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It's less about general criticism, and more that this is ymeskhout's specific hobby horse that has been flayed for years at this point, and regularly comes with standards called for against Trump that were not followed or applied (in general or by ymeskhout personally) on the lawfare against Trump. As with other pet topics, it repeats old themes to the point of evaporative cooling, which then leverage's ymeskhout's bad habit of dismissing/forgetting/claiming prior engagements on points either didn't occur or have been dismissed, for lack of an engaged opposition to engage otherwise.
As far as Trump-related lawfare goes, ymeskhout's a partisan and an old one at this point. At this point I only pay attention when he starts being petty towards people calling him out, like how this time he edited-in a callout- against The_Nybbler and then edited it out after being called out for it.
Is there any theme discussed at this point on the Motte for which one could not make the exact same argument as the one you make against @ymeshkout?
People tend to have their opinions, which they change rarely through discussion. And culture war issues are only so many.
If your contention were made into a rule, this site would need to shut down.
This mistakes my contention. The contention is not that a position doesn't change and this should be banned- the contention is that the position is re-raised regularly without regard or even accurate reflection of previous engagements, and with poor conduct towards other in the process.
Ways to avoid this include not misrepresenting people's current positions, not mis-representing previous engagements, and not making one's hobby-horse a top level post with regular slights towards other posters.
This also describes many other regular posters on the Motte (and @ymeskhout much less so than many others I could name), and yet strangely receive far less pushback, and even provoke resentful carping when they push it too far and get modded.
Most reports we see are 100% partisan and can be summarized as "A person I don't like said something I don't like."
Both sides(tm) do this, but because of the increasingly skewed nature of the Motte, the majority is directed at people like ymeskhout expressing left-wing viewpoints.
What's strange about it?
The well established climate currated by the mods here is that not pushing back against many sorts of posters is a survival strategy, as the sorts of posters who would push back strenuously against the Darwins or Julius's of the motte were also the ones more likely to be banned than the Darwins or Julius's of the Motte. When moderates have open commentary on calibrating mod action based on political composition of forum, or accuse censored posters of ban-worthy tresspasses while simultaneously not doing so, it creates a pretty clear climate of what is more or less acceptable, and 'more pushback' is often the less acceptable path for long-term motte posters if they want to remain long-term motte posters. This is an old and well established failure state of the Motte, where bad posters both poison the culture and get the mods to ban better posters reacting against them, but this has been defended in the past an acceptable cost for the target goal of the Motte to not punish what people say, but how they say it.
But it is still a basic punitive incentive structure as enforced by the mod team, and as a consequence pushback that does occur will exist within other contextual boundaries- such as the acceptable areas of criticism such as treatment of other posters, or when it exists within the space allowed by the social dynamics of when a mod is involved. These social dynamics involved when mods don't want to be involved in moderating either other mods (internal group dynamics of people who do/have worked together for common causes, a desire to privately raise concerns out of public view) or when mods don't want to get involved in the personal non-mod disputes of a mod and other conflicts (public optic dynamics of not wanting to present mod solidarity). This creates greater conflict space- an overton window if you prefer- for more pushback to people who act within the ven diagram overlap of 'takes condemnable swipes at other posters' and 'is a mod.'
In so much as this is a problem for the broader motte space, the solution is to reduce the ven diagram overlap.
I imagine most non-quality post reports would be summarizable as 'A person I don't like said something I don't like' whether it was partisan or not. Most internet fights seeking higher sanction against another are not between people who like eachother fighting over how much they like eacother.
Is ymsekhout being criticized for expressing left-wing viewpoints, or is ymeskhout being criticized for his character in how he responded to a very minor barb about how his own post could be viewed from a non left-wing viewpoint?
"Pushing back" against the Darwins and the Juliuses never got anyone banned. Losing one's emotional equilibrium and going off on them did. I won't deny there is a failure mode here where someone very good at writing provocative posts that fall within the rules can result in some decent posters losing their shit when they can't take it any longer and getting themselves banned. On the other hand, someone who only does that once or twice doesn't get banned for very long, and Darwin and Julius both eventually got booted long-term. We have never had a great solution for getting rid of bad but effortful posters who poison the discourse without breaking the rules, and I have yet to hear proposals that don't amount to "Ban this hobby horse" or "Just admit that this person is terrible and ban them." (The latter we very occasionally do under the egregiously obnoxious wildcard rule, but every time we do it burns some of the membership's goodwill... remember, there are people who got on our case every time we modded Julius, and some of those people were not Julius's alts.)
I also do not think ymeshkout can fairly be compared to Darwin or Julius.
I am saying a large percentage of reports are "non-quality" as you put it - not people genuinely concerned about the tone and quality of arguments here, but simply seeking to punish their enemies.
Both, IMO. He writes long, effortful posts that are hard to take apart on the facts, as you'd expect when debating a lawyer, but he also criticizes Trump a lot, so a lot of people see "Long-winded criticism of Trump" which makes them angry, but they can't really muster a cogent response to explain why the criticism is wrong, but they also notice him taking a few pokes at his interlocutors, which triggers even more rage. No, I seriously do not think he would get this kind of pushback if he were writing similar posts about how corrupt Joe Biden is. (He'd get some, but not like this where you're trying to make him the new Darwin.)
I disagree with sentence one, and from that much of the rest. The nature of pushback vis-a-vis disagreement in a metaphor of equilibirum is that pushback is inherently destabilizing, and generally driven by emotional impetus to respond. Just as walking forward is a controlled fall due to off-balancing your center of balance, pushing back is inherently moving one's self due to motivation, and that is what got people increasingly banned as early phases of intellectual-only pushback died with evaporative cooling and bad faith, which led only the emotionally-driven pushback to remain... which, of course, is what is selected against with mod censure.
The crux of Darwin and Julius is that while both 'eventually' got booted long-term, it was only well after bad faith was widely recognized, and also well after repeated toleration by mods explitictly recognizing -bad thing- but also tolerating it. Darwin in particular received multiple warnings that were framed in terms of 'we're going easy on you because of past quality contributions' (selecting for past rather than current conduct) despite blatant trolling, and Julius had a number of sockpuppets for whom the mod response was 'we believe you as a sockpuppet, here's your warning but you can stay.' The actions that were bad were recognized as bad, and ban-worthy, but not banned until they were... and until they were, the punishment for months to years was that it wasn't ban-worthy to conduct the offenses one would be eventually banned for.
I cannot emphasize how much this discredits standards of moderation. You speak of burning membership good will for moderating, but you also burn good will when visibly not moderating by professed standards. This is why legitimacy, not popularity, is the crux of acceptable conduct codes, and why legitimacy depends on consistency, because people can accept unhappy things if viewed as legitimate and not arbitrary.
However, legitimacy derives from culture, and culture is set by the climate that enables it, and the moderator climate has regularly and consistently been that while consistent bad actors may eventually get the boot, the people they provoke into continuing engagement will get the boot much sooner for being the sort of people who would continue engaging well after the evaporative cooling process sets in.
The way to resolve this is not by banning pet topics, but by consistently enforcing the rules... but consistently enforcing the rules is secondary to the mod team's goals of trying to retain / grow membership, which is viewed as being compromised when enforcing rules.
That depends on what flaw you think links them, otherwise one might as well say that Darwin and Julius cannot be fairly be compared. The point of two extremely dissimilar people is to weaken comparison to either one of them.
The flaw I refer to is the mix of unchanging hobby horse and bad faith engagement with others that leads to evaporative cooling and the gradual forum disinterest of engaging in any intellectual push-and-pull because there is none to be had except from the more emotionally-driven.
And I am noting this is entirely expected and typical, without warranting a caveat or special notice. It's exactly what one would expect for any appeals process in a political dispute.
...which goes right back down the Nybbler's critique of the original post argument- that the criticism of pretext in the case of Trump is not people genuinely concerned about the quality of the legal case, but simply seeking to punish their political enemy in some way, which goes to the broader principle of lawfare, which is what the post covered in a condemnatory fashion. As a metaphor, pretty spot on, but probably not your intent.
What you call 'can't really muster a cogent response' is what I call 'evaporative cooling,' and is the point of recognizing the Motte's selection bias for people who disagree to disengage from addressing the arguments.
'They can't really muster a cogent response... triggers even more rage' places the onus for lack of good engagement on those still engaging, without noting that they are the primary source still willing to engage. Note that even most of the 'Well, I liked it well enough' posts were in response to people expressing dislike. The current exchange is entirely consistent with controvery attracting more engagement than the underlying thing itself.
The arguments that the lawfare against Trump are primarily pretextual by parties just as guilty or worse of the same sorts of sins is long, extensive, and literally years old at this point. ymeshkout was also a regular part of them, so regular that the old sparring partners have lost interest.
Alternatively, if he were a non-mod writing the same posts about how corrupt Joe Biden is and the same shots at left-leaning posters, he would get a different and stricter response from the mod group, who has discussed how political balance and forum management considerations shape their response.
This is the crux of the issue when in the past conduct concessions are made to people on the basis of overall political composition of the forum- everything starts to be seen as pretextual, by all parties.
I can tell you that the mod team, and I personally, have not intentionally chosen to prioritize retaining/growing membership over consistent rules enforcement. Believe me or do not, but I strive to be consistent and even-handed, and I believe the other mods do too. Maybe you think we're all terrible at it, but you are definitely mischaracterizing our motives.
I am kind of curious in what way you think we do not enforce the rules consistently, but I fear it will boil down to "Ban the people I think should be banned, and don't ban the people I don't think should be banned," because it always does.
There are people I think are bad faith actors and poisonous to the environment whom I would boot in a heartbeat if we took the more expeditious route you are suggesting. But I am fairly certain you'd find at least some of my choices objectionable.
Just to pick at this a bit, if I understand your argument here, it's basically that we let terrible people like Darwin and Julius (and ymeskhout, apparently) run amok until they drive good posters away. There may be some truth to this (in that I'm sure that all those individuals have driven some people away, some of whom might have been good posters). On the other hand, the people often mentioned as "good posters who were driven away" are people like trannyporn (on one end of the spectrum) or Impassionata (on the other). Do you think any of the people complaining about all the people driven away by so many threads about HBD and Jews and progressives-are-cancer might have a point as well?
Is this the "You give leftists extra slack to try to cultivate ideological diversity" argument again? Because I recall one time when Zorba said something like "Yes, we have a problem keeping leftists around and so we might sometimes go easier on a lefty who's taking a lot of flack," and for years since y'all have beaten that particular horse to death. I can tell you that at present, there is definitely no intentional extra slack given to left-leaning posters.
I do believe you try to. I also believe you are fallible, and susceptible to the same sort of biases that people like to think themselves above. I also know that mods have regularly appealed to personal subjectivity towards those they moderate as they do.
I do believe you try to be even-handed, I challenge that even-handed is subordinated to other concerns, and I base this off of mod comments in ban-posts or kicks which elaborating why certain degrees are inflicted. The words to use them may change- 'not becoming an echo chamber' or 'don't want to drive away key counter-balances' or 'you were a good poster and we'd like to be again"- but past compromises compromise future credibility.
Of course it does, you made a truism of a generality. Nobody goes 'ban the people I don't think should be banned,' because it creates a paradox. This is what I mean by mods not being above logical failures when under their subjective presence.
But, if that feels too confrontational, let me ask a question in turn-
Amadan, how many times in all my years at the Motte have I ever reported someone asking for them to be banned?
Certainly. But the point of a legitimate justice system isn't being non-objectionable, it's being consistent/credible and legitimate. The conflation is why I believe there is a breakdown, and interjects the biases I was mentioning before.
Or me. I am well aware that geopolitics is a hobby horse.
Not drive them away- drive them into not responding to them.
When you have a mix of 'good' posters (those who will only respond in accordance to the rules) and 'bad' posters (those who will respond emotionally, and at risk of the rules) facing a 'nasty' poster (who is not going to change or engage in good faith), the 'good' posters will avoid risk by disengaging. By ratios alone, that makes bad posters a larger share of the remainder, which in turn changes the dynamics of reporting and perception of bad posters, because rather than one bad poster against many good and a few bad, it becomes one bad against many bad and now even-handedness rears it's ugly head because what does 'even handed' mean in practice when dealing with one-vs-many? It certainly doesn't often mean joining in with the unsightly crowd.
This is the environment which drives people away- where dogpiling is very obviously occuring on unpopular positions by obstinant people, where the optics are of mods taking greater actions against those objecting to those in bad faith than against the actors they will eventually ban anyway, where good-faith engagement is hard to find because the good-faith opponents left and the remainder are the sort motivated by emotion, and where even-handedness struggles to handle two different sorts of 'bad'.
This is not the worst environment, or even a worse environment than alternatives, but is the climate of the motte when unmoving bad-faith arguments are raised time and time again.
I absolutely think they have a point, and encourage them to make it- because I believe the mods have a point to, in that a key purpose of this forum is how to argue, not what to argue. This is not a curated garden of harmony, this is a moderated battleground. Siege warfare is our literal visual metaphor, and the motte is for defending points under challenge.
Points are not to be dismissed from consideration, they are to be defeated. Even if people are being driven away by HBD and Jews and progressives-are-cancer... so what? What would you do differently if that were true, that you would not do despite it being true?
Whether there is an intention is irrelevant to whether there is, because, again, biases and other concerns and how subjective things get framed in the context of incentives other contextual priorities. And, of course, prior interest such an intention, even if it's not formal (or even informal) policy at the present.
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