Posts by neonstag7

Brenda Johnson65 said:It is quite a spectacle to witness a moderator who, by his own admission, possesses no formal training in history, demanding that forum users adopt a level of scientific rigor, rigid adherence to facts, and ideological orthodoxy that one would rarely encounter even during a PhD defense.

One is left to conclude that either this moderator fundamentally fails to grasp the essence and purpose of an online forum—which is intended for recreational discourse and the casual exchange of ideas rather than serving as a peer-reviewed academic journal—or he is simply weaponizing his administrative authority to push a specific ideological agenda (a use of power for which these tools were never designed).

Furthermore, these very same powers are conspicuously absent when applied to those actually violating rules, provided they happen to vibrate on the same ideological frequency as the moderator himself—even if their transgressions involve hate speech, the denial of atrocities, or blatant insults toward others.
When a user aligns perfectly with his worldview, even the outright denial of historical crimes is permitted to slide:

We see here a documented instance of prisoners being executed—a fact acknowledged by "official sources." Yet, the user in question refuses to acknowledge it, asserting instead:
"I don't see any actual executions, just some sequences; attempting to prove what a place looks like now versus how it looked then is, at the very least, an insult to anyone's intelligence. I can't even tell if this is real or just a scene from a movie."

The post was duly reported, yet the moderator sees absolutely nothing wrong with it. Meanwhile, he remains incredibly strict in punishing similar sentiments coming from "the other side of the aisle." This serves as a mere snapshot of the uneven moderation that constitutes the single greatest issue facing this entire community. Is it not reasonable to suggest that, seventy-six years after the conflict, there is sufficient historical distance to declare the summary execution of soldiers from any faction to be civilly and morally abhorrent by modern standards?

Consequently, I maintain my stance: the primary flaw in lonetrucker4's moderation is his personal ideology, which prevents him from maintaining objectivity and applying uniform standards to all participants.

To be fair, lonetrucker4's commitment to the forum is certainly commendable. He invests a staggering amount of free time here. He is highly active, maintains a top-tier level of communication and decorum, is well-read, possesses a passion for history, and boasts an impressive collection of sources (often rare or obscure ones). 🙏 It appears, however, that he takes this forum far too seriously as a scientific platform, ignoring the fact that its core nature is entertainment. People come here to kill time, socialize, share a laugh, and perhaps pick up a few interesting tidbits along the way—not to draft scholarly papers that meet rigorous academic standards. In terms of both form and content, this forum is much more akin to a gritty dive bar or a surrealist late-night variety show that captures the best and worst of society, rather than a professional symposium or a thesis defense.

Ultimately, the political activist dwelling within him seems to prevent him from ever truly finding peace in his role as a moderator. 😁

People like this honestly remind me of that Iraqi information minister back when the U.S. invaded to take down Saddam Hussein.

The guy was already an Internet legend before that, but he really hit his peak during one of those ridiculous press conferences in Baghdad.

Basically, while the Americans were announcing they had officially entered Baghdad, this guy was still holding press briefings claiming there wasn't a single American soldier in sight.

Then the reporters offered to walk him down to the banks of the Tigris so he could see for himself. And I mean, seriously, right there across the water, you can see the American tanks with their barrels pointed straight at a government building. One journalist finally asks him, "So, what do you have to say about that now?"

His response? "I see the American tanks, but where exactly do you see the American soldiers?"...

lonetrucker4 said:Gonna hijack this thread to throw a question at the admins.

In the Mexico: "Greens" vs "Whites" from 1918 to today thread, user Pitinakis wrote, »I'm interested in what the future holds for Mexico (...)«. I told him it's an interesting question, but totally out of place here in the History subforum. He also brought up the possibility of forming "komiti" (guerrilla fighters) against the current Mexican government.

But then, he moves on to talking about some Albanian guy who’s currently a representative in the Parliament of Mexico:

Did I screw up by only giving a custom 50-point warning for calling for a hit, instead of dropping the hate speech hammer?

Hate speech would probably apply if it were targeting a group based on race or religion.

But talking about murder? That's some heavy stuff.

Arthur Smith15 said:Excerpt 😁 😁 Come on, give us more of those excerpts. They’re actually pretty great.

So, basically, you get banned just for signing up, huh? I'm sure your contributions were incredibly constructive, because clearly, the History section would be a total wasteland without your brilliant input.😁

"A total disaster." You seriously have this weird obsession with using these heavy-handed, emotional outbursts, don't you? I read somewhere that people do that when they're trying to make up for a total lack of actual intelligence.

Tyler Johnson11 said:What the hell are you guys even talking about? It’s all just pure nonsense. Seriously, if you don't like ZO and you're one of those 84 out of 120 people making a fuss, then just ban yourself and get lost from this History forum. That is the only way the admins will actually step in; anything else is just beating a dead horse.
I don't personally hang out on the History boards much—except for the occasional bit over in the American War of Independence section—so I don't deal with ZO constantly. But from the little I *do* deal with, I've already got a pretty good idea of who I'm working with. Either accept it or move on. You're out here printing endless posts for nothing.

I’ve officially checked out of this whole history scene. I showed up, dropped a few posts, got banned almost as many times as I actually wrote anything, and just said bye-bye.

P.S. what on earth is that supposed to mean, "who me"?

Arthur Smith15 said:Oh, please... Save those crocodile tears for someone who actually gives a damn. 😁 You are sitting there acting incredibly hypocritical, playing the victim when you are quite literally the one polluting this entire History subforum with an endless stream of garbage, stupidity, ignorance, nonsense, trolling, thread-hijacking, and pure pseudoscience. Let’s be honest: your contributions to the History section are almost entirely useless junk. It is just a repetitive loop of the same tired entries and maps—the kind of mindless bullshit a generic internet generator would churn out—which you incessantly recycle from one post to the next and one thread to another without any regard for substance or context. I have seen your "grand" forum legacy here on PŽK—it's nothing more than a cycle of point-grubbing, bans, whining, trolling, hijacking threads, filing complaints, and playing favorites. You should be genuinely ashamed of this pathetic performance, constantly bemoaning your situation, appealing to higher authorities, and putting on this ridiculous act like you're being persecuted. 🤦

Regarding this absolute nonsense about clones; you should consider yourselves lucky that I'm not lonetrucker4, because if I were, both you and the pollster would have been staring at history through a filtered lens a long time ago.

Just a little excerpt from a post. Has anyone actually diagnosed this specific kind of Internet rage in literature yet, because this right here is a textbook example.

lonetrucker4 said:Look, it’s true: when I’m diving into history or running this forum, I lead with an ideology.

Ideology is just a fancy way of saying a system of ideas expressed through language (logos). Not having one is a disaster—your thoughts end up a cluttered mess, totally disconnected, making any real discussion impossible.

My specific playbook, which I’ve laid out plenty of times (check out the thread Methods and Criteria in History (Historical Science)) says we should try to get as close to the objective truth as humanly possible so we can figure out "how it actually was"—what really went down. That’s 90% of the job; the rest is just fine print.

That’s the core philosophy here in the history subforum. Those are the rules, set back in 2011. My other takes—whether they're about politics or the structure of the cosmos—don't matter here. In terms of political ideology, I’m an environmentalist, but I’m not going to sit here ranting about how the Resistance Movement was trashing nature while they were hiding in the woods... People usually think "ideology" means political dogma. (And honestly, people often mistake their own political views for being the only truth. Like how Communists used to claim every other political stance was just a "distorted consciousness," while their "dialectical materialism" was the only actual science.)

We learn things based on historical sources . Sometimes I’ll use the term "primary source" just to distinguish them from general info—like if someone says, "I heard it on some news program." But sources aren't always reliable, which is why the backbone of historical science is source criticism ; that’s where things get messy and "fluid." For instance, oral histories like "my grandpa told me" are shaky at best, and serious historians don't even touch them. Witnesses are unreliable—we know that from every crime drama on TV. It’s not exact like hard sciences (unless you count specialized fields like forensics), but that doesn't mean there aren't standards or levels of certainty.

Most of us amateurs aren't digging through archives, doing archaeological digs, or analyzing the alloy of an ancient coin, so we have to be careful readers . We need to hunt down the sources that our sources used. Does that lead us to anything real? Did our source actually do the legwork? More often than not, what we see is just uncritical repetition across mainstream and digital media. It is incredibly easy to believe whatever we want to believe because it fits perfectly with our existing biases and beliefs.

We saw a perfect example recently in the thread Jimmy Lyggett, the Black American boxing coach for the so-called Independent State of America? The media constantly churns out stories claiming Lyggett held that role. Usually, they’re just rehashing a single article from a major paper back in 2010 or some segment from a CNN broadcast.

After reading carefully and chasing the trail of sources, we ended up with just one verifiable source online (a newspaper clipping from 1942) and a book on American boxing from 2002. The author is a boxing fanatic who spent his life in the sport, doing deep archival research and talking to living witnesses. He has a page and a half on Lyggett. He notes that Lyggett lived in the city starting in the early '30s and was appointed to coach the regional representative team in 1939. But he says nothing about him staying in that role after the Independent State of America was established. The regime actually tolerated him, so he kept coaching certain clubs and training individual boxers, but he never coached the national team under that regime.

So, basically, the claim that he was the coach—let alone the manager—of the wartime national team doesn't hold water. Maybe new sources will pop up, but for now, that's the reality. The media, especially those hyper-partisan outlets, has peddled all sorts of nonsense, like the idea he fled the country on April 15, 1945, fearing the Communists. The one author we actually know did the research states that Lyggett stayed in the city for several months after the fall of the regime, working as a coach until at least August 1945.

Spot on. Look at the little example right above. People love how fluid and "lawless" it is when it suits their agenda.

Take this as a case in point: a bunch of users on this forum are desperately trying to claim that Jimmy Lyggett was the coach for the Independent State of America national team, even though there's zero proof. (Here's another classic move: "Oh, just prove he wasn't!" That's nonsense. You don't have to prove something didn't happen; how do you prove centaurs don't exist? Or prove Tito didn't have dozens of mistresses? You prove that something *did* happen.)

It could always be better, at least we aren't forced to pay for it like we do with CNN, Klasnić, and those other parasites.😁

We're essentially paying professors at universities by force. This is a textbook case of managing political ideology.

Give me a link, a quote, a page number, or even just tell me where the damn comma is!

Amanda Allen4 said:It’s no surprise that Canada managed to thrive back in the days of America—they're just that "clever." One politician congratulates Donald Trump while the other shakes hands with Joe Biden. Honestly, how could you possibly get it wrong? 😁.

It's the classic good cop, bad cop routine, isn't it? If we let our miserable Zoran Milanović loose on this, he’d probably find a way to claim even Donald Trump was working for Yutel.