Posts by Sam Green73

Morgan Rodriguez57 said:- why did it take six (6) whole days to get hit with a warning?
- why am I getting flagged while others aren't? what makes my posts so special?

silentridge3 said:And that freedom of speech can be used pretty selectively, I guess...

I might use the "Politics" section on a major US news forum as an example. Back then, my ideas were basically unacceptable to the moderators over there—they mostly breathed Republican air, I think—so I kept getting warnings for things like, say, posting a bunch of smiley faces after quoting something I liked. I guess the crime was being "off-topic." Meanwhile, you’d have these other posts in the exact same thread that included direct insults—worse than Dr. House, really—going totally unpunished.

If a moderator wants to, they can just pick one side of any conflict—whether it's politics, real estate, music, whatever—and continuously punish, delete, or slice up posts until the unwanted opinion simply disappears from the forum.

Another trick is "merging." On that same politics board, they could open a new thread every single day about some politically irrelevant figure like Stipa Mason, with titles like "Mason traitor," "The New Betrayal by Stipa Mason," or "Another betrayal by Stipa Mason," and the mods would just let those pile up. On the flip side, they could take much more significant political scandals involving someone like Ivo Sanders and merge them all into one giant, singular thread under a neutral title like "Ivo Sanders." So, on page 342 of that massive thread, you might find a debate about "Verona," and by page 456, it’s a discussion about "Hypo," and so on... Technically, everything is within the rules, but from a moderator standpoint, it's incredibly directed...

As for deleting and locking threads, well, I don't even need to go into much detail. I remember looking at a PDF archive of that "politics" section where threads about World War II existed alongside comments like "you're a total idiot" without anyone ever being penalized...
...I actually started a thread once where I wanted to explain the pitfalls of financial decentralization to everyone (which a lot of people were calling for before certain elections). My opening post was completely non-ideological, without any insults or violations of the rules whatsoever. It was wiped out within maybe ten minutes of me posting it.

I’m not saying there’s a grand conspiracy here, maybe it’s just the specific political leaning of the moderation team. But it seems pretty obvious to me that a "free forum" actually offers a ton of ways to steer the conversation using moderator tools...

Brenda Cook4 said:Honestly, it’s just like telling the truth. You don't have to play mental gymnastics to remember your own lies, you don't need some elaborate master plan, and you don't have to constantly worry about keeping your guard up or looking over your shoulder. It’s much more complicated trying to navigate a web of deception than just being straight with people. Being honest is simply easier.

Michelle Palmer6 said:Prika, don't give me that spinach! If posting private messages is against the rules, then it applies to all private messages, period. It's that simple. If we start making exceptions here, we’ll end up making them for everyone.
Rape gets reported to the police, and insults get sent to the administrator or whoever is in charge. Look, if a regular user did that, they'd be banned instantly.
Besides, even if there was never an explicit rule about private messages, it doesn't matter because bad behavior was always punished anyway. Let's show a little consistency, shall we?
Some forum members are treated as being "more equal" than others, apparently—just like how the rules over there seem to change overnight.

Nicholas King said:Look, let's set the nuances aside for a second—that whole logic of "he sent insults, so I have a right to be rude too" just isn't my cup of tea.

We could sit here counting angels on the head of a pin until tomorrow, but the reality remains: Steven Ruiz missed a colossal opportunity to effectively bury "the other side"—sometimes, I suppose, a simple, plain admission of a mistake is actually the deadliest weapon you can wield. If you do that, the opponent is left standing alone on the "battlefield," looking pretty damn pathetic.

Nicholas King said:No. I disagree. The responsibility of the recipient is to sanction those messages—that is, to ensure they are actually penalized.

Someone sending insults via email or direct message has essentially forfeited any claim to being polite in advance.

The problem is, when you react at that same level, "in the end, you can't tell who's the pig and who's the human." 🙂

BTW, your attempt at paraphrasing the example was a complete disaster—from the role reversal onwards, it just didn't work.

Nicholas King said:Beyond the official bans and the rulebook, there are these other... unwritten norms that we all generally follow.

I mean, if George spends a wild night with Marina, there isn't some legal statute preventing him from giving the guys at the bar a play-by-play of everything they did—but somehow, it just feels wrong, doesn't it? 🙂

Generally speaking, sharing something private—something said or done "off the record"—just isn't right (regardless of whether there was a formal rule against it or not). In this specific case, the post was pretty much unnecessary, and the real mess is that because of your position, you're sending a message to everyone else here that says, "Watch out, we can leak any message we feel like."

It’s honestly a shame that you reduce your own responsibility to some bureaucratic "ban card" checkbox instead of just looking at the situation from a human perspective. As far as I know, it’s still free, and it shouldn't hurt too much to say, "Damn, I messed up, I got provoked, I'm sorry." I don't quite understand why you aren't able to write that simple sentence. Here, you can just copy and paste mine; you don't even have to type it. 🙂

Morgan Rodriguez57 said:Nah... well, at least that was how things worked back in my day—you could say just about anything in the PMs, and a mod (or anyone else, really) wasn't allowed to post them or punish you for them...

Morgan Rodriguez57 said:Nah... well, at least that was how things worked back in my day—you could say just about anything in the PMs, and a mod (or anyone else, really) wasn't allowed to post them or punish you for them...

hollowtrucker77 said:I’m honestly worried that won't actually work.
🙂
First off, there’s just the sheer workload the policy mods have to shoulder—you either deal with it or you don't, and the quality takes a hit regardless. But more importantly, you're dealing with certain types of people who simply cannot swallow their pride or admit when they've messed up. That usually just spirals into these endless, circular arguments that go nowhere.

Austin Gonzalez13 said:unless I'm totally misreading the situation,

Tyler Anderson48 said:Fine, then just ignore the mods and walk all over whoever you want.