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Oh come on, I can't believe this, every time I make a top level post we get people going "5 secret and esoteric knowledge reasons why BC is actually trolling even when he says he's sincere" that there's no good response to other than going "no" because with text anyone can make up anything to support their viewpoint and make it sound plausible (see your average literary analysis magazine or Scott's Recent Anti-Christ lecture).
I think it only takes a very quick glance at this forum and past moderation activities to realize that us mods have very little in common with the good Cardinal. We warn sparingly, and hand out bans even more so.
As is regrettably necessary, mod decisions usually revolve around matters of opinion, not the kind of objective fact that can be analyzed under a microscope. Yet, the average Mottizen attracts little such censure.
The last time I had to ban you, I even went to the trouble of rewriting your post to demonstrate a version that used inflammatory language to only the minimum extent necessary:
https://www.themotte.org/post/2269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348561?context=8#context
So I am confident that it isn't the content, but the user presenting it and the way it's presented that's an issue.
At this point, you have the following options:
Keep doing whatever it is you are doing, till someone less amused by your antics permabans you.
Write something of actual quality to counterbalance things (you are in fact capable of doing this, look at your Alawite writeup, it won an AAQC). Or, if you're going to keep actual intellectual effort at what it is, phrase things in a more neutral manner.
As it is, my stance is that your current post isn't quite bad enough to warrant another ban, but has supersensitized my receptors such that a second offense will definitely result in a ban.
Honestly, I'm not sure any expression of sincerity will make up for past actions. Finding Christ or Allah right at the noose might do good things for your immortal soul, but it'll take a great deal more to make us not consider you a bad actor.
I'm not interested in debating your character with you, though I might with other people who genuinely don't understand our stance. What is within your control is your behavior, such that you may delay or deny the looming banhammer.
If you can't? Well, you'll certainly break out of the loop of samsara, for better or worse.
In fairness, people have been saying “the forum will die because you’re banning all the interesting people” for at least 5 years now.
On the other hand, we actually have banned some interesting people, and the forum is worse for their absence.
Okay buddy - you and @ABigGuy4U - I am calling your bluff. Who are the people we have permabanned who actually made the forum worse for their absence?
The only one I can think of is @HlynkaCG and he is extremely debatable - for every Hlynka-stan who misses him, there is someone who was screaming at us to ban him for years. And I've already written several times about how we did everything we could, short of just literally saying "The rules don't apply to Hlynka," to avoid having to permaban him.
Every other permaban I can think of might have been in some cases an "interesting" person, but they were interesting in the sense that they wrote high-effort screeds spitting high-effort venom, and the people upset that we banned them approved of the direction they were spitting.
Go on, tell me who on this list was a valuable contributor who you think should be granted amnesty?
We do not casually permaban people, and we let even the most belligerent and obnoxious people, if there is even a shred of redeeming quality in their posts, have multiple chances before we pull the trigger.
I personally don't find @BurdensomeCount's contributions very interesting, though I will say his trolling has gotten less blatant. I just skimmed the OP because it was the usual uninteresting BC sneering. He mostly gets away with it because he's toned down the celebratory triumphalism about enjoying the fruits of immigrating to the UK which he looks forward to being conquered by his people who will punish the white supremacist natives in good time. It was those kinds of posts that got him banned before.
Looks like @fuckduck9000, banned for this, was banned for something far less inflammatory than stuff that barely merited a warning in this very thread.
I only vaguely remember @fuckduck9000. The ban was a year ago and it was @naraburns who banned him and I'm not going to read the entire thread to see if I agree with your summary, since your summaries are almost always disingenuous.
But let's look at @fuckduck9000's "valuable contributions": he had eight warnings and/or tempbans before he got permabanned. All of them were basically for petty shit-stirring and condescension, often by starting a "call-out" thread obviously intended to start a fight. He had zero AAQCs, and my recollection of him was basically just another sneering culture warrior (which fits your defense of him, he usually sneered at the people you like to sneer at) but he never did so in an interesting or effortful way.
So your example of someone who was a loss to the forum was an uninteresting, unmemorable snarler who was given many, many chances to improve. Try again.
If upvotes mean ‘more of this’ and (like most commenters) fuckduck was largely upvoted, shouldn’t there be a presumption of adding value to the forum, that cannot be annulled by you simply finding me annoying?
I admit, I’m not a high-effort, longform poster. More of a mid-effort reply guy. I get bored on the fourth paragraph describing an idea. I don’t have the impeccable prose of a rafa. But we can’t all be rock stars. I’m not a rock, I identify more as the glue, or cement, in a forum like this. I argue with everyone. Someone has to purge by fire all the crank theories and showerthoughts that make up the AAQC. This can come off as hostile ‘call-outs’, ‘shit-stirring’ and ‘condescension’, but I’d say it’s valuable – and I never tried to get anyone I argued with banned, hostile or not.
Mostly, I blame my vulgar name for how things turned out. I never had much problems with other alts before or since. Much like trannyporno, I fell victim to nominative determinism. Milgram’s experiment of sorts: first named as a villain, then treated as one, sooner or later I ended up as one.
Anyway, since I often defended trannyporno, darwin, hlynka, burdensomecount and almost everyone else who was slowly banned or chased away by heavy-handed moderation, I thought I might as well put in a kind word for myself. @The_Nybbler , @Primaprimaprima , thanks for the appeal.
No. People can reliably get lots of upvotes with a flaming hot "I hate my outgroup" post. We don't mod by upvotes.
If you're admitting to being fuckduck, consider yourself being given grace for not being given another ban for ban evasion.
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