naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
3d ago
equivalent
What I am trying to communicate is that the length of the ban is not strictly determined by the specific offense, so you are drawing a false equivalence in your perception of the ban lengths in this case. They are incommensurable.
Basically, you seem to be saying "georgioz got off light!" And we are saying, "yeah, he's a really good poster normally, so we let him off light this time, hopefully he was just having a bad day."
Or maybe instead you're saying, "I was punished too heavily!" Maybe so? But you admit you were engaged in condescension, despite it being reactive, and reactivity is exactly what you've been moderated for in the past. It's true that we frown heavily on telling other users to "fuck off." But that doesn't mean we don't frown on users for less vulgar ad hominem attacks.
I would just encourage you to not read too much into the precise length of anyone's bans, yours or others. It's not a science. It's just feedback.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3d ago
I'm not Amadan, but you tagged me, so I will point out that we actually tend to give much longer bans for straight up "fuck you"-type posts. In this case, Georgioz has an almost completely uninterrupted moderation record of several AAQCs. Because this is a reputation economy, we're much more likely to look at a user with a good record and say, "okay, not sure what's happening here, this person does not usually behave this way, maybe they are having a bad day" and we assign a lighter penalty than we normally would. If the behavior continues, the penalties do escalate!
The other half of this is that other people's bad behavior is never an excuse. The best way to respond will always be to respond within the remit of the rules; the second best thing to do is to not respond. When others are baiting you, dogpiling you, etc. remember that the goal is light, not heat, and responding to heat with heat only compounds the problem. We want to encourage discussion and we try to be reasonable about the fact that sometimes even productive discussions get a bit heated, but at some point we have to step in.
In this particular case, the penalties were light for both of you, which seems like the right call to me. These were "cool off" bans. But the length in part reflected your respective posting histories. This is the third time you've been moderated for letting people draw (or bait) you into a heated exchange. This is interesting to me in part because it suggests on the one hand that you are basically rule-abiding, which is great! But you seem to take other people's bad behavior as an excuse to respond in kind, but it's not.
More generally, this advice probably applies as much in life as on the Motte: if someone drops a "FUCK YOU" in your direction, unless you have an extremely solid plan for rapid de-escalation, you are almost certainly best off to disengage immediately.
EDIT: Looks like Amadan responded while I was thinking about this, so, there you go.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
In nigh every post there are unsupported and often unfounded claims.
That's why the rule is, "...in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."
But they are not modded because no one can be bothered to cite every sentence or hyperlink every belief to supporting evidence.
Wrong. First, the rules do not require every expression of belief to be meticulously supported--see above. Second, even rulebreaking posts may not be modded for a litany of reasons, including "the mods never saw this" or "the user was already banned for something else that day" or "sometimes you just have to pick your battles" or...
The standard you talk of is only raised when either enough reports...
This does matter, yes.
...or the wrong group is being discussed.
This is wrong. It's false. Every time. And yes, the anti-Semites in our userbase like to insist that we are especially protective of Jews, but the anti-Semites of the world always think that everyone is especially protective of Jews. Of course they're going to say that, because any time someone gets moderated for being a single-issue anti-Semite poster, they update their (trapped) priors on the mods being in the pocket of Big Jew, but every time someone doesn't get modded for being a single-issue anti-Semite poster, the anti-Semites do not update at all while the Wokists update their (trapped) priors on the mods being crypto-Nazis, or just regular Nazis. This pattern has been repeating for like a fucking decade and it doesn't matter how many times we explain it, a large portion of the userbase is absolutely, immovably convinced that the mods are pulling for $OUTGROUP.
You're all just wrong.
I mean, everyone knows that,
Look, I know you're doing the whole meta schtick here but don't post like this. It is not true that "everyone knows" probably anything, but setting aside anodyne facts, applying "everyone knows" to any CW claim is going to fall afoul of the rules, whether we moderate that particular instance or not. Just avoid the phrase! It's not hard! Maybe you think it's a bit of harmless hyperbole, and often it probably is, but we have a rule against this particular kind of rhetoric for good reasons: it's a way of waging the culture wars.
Would either of these claims need modding?
Depending on how they were expressed, yes.
No
Wrong again!
Or if we think of it in the context of AI. A topic with multiple functionally single issue posters that make grand claims about a host of things with no supporting evidence.
AI is like, barely a CW topic to my mind. It touches on CW stuff, no question, but you can post about AI in the SSC subreddit all you like, and CW is (nominally) banned there. See my first point about proportionality. You are still focused on the wrong things.
To put it a different way, how is a poster supposed to share their preference for violent solutions and why should they do that differently and with more supporting evidence than those who feel a similar want for violence, just towards Palestinians or 'Muslim Arabs'? There's no sense in this.
People do it all the time, actually. Usually it's something like "look, here are 20 different concrete instances of $OUTGROUP saying that they are going to exterminate me. I feel like 'I wish $OUTGROUP was dead' is a bad look, posits a costly and maybe impossible solution, and makes it difficult for me to have productive dialogue with any member of $OUTGROUP, but I didn't start it. Maybe on some level I would prefer a peaceful solution, but I'm not the one who refuses to consider peaceful solutions. This leaves me in a position where I support a policy of extermination against $OUTGROUP, even though I feel kind of sad about that."
This is not an easy standard to meet. The proportionality requirement when applied to "let's nuke the outgroup" is very high--of course! And I think you actually understand this--your last mod warning, almost a year ago, was tagged with a note suggesting the next ban should be permanent. Since then, you've accrued several AAQCs and no warnings at all. Clearly you understand the rules at least well enough, but you couldn't be arsed to follow them until it became clear that you had burned away the goodwill that was allowing you to continue posting.
Almost every single post has the issue you describe in your mod comment, aside from the account being a sock.
Moderation is, I guess I would say, holistic, and ultimately all rules are subordinate to the Foundation:
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
We are not technicians applying mathematically precise measurements to content. We are more like gardeners. We are curating a community. We are not perfect at it. But neither are we doing quite what it is that you seem to be accusing us of, here.
The poster replied and brought up antisemitism in their reply in some confusion and that's an instant permaban because...?
Was it confusion, though? How do you know? Any time a post begins with "I hope I don't get banned for this" the first thing that goes through my mind is, "this poster is hoping to get banned for this, specifically to start shit with the mods over whatever axe it is they have to grind." Several responses in the thread were "It's not anti-Semitism, it's game theory!" To my eyes, that looks like someone who really, really wants to talk about Jews while maintaining deniability. You know--kind of like nuking Israel, but in secret.
It beggars belief. The whole thing is just too on the nose.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6d ago
why would this deserve a warning at all?
You can read the answer in my actual warning, but the short version is that you are focused on the wrong thing. Telling on oneself by expressing a clear preference for violent solutions is at least speaking plainly, and so long as it is otherwise rule-abiding it gives others an opportunity to respond plainly. "Just asking questions" with nary a link or effortful analysis, while simultaneously insisting on what "everyone" knows, is much more obviously a rules violation.
(Endorsing a group's extermination does arguably violate the "write like everyone is reading and you want them included in the conversation" rule, but that's a tough one because we also don't want to grant a heckler's veto to anyone who feels like disagreement or even sharp criticism of their in-group constitutes exclusionary rhetoric. Ultimately we have to make a lot of judgment calls on who the audience seems to actually be.)
So the primary offenses were consensus-building rhetoric and inflammatory claims without proportional evidence. Overall the post also looks like a troll to me, but Poe's Law applies, so it's best to just focus on the clearest problems. Furthermore, it's gone now but this four year old account initially posted a "test" post to the thread to verify that their post would be visible, suggesting that this is an alt from a repeat rule violator who understands that new accounts get filtered for a while. If I'd caught it a little sooner, I'd have removed and shadowbanned rather than moderating it; this kind of posting is essentially indistinguishable from spam (though spam is often written more intelligently than this).
I do not understand why someone would lurk a burner account in this space for literally years just for an occasional opportunity to vomit something like this into the environment; that degree of autistic grudge-nursing and discourse-poisoning would be downright shocking if it weren't for some reason the bog standard for foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semites. Which, you know, maybe this poster isn't an anti-Semite, but when their doubled-down response to moderation was "why are you bringing up anti-Semitism" even though I hadn't brought it up at all, well, methinks the lady doth protest too much.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6d ago
You want evidence? Alright, where is Epstein's hedge fund registered? Where did all his money come from? Isn't it a really strange and weird coincidence that Epstein gained billions of dollars at approximately the same time that Ghislaine Maxwell's father lost HIS fortune?
Those are questions. Questions are not evidence.
If you want to quibble over my definition of the word "sabotage" I'm not sure you're arguing in good faith.
I'm not arguing with you, I'm moderating your posts.
Why do you need to bring up antisemitism?
I never brought up antisemitism at all. I never mentioned Jews, Israel, or anything plausibly related to antisemitism. I explained to you the problems with your post, according to our ruleset, and instructed you to not post this way. You responded by doubling down on the... whatever this is. So I will comfortably conclude that whatever it is you're doing, it's not in good faith. Now you're permabanned.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6d ago
This account hasn't posted in several years, so I intended to simply remove this post pending discussion with other mods but it has already garnered some reactions (two reports and a comment), so, here we are.
For example, it's obvious to anybody who examines the evidence that Epstein was a Mossad asset.
This is consensus building combined with failure to bring evidence in proportion to the inflammatoriness of the claim.
Another example is George Soros. His influence on politics is undeniable, and he actively sabotages Western nations for profit.
This, too--I don't think there's any question that the man spends a lot of money exercising political influence, but if you're going to characterize it as "sabotage" you need to explain some cause and effect.
Arguing that the U.S. should engage in acts of war and/or terrorism is always going to be a high bar to clear, rules-wise. It's not against the rules per se, but rather, the level of argument and evidence required is just, well, a lot higher than what you've brought to bear. As is, it is impossible for me to say with certainty whether you are fedposting, schizo-posting, trolling, writing satire, or (perhaps worst of all) actually serious.
Don't post like this.
Well yes, that too!
I agree that you showed some restraint. But you still wrote a rule-breaking post, and that's what counted against you here.
Ad hominem literally translates "to the man." Its use here identifies your excessive focus on georgioz and his characteristics, to the detriment of your engagement with the substance of your argument. When we talk about ad hominem in the context of moderation, it is not an academic critique of your grasp of informal reasoning, but rather a suggestion that you should spend less time casting aspersions on your interlocutor and more time addressing the substance of your discussion.
(Fun fact: I am a philosophy professor. I make my living, in part, teaching both formal and informal reasoning!)
I see. Well, it's an unforced error to insist on things that "I know" when I have not told you that I know them; as a rule, I am not hiding the ball on that. I can be mistaken. We can disagree. But I'm not pretending, and now you're making the same mistake with me as you made with georgioz.
But now that you've spelled it out more clearly, okay! You don't like the way we moderate based in part on reputation, as it sometimes leads to results that offend your sense of fair play. Your complaint has been noted. In hopes of managing your expectations: so far, the moderation team does not agree with your position on the matter, and has no plans to adjust our moderation approach in response to your complaints at this time.
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