Basic manners, keyboard warriors etc

[BlueDruid]

Any news on De Bruyne?

 

[whp.blue]

Spelling like that should be taboo in my opinion.

actually that is more of a fat finger issue than a grammatical one if I am honest

 

[BlueDruid]

actually that is more of a fat finger issue than a grammatical one if I am honest

 

[foetus]

You see, to me, this reads: its ok to abuse islam because it will be in the heat of the moment. Its not for someone to call previous poster a ****, they should go to the mods.

It's ok to discuss it and points out it's flaws. Just like with any other belief. Nothing wrong with that imo.

 

[Damocles]

Ok, fair enough. For the record, genuinely wasn't trying to piss you off.

Well I'll bite, just this once and give you an overview of how it scanned in my head -

For example, your post came across as sarcastic and patronising, but I'm sure you didn't mean it like that.

Here you are accusing me of being needlessly aggressive and confrontational with needless aggression and confrontation. I won't point out the irony here.

You don't understand I did this on purpose. Suggesting that this post that claims that society is "fucking wrong" and people "should be called cunts" is perfectly rational and calm is ridiculous.

Out of the numerous times you have explained to posters this isn't a democracy, what was the context, then? Were they ever questioning the code of conduct? Perhaps discussing the ability to have free speech on this board? I'm not about to run a search on this, but when you see the words "this is not a democracy", I'd imagine that the context is probably something to do with questioning how the board is run.

This is irrelevant. I don't know what you had in your head but you didn't put it down in the post for what this is supposed to mean. This isn't a democracy. That phrase will come up when people mistake it as a democracy ergo they will be discussing the board because it's a description of the board. That should be remarkably obvious.

His first point is apt, and I have, to my best ability, tried very hard not to be needlessly aggressive here. Partly because I don't really get overly involved, but partly because its just not in my personality.

Your first post was needlessly aggressive or certainly used needlessly aggressive language. You can't throw in accusations that "society is fucking wrong and Bluemoon is wrong too" and expect the tone to be read as perfectly calm.

You say you don't get overly involved but the past 3 pages are examples of you specifically getting overly involved because I ignored your post.

But Damocles, you used to be one of the most interesting posters on this board, I could read your science threads page to page completely enthralled. Now you've become a snarling, aggressive moderator who is routinely abusive. I've seen you banding the word **** around, the manner in which you jump upon posters is quick and aggressive.

Patronising drivel. I was ALWAYS aggressive in stating my opinion and ALWAYS dismiss crap points badly made, and I still constantly contribute to any scientific threads. If anything I've calmed down. This is you talking about me in a negative fashion in a post claiming that you're not trying to piss me off.

"I'm not trying to piss you off and it's not personal or anything but you're a **** mate"

Yeah ok, cheers.

As though you act with complete impunity.

It's though as a moderator who enforces the Code of Conduct on a daily basis and along with Ric and the other mods helped write and design the Code of Conduct, I know the Code of Conduct well enough to see where the line is and not go over it. There are numerous posters who can be aggressive with their opinion and stay within the Code of Conduct, the CoC isn't designed to moderate attitude but behaviour. @BillyShears and @Shaelumstash are a good example of two pretty mortal enemies who both understand the CoC enough to have straight up arguments but rarely crossing the line into abuse. Like me, and other posters of this ilk of which there are too many to name, they get a warning or a ban. Here's the important distinction, as long as you aren't abusive and as long as you're actually discussing things then you can have a bit of an edge to posting because we're grown men and women and this isn't a safe space/passion free zone. People like Rascal and others were straight up abusive and didn't actually talk about the thing they were arguing about, but instead talked about the posters. It saddens me that this has to be explained. Don't be a dickhead but be yourself should be a pretty commonly understood thing (unless you're a dickhead, then it's more complicated..)

This is reductio ad absurdum, but I'm going to give an example.

You've just told me the rest of this paragraph is bollocks, so why would I continue to read the rest of the paragraph? Make a proper point next time.

No, read it Damocles, as a scientist your level of analysis is better than that, and your powers of comprehension are better than that.

It's patronising to say "you said my point is bollocks. You're a clever man, you should be able to see that my point is not bollocks". You also never considered that my level of analysis is high enough to understand that your point is bollocks regardless of whether you also recognise that.

Stop picking holes where there are none.

"Stop disagreeing with me"

You're talking about reflecting society, and the views of society to be aired as though we are a mouthpiece for the british public. As you have pointedly said many times, this is not a democracy. This is also not a societal mouth piece. This board doesn't have to represent the british public, it reflects what the site owners and its moderating team want it to reflect.

In all of this you seemingly missed this bit of my post which completely negates this whole paragraph:

On the second point, you actually said something like this to me as a reply in the Mod Forum when I raised it -

I directly was addressing the owner of the site and using the exact phrasing he said to me. I didn't pick those words out of thin air.

Don't try and perniciously turn this into an argument about semantics, its an embarrassment to your intellect.

We're talking about what somebody wrote and what they meant by that. How exactly could this not be an argument of semantics? It is almost the dictionary definition of what semantics means. I didn't turn it into a semantic argument, it already is one because you're addressing something I've said about something that you've written. You certainly didn't mean it literally because there was nothing literal in what you posted.

Societies views have no right to airing simply because they are societies views.

Societies determine their own acceptability of their speech thus their views are aired whether you personally like it or not. You do not singularly make the distinction. Unless you are a publisher, then you make the distinction yourself and can limit anything and everything that you wish to publish.
Ric can decide straight away that no discussion of Islam can take place or that we should programmatically word filter Muslims to terrorist because he's the publisher of all comments on this site. That's his choice.

You can't say because islamophobia is on the rise in society, that it should be reflected here without letting rags go on the wum in the other forums, because that happens in society to

Yes you can. You can do whatever you like. Why is there this obsession amongst people that you have to be completely and utterly philosophically consistent across all fields? Maybe you think differently about one subject and want to plead a special case? Fine. This idea of consistent ideology is the refuge of the slow, there's no such thing as having a completely consistent belief system. There's a difference between consistent and logically justifiable.

Also, the whole "you ban rags so you should ban Islamophobia" might have been the dumbest possible expression of a point that you could have made. I think I know what you're getting at and addressed it above but that example was crap and doesn't make sense.

Either we have a completely open forum where anything goes, or restrictions are in place, but consistent restrictions. Thats fair, no?

Again, you've confused "logically consistent" with "philosophically consistent" and it isn't the same thing. Our rules are logically consistent with each other. They can, like every single ruleset in the existence of mankind, be seen as philosophically inconsistent. The application of them matters more than the debate over morality. If they achieve what they want then they're good rules and if they don't then they aren't. I personally happen to think that our rules are fine, we have thousands of posters posting thousands of times per day and we probably get between 1-5% that need to be addressed and fewer than 1% that we cannot address in the framework we have now.

No, this is not my problem. I didn't bring Islamophobia into it, that was previously mentioned and I ran with it.

You've misunderstood. The conversation was about that <1%, the posts that do not break the CoC but somebody feels that they do and Islamophobia is one of those topics where people feel that something is against the rules when it isn't. That was the topic of the conversation. That was the point of it, how to best deal with those posts that aren't already covered. That doesn't mean directly abusive which we already deal with. I'm talking about things like the "Religion of Peace" lot who go round quoting bizarre quotes from an obscure Hadith or blame everything on the Muslims because of their "dirty religion". Those are the problem people. My argument is that this sort of behaviour is not against the current rules and that type of Islamophobia is best dealt with on the forum than by the mods. My personal stance on moderation, as many of the mods will back up and confirm my pain-in-the-arseness about, is that we should let the forum fly and when somebody says something really heinous let the community sort it out themselves. Yes, this means that I think that some people should call them a **** and we should use common sense in moderation and get a full picture of the conversation rather than just warning collections of letters. No, this isn't how I moderate because my views are my own and not a consensus view. I believe that the behaviour of the community should always be shaped by the community and things that are grossly unacceptable will be stamped out through time.

Its a thankless position you and the board owners are in, I will admit that. But I think you need to find a way to change the culture of the off-topic section. Its not a good representation of our supporter base, sometimes, and thats sad.

It's absolutely definitely an excellent representation of our supporter base. What you mean is that it's not a good representation of your mates or your idealised version of our supporter base.

Here on Bluemoon we have tens of thousands of people from all over the world, from every race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, height, weight and inside leg measurement with the only commonality between that they support Manchester City Football Club by the overwhelmingly large majority. Bluemoon and other places like it are in fact the ONLY places where you can get an absolutely true representation of what a fanbase is. The numbers are too big, we have too many members for one dominant faction to skew the odds. Even in Off Topic people generally think of about 5 posters who are regular but one thing ex-mods will attest to is that when you become a mod you become shocked at just how many users are regular posters and contributors which you've never even noticed before.

Let me give you a good example. I know that you post on this site, I recognise the name if somebody were to say "have you seen this name before". I couldn't tell you a single view you hold on any issue and I'm sure outside of very visible things like science stuff, you couldn't tell me what I think of the IMF. This is not because I don't like you or anything but rarely have we had any properly extended interaction and people tend to remember those who they have that interaction with. There's hundreds of people like this in Off Topic who all contribute and nobody ever remembers when thinking of "Off Topic Posters". I could name almost every major right or hard right poster on this forum who contributes to Off Topic, because I have had interactions with them regularly due to my left wing views. You remember those people and forget the people who agree with you.

This goes for viewpoints aswell. Loads of people on the right wing say the forum has left wing and the recent adjustment took it from hard left to centre-left. Loads on the left wing say we're a hard right forum. Both of these are bollocks, again due to the numbers we can do nothing but reflect the way the country has gone and the attitudes of the people inside of it. Bluemoon is not a special case and we're a collection of mostly British people or ex-pats/those heavily influenced by British culture and we will reflect changes in the general population. I don't believe we're specifically worse than the way the country has gone and due to this think that trying to moderate the forum against it is a form of political moderation. That was the whole point of the first post; that we can't allow ourselves to start moderating politically because like all collections of rules, you can very rarely get rid of a policy once it's in place.

 

[No6]

Here's the important distinction, as long as you aren't abusive and as long as you're actually discussing things then you can have a bit of an edge to posting because we're grown men and women and this isn't a safe space/passion free zone.

Interesting, as that isn't what's always applied...

 

[Damocles]

Interesting, as that isn't what's always applied...

In my opinion this is a baseless comment and as somebody who both makes the decisions and sees the resolution of these decisions then I'm in a better position to judge. We don't publicly release mod decisions so you literally can have no possible knowledge of this

Unless of course you're talking about your own personal experience of this which started, oh about 5 hours ago, which means you'd be talking about a mod decision publicly which is something I could swear a page ago you'd said "this I will not do".

But maybe that's my paranoid delusional state that I'm in huh?

 

[Yaya_Tony]

If you'd bothered to read the thread you would've seen that he received a ban for his outburst last night. Let's not let the facts get in the way though.

Just to clarify, we have people on the left accusing us of being too lenient to those on the right.

And those on the right accusing us of being too lenient to those on the left.

It's an unwinnable situation really.

And you banned me for a week after that caption competition gnome bukkake photo. Can't win ;-)

 

[SWP's back]

And you banned me for a week after that caption competition gnome bukkake photo. Can't win ;-)

Sounds fun, what happened to Colin?

 

[No6]

In my opinion this is a baseless comment and as somebody who both makes the decisions and sees the resolution of these decisions then I'm in a better position to judge. We don't publicly release mod decisions so you literally can have no possible knowledge of this

Unless of course you're talking about your own personal experience of this which started, oh about 5 hours ago, which means you'd be talking about a mod decision publicly which is something I could swear a page ago you'd said "this I will not do".

But maybe that's my paranoid delusional state that I'm in huh?

I don't know Damo, you tell me. You seem to be able to pre-emptively know all posters' motives and innermost thoughts without even reading their posts, so I'll bow to your better judgement.

PS - seriously, what have I done to upset you so much and deserve such vitriol? Seriously, what? PM me if you prefer.