For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
oh, that’s rich coming from thorton.
To my knowledge, Kantian Naturalist was not banned from UD, his departure was purely voluntary, and unlike others who promised to leave and not return he has been a man of his word. Almost.
KN has never been banned at UD.
No one has ever been banned at UD for making a good faith argument. Trollish behavior will get you booted PDQ.
“Of course exposing your incompetence and bullying stupidity is not very difficult thing to accomplish.”
Then why have you never been able to accomplish it?
LOL! Where “trollish behavior” is defined as anything that contradicts the claims of the blustering gasbag lawyer that controls the place.
I was banned years ago when Dr. Dr. Dr. ran the place. But that’s OK, every person you cowardly ban for showing you up just adds to your ever sinking reputation.
Hi Barry – welcome!
First – I think you deserve credit for venturing out from the safety of UD.
Here’s a link to a partial record of UD bans (27 pages and counting) : http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=52957406294c2aaa;act=ST;f=14;t=5141;st=0
Congratulations on being in charge of UD. As a regular reader I’d personally like to see some science with actual information calculations for biological organisms, and less apologetics and right-wing talking points.
Should you wish to author posts here, I’m sure we can arrange that. Our moderation rules are a bit different so we’d have to be clear on that first. Please, enjoy yourself, have a virtual cup of tea and again, welcome.
Ah they joy of knowing with certainty the faith of people’s arguments and Troll detection. You have much to teach us, Barry! Please, stay a while.
You lie.
Barry, please demonstrate that I ever posted anything not in good faith.
Barry Arrington:
That got a good belly laugh out of me.
Welcome Barry!
@ Thorton
You can be very hurtful sometimes! 🙂
Lizzie’s blog – Lizzies rules.
No accusations of lying, no insults. Treat other commenters as if they were posting in good faith.
This applies to the sandbox.
Further transgressions could land your comment in guano!
Are we allowed to point out that a statement is false?
Of course. Lying is when someone makes a false statement knowing, at the time, it is false. Making a false statement, believing it to be correct; is something I am probably guilty of more often than I realise.
Your projector needs a new lamp.
“No one has ever been banned at UD for making a good faith argument.” – Barry Arrington
Does that include booting people for pointing out that the strongest and most accurate criticisms of IDT are made by theists?
Barry is so far-right Colorado he misses the posts. His claim of ‘good faith’ should be interpreted in that ‘way out’ (over there) sense. We wouldn’t want Barry giving a bad name to all of the centre-kicking Abrahamic believers who reject IDism on a sound and coherent basis. And that’s a scary thing for a lawyer like Barry to face, when he knows the ‘case’ he is being a UD activist for cannot be defended without underhanded tricks and censorship.
Interesting to note that Arrington has started a thread at UD claiming he was effectively banned by TSZ. Several people have pointed out to him that no he wasn’t banned, he (and some others) had some off-topic posts move here to Sandbox. Despite this correction Arrington is still sticking to his “banned’ claim and claiming TSZ is just trying to spin doctor the ban. Pathetic.
In that case, I would like to challenge Barry to explain exactly how Lizzie was not arguing in good faith when she was banned. If he cannot support his claim, he should retract it. If he refuses to do either, I submit that identifying him as a liar is an objective observation.
It seems Barry has forgotten that he was welcomed and offered post authoring rights in his version of events on UD. I’m sure a nice fella like him will correct that oversight.
Oh wait, I think I get it. Barry has posted “Arrington Effectively Banned at The Skeptical Zone” – I think he’s cleverly making a meta-point. The phrase “Arrington Effectively Banned at The Skeptical Zone” is of course testable! When Barry posts again it will (per Popper) have been falsified but could still become true (and then untrue again) at some point in the future.
Barry is also smart clever lawyer and knows that posts moved banned. I’m excited to see where Barry is taking this!
At this point in the saga I feel that Mark Frank and Neil Rickert have taken me to task for deleting Barry’s post, and that they were correct to do so. I violated the TSZ moderation policy when I deleted his post, and it was wrong of me to do so. Hence I’m thankful that Neil restored the comments and posted them here. (I do regret having caused extra work for him.) The content of Barry’s post made me very angry, but that’s no excuse. I shall do better in the future.
Kantian Naturalist,
KN, I think perhaps you should consider stepping down from Moderation duties.
Arrington is still playing the martyr at UD claiming that it was TSZ who “banned” him. Not one individual poster who Arrington has treated like shit in the past removing Arrington’s off-topic bluster from one thread.
Honesty just isn’t Arrington’s thing. Of course now he can’t come back here without looking even more like a hypocritical jackass.
I agree. I hereby withdraw my moderation rights and authorship privileges.
Oh, if only UD had the candor to suggest Salvador T. Cordova ‘step down’ from his blatant censorship there. Barry Arrington endorses Cordova’s editorial lunacy, even when it involves IDist ‘Mung.’
As a moderator, I would prefer that authors make requests in the “Moderation” thread, or even notify me in the contact form at my blog. The “Moderation” thread is readable by all moderators, but the request is public. The contact form at my blog would only be seen by me.
If an author thinks urgent action is needed, I would prefer that an offending comment be flagged for moderation, instead of being trashed. It is easier to notice that there are items that require moderator attention.
KN – No need to withdraw your authorship privileges. Your posts are in my opinion excellent.
Thank you. But as I understand the system — granted, I’m fairly ignorant about computers — the author of a post automatically has moderation privileges over the comments on that post. Is that not so?
If the two are separable, and I can retain my authorship privileges while rescinding my moderation privileges over comments on that post, I would prefer that.
That’s exactly what happened to me when I did the same thing you did KN (B. Arrington aside). Apparently Elizabeth hasn’t reinstated my moderation ‘priviledges’ yet.
The possibilities are only that you retain your current status and promise not to delete comments in your threads or that you move to contributor status which allows you to write posts but needs an admin to OK publishing.
I know that moderation is patchy because we all have limited time to spend which is why I hope that people can restrain themselves to keep within the rules. I’d much prefer Lizzie to rule on such matters as member status Otherwise I am OK with you continuing as you are assuming you agree not to delete any further comments.
If you prefer to move to Author rôle let me know and I’ll make the change. WordPress rôle options have reduced down from the original 10 and don’t have options to increase flexibility.
@ Gregory
I guess the same applies to you. Hopefully Lizzie will pop in soon.
Barry, welcome to TSZ.
Please either demonstrate that I ever posted anything not in good faith, or demonstrate that my banning was precipitated by “Trollish behavior”.
I took it upon myself to restore author privileges yesterday, and I posted a comment to that effect (in “Moderation”).
Personally, I’d prefer the first option. But if others believe that my violation of TSZ policy was egregious enough, I’ll accept the second.
My advice: Instead of getting angry, try to laugh at the folly of the attack. I suspect most folk here were able to see that Barry’s post was laughable.
The advice can be difficult to follow. I’ll readily admit past instances (mostly on usenet), where I have allowed myself to get angry when laughter would have made more sense.
For a tough guy he plays on the internet, Barry is such a drama queen.
Neil Rickert,
I agree entirely, and shall keep that in mind in the future.
Just out of curiosity, I’d like to hear what Barry has to say about the practice of changing another poster’s words without notice or permission.
What’s the self-evident moral stance of altering another person’s post without notice vs deleting it, or moving a post to an appropriate thread?
How does that compare with honest disagreement labeled as trolling?
A further point — when I referred to ” the pseudo-intellectuals (in fact anti-intellectuals) at Uncommon Descent”, I didn’t mean that as a blanket statement for everyone who contributes to Uncommon Descent.
I actually enjoyed and learned a great deal from my interactions with quite a few people there, such as Eric Anderson, Timaeus, and Nullasalus. Nullasalus and I had a productive exchange about the debate between Churchland and Plantinga, and while we remained entrenched in our respective positions, some real light was thrown on the underlying issues. Likewise in my exchanges there with Anderson and Timaeus.
Guys
I’d like to think there is no ethical equivalence here. We ought to be absolutely scrupulous in how we operate our moderation policy. The fact that it doesn’t need to be very good to be a lot better than some is no excuse for not maintaining our own standards to the best of our ability..
I have no problem with the moderation policy here, and if I occasionally get booted to guano, I don’t complain.
But since Barry has made untrue statements about this site being an echo chamber and about the policies at his site, I think we should have a discussion.
It is my understanding that Barry has author privileges here and can start a thread to discuss his claims.
petrushka,
No, at the moment, his status is “subscriber”. If Barry wanted to author a post here, I don’t see any reason not to agree to his request.
I’m happy leaving things as they are.
That would be inaccurate to say the least. I was banned from UD for no reason whatsoever. Feel free to post a link to the reason presented (there was none…ever) or an example of my “trollish behavior” to prove me wrong. Good luck with that…
Well, it was Richard Hughes who suggested I step down from moderation privileges — which I certainly don’t object to doing — but if the community accepts my promise not to overstep my bounds again, that’s fine by me too.
I too was banned – twice. In both cases after attempting to post comments that were a) germane to the subject of the thread, and b) perfectly polite, containing no insults or profanity.
I was banned a third time for no reason that I remember; I suspect it was largely because I had adopted a username ( Bydand) that upset Mullings
You had me at “both Neil and Mark have pointed out that I was wrong to delete Barry’s posts here, and I agree.”
Go and sin no more.
I’ve given Barry posting rights, and emailed him to let him know that deletions are not policy at TSZ.
Apologies for long absence – I’m still up to the ears in teaching, and what little online time I have I tend to spend at TR since being admin there. Light is visible at the end of the tunnel, approximately two weeks away!
Missing you guys.
What a bizarre episode!
I too was banned from UD for reasons that were never made clear – my posts simply stopped becoming ‘real’, round about the time of the “right, petrushka, answermethis about Jupiter and the LNC” debacle. I genuinely believed I had tried to be fair, clear, non-trollish, to argue in good faith etc. I was apparently wrong in that belief.
And a frank confession re: my behaviour here: I once moved some OT Byers posts to his very own thread. It gave them more visibility, not less, so my conscience is clear.