As the replacement Moderation page has developed the old bug so that permalinks no longer navigate to the appropriate comment, so here is yet another page for continuing discussion on moderating issues. The Rules can be found there so anyone with an issue should check that they are familiar with them.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
I think Lizzie is clear enough for us to work with that unless she indicates otherwise. I agree that moving complaints and queries about moderation directly to the dedicated thread and responding immediately is better than guanoing a comment. It does seem at the moment Lizzie prefers comments are either moved to guano or not at all.
Repeating myself, the aims Lizzie has expressed are the important thing, that we, as far as possible ensure a venue that welcomes people with widely-varying points of view and allows rancour-free discussion. I think rules that assist that aim should be kept and rules that don’t should be changed. As Patrick says, it is an experiment.
Well, I’ve bitten my tongue on a couple of occasions too! I feel sure we agree on the overall aim to enable a free and open venue for discussion.
Alan Fox,
Yeah, you’re alright. *mumble*that Neil guy*mumble*
Hey Alan, has it ever occurred to you that one of the reasons that there is so much talk about moderation here, is that at least one of the moderators is a contentious, divisive asshole? Do you understand that that is usually not the type of character that websites use to act as a voice of reason and “moderation”? Do you think other decent websites choose the most ideological, bullying type of individual to bring civility to a site?
Its like deciding Donald Trump would be a good candidate to be a United Nations ambassador. How blind do you all have to be to not realize this is not a great idea?
I think this shows exactly how out of touch this site is.
At least one? I say, steady on!
Well, we’re not slavish imitators of other sites.
Assuming you are referring to Patrick and his dogged pursuit of a response to his questions regarding Erik’s position on Biblical literacy, I think people are free to ignore or not respond to questions as they wish – we have the ignore button now as well.
God knows what sort of a US President he might make. Do you think Trump has chance of being elected to that office? God help the US and us all if that happens.
The problem is that Lizzie’s benign dictatorship becomes an uncertain oligarchy in her absence.
Alan Fox,
Your TSZ Moderator! :
You are definitely not imitating other websites Alan.
More message weirdness. Two messages have simply disappeared. On received, and a reply.
phoodoo,
That’s pretty unfairly harsh on Neil, I think.
Has it ever occurred to you that it is possible to responsibly and fairly fulfill an admin role while still participating actively in discussion like any other commenter without taking advantage of those privileges? Just because the UD censors can’t do it doesn’t mean the rest of us are as ethically deficient.
Noyau is for letting off steam, phoodoo. If you don’t like that kind of free for all discussion, you don’t need to participate there.
I mostly agree with Alan’s decisions.
A couple of them have been borderline as far as the written rules go. But they fitted well with the broader conception of keeping this as a good discussion site and dealing with distractions from that goal.
We could just change the mission of the site to that of discussing moderation rules.
Would that help?
More importantly, would it actually change anything?
Glen Davidson
phoodoo,
Phoodoo, have you ever wondered why all the Moderation Talk here is by Butthurt UDites?
Is this your way of admitting that UD is not a decent website?
Sadly, you probably actually believe this is true.
😀
Mung,
It’s hyperbole. But still, its disproportionately high from those looking for death by cop. Fix UD first, reclaim your testicles, be a man again.
We should change this thread to “Mungeration Issues”.
I see you did not shit the bed when JohnnyB had a featured thread. Well done.
I see that dazz continues to be an ass and no
moderatoradmin seems interested in doing anything about it.I still fail to see why it’s the theists who have to play nice and suffer all the insults. Perhaps in all the concern for Lizzie’s wishes for this site someone ought to do something about the constant offenders.
I know, let’s ban them. 🙂
Richardthughes and his fixation on testicles and anal ejecta. Just the sort of person Lizzie loves to have posting on her site. Poster boy.
Radio Mung. All whine, all the time. Your 24/7/365 I’m A Victim station.
I think we’re seeing just another routine example of “Christian Persecution”, an affliction wherein Christians are treated exactly the same as everyone else, in sharp contrast to how they are treated when they hold the reins of power.
I bet you’re one of those back-woods intellectuals who thinks President Obama is a Muslim.
I have more sympathy for Mung than some of you.
Imagine waking up every day with a Mung brain in a Mung body. It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare, and Mung lives it every day. No wonder he’s grumpy all the time (quite apart from being rejected by KF).
The point is, when one becomes accustomed to privilege, and comes to take it for granted as the natural order of things, equality is indistinguishable from persecution.
And I note that the converse is also true – that groups routinely persecuted who are suddenly granted equality, SEEM like they are getting special treatment.
Because this thread is no different from Noyau. You may as well move borderline posts that are only kinda sorta Guano depending on which admin is looking at it to Noyau.
This just shows how inconsistent and confused Lizzie is. It’s ok to move posts to Guano but it’s not ok to move posts to Moderation Issues? Why not?
I’ll take a stab at it. There’s rules about what belongs in Guano. There are no rules about what belongs in Moderation Issues or Noyau. Instead of addressing that fundamental flaw, let’s pretend there are rules that don’t actually exist.
Back to your original question. Make the thread about Moderation Issues. Right now it’s about anything anyone wants to make it about, including allowing people to abuse anyone who posts here to their hearts content because this thread is as much a free-for-all thread as Noyau.
Make thus thread on-topic for moderation issues and disallow the off-topic and abusive comments. Make rules for this thread.
There’s no motivation for me to adopt any suggestion that I post here when in doing so I must agree to subject myself to abuse. That is just utterly insane.
Not only that, my request seems to me quite reasonable. I am seeking to strike a balance and find a way to agree to post comments about moderation in this thread, but Elizabeth can’t give an inch.
Now let’s see if we can at least admit that this suggestion that we post Moderation Issues in the Moderation Issues thread is a rather recent change to the way the site has been run. As I have pointed out, there have been a number of threads started for discussing site rules and moderation and none of them were closed to comments. Until now. So “the rules” have obviously changed, but you can’t tell that by looking at “the rules.” No such rules exist.
Making up new rules on the fly and censoring debate. Lizzie’s site, Lizzie’s not a rules. Whatever. Let’s at least drop the pretense.
Why are you asking people to imagine the impossible? Ah, skepticism! I get it now!
I was constantly bullied while growing up. I can recall instances from grade school through high school. Is that what you mean by privilege and the natural order?
If so, it sucks, and I want nothing to do with it.
In this instance, I was contrasting even-handed moderation with agenda-driven moderation. When one becomes accustomed to pontificating in a venue where everyone (who is allowed to post there) agrees, this becomes the Standard of Moderation. When one moves to a forum where the rules are applied equally, and behavior enforced only against the Misguided Enemy in the comfortable forum are applied against everyone, it seems like bias.
And so we see “Hey, I’m not doing anything different from what I’ve always done, except THERE my efforts are welcome and HERE I get sent to guano. THIS forum’s administrators are biased!”
Thank God that TSZ is not agenda-driven. It’s the anti-agenda-driven site! It’s owner and admins are atheists. Let’s pretend as if this does not affect their decisions or their actions [or lack of action].
I love fiction, including science fiction. Construct any alternate universe you like. That, along with a good story, might make me a fan.
LoL. TSZ. In search of house-trained penguins. Yeah, we understand what Lizzie wants.
I suppose you could say that the agenda here does favor some behaviors and not others. That’s the nature of rules. The distinction is that religious belief is orthogonal to the TSZ rules.
But I’m reminded of the Russian legal system, where it never even occurs to anyone to wonder if the accused committed the crime. Totally irrelevant. It’s a matter of whom he offended, and whether he has friends powerful enough to protect him.
If that’s the nature of rules, why should we suppose anything at all?
TSZ has rules. They are published. The admins fail to enforce the rules. The admins ignore the rules. Additional rules are made up to support the admins when they ignore the rules. Lizzie’s site, Lizzie’s rules. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
House trained Penguins unite!
He’s taking IDs demise badly….
I’ll agree you have a point here. Lizzie has said that it would be difficult to discuss individual issues about moderation while at the same time applying those moderation rules. But this thread seems to have evolved somewhat convergently towards another noyau. I think insisting that moderation issues should only be raised here should be balanced by insisting that it is only for moderation issues. Commentary that is not about moderation can be made in the sandbox thread (somewhat neglected these days) which is intended for anything that would be off-topic elsewhere, and there’s noyau for flaming and ranting.
Taking on board another point. Sure, many borderline rule-breaking comments get missed. Most commenters here, most of the time, have no apparent difficulty with remaining civil. I don’t know about other admins but I don’t have time to read all the comments these days. So I certainly miss comments or see them when they are so far upthread it would likely only create more friction by moving them. If I could find a plugin that would add an “alert mod” button to the comment box, that would be a help. The messages system is available now as a substitute.
Oh man, what parallel universe are you existing in? Holy Cow!
You think most posters here remain civil. You would be hard pressed to name even TWO who don’t resort to some kind of name calling or dismissive condescension at some point. And even if you could name two, they would certainly have to come from posters who posters rarely here. I don’t think you can name ONE who remains civil, and who posts frequently. That would be a real challenge to find that person here.
phoodoo,
He wouldn’t have to find ANY for “most of the commenters here, most of the time” to be true. You seem perpetually to be spoiling for a fight.
Mung,
That’s a convincing argument. I agree with you completely. This thread should be solely about Moderation Issues, with the rules relaxed only enough to allow that discussion. It should not be a second Noyau.
I’ll send a message to Elizabeth asking her to consider your position and modify the rules accordingly.
Alan Fox,
I agree completely. I just sent Elizabeth a message requesting such a rule change.
In general, I find the discussions here entertaining and informative. Yes, there is the occasional food fight. Yes, there are a few posters who seem to me to have a chip on their shoulder and take offense for no better purpose than to be offended, but this is infrequent enough so the site remains a worthwhile exercise.
I could wish to see less tu quoque argument, it sounds like a bunch of children saying “no fairsies, how come HE can do it and not me?” I interpret this as a consistently disappointed expectation of privilege.
I find the discussions to be mostly civil. Of course, I have stopped reading several posters, and stopped reading guano. And don’t spend much time at noyau or moderation issues.
I came here because this site doesn’t ban and doesn’t delete or edit posts. 99.999 percent true.
I have little interest in managing other people. I am not perfect, and I don’t demand perfection in others.
petrushka said:
… as long as no theist participates.
Patrick said;
Translation: “Don’t you think I can personally attack you in Noyau and treat you fairly on other threads?”
Answer: What we’d prefer is a moderator who doesn’t personally attack anyone, ever, regardless of their views, and who, after it was clear that they weren’t going to get the kind of answer they wanted, didn’t stalk other commenters.
Apparently, though, there isn’t a moderator to be found here that can resist joining in when the jackals get excited.
Should we take that as an assertion that theists are uncivil?
Only if you’re gobsmackingly stupid.
WJM:
C’mon, he’s using IRONY, Neil.
(Unintended meta irony also courtesy William “Go fuck yourself” Murray.)
That wasn’t irony, moron.
You miss the irony, do you?
Like so much…
Glen Davidson