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Where did you get any of that from what he said? You've basically imputed all of your own imaginings onto him based on one comment posing you a hypothetical.
For what it's worth, I agree with @TitaniumButterfly. Your commentary is routinely so incredibly low quality I barely respond to it, but I would honestly prefer not to see it here.
This is her whole thing. She hallucinates stuff to get indignant over and then mocks anyone who objects by implying they're too dumb or insecure (or whatever) to see her point.
Yeah the absolute gall of this user never ceases to astound me, especially considering she routinely violates so many of the rules of this forum. So many of the rules are about limiting antagonism, charitability, kindness, avoiding low-effort participation, avoiding weakmanning, providing evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory one's statement is, and she just freely flouts all of these rules as if they shouldn't apply to her. In this thread alone she has done this to at least two separate users: she has assumed your mental state and accused you of not seeing women as anything other than body parts to fuck and jerk off to, then accused someone posing her a hypothetical of asking her to "concede" to a whole list of imagined uncharitable points of view that were present nowhere in the original comment. It’s nothing but flagrant bad faith.
I understand the point of having affirmative action for minority posters in order to ensure ideological diversity, but when someone pollutes the commons this consistently and has such a small (nonexistent?) roster of quality contributions they end up having a strong net negative effect on the forum. And somehow you collectively got singled out alongside her for being inflammatory in spite of the fact that you were responding to a ridiculously uncharitable and downright slanderous picture she painted of you. Incredible.
A few things:
First, this "affirmative action for minority posters" thing is taking on the character of a Motte urban legend. Being a lefty or Jewish or black or a woman doesn't give you extra latitude to break the rules. We are sometimes slower to act on people who are being reported a lot for having unpopular views, because frankly there is hardly any active poster here (with only a few exceptions) who, if everything they said was getting reported, wouldn't end up having some comments cross the line and the mods getting a sense that this person is a Problem.
Second, @HereAndGone2 has been modded and temp banned, many times, and she is aware that her previous record does not get erased when she creates a new account.
Third, yes, I scolded her and @TitaniumButterfly both because they were both getting unnecessarily personal. I am telling you the same thing. The fact that some poster really grinds your gears does not mean you should take the opportunity to write screeds about how much they annoy you.
In my defence, I'm an idiot and do things like "what the hell was my last password, I can't log in, oh well just create a new account" and "that's it, I'm done, I'm leaving and deleting my old account/damn it, somebody said something dumb, I can't let this go, oh well just create a new account". It's genuinely stupidity, not an attempt to ban evade.
EDIT: "I understand the point of having affirmative action for minority posters in order to ensure ideological diversity"
I'm a minority now? Whoo-hoo! So where do I apply for reparations, then? Favourable hiring practices? Accommodations for my various ailments (gotta give me accommodations because of neurodivergence, you know!) Ah, at long last the lap of luxury beckons! 🤣
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To clarify, I didn't mean "minority" posters as in a minority demographic, I meant minority posters in terms of holding and expressing unpopular views (hence why I referred to "ideological diversity").
This is true enough, and I do understand this principle. But there exist unpopular posters here who are capable of engaging within the rules of the forum and don't repeatedly flout it (in spite of the fact that I am sure they get reported). magicalkittycat and Goodguy are some examples who, in spite of sizeable ideological difference from many of this forum's users, I would prefer to keep around. This user's behaviour on the other hand regularly brings heat and not light, with relatively few quality contributions to show for it unlike other posters like Dase/Ilforte.
I realise moderation isn't a task that can be 100% consistent all the time, and had I ever been offered a moderator position I would probably refuse. But this kind of user criticism does not seem particularly out of pocket for this forum; it's something that happens on this forum a lot.
So just to clarify the rules for the future (and I am asking this to clarify, not as a rhetorical question): What is the definition of "personal", and does criticising the visible behaviour of a poster here without extending into their personal life count as overly personal? If not what's the criteria for moderation? Because it has been stated before that criticising people isn't against the rules, only making personal attacks, and as such before this I would have thought criticism restricted to how one's behaviour breaks the rules is fair game, especially considering that virtually every time any other user has reacted with hostility in this thread, it was in response to bad faith.
I cannot and will not give you a precise guideline as to when I or another mod will step in because people are going at each other. First, because that gets pretty close to "Tell me how I can attack someone I don't like without being modded," which we get sometimes. Second, because you are right that moderation cannot be 100% consistent all the time. I try to be consistent and principled but I'm sure looking at every single time one poster criticized another, you could find discrepancies regarding when I did or did not put on the mod hat.
General rule of thumb: if someone is grinding your gears and your post is all about how they grind your gears, it's probably not a necessary contribution. And if two people are in a slapfight because they annoy one another, we are likely to step in and say "Knock it off," and no, I'm not going to try to measure which of them typed more mean words.
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