banned
Apply the same low bar consistently. Let people have an actual conversation with actual disagreement.
I am not aware of any banned person who was trying to have an actual conversation with actual disagreement. People mainly get banned for being obvious bad faith trolls who are just here to deliver drive-by insults and then vanish without making any arguments for their position.
Sure, there are some people who do that and don't get banned, but that's not quite the same thing, is it? I don't think it's so terrible to err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt. There are few enough posts here that tolerating a few more won't take away attention from anyone more deserving.
And for the record, I would be willing to bet that >75% of this forum is non-antisemetic (is there a word for that?) and a commanding majority support Israel over its various Muslim rivals. There are a few antisemites lurking about darkly Implying Things, but much like the leftists they tend to scurry away when you shine a spotlight on them rather than actually stand and fight.
It is not a consensus opinion that smothers dissent, it's the opposite. It's an embattled minority opinion that no one is willing to stand up and openly defend. You don't have to tiptoe around anything.
Here, watch: I think antisemetism is stupid. Much like a primitive savage who thinks thunder is caused by an angry god, many people anthropomorphize the impersonal forces of politics and economics. When confronted with a phenomenon one doesn't understand, one might assume it must be caused by a cabal of scheming humans. But cabals of scheming humans are rare, and the idea that an entire ethnic group is carrying out a conspiracy is preposterous. Keeping a secret on that scale is not possible, and the suggestion that such a conspiracy exists is reflective of a lack of understanding of the limits of large organizations more than anything.
I've called you out, antisemites of the Motte! I've dismissed your beliefs as mere superstition! Show me how fearsome and numerous you are! Dogpile me into oblivion!
Clementine
6d ago
I moderated a forum once.
Like many forums it struggled with one of the basic problems of forum moderation — how much niceness do you enforce, which I'll explain by way of some endemic user types in any forum with enough people and anything but the most milquetoast topic.
A: Here's the troll who comes by only to post egregiously offensive "go kill yourself [list of slurs]",
B: Here's the more subtle troll, who keeps toeing the line as much as he can get away with.
C: here's the user who is not a troll. They actually do participate in discussion and are clearly trying to be a part of the community. They're also abrasive and/or obnoxious and/or inflammatory.
D: And then here's the final type of user that's problematic as a mod: They're a sensitive snowflake. Honestly they need to be sub-divided further, because some of them are just born snowflakes that can't handle any opposition to their viewpoint at all, and others are retaliatory snowflakes, because if I got a ban for three days for saying this opinion is dumb then that guy also needs to get a ban for three days for saying this other opinion is dumb.
The forum was one that was trying really hard to be heterogenous in terms of opinions and also to be nice and moderating it was a nightmare, not because of the obvious ban on sight trolls but because inevitably when you want to moderate niceness now 90% of your mod time — and the mod time becomes a balloon that expands to fill all available space — is spent on dealing with constant playground supervision of the snowflakes. Also you've been slowly but steadily banning your type C members when they eventually accrue enough complains from the type Ds, and because they're really annoying you initially don't miss them until you realize that conversation in your forum is drying up a bit and also some of the valuable forum members who were friends with type Cs also got pissed off and left and also mixed into the type Cs and their friends were, inevitably, some of the more useful members of the forum who knew a lot (and hence got into arguments that annoyed snowflakes).
Also it turns out snowflakes are basically never satisfied as long and are just a self eating death spiral of a forum culture.
After my experience moderating that forum and swearing off moderating ever again, I ended up lurking the notorious kiwifarms. It was full of people who engaged in what would definitely be termed elsewhere as hate speech against me. Now, I never actually made an account there, and I also stopped visiting a few years back so idk if things have changed, but at the time I remember being struck by how much less of a threat I felt reading kiwifarms, because yeah slurs were being thrown around but users were actually arguing, you didn't just have someone with the viewpoint that was the forum consensus and then everyone else against that consensus gets to tiptoe around what they can say or get banned. Everyone shared their most idiotic opinions and had other people arguing with them no holds barred, the forum also had reaction emojis so you could freely post your insane conspiracy theory but wou would get 50 "lol look at this insane conspiracy theory" reactions.
I remember a few years ago people were still making fun of t*kt*kers and how they would asterisk everything or use idiotic word substitution like "krill myself" because otherwise they'd get blackholed by the TikTok algorithm.
Meanwhile I took a long long break from reddit and only recently returned, to a forum dedicated to a game I play, and discovered that in the interim reddit has added some kind of probably AI based site-wide moderation against violent language (or actual human beings are being this dumb idk) and it's impossible to talk like a normal person there anymore, because if you say, in a joking and friendly fashion perfectly understood by you and the person you are talking to to be friendly, "you said my build was bad, I'm gonna have to shove you off a cliff" (this example is not great because I forget the actual exchange, but whatever, fill in something more normal) then you get banned from all of Reddit and the poor guy you were talking with gets to post your exit speech from the discord you're both in as well. It does appear to be a strike system where first you get warned, since I got my first warning for telling someone who posted about a pedophile moving into their neighborhood that hopefully the pedophile would die suddenly.
It's hard not to turn this into some kind of doompost about how the internet is turning into a horrible little hellhole where no one has a normal argument anymore just constant barricading themselves into their own opinions lest they be offended by the not niceness of having to hear someone else's opinions, each little forum and its own narrow band of acceptable ideology, all while the biggest social media sites are enforcing the most transparently fake bullshit kindergarten language upon us all. It brings out the free speech absolutist instincts in me, it really does.
But what if you don't want an aggressively anti-censorship forum that will involve a forum culture of calling everyone slurs? You want the veneer of respectability and gentility but also the ability to have an actual conversation?
Well I already listed the shitty experience I had trying to moderate such a forum, against what was not bad faith actors but just human actors acting predictably human hence this being a pattern you can see all over the place, and now I have to address the flip side of the coin.
Let's by analogy discuss locker room culture. I don't actually know if locker room culture is a real thing irl so I'm going to discuss hypothetical locker room culture.
It's a group of like fifteen guys in a guy's only space. They're basically all normal guys, plus rapey Kenneth and edgy Doug. Sometimes rapey Kenneth makes a joke about how some girl in the school really needs to be fucked into her proper place in society and Doug will make some follow up joke and everyone else is maybe thinking "c'mon man can we not do this" if it's been like too many times that day but usually you're just trying to finish getting dressed and maybe John also is like "that's not cool man" and pushes back. But like, the rest of the time the atmosphere is just a comfy men's only space plus the occasional rape joke or comment about how women suck or are all gold-diggers or are responsible for everything wrong with society.
Anyway, if for whatever reason that locker room decided it wanted to actually be a co-ed discussion space instead, it would have a little problem, which is that any individual woman walking in would get the vibe — they're the barely tolerated outsider — and then leave unless they're like extra autistic/socially challenged.
Because there's just the microculture of what kinds of things are ok to say there and what aren't, and sometimes what's ok to say is anything negative about group A and what's not ok to say is anything negative about group B, and it's not really about an active policy one way or another it's just this is the overall culture of the social group, read the room and get out.
This is, unfortunately, the part where I admit that I've spent weeks now debating if I should just quietly show myself the door. I didn't mean to enter themotte under false premises, I just decided my first post wouldn't be some "here's all my labels and opinions" and would be an actual post about a controversial topic I wanted to talk about. And then before I had the chance to like, casually drop the relevant information about me and get it over with (I despise sharing personally identifiable information online, but it was nonetheless something that needed to happen eventually if I wanted to talk about any number of topics I wanted to discuss), my government did a surprise attack on Iran. I quite vividly remember someone posting a comment about there being a siren and someone else saying "can't find any news confirming it" and not piping in with "it's me, I'm the news, posting from the spotty internet in the bomb shelter". And then it became just increasingly not the right moment for it (also I was quite sleep deprived and dealing with lots of other more immediate concerns).
And in the meantime I got to have the uncomfortable sensation of listening in on conversations I felt were very obviously not meant to include me. For several days now I've been debating doing a rip the band-aid off kind of post (how? What framing?) to get it over with and be able to discuss things again or to just... Leave.
Because of course the alternative is to figure out the correct, respectful way to tiptoe around the conversation over whether Jews control the American government/assassinated Kennedy, since we aren't doing kiwifarms style dialogue where someone talks about the kikes ruining everything and someone else responds by calling him a retarded autist, you've got to politely request sources and carefully have respectful mutually productive dialogue.
Or to just like ignore that the conversation is even happening? Stick to discussion of feminism and essentially continue faking being a normal non-Jewish mottizen...
Polite respectful mutual dialogue.
But only for some opinions, because others are an "immense pain in the ass".
Yes this is the actual reason I ended up writing this comment instead of continuing to waffle over if I should just leave. Because it is actually really annoying, if I need to play nice with the neonazis and have polite and measured conversations — I am willing to do this, even though conversations with people who are (only theoretically!) interested in me and my family being dead are a "pain in the ass" to conduct civilly — and to then see someone else express some opinion that is more objectionable to the baseline motte culture, but expressed according to all the rules of the site, and get banned (temporarily) for it. Because it just means setting the lines around what kinds of people are in the locker room, which is pretending to be a co-ed discussion space, but isn't. And yes I'm biased by being more inclined towards free speech over banning and thinking that it's better to have the opinions and talk it out then constantly police what people say, sure, but if the forum can tolerate holocaust denial I think it can also stretch itself to tolerate libtards. I'm not interesting in doing some tit for tat thing where I'm like "well if you banned them for this, why didn't you ban that other person for that" because like I stated up front that's just the path to a death spiral where almost no one interesting sticks around. But still, come on, you didn't ban them for constantly sticking their conspiracy theories into every discussion couched as consensus building obvious fact. Apply the same low bar consistently. Let people have an actual conversation with actual disagreement.
hydroacetylene
6d ago
It was putting words in the mouths of a large, vaguely defined political movement which you associated those you disagree with on the forum with.
I wouldn't have banned you for it- although if I made all the mod decisions you probably would have been banned at the time you posted it for one of the personal attacks you got a slap on the wrist for- but it wasn't the post we'd like to see more of. I think you could have written a better version of that post; goodness knows we have enough discussion on native white men and the economy.
We have conservative posters who whine about the mods oppressing them, too. I generally say the same thing to them.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
-
I would not have personally banned you and I don’t think you’ve ever posted anything banworthy.
-
But @netstack was correct that based on your comment record, you’re here to pick fights rather than engage in constructive dialogue. Like everywhere else in the world, we have multiple competing values that we want to balance: we want a diversity of viewpoints represented, but we also don’t want people who are just here to pick fights.
The mods are only human. I haven't dived deep enough to evaluate the merits of your particular ban, but for what it's worth, I've been banned several times. I don't hold any grudge against the mods for that. My bans were generally in the nature of "I got emotional and I started to really lay into my political opponents in an obviously angry and uncharitable way". I do sometimes get annoyed by the fact that I feel that people on this forum often break the "Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity." rule by assuming that social conservatism is good, without actually justifying it. But I don't feel that this happens because the mods are ideologically biased. I think it happens because I think that this forum has more social conservatives posting (though not necessarily lurking or voting) than social liberals like myself, so social conservatives just create more content for mods to address than social liberals do. Certainly there are plenty of snarky posts and consensus-building posts here by conservatives that don't get modded, but I don't feel that the mods are trying to support conservatism, it's just that there are a lot of snarky and consensus-building conservative posts to go through compared to snarky and consensus-building liberal posts, so it's very easy to find examples of the former that slip through the net.
While this forum leans right, I often see posts of mine that are left of the average get upvoted by quite a bit. You might be surprised how receptive you find some people here if you argue for your political opinions plainly and calmly, laying out arguments for why they are accurate and/or beneficial, rather than with anger. I extend this appeal, also, to some of the more snarky and angry right-wingers here: please put aside the emotional fervor and try to just argue for your political opinions plainly and calmly, rather than in a perpetually angry and conspiratorial mode.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
6d ago
On the sidebar it says "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." In this thread, it is claimed "the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here."
After my ban for this comment, it's hard to take that seriously. It did not include personal attacks, name-calling, strawmanning, or attempting to enforce ideological conformity. It "spoke plainly" and provided evidence. Yet the mods banned me for it, saying I was being an "immense pain in the ass."
I think the mods, and most people here, believe that they want this to be an open discussion forum with people of many different viewpoints, but when they're actually confronted with it, they feel it's an "immense pain in the ass." They called me an "obnoxious trolling shitstirrer." Yes, I am a shitstirrer in the sense that I say things that go against the dominant ideological viewpoint here, and I know in advance that hostility is likely to result. But isn't that what you want here, rather than another online echo chamber? I'm sure many of you have experience being "shitstirrers" in online spaces where you're in the ideological minority, now the shoe's on the other foot.
The mods accused me of "snarling" at my enemies, which gets to the meat of the issue: do you want an ideologically diverse forum or not? I freely admit I have a contempt for forms of conservatism and white nationalism I see as third-worldist. (Anti-vax, raw milk, conspiratorial, superstitious, fetishizing low-skilled manual labor, etc.) That's why I disagree with you guys and don't identify as part of your political tribe. If you think I'm a "leftist," try talking to a real one, the kind who uses terms like "patriarchy" or "heteronormativity" non-ironically. They do NOT like you. They see you as a malignant, cancerous influence on America. If you don't want to have a discussion forum with people who dislike you, change your rules to state that they aren't welcome. If, on the other hand, you want people from other tribes to be in this "jury," then you've got to accept them as they are rather than the imagined versions who disagree with you but like and respect you and never come around to actually posting here.
It seems to me that what some people here want is a forum with "left-wing" equivalents of David French. For the unfamiliar, David French is an allegedly "conservative" columnist for the NYT whose articles are just one after another telling liberals they're right and that conservatives are gross and mean and only ever making "we need 50 Stalins" criticisms of the Left. Thing is, French doesn't play this role for free. And you should be glad you don't have David French's, as I suspect that they have had a detrimental impact on the Left's electoral fortunes. If your only exposure to "conservatives" is people like David French, you're going to get a warped view of American politics that will lead to bad election strategy.
None of this is to say you should get rid of your rules against shaming, strawmanning, name-calling, etc. Maybe a new rule should be "be as polite as possible without being insincere." I admit that this is a tough balance to strike, I just think that right now the Motte is too far toward forced politeness leading to ideological conformity.
quiet_NaN
7d ago
I will register the unpopular minority opinion that I dislike the TikTok ban.
Fundamentally, it goes against the ideal of a marketplace of ideas. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. and all that.
Worried about TikTok promoting harmful behavior? Set up a general framework which video platforms liable (e.g. once they have been notified). Worrying about kids getting addicted to short videos? Ban short video platforms generally.
Plenty of countries ban or restrict foreign-produced or foreign-owned media. The Chinese can not read the Guardian. Russia severely regulates any NGOs which come within a mile of foreign funds. No Netflix for North Korea. And so forth.
In my mind, restricting foreign media is a sign of weakness. If North Korea gave its subjects access to Hollywood TV and CNN, their own propaganda would indeed look stale by comparison, so they ban foreign media not mainly because it has the better arguments (though of course it has), but because they could not match its visual appeal.
The US is both a champion of the marketplace of ideas and a dominant global cultural force (two facts which might be related, somehow). Netflix exists in 190 countries. Hollywood productions probably reach the majority of the world population, spreading Western ideas around the globe.
If that country says "actually, the most popular mobile app being foreign-owned is a, flips through excuse calendar NATIONAL SECURITY RISK, so sell it to a US company or we will ban it" is absolutely pathetic.
Don't get me wrong, I do not like short video apps particularly, but I also do not think they are intrinsically more harmful than Skinner box games. TikTok was clearly targeted because it allowed China (through recommendation algorithms) to decide what political speech Generation TikTok would be exposed to. Telling a generation "you are not allowed to use your favorite app because Red China might expose you to wrongthink" is pretty fucked up. If TikTok is a direct unfiltered channel into the viewers mind unlike all the media formats which we encountered before, then it should either be banned or be placed under the control of the US ministry of rightthink, not just sold to some random US firm which might not be that much more trustworthy.
And yes, I also hate the precedent this sets for free exchange of information, because the West just lost the moral high ground. Any tinpot dictator can say "Sure, I ban X/Bluesky/Meta/Google, but you see, I consider a dominant foreign media app a NATIONAL SECURITY RISK, just like the Americans do."
What can we learn about optimal cultural leadership in light of the 2013-2021 social justice period?
-
Religious leaders did not adequately stand up against the mass movement. Although many conservatives see value in religious institutions as a cultural defense, mainstream Catholicism and Protestant denominations did not substantively address the social justice craze. In some cases they placated or even promoted it.
-
Academics did not adequately argue against the mass movement. It is not the case, for instance, that the experts in western history, literature, or philosophy were more likely to argue against the mass movement in any substantive way. This is problematic: if learning the best of western culture does not lead to protecting said culture in any genuine sense when it matters the most, then how great is the actual utility of such learning?
-
The main “public critics” of the period have little in common except that they were passionate and somewhat neurotic men. Yarvin, Peterson, Weinstein, Scott Adams(?). My memory of who was most dominant in this period is somewhat hazy, maybe someone with a better memory can correct me. There were more psychologists among critics than philosophers. You had people like Stefan Molyneux passionately criticizing the proto-movement well before its zenith. His Twitter attests to his neuroticism.
-
Random people online were able to sense a threat that leading experts weren’t able to sense, and made arguments that leading academics did not make. Why?
It’s difficult to come away with clear takeaways. IMO: (1) it is beneficial to increase anonymous discussion, as this laid the groundwork for future criticism, and allowed for arguments to spread which would otherwise be banned. (2) It may be essential to increase the number of passionate and neurotic men, over men with other skills, as the major critics were more often passionate and somewhat crazy. A “passionate” temperament is occasionally inaccurate, and may result in behavior that leads institutions to weed them out — but their utility in sensing and addressing threats compensates for the occasional bout of craziness.
There is a funny review of Jordan Peterson from 2013, possibly the first time anyone commented about his personality online. It was made on the anonymous literature board of 4chan in 2013, long before his rise to fame.
he's craaaaazy. he so crazy. I had a class immediately following one of his lectures like, his was from 1:15-3:15 in Room 101., and my different classes was from 3:25-5:25 in Room 101 too. ok? So... he would totally bug out if someone opened the door early. Like, screaming fits and stuff. my prof (who was just a postdoc and wasn't going to get tenured at u of t) encouraged us all to fuck with his head because in addition to being a rageaholic spaz, peterson would also leave the podium really dirty. also, he lectures in a cape for some reason. he went on this ontario talk show with his daughter talking about how they're both clinically depressed bla bla, I feel bad that she's his dad, that must be hard to deal with
Editing for clarity
The question is geared toward users who believe that wokeness constituted a threat — to institutions, America, truth, etc. I suppose there are some users who do not believe that wokeness was a threat. I can’t recall seeing such a comment in years on this forum, but if you’re such a user, you are of course welcome to comment and critique in any way that you’d like. Feel free to comment on the premise, the points, a tangent.
-
Why were the individuals leading the fight against wokeness outside of the traditional framework of understanding and designating cultural authority? The study of philosophy, the study of history, the study of great works, the study and authority of religion — these things did not create any of the influential “fighters” publicly arguing against wokeness. If they couldn’t detect, grasp, and eliminate the threat, then how important should we consider these pursuits and domains? Why did they fail when they were needed? Are these pursuits less valuable in moral formation than generally conceived? Many conservatives believe that these mainstays of Western education are important to study; yet the students of these were impotent against the threat. There are conservatives who studied these, and who teach these.
-
”Institutional capture” doesn’t factor in here because there are non-woke members of these domains, perhaps a few percent or a few tens of percents, but none of them were to be found among the influential critics of wokeness.
-
It appears to me that temperament played a larger role than anything else in deciding who was instrumental in tackling the threat. Do you agree? Do you disagree? From Peterson to Musk, the great “defenders” against it were passionate and somewhat crazy personalities. They cried publicly. They had strange personal lives. If that’s the case, should temperament be considered a greater deal in the selection of authority?
I think this clarifies. There’s a mismatch between “the study of Western things leads to great moral conduct!” and the reality of how everyone behaved during a mass movement which veered toward moral hysteria. “Traditional education” did not avail anything. This is interesting, provided of course that you agree with the premise.
TheDemonRazgriz
7d ago
Maybe it’s a relatively small issue, but I have been immensely disappointed in the Trump II admin’s handling of the TikTok ban (which is to say, stonewalling it seemingly at all costs).
For one, the bill has remarkably plain text which they are openly violating. I’m open to hearing examples if people here think I’m wrong about this, but I think this is qualitatively different from most of the “Imperial Presidency” actions taken by Bush and Obama (and Trump I, and Biden). To my knowledge those situations generally relied on Congress abdicating its authority to the President or to the executive branch. For example all of the 21st century’s military escapades and undeclared wars, often described as being in defiance of Congressional authority, are actually operating with explicit approval in the form of the post-9/11 AUMF. Congress could repeal it at any time and reclaim its war-making authority, it simply chooses not to. Much the same for all the myriad powers now granted to federal agencies. In this case the executive is quite nakedly saying “this law has been passed, but we don’t like it, so we won’t enforce it.” This is not a power the branch is supposed to have.
Second is the way in which this came about. Trump had campaigned as a China hawk and, iirc, publicly supported the bill until an 11th-hour turnaround which was conveniently timed after an influx of campaign funds tied to Chinese business interests. This is, at best, not a good look.
And finally I just disagree with the substance. TikTok should be banned in the US, or at least sold to US owners. All the innate problems with algorithmic social media feeds, which are frankly bad enough on their own, are massively amplified when the company which owns and operates the algorithm is beholden to an explicitly hostile foreign power. There’s already pretty incontrovertible evidence that TikTok is tuned to mildly promote divisive content and to mildly suppress content critical of China (e.g. higher rates of Palestinian-related content but lower rates of Uyghur-related content versus similar social media apps, among others). The algorithm could trivially be tuned further in the event that Chinese-US relations deteriorate further, or just if the company’s state handlers want to. I don’t see a reason why we should need to accept that risk.
Even if your neighbor's dog is barking a lot, barking utterly pales in comparison to fireworks in terms of how disruptive it is due to the massive difference in volume
I don't know where you live, but I hear barking on a daily basis much louder than any of the firecrackers that went off this weekend (at least accounting for distance; how loud a mortar is from equivalent distance is frankly irrelevant to me unless my neighbor is literally setting them off from his porch). At least with fireworks, it's one or two nights per year and confined to a predictable 6 hour span. The barking occurs on a daily basis, at random, and extends indefinitely. Here, people's dogs bark at any hour. I've been woken up by howling at 3-4 am on a work day multiple times. You could ask me to choose fireworks every Friday if it meant dogs were banned from residential areas and I'd take that in a heartbeat. Over the span of a full year, there really is no comparison when it comes to which is more disruptive to my life.
At least a dog is an independent creature you can't control ... fireworks people are deliberately choosing to be assholes disrupting their neighbors
People choose to own dogs. They choose to ignore properly training them. They choose to continue to keep them even when they are a persistent nuisance to their neighbors. This attitude that you can't just get rid of your personal vanity project is common among dog owners. If your neighbor has a car horn that goes off at random times for random durations, I think you would be right to say it should either be fixed or trashed.
Are you really trying to argue that fireworks are just desserts when they punish not only the irresponsible, but also the responsible owners and those who don't even have dogs?
Nowhere in my post did I support the use of fireworks past a certain hour. I explicitly said I find them annoying as well. I've found many dog owners and their allies have a tendency to get extremely defensive and treat the slightest pushback on even a subset of behaviors as an attack. I never said that I want fireworks in order to punish dog owners, but somehow by simply saying that my personal frustration with dog barking is greater than my frustration with fireworks you jumped to that conclusion.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
12d ago
I answered you already downthread, but since you've spun into multiple sub-arguments with different people about your grievances with various posters, how we handled Darwin (unfairly, disproportionately, and with great bias, according to you), and alleged personal attacks against you that we have refused to mod, I have a few points to make in addition to those I made here.
First, regarding Darwin aka @guesswho.
Have you noticed, perchance, that @guesswho is not banned? During his last pass, he earned a bunch of warnings, one tempban, and an AAQC. Hardly indicative of unfair treatment, for all that many of our users (and, being honest, half the mods) hated him.
I didn't hate him. I found him annoying and disingenuous, but I agree with you that to some degree, the hatred of Darwin was excessive and ideologically motivated (he was one of the most persistent and antagonistic leftist posters willing to argue a leftist position down to the ground).
But you know what? I also totally understand why he drove so many people absolutely bugfuck crazy. Because that was more or less his entire reason d'être. He had mastered the art of poking people in the eye until they'd rage back at him. I don't think he was a literal troll - i.e., someone engaging in a performance just to piss people off, without really believing the things he argued. I think he really believed the things he argued but I think he argued for the joy of it, the joy of "conquering" his enemies (i.e., driving them bugfuck crazy with his tactics) and he wasn't particularly interested in, you know, accuracy or sincerity or ingenuousness. "Owning the righties" was his game and he played it with prejudice.
You know who drove him away?
Me.
The thread you were already linked to, about J.K. fucking Rowling. Here you go again. The one where I finally lost it with him. But I "lost it," not by going bugfuck crazy, but by deciding I was going to nail his feet to the ground, pound on each and every one of his arguments, and drill him until he either stood and delivered or ran.
Been a year, and we're still waiting for him to get to it "in his queue."
But he's still not banned! He can starting posting again whenever he wants. And while I'm sure if he did, a lot of people (including me) might say "So, about that JK Rowling thread?" - most likely he'd waffle and dismiss it, and go back to his old ways forthwith.
Your thesis that "Darwin was ganged up on and mistreated just because he was a leftist" is mostly bullshit. Sorry.
(@Tree's claim that we bent and made up rules just to go after Darwin is thus 100% bullshit.)
Now about all these other threads you point to as examples of us "Letting righties be mean and not modding them."
@gattsuru has a ton of AAQCs. That gives him a very long leash. This is by design and it's not secret - people who generate a ton of quality comments get away with more. That said, every comment you've linked to as an example of personal attacks? Being aggressive in interrogating you is not a "personal attack." I say this as somone who has been the target of @gattsuru's interrogations more than once and who can hardly be considered a fan of him or his tactics. He's a dedicated hater and I'm on his hatelist. No bias here. Worth noting that at one point we pretty much did issue a "Stop using this particular tactic" rule regarding throwing walls of links to every single past conversation every time someone he hated posted something, because it was obnoxious and degrading to the discourse (and we got some flack and resentment over it). And I mention this, not to continue to persecute @gattsuru (hey buddy, at least I guess we can have civilized conversations about which SF authors suck) but because you think we make up or bend rules just to prosecute our ideological biases, when in fact, if we bend or make up rules at all, it's because someone is being particularly and uniquely obnoxious (a point I already made about @AlexanderTurok) and it's not ideological bias at all, we do it to people who are being particularly obnoxious.
You (and @Tree, and a couple of other people) hammer this argument that we are absolutely seeing for the very first time (that was sarcasm), that the Motte picks on leftists and they get unfairly dogpiled until they get banned, and meanwhile we let MAGAs get away with anything. We've been hearing it since the Motte began. You've all read my "if I had a nickel..." speech about a dozen times now. Because yes, kids, the righties, especially certain categories of righties (the ones who really like talking about Jews, bitches, and fucking children - that's a gerund, not an adjective) insist that we're all ZOG-converged tools or something. Or, from the saner but still angry right wing, that we let leftists in general get away with more. That we practice "leftist affirmative action" and the Darwins and the AlexanderTuroks (whether or not he claims/admits to being on the left) go way too long without being banned even as the mod queue is being flooded with people demanding we ban them. We especially hear it when we ban a rightie for, you know, being particularly and especially obnoxious, whatever his particular hobby horse (even if it's just "hating leftists").
The point of this long screed (besides letting me get some mod frustration off my chest - man, does it get annoying hearing the same tired accusations over and over and fucking over again)? Make a new argument. But not really- you don't have one. None of this is new. Instead- accept that this is how moderation works here, it's by design, and you can nudge us incrementally towards being harsher or laxer with the general feedback that is the overall pattern of complaints and reports, but playing "Why did you mod Johnny and not Suzy?" for the hundredth time is not going to move us. Insisting "You take sides (against my side)" for the hundredth time is not going to move us.
You're wrong. You are observably, factually, and empirically wrong. I say this because I see the mod queue. I say this because I have a pretty good memory of the Motte and its moderation going all the way back to before I became a mod (I wonder if even @naraburns remembers that I was once on the "You're cruising for a banning" list). I say this because I am part of the mod discussions we have. I say this because I have a pretty good mental model of my fellow mods, and of our most prominent posters. Not flawless, I am not perfect and I can sometimes misunderstand people (and I am saying nothing here about the quality of my own arguments - there's a reason my handful of AAQCs are mostly for writing about hobbydrama-type posts), but I have a reputation for having the best spidey sense when it comes to alts and trolls. I could tell you stories, many more stories. A lot of the misapprehension people have about modding is because you really don't see... the stuff you never see. Not your fault.
But a lot of it is because you're just wrong.
@AlexanderTurok got banned because he has been regularly and intentionally obnoxious for weeks now and he's already been warned. Not because we hate his opinions. Not because he's a leftist. (Or a rightist or a whatever-he-calls-himself playing the part of a leftist who claims not to be one.) The one-week ban, specifically, was @netstack's call. I might have only warned him. Or I might have given him three days. Another mod might have actually let it go. We didn't actually discuss this one internally (we do not discuss every ban). But it didn't happen because of ideological biases or unfairness or the Motte hating lefty posters. (A particularly ironic accusation to throw at @netstack, who is the only mod arguably more lefty than me.) It happened because Turok likes to rattle cages and frame arguments in a maximally uncharitable and inflammatory way calculated to be ragebait. He thinks this is entertaining, and if he keeps it up, his next ban will be longer.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
12d ago
But this is madness, and I do not believe that you would ever accept the framework off aggregating assholes by ideology, and deploying moderatory actions adjusted for that
I'm not asking for that. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it for genuinely woke people as a form of affirmative action for opposing views, and it should be noted that I wouldn't see myself as being a beneficiary of that if it were implemented since I'm not woke myself.
What I'd like as a baseline is consistent enforcement across ideologies where things like personal attacks get a warning or a ban no matter who they're coming from. As it stands right now, we're in a regime where right-leaning people freely make personal attacks and only rarely get modded even if they're reported, while left-leaning people get banned off of vibes and convoluted notions that they're being "manipulative".
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
12d ago
This seems like a ban based on vibes alone.
Another way of saying vibes" is "tone." Yes, we moderate based on vibes. It's not quite that fuzzy- we try to follow the rubrics we've developed over the years- but yes, when someone is being an obnoxious trolling shitstirrer, and has been posting obnoxious trolling shitstirring threads for a while that so far have been just barely this side of acceptable discourse, eventually we're going to say "Enough, knock it off." @AlexanderTurok has been there for a while, and he's been warned repeatedly. He just got a 1-day slap on the wrist, and so promptly writes a post absolutely dripping with sneering condescension.
Here's a post from a year ago that came from a right-wing that IMO is far worse, and yet it didn't get a ban or even a warning. Here's another post that I also think is pretty bad, but is actually classified as an AAQC!
You know what my least favorite category of bitching about modding is?
"Waaah, you modded Johnny but you didn't mod Suzy, obviously you love Suzy more!"
Playing this kind of game is never productive. Every one of us mods has explained, many times, that while we try to be more or less consistent, we do indeed mod based on "vibes" to some extent, and a lot of those vibes are "How obnoxious is this particular person being right now?" "How annoying has this particular person been recently?" and "Does this particular person have a long record of AAQCs, or a long record of being warned to knock it off?" There is also a lot of subjectivity in whether a particular word or phrase strikes this mod on this day as being over the line.
(Also worth noting that sometimes someone is filling the mod queue with reports, and he'll eventually get banned for one of them. Unless you're absolutely sure that the person you're complaining about didn't get a ban around the same time for some other post, don't assume that whatever post you're linking to is an example of "Mods thoughts this was okay.")
Tree
12d ago
One of his predictions was wrong, that warrants a ban. You really have zero arguments.
If you disagree, show me some examples of what high-quality Darwin looked like
darwin had AAQC's. But just presenting a somewhat uncommon, solid argument is high quality in my book, and he did that often, because by virtue of his politics, most of his arguments were uncommon here. We banned the only progressive voices we had, all to maximize the content-free comments complaining about the enlightenment, modernity and the sexual revolution - the motte equivalent of complaining about boomers, or neoliberalism.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
The fact it keeps happening over and over across many different posters should be sufficient evidence that it's a systemic issue,
I get why it feels like that from the perspective of someone who disagrees with the majority of the forum. People start blurring into a single indescript swarm, and it's all the same to you if it's one guy being and asshole one day, and another guy on another day. But this is madness, and I do not believe that you would ever accept the framework off aggregating assholes by ideology, and deploying moderatory actions adjusted for that, if it was your ideology, or you personally in the line of fire
Right-leaning mods are naturally going to feel that left-leaning posts are far more hostile and delusional than the average right-leaning post, which is probably why a post like Turok's gets banned while something like this gets AAQC'd.
If you're trying to tell me gatsuru is somehow as bad as AlexanderTurok, you're going to have your work cut out for you. For starters, don't you think keeping up with all these court cases required several orders of magnitude more effort than anything Turok has ever done here?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
Yes, I was there too. There's nothing obvious about it. There are plenty of capable debater progressive posters around here that don't get banned. Even Darwin didn't stop posting here due to the ban, he was posting here until fairly recently, and only tapped out after he made dishonest claim, briefly tried pretending he didn't actually make it, and saw people are buying it even less than his excuses for the Jussie Smollet fiasco.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
12d ago
I have a laundry list of bad interactions with MAGA aligned people on this forum, but I can't really supply evidence of any specific poster being bad over and over again since I typically just block them if they're sufficiently bad even once. The fact it keeps happening over and over across many different posters should be sufficient evidence that it's a systemic issue, and not just one or two bad apples that slip through the cracks.
Moderation never worked on a "specific sentences get you banned" basis, it was always about whether the post as whole
This type of vibes-based moderation is just a glaring invitation for mods to be arbitrary. At the very least there should be a sentence or two that should be close-enough to breaking the rules that it can be cited as the issue, and then the rest of the post's tone can be used as context for whether to pull the trigger. Right-leaning mods are naturally going to feel that left-leaning posts are far more hostile and delusional than the average right-leaning post, which is probably why a post like Turok's gets banned while something like this gets AAQC'd.
Tree
12d ago
I was there, and he was definitely banned for his political opinions. It's obvious because :
-
he was the most progressive commenter
-
he was a capable debater
-
he stuck around a long time, obeying rules that became increasingly convoluted and personally-tailored against him, due to the hatred of the people.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
Extremely not true. I've had many discussions with MAGA folks here that degenerate to them doing little more than making a series of personal attacks, I report it, and then nothing happens. Making personal attacks against other people here is far worse than vaguely shaking one's fist at broad political movements,
I actually agree with you about personal attacks being worse, even as a singular instance, so I'm willing to agree the mods could've dropped the ball there. It doesn't make what I say untrue, though, let alone "extremely". You'd have to find an example of a specific person being able to do that over over for this argument to work.
Again, I ask as to what exactly was the banworthy part of his post? What specific sentences were the issue that if uttered by right-leaning people ought to similarly catch a warning or a ban in the moderators' eyes?
What are you talking about? Moderation never worked on a "specific sentences get you banned" basis, it was always about whether the post as whole, or even the posting history as a whole, is breaking the rules.
Tree
12d ago
He's a nazi who pretends to be inoffensive braindead left and gets banned for ban evasion, he's nothing like Turok.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
12d ago
Any right-winger acting like him would be instabanned
Extremely not true. I've had many discussions with MAGA folks here that degenerate to them doing little more than making a series of personal attacks, I report it, and then nothing happens. Making personal attacks against other people here is far worse than vaguely shaking one's fist at broad political movements, which was what AlexanderTurok did here. Again, I ask as to what exactly was the banworthy part of his post? What specific sentences were the issue that if uttered by right-leaning people ought to similarly catch a warning or a ban in the moderators' eyes?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
And my argument is that they're not functionally the same. Any right-winger acting like him would be instabanned, he was actually given a lot of leeway.
You're trying to claim that all the instances of different people occasionally being assholes somehow add up, if they come from the same ideological background.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
13d ago
Your report was obnoxiously unfunny and we have to deal with enough spurious and bad-faith reports on posts.
Normally I'd leave it at that, but you have a history of this kind of obnoxious trolling, so banned for a day. Knock it off.
bees suffer 7% as intensely as humans. The mean estimate was around 15% as intensely as people
Shocking. So shocking I'm calling BS. We should be arguing if one ten thousandth or one one hundred thousandth is a better order of magnitude estimate. Not 15%. Wrong order of magnitude is putting it lightly.
I'm aware of people very concerned about the very hypothetical suffering of tiny bugs including dust mites. Imagining that they have conscious awareness and suffer. Ex: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3hqXxzFRSZqRFPCTv/killing-the-ants
https://old.reddit.com/r/reclassified/comments/1kpl5ur/refilism_banned/mszshz5/
We need a term for this. Toxic empathy or something.
I have moderated forums before this one. You have pretty accurately described the personality types.
I don't want this place to be dominated by snowflakes like so many of my hobby forums, and reddit, and most mainstream forums now, really. I also don't want this place to be kiwifarms or rdrama.
I hear what you are saying about, for example, merely annoying people vs. people motivated by hatred of certain groups, especially a group of which you are a member.
Unsurprisingly, my answer to you will be the same one I usually give to people who think we haven't set the dials and thermostats correctly, which is that I think you are wrong about some things, and that there just isn't a great solution to other things.
We have had annoying (by which I mean outspoken and argumentative) liberals (who got reported and downvoted heavily) who still didn't get banned (or even warned in many cases). They still leave because even if the mods are fair to them, the rest of the forum largely is not, and it's not much fun being extremely leftist and trying to engage in good faith with people who, at best, seethe with barely restrained contempt in their every reply to you. I can think of several normie liberals, a couple of trans-women, at least one black guy, and one or two outspoken unabashed leftie feminists over the years who gave it a shot, made some decent contributions, but haven't been seen in a long time because, I assume, they just got tired of people politely telling them they are despised.
The Joo-posters have been warned when they cross the line -- and I don't want to name names here to avoid this being a "call-out" post or making it about individual personalities, but the most prominent ones you are thinking of have somewhat ratcheted it back after being modded repeatedly, and several others have been banned. (Not for their Joo-posting alone but because they were general pains in the ass.) This, of course, was not taken with good grace and acknowledgment that we were trying to maintain a forum where Jews and Jew-haters could somehow engage in mutually respectful dialog. It was met with indignation, anger, claims that we are trying to suppress certain viewpoints, and accusations of the forum being secretly controlled by Jews.
Are we a locker room culture where we put up with Kenneth and his occasional unfunny rape jokes? I suppose that's not a terrible analogy. And should we become a coed locker where everyone now has to avoid offending the more sensitive members now sharing space with us? A lot of guys might not like Kenneth and his rape jokes, but they're willing to put up with it if they can speak unfiltered and the alternative is being policed by the kind of people who would punish all of them for not exiling Kenneth.
I guess the problem with this analogy (or maybe the point) is by implication women aren't just expected to put up with Kenneth and his rape jokes, but to not even be present, whereas we do allow Jews and blacks and women and trans people and liberals to be here... and listen to what some other people really think of them.
The Motte really was not meant to be a "right-wing" forum, but it has more or less become that by virtue of being one of the only places where right wingers can say right-wing things and not get banned. However, I maintain that we do put up with "libtards." We moderate on tone, not content. That's always been by design and one of our explicit principles that sets us apart from most forums. That means yes, the polite Holocaust denier gets to post about how in a purely hypothetical way, the world would be a better place without Jews, while the annoying shit-stirring leftist gets banned for being a dick. I understand how that may seem like we are favoring Holocaust denial and picking on liberals, but we're not. At least not intentionally.
I dunno. A lot of people (including the mods) think the Motte is ultimately a doomed project and it's just a matter of how long we can keep it going. So far we've lasted longer than most expected. I don't know what to tell you. Speaking for myself, I really do try to apply the same moderation principles to the shit-stirring libtards and the Joo-posters, and unsurprisingly, they both think I am clearly out to get them and run cover for the other guys.
More options
Context Copy link