created the Moderation Issues thread.

    I think Lizzie wanted commenters to have the opportunity to complain about moderation decisions, free from any fear of censorship.
    Please provide a citation to support your contention that Lizzie wanted the moderators to be answerable to the commenters. I think you may be correct in this, but I’d like to see your evidence.
    Please provide a citation (#2) to support your contention that it is a moderator’s job to “explain their moderation decisions when questioned.”.
    Note that, in normal English usage, your ‘when’ is synonymous with ‘whenever’.
    Hence my disagreement.
    You’ll need this latter citation to support your position that I have not done my homework. You can JMO, if you would prefer.

  33. Jock,

    Whether you got the memo is unimportant and uninteresting. Alan and Neil both know that they are supposed to respond to moderation complaints and justify their actions. Indeed, both of them do so when they feel they can. It’s when they can’t that they fall strangely silent. It’s an obvious “tell”.

    As in this case. A good moderator would close comments on a thread only with justification, and a good moderator would be willing to share that justification with the readership. Neil and Alan can’t do that. Neil screwed up, and he knows that. Alan screwed up by not reversing Neil’s decision, and he knows that. So they both clam up. I suppose they figure it’s better to remain silent than to give a bogus justification that everyone will see through.

    TSZ deserves better than these fuckups.

  34. keiths: Alan and Neil both know that they are supposed to respond to <insert>reasonable</insert> moderation complaints and justify their actions.

    FTFY
    It seems to me that you are harboring a strange delusion about the nature of the obligation that Alan and Neil are under.

    keiths: Whether you got the memo is unimportant and uninteresting.

    To you, perhaps. But you asserted that I had not done my homework.
    Since you are unwilling or unable to support your assertion, are you going to retract, or JMO?

  35. keiths: Whether you got the memo is unimportant and uninteresting.

    It’s interesting to me. Go fetch the evidence for your claim.

  36. keiths,

    These guys are doing moderation. Moderation is not easy. Thus, sometimes they might be spot on, sometimes they might mess it up. So what? There’s plenty of threads where we can comment, and that my insults to some idiots have gone to guano doesn’t mean that those idiots have stopped being idiots. Life goes on. Let it go. Keep having fun regardless.

    Just a suggestion.

  37. Jock, inserting “reasonable” into my comment:

    Alan and Neil both know that they are supposed to respond to reasonable moderation complaints and justify their actions.

    What’s unreasonable about asking Neil to explain why he closed comments on the Paley thread?

    keiths:

    Whether you got the memo is unimportant and uninteresting.

    Jock:

    To you, perhaps. But you asserted that I had not done my homework.

    And you confirmed it:

    I think you may be correct in this, but I’d like to see your evidence.

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