Politics and Society Moderation Discussion Only Fans Thread

Are posters supposed to be using terminology like "dirty Arabs"? That seems rather racist to me.

It sure seems this way to me as well. Is anyone else allowed to curse, make obviously false statements, and use racist slurs in the Moderation Thread??

I said Im going to review this situation but it will take time to review a few hundred posts. But are you really suggesting I delete every post with a false statement in it? Or ban every user who makes a false statement?

Do you want me to post some examples and then you can comment on them?

"Dirty. Informal: used to emphasize one's disgust for someone or something.
"you dirty rat!""

Context matters. While it could be, it seems clear to me that he was implying, in the quote you quoted, that it was others who had a lower opinion of Arab lives than Ukrainian lives, hence this particular use of dirty to suggest those others discounted Arab lives vis a vis Ukrainian lives. (In his opinion).

No.

IMO, the context makes it even worse, as he is using an offensive term, which was not used by anyone he is criticizing, to imply someone else is racist.

Would it be ok for me to accuse someone else of something by using the term "Filthy N-----"?

No, just the people who do it every day. Check post 6704 above.

You realize, right, that in your example, you substituted filthy for dirty, two similar words with similar meanings as adjectives. But you also substituted n---- for Arab. Do you really think Arab and n---- constitute equivalent categories of words with similar meanings. WTF?

Everyone can stop the bashing of a particular poster and especially stop coming up with absolutely ridiculous hypotheticals. I am hardly going to go word by word and post by post itt and evaluate wach one. So just stop.

I said I will review some past postings and I will. I will note that after the first 100 posts of my review, all I have seen are posts that have very strong opinions about the actions of various countries that many posters find outlandish and unsupported. That's not prohibited, no matter how distasteful you may find the opinion. I still have about 250 posts to get caught up in that thread, so maybe I will in fact encounter problem areas.

So until then, everyone should just go back to posting in the topical threads, expressing your opinions, countering or rebutting opinions you find unsupported, and if you find a post you believe warrants mod action then by all means report it. Just recognize that mods dont respond in real time even to post reports. We may not see them for hours or even days. So dont assume that just because a post is still up 24 hours later that it has a mod stamp of approval. I, for example, live in Thailand, so I am 12 hours ahead of US east coast time, which means if you teport something at 2pm et I am most likely asleep at 2am my time.

OK. One time. This is post 6704. It was a response to a quoted post by trolly saying something about cleaning up the Israeli thread.

Should I delete it because he implies someone is a liberal, which is as nasty an insult as can be hurled in the eyes of a MAGA supporter. Or is it the fact that he says Biden loves killing Gazans and wants to kill more. Imo for many reasons that's an absurd idea; but is someone not entitled to that hyperbolically expressed opinion based on the fact that Biden has explicitly stated there are no red lines for Israel? Could someone make the case (whether completely accurate or not, that Biden could bring more pressure on Israel to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza?

From my own 22 years experience as an Army officer I know that combat in urban areas is one of the most complex situations military and political leaders face, as well as the individual soldier on the ground. In many situations there are no good answers just bad choices. But I don't want to debate that here. My point from a mod perspective is that while that description is over the top imo, it is not a totally baseless opinion nor one that would require deletion or banning.

And then this posts finishes with a suggestion that people who support Bidens actions by default support the actions that have resulted in so many civilian deaths. Again, not necessarily a popular position, and one that leaves out a ton of nuances involved in what it means to support a president. But again, what I see is an unpopular, unnuanced opinion but one a poster is free to make in this forum, and others are free to point out flaws in the argument.

That's the only post Im going to walk through. I only did it so that people understand that unpopular opinions are OK as long as they dont violate the rules. Opinions dont even have to be supported by facts. Its up to the other posters to point that out. That's the basis of political discussions. Both sides on completely opposite ends of an issue will never be seen as "right" by the opposing side. While in rare instances you may get someone to change their mind, in most cases the real target audience for your arguments is the undecided members or lurkers who are reading the discussion but not posting.

The clear lie is that Biden is doing everything in his power to kill more Gazans. That is obviously false, because Biden could nuke Gaza to oblivion, instantly killing everyone there if he wanted to do so. Even without using nukes, you know that the US could kill every single Gaza resident pretty quickly if they wanted to do so.

It might seem like a minor thing to have someone use hyperbole, but he does this kind of thing every day, sometimes even adding the word "literally" to an obvious lie. A few days ago he claimed that everyone in Israel has literally stated on social media that they want to kill as many
Palestinian babies as possible. I asked him to show me just one such post, and he came back with the results of a poll saying that 80% of Israelis wanted bombing of Palestine to continue. Of course if he had said that to begin with, no one would have argued with it, but he can't manage to report things which are already somewhat damning, without rewording them as something everyone knows is impossible. It really makes a mockery of having a debate at all.

Just thought I'd point out that MAGA, and Trump, are liberals.

I have reported time and time again when someone makes a crazy insult with no basis like calling someone else a Nazi when he has espoused no views or behavior associated with the Nazis. He has done this to me and many other posters, incessantly interrupting the legitimate debates taking place. Sometimes the post is removed, sometimes it is not. Sometimes you post in here warning everyone not to do what only one person did. But I never see any bans being made or any other punishment given to the person who claims specific other posters are happy to see babies killed, and want to kill as many babies as possible.

I don't know how this particular poster is allowed to constantly make these kinds of aspersions on the character of others. Do you really think this kind of thing should be allowed, and fosters healthy debate? I don't, but if these continue to be allowed, you will see some other unbased insults made to that poster which he is REALLY not going to like. I did one in the past which IMO was exactly the same thing he does every day, and he cried about it for months, trying to get me banned. He can dish it out, but he can't take it.

Kelhus/Dunyain is in the Israel thread every single day spreading ugly anti-Arab slurs and you people are upset that someone got called a “liberal.” Can’t make this **** up.

I have seen cases of multiple posters get into name calling exchanges. So just a couple of days ago, I posted this reminder about the rules, quoted above. Likely many of the cases you are referring to predated this warning. Im nit going to go back and remod those.

But now, going forward, everyone has been reminded/warned/asked to stop attacking people and attack the argument. So going forward hopefully the issue will decline in frequency. One thing the forum as a whole doesnt see are the pms sent when needed to warn a specific poster that continued violations could lead to additional mod action.

My modding druthers, so to speak is to give any poster ample opportunity to voluntarily adjust their trajectory if needed. The last thing I want to do is ban anyone. Sometimes people refuse to change; so be it. Sometimes old habits die hard, and people try to do better but slip into old habits. I would rather address that with a note than a ban whenever possible.

If anyone finds a certain posters comments so infuriating that yu get enraged, then ignore them. Not necessarily by using the ignore function, which can cause a thread to appear disjointed. But rather, if you see a posters name, skip over it. Or better, if you read it, just dont respond. Dont engage. That will just ellicit a response leading to more frustration.

So just disregard his comments as not worthy of consideration or response and move on. Sometimes it really is as easy as that.

Except you just did make it up! No one got upset about being called a liberal. 😵

So if I think that is a false statement should I ban you for saying it,or just point out that while you may believe that due to some obscure political spectrum model you believe in, that in the common usage and definition of the political spectrum in the US they are conservative? 😀

Can you point to where I've suggested anything similar to that?

Also I do not believe it, it's just one of my favorite quotes.

I was just responding to your quote as an example of why a statement given as an opinion does not necessarily warrant a deletion or ban just because its false.

I was the one who suggested it, and I think it would be fine to delete that post, not only because it is false but also because it is off topic.

You shouldn't ban BGP for it though, as I believe he was just being silly by repeating one of the ridiculous claims made by someone else.

I’m saying better mods have kept threads on topics for years without constantly having to mass delete or move stuff around. We still had topics. Just because you say something is “logical conclusion” doesn’t mean it actually is. Moderation threads, when thru work, necessitate discussion of the examples going on in the content threads where the moderatio needs to improve.

He's just been perma'd by browser. Vic propagating known anti Semitic tropes such as dancing Israelis on 9/11 though... seems to be acceptable.

OK. Dunyain is permabanned for comments made against chillrob. Chillrob got 3 days off for retaliating with an equally obnoxious attack. Its sort of like an NFL game where one guy does an unsportsmanlike act andgets a flag but the guy hitting back does also. If you think someone inappropriately attacked you, report it. Dont reply in kind.

Thanks for correcting me on who was responding to whom. I got that mixed up while switching between various pages. Poster user notes and the mod control panel open in different windows and there's a lot of copying and pasting back and forth.

As to the tropes, Nay. Had Dunyain simply pointed out his issues with the credibility of the story reported in that article it would have been fine. That's not what got him banned. It was the implication that vic had to be racists against jews to post that link, and that everyone knows he wants to put a swastika as his avatar. The reason it was a permaban is that dunyain is at least the third account with his others already being banned. So a previously banned user doesnt get the same leeway as someone never banned.

As for tropes, that article said nothing about Israel being behind the 9/11 attacks. I was not familiar with this article or accusation. After googling it, it appears the story about the Israelis being apprehended is true. Multiple reporting sources confirm this, and states that the men were actually held and interrogated for over 60 days before being returned to Israel.

So it seems to me that you may be conflating the broader conspiracy theories with an event that actually happened pretty much as it was described in the article. But I just did a quick search on this, so if you have cites showing that the incident in the article never happened pls post that here so I can look into it further.

But as far as I could determine, the article was actually published by ABC and further investigation showed the incident happened as described. Again, if that is incorrect please lmk.

Thanks