Moderation Questions and General Chat Thread

Moderation Questions and General Chat Thread

The last iteration of the moderation discussion thread was a complete disaster. Numerous attempts to keep it on topic failed, and it became a general discussion thread with almost no moderation related posts at all. And those that were posted were so buried in non-mod posts that it became a huge time drain on the mods to sort through them. Then, when off topic posts were deleted posters complained about that.

This led to the closing of the mod discussion thread, replaced by the post report/pm approach. This has filtered out lots of noise, but has resulted at times in the General Discussion Thread turning into a quasi-mod thread. This is not desirable, but going back to the old mod thread is also not a workable option.

Therefore, I have created this new moderation thread, but with a different purpose and ground rules than previous mod threads. The purpose of this thread is to provide a place for posters to pose questions to the mods about how policies are applied; to bring to the mods attention posts they think are inappropriate and reach the level of requiring mod action; and for mods to communicate to posters things like changes or clarifications to policies, bannings, etc.

Now let me tell you what this thread is NOT a place for. It is not for nonmoderation related posts, even if the discussion originates from a comment in in a mod related post. It is not for posters to post their opinions about other posters or whether a poster should be banned. It is not to rehash past grievances about mod decisions from months or years ago. The focus of this thread will be recent posts that require action now. Or questions about current policies and enforcement.

So basically, this is a thread to ask mods questions. Which means, pretty much that only mods should be answering those questions. If a poster asks why a particular post was deleted or allowed, only a mod can answer that. Everyone else who wants to jump in with their opinion or their mod war story needs to stay out of it. It just increases the noise to signal ratio and does nothing to answer the question.

Everyone needs to understand that this thread has very different rules than the old mod thread and any other thread. Any non-moderation post will be deleted on sight. Not moved to the appropriate thread, just deleted. So don't waste your time crafting a masterpiece post about wars or transgender issues or the presidential election and then post it in this thread. It will be gone. Also, this isnt a thread for general commentary about our mods performance. Posting "browser sucks as a mod" or any such posts that don't actually ask about a policy or request a mod action will be deleted. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the moderation of this forum. But this thread isnt for complaining about mods. You are free to go to the ATF forum and make your concerns about modding in this forum there.

So with that intro, this thread is open for those who need to bring questions about mod policies or bring inappropriate posts to the mods attention. Again, it is NOT a thread for group discussions about other posters or for other posters to answer questions directed to mods.

We'll see how this goes. If you have what you feel is an open issue raised in the General Discussion Thread, please copy that post or otherwise reintroduce the issue here.

Thanks.

30 January 2024 at 05:27 AM
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6491 Replies

i
a

Lotta behavioral health issues on all sides. next


few questions for the mods

1. why is "Kill em all Bibi" accepted posting?
2. why is it not acceptable to label this sentiment as "loving genocide"?
3. would "Kill em all xxx" be acceptable directed at any group other than Gazans? for example "Kille em all Hamas" or "Kill em all Putin" or "Kill em all Biden"?

to spare you the suspense and to clarify my point, I dont really want him banned or chided, but I am confused as to why such posting is protected from any criticism.


by Victor P

few questions for the mods

1. why is "Kill em all Bibi" accepted posting?
2. why is it not acceptable to label this sentiment as "loving genocide"?
3. would "Kill em all xxx" be acceptable directed at any group other than Gazans? for example "Kille em all Hamas" or "Kill em all Putin" or "Kill em all Biden"?

to spare you the suspense and to clarify my point, I dont really want him banned or chided, but I am confused as to why such posting

You're not going to get a quote snippet by quote snippet comparison so quit trying. But just to be clear you referred to others as genocide lovers. Your ban is over. You can carry a chip on your shoulder as long as you want or move on. If each poster focused on their own posts and if they insulting someone or not 90% of mod actions would go away.


If you want to analyze, dissect, or just cry on each others shoulders about some previous mod action (or lack thereof) feel free todo that in the BOC thread. Such posts itt will continue to be deleted.


so am I allowed to say that specific posters are "fine with genocide"


or is such language only reserved to be used against me and furthermore with no real basis.


Actually vic, browser earlier gave the "logic" behind your argument, without endorsing it. Same principal applies here. You deny the Uighur genocide and denied Russian genocide in Ukraine and constantly make excuses for Hamas. Ergo you're seen as an apologist. Maybe if you didn't deny genocide and make up excuses for murderous scumbags like Hamas, you wouldn't be seen as an apologist and okay with genocide. I personally suspect that if Hamas got their hands on say, chemical/bio weapons and engaged in actual genocide against Israelis, you'd make excuses for it, probably via your usual whataboutism.
So basically you've only yourself to blame here.
Browser advised posters to refute your argument. You should try refute Rob's, rather than go crying to the mods like a wet ass pussy.


denying genocide is not the same as being "fine with genocide". in other words, if there was a genocide on Western liberals or Israeli fascists then I would not be fine with it and would oppose it obv and those are really the only 2 groups that I dont like.


Holocaust deniers strike me as being fine with genocide, deep down. And you deny the Uighur genocide among others. So an argument can be made regarding you being fine with genocide and certainly an apologist.


How many Uighurs have been killed?


by Victor P

How many Uighurs have been killed?

--It looks like the strategy seems to be to make sure they are never born at all. 84% birthrate collapse according to this source. As opposed to Gaza, which has had its population exponentially increase during this same time frame. But yeah, Gaza is the genocide and what is going on in China is just good, wholesome family planning.

https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-pos...

The Chinese government's family planning program restricts Uyghur and Turkic Muslim reproduction, preventing births in violation of Article 2d of the Genocide Convention. According to Adrian Zenz, between 2015 and 2018, East Turkistan's Uyghur population growth rate fell by 84%. State-sponsored forced inter-racial marriages between Uyghur women and Han Chinese men are part of "family planning" policies, as are female sterilizations, forced abortions, mass rapes, and sexual torture. The CCP forces Uyghur women to live with Han Chinese men in Uyghur homes. The CCP forcibly removes Uyghur children from their homes and places them in residential schools where they are forbidden to speak the Uyghur language, a violation of Genocide Convention Article 2e.


According to Adrian Zenz

is not credible at all


dunyain & corpus

over a period of just a few years there were dozens of terrorist attacks in china, all carried out by uighurs who were trained by al qaeda (xinjiang borders afghanistan and it's so remote that making the crossover undetected is fairly simple if you do so without a car)

i was there during the attacks, the day there was an attack tiananmen square was when i had some friends visiting and we were deciding between tiananmen and great wall that day and chose the great wall - had the weather not been so nice and we chose tiananmen that day instead then it's quite possible you'd all be relieved to not deal with my posting because that day they drove a bus through the square running people over while simultaneously running around stabbing people to death



tiananmen obv had high security so they killed/detained the attackers by the time they had killed 5

the biggest attack was at a crowded train station where 29 were killed


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_...

you can see how many attacks they had over a very brief period - it's longer than this, just ran out of screen space, click the link above


there is absolutely zero chance the USA would stand by casually observing if a distinct ethnic group were repeatedly making terrorist attacks - this is much more akin to the early american days where literally every single populated settlement in new england was attacked by natives at least once in it's history - you name the town in new england and can trace back to a period when natives attacked and raided it - the city of providene once had its population reduced by 1/3 in a single raid

how we responded by raising armies and wiping out the natives and relocating the surrendering survivors to remote reservations was a far stronger response than what China is doing and I guarantee that if native americans were making a half dozen terrorist attacks a year again then we certainly would respond with some draconian measures similar in nature to how china has responded to xinjiang

importantly, china has mangaged to put a stop to the attacks, so the population overwhelmingly supports their policies in xinjiang

china took a look at the situation and concluded that the attacks are stemming from

1 population of xinjiang is mostly illiterate uighurs still living traditional semi nomadic lifestyles

2 the population is rapidly shifting from a moderate muslim society (see bangladesh, turkey, morocco, malaysia) into an extremist form due to foreign aid coming in from saudi/taliban/al qaeda setting up madrasas and mosques much in the same way they converted places like egypt and iran which were very moderate and liberal until recent times

3 the uighurs for the most part did not put their children in school, this ensured they wouldn't learn any skills nor chinese and remain destitute with only source of education/influence coming from extremists foreigners


so they deported all the foreigners, shut down the madrasas, enforced education for minors, and forced unskilled unemployed uighurs to attend a boarding school where they would graduate once they learned some conversational chinese and basic job skills

they've since had zero terrorist attacks

everything beyond that, there is literally zero evidence of, all we have is testimony from unreliable witnesses and there's a long history of unreliable witnesses lying in congressional testimony - just look at kuwait for a recent example


lol pwnt


OK. Look, it's time to stop this back and forth about this phrase or that phrase being allowed, or whether this ban or that ban was appropriate in this thread. And people in other threads seemingly making comments for the sole purpose of testing to see if they get banned or not. And please stop the pity phrases like "I would say what I'm thinking but I'll get banned". If your nature is to be an insulting *******, that's probably true. Everybody moderates their own speech at times. I'm probably the heaviest moderated person in this forum, but it's self-moderation.

It's impossible to take the time to go into detail about mod decisions and why this was banned and not this. And even if I did, it wouldnt matter or end the controversy anymore than Obama putting out his birth certificate ended the birthers. There will always be those who disagree with a decision regardless of any explanation provided. So it is a fruitless endeavor to spend the time debating or justifying actions.

I will say this on the genocide issue and why context and the actual word form used matters. There were many posters upset that I wasnt banning Victor for saying that they supported killing babies or genocide in Gaza. They took that as a personal attack and insult as they certainly dont believe they support killing babies or genocide. I wont go into it all again here, but I said there was a logic train that one could follow (not my opinion) to say that if you support Israel's war effort, and it's killing babies, then you support killing babies. And I asked people to rebut that argument in the I/P thread rather than seek a moderator to do it.

But when victor referenced people being "genocide lovers" (note, not supporting genocide by supporting Israel) imo that crossed the line from the logic chain I mentioned to a personal attack (in this case on several posters collectively) . It is one thing to say someone supports something by supporting a war effort. There are those who could feel that the civilian deaths are horrible, but a necessary collateral death issue caused by the competing factors of needing to destroy Hamas but doing so in a densely populated area. It is a very different thing to accuse people of being genocide lovers, which connotes an enjoyment of the killings that is not based on any logic train. So I considered (and still do) that an egregious personal attack. So the ban was not simply for mentioning genocide, or even saying people supporting genocide (and there is debate about what constitutes genocide in the first place). It was for crossing the line by accusing posters of loving genocide.

Now, contrast that personal attack type comment with statements like "I wont shed a tear ..." or "kill them all, bibi". Offensive to many...sure. But a personal attack on anyone...no. Bigoted...maybe. But there is a logic train (a twisted one, and also not my personal belief) that the people of Gaza are complicit in the deaths in Israel by Hamas because they voted Hamas in, have done nothing to remove them, and generally see Israel as the enemy. So from that perspective, there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, and they are part of the enemy. I think Ive seen posts of some Israelis making such comments. So as wrong as I believe that way of thinking to be, it is an opinion people can have and express. But the distinction here is that the comments are made in the context of a population in a war zone, and not a random ethnic group, nationality, etc. That's why it's not analogous to saying kill all christians, or Palestinians around the world, or any other group.

Now, to reiterate, those are not my personal beliefs. And Im not saying that people wont find them offensive. But from a moderation perspective, it is up to posters to rebut the opinion that civilian populations are complicit in the actions of their governments and therefore are subject to attacks. It's a complicated issue with all sorts of vague international agreements with conflicting terminology about civilians, resistance in occupied areas, etc.

Now, dont bother posting in here about whether you agree or disagree with my take on this. Some will, some wont. Mods make decisions based on how they see a situation at the time. There is a lot more that goes into it than I have outlined here. That's why we cant possibly try to explain every decision. People are seeking a clear line between black and white where none exists. Its a gray area, and in gray areas a decision may go one way one day and the other way on another day. Sometimes it's a 51-49 situation, not a go/no go situation.

If you truly believe you received a ban unfairly, there is a procedure to appeal the ban when it happens. And there is a procedure to report mods you think are acting inappropriately. But to repeatedly try and relitigate the ban after the fact in here is pointless.

Finally, again, if you want to discuss my comments between yourselves, please do so in the BOC thread. I will not be further debating this anymore. Whether you agree or disagree, its time to move on.


Please move discussions about China or what is genocide to the COB thread or if there is enough interest start a new thread on what is genocide. But dont clog up the mod thread. Thanks


Stoppedrainingmen has been temp banned for 1 week for insulting a poster after receiving previous pm warning for same type violation


Is one week now the minimum ban duration? I don't recall anyone being banned for less than one week for some time regardless of infraction.


Browser you shouldn't have deleted my response to Rick especially as I acknowledged your advice, you could have easily moved it to the general discussion thread. This is one of several reasons you're considered a poor moderator.


by corpus vile P

Browser you shouldn't have deleted my response to Rick especially as I acknowledged your advice, you could have easily moved it to the general discussion thread. This is one of several reasons you're considered a poor moderator.

Ive told everyone repeatedly that those responses to other posters posts are not to be posted itt and will be deleted. I specifically advised everyone that we would not take the extra time it takes to move posts to the correct thread because posters just cant seem to be bothered to follow the rules themselves. Yet some posters just don't seem to believe the rules apply to them, so Ive had to delete over a dozen posts today.

I'm done pleading with people to follow the guidelines for this thread, and done explaining the guidelines over and over. So the posts will be deleted. Perhaps people will finally understand that they are responsible for keeping that atuff out of this thread and putting it in the general thread. If people dont want the posts they worked so hard on to get deleted, they should stop ignoring the guidelines in the first place.


by d2_e4 P

Is one week now the minimum ban duration? I don't recall anyone being banned for less than one week for some time regardless of infraction.

This is a question about moderation
It wasn't rhetorical. It was framed politely. Could you answer it please?


by browser2920 P

Ive told everyone repeatedly that those responses to other posters posts are not to be posted itt and will be deleted. I specifically advised everyone that we would not take the extra time it takes to move posts to the correct thread because posters just cant seem to be bothered to follow the rules themselves. Yet some posters just don't seem to believe the rules apply to them, so Ive had to delete over a dozen posts today.

I'm done pleadi

Your condescending attitude is yet another reason you're considered a poor mod.


by d2_e4 P

Is one week now the minimum ban duration? I don't recall anyone being banned for less than one week for some time regardless of infraction.

No. Unless you consider 2/25/2024 some time ago when I announced a 1 day ban. I mean it was a whole week ago.


"A week is a long time in politics"


RICKROLLS post wasnt deleted, CV
Probably nonsensical posts get deleted. Your subjective insulting posts regarding mods should get deleted as well.
Youre way out of line here.
Browser is doing an outstanding job.
You just dont get it.


Maybe 2-3 days is better at first. That seemed to be the norm.
Repeating Id increase slowly up to 2 weeks.


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