Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Darwin was never actually banned here. When we moved off of reddit, everyone started with a clean slate. Darwin and Hlynka and everyone else had a blanket amnesty.
While we will sometimes let someone we suspect of being an alt stick around if they are behaving themselves, we're still going to whack ban evaders when it's obvious, because we don't want people to think they can just spin up a new account and carry on like before. (Some people do this anyway, but they at least suffer the minor inconvenience of having to keep creating new accounts and being unable to establish any kind of reputation or history.)
Also worth noting that Hylnka did not exactly come back "reformed"; @TequilaMockingbird was temp-banned three times and warned many times even before I clocked him (and this was not his first, second, or third alt).
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
If your understanding of "permaban" is "The mods are never allowed to consider rescinding the ban" then sure, mentally substitute "permanent except in exceptional and so far purely hypothetical cases" if that satisfies your need for literalism.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I dismantled this claim before but you're going to keep repeating it, I guess. And I will keep pointing it out every time you insist on being dishonest.
You understand what words mean.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
No, it is not. It's not a formal rule. And no, we're not going to rewrite and rename things just to satisfy autists.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Really? I've defended people I despise against attacks I consider unfair. As for five adults on the planet enjoying her books... what?
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I'm going to pretend you're not being a bad faith ankle-biter here.
The only way back is by promising you will follow the rules and not continue breaking the rules. Under those circumstances, we will consider unbanning someone.
No one should consider this unreasonable.
The alternative is no forgiveness ever.
You can disingenuously characterize this as "Begging can save you from banning" but you know that is not remotely the same thing.
We've never rescinded a ban because someone begged (and once or twice someone has tried).
Also worth noting that as far as I can recall, no one has ever actually petitioned us to be unbanned other than the ones who pleaded for leniency as soon as it happened (and then flew into a rage when we said no). Quite a few people have complained that their banning was unwarranted, and a few times someone else has petitioned on behalf of a banned member, but this scenario in which someone genuinely asks us for amnesty (whether you call it "begging" or not) is to date entirely hypothetical.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
That is not what I said. You did not misunderstand me. You are pretending to misunderstand me. Stop doing that.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
We know for a fact he's done it repeatedly. I am only 95% sure this was him.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Hah. I remember thinking at the time he was very sus, but for some reason he just didn't trigger my radar. Well played, I guess.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
You expressed skepticism earlier that it would inflict guilt-ridden nightmares upon the executioners - but supposing it provably did, would your stance change?
Well, now we're deep into hypotheticals having nothing to do with the original example.
If I knew that undignified groveling and blubbering would make my killers feel bad, but not save my life, would I do it? I like to think not. If it would serve some instrumental purpose - like making a martyr of myself that would stir public pity such as to prevent future killings? Assuming I was capable of making such a rational and strategic decision in such a moment, maybe?
Notably, this needn't take the form of whining and blubbering; you could also try and make an impression on the basis of fighting spirit, struggling and cursing your murderers until your last breath, to try and inspire others to show the same rebellious courage - even if you have ~0 odds of actually freeing yourself or injuring your captors. Much manlier, but also very different from "facing death with dignity".
Fighting them and cursing them seems much more dignified than begging and crying. At least I wouldn't die ashamed.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I am greatly amused. You talk like you know who I am, yet very little is recognizable. ("My feminist idol"? My gosh.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
But being the enforcer made him bitter (like it does to everyone who assumes that role)
Eh, more like jaded.
He did get "special treatment" but we never hid that; we have always given more slack to people with a positive record. However, that slack is not infinite.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
On what grounds? Your idea of 'manlyness'? You're generally liberal, but the sex stuff is your achilles heel.
I don't even know what you mean by "sex stuff" here. I despise cowardice, weakness, and lack of dignity and self-respect.
Right, but I don't think Hlynka thinks he's been justly punished for his actions.
Actually, he was pretty straightforward about his disagreement with Zorba and acknowledging that this disagreement necessarily led to his being removed as mod and then banned. We had many conversations with him: I don't know that he necessarily agreed that he was "justly punished" (obviously he wanted to keep doing what he was doing and he did not want us to make him stop) but he knew what he was doing and at the time seemed to accept the consequences.
Personally I don't consider most of the permabans the mods hand out justified.
This does not surprise me.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
He was a former mod, greatly respected by many members and absolutely hated by many others. He was eventually removed as a mod for being too antagonistic towards people he despised, and then when he wouldn't amend his behavior, he was banned entirely.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
No. Hydro has been around for a long time, and he and Kulak are entirely different people.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
If you really believe that begging might save you, there is an argument for it, but otherwise, no, I can only despise the "morality" you advocate.
Also, your example is of someone being unjustly and arbitrarily executed, not someone being justly punished for his actions.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
They're not going to have nightmares or be tortured by their consciences. They're just going to remember you as a whiny, blubbering coward. If you can't change your fate, then facing it with dignity is better than making yourself pathetic. You aren't helping people do what they are going to do anyway.
Banning people from a forum, of course, is nothing like executing them, and I feel no remorse for banning people who deserve it, so arguing that it's "cucked" to refuse to accept a banning just means you think there is some virtue in being an undignified annoyance. There isn't.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
95% sure. The report made me look back over his comment history and previous warnings.
We do frequently get reports claiming someone is an alt, but we usually don't find them particularly credible.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Also, creating alts to get past a ban doesn't mean you place no value on your word or reputation
Yes, it does.
Suggesting you'd be willing to reverse a permaban for things other than error in imposing it, however, does cast doubt on your word
We have always been willing to consider granting amnesty to someone who contacts us and asks for reinstatement, with the important proviso that they promise to stop behaving in the way that got them banned in the first place. I pointed this out to Hlynka when he first started coming back with alts.
I have a cynical answer that I expect to get me in trouble with the moderators, because I am about to take a stand in defense of Bulverism.
Not for this, but for unmasking yourself. Someone else finally pointed out the obvious, and I am kicking myself for not seeing it.
Hlynka, I have told you this before, but I am hugely disappointed that rather than taking your ban like a man, or asking us to reinstate you, you keep creating alts. Good job that you managed to run this one for months and being actually rather flamingly obvious about it in retrospect and not getting tagged, but you're done now. We don't exert much effort to catch alts and some people think they are clever, clever little people bragging about how easy it is to recycle an alt every time you get banned, but it just shows you have no integrity and place no value on your word or reputation. You're there to troll, to shit up the place, to giggle and get your digs in before the mods swat you and you reboot. Hoorah, a winner is you. Yes, it's easy to do this. Eventually, however, everyone regresses to their mean.
ETA: In case anyone doubted my judgment, he confirmed it in modmail.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Should be 100%. But that's just my opinion.
I don't hate AI. In fact I like it a lot (while having some concerns about long term implications). I use it for art, and I have artist friends who are furious about that. I do use it to write tedious stuff, like rough drafts for letters of recommendation, which I then clean up and edit.
But on an art forum, I would not post AI, or even post-worked AI, unless there was a section specifically for that. On a writers' forum I would not want to see AI writing unless there is a section for that. And I don't want to start wondering how much help AAQCs are getting from AI.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Speaking not as a mod, I don't think we should (or realistically could) ban "AI-assisted" writing. (Something that was obviously mostly or entirely generated by AI, OTOH...) That said, I was starting to be impressed by your essays, then I realized that a substantial portion of them are AI written, and now I tend to skim over them.
IMO, using ChatGPT to do light editing and maybe make some suggestions here and there is one thing (just advanced grammar and spellchecking, really), but actually letting it generate text for you is ... not actually writing. We can debate whether GPT can "write well" by itself, but it's definitely not you writing it just because you gave it a prompt, and I would even say that "collaboration" is stretching it.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I honestly can't tell if you're taking the piss here, but somehow this comment makes me think of David Brin's Uplift series.
This would be a request for @ZorbaTHut, but while it's annoying when people go on deletion sprees (and we have banned people for it), I don't think we'd want to prohibit deleting a post you had second thoughts about.
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