Tyler Grant76 said:For instance,
my own post—which I'm only bringing up to show that PL is quoting me:
and then I get this response: (it starts off with "you're making things up and twisting words, as usual" 🤷),
just so the grand finale, in response to yet another objection ends up being this:
Do I really need to go on?
Nah, you don't need to. I took a look at the thread and honestly, I don't see any issue here. Personally, I’ve got nothing against things getting a little heated, as long as people actually have an argument to back it up. Besides, both you and slybison8 are top-tier users on this board—and I mean that sincerely, no sarcasm intended—your posts are always a blast to read. Yeah, you might throw a sharp jab at each other once in a while, but I don't think it's a big deal. It’d be nicer if we could skip the toxicity, sure, but if I have to choose between a high-quality debate that gets a bit salty or some polite, boring conversation that's just plain stupid, I'm picking the first one every single time.
Zachary Gomez2 said:Just a small contribution from my side—I have no intention of hijacking the primary purpose of this thread, so if I drift into generalities in the title, bear with me. Since you all decided on the other thread that Powerlock has every right to his own opinions as a forum member (or a "Forumer," in his preferred terminology), and that such views don't interfere with his moderation duties, I feel compelled to remind everyone once more: having an opinion is one thing, but influencing the direction of a discussion by permitting sub-par discourse is quite another (though I suspect my previous posts failed to convey that distinction clearly enough). In that particular example, it isn’t that one shouldn't be allowed to claim homosexuality is a disorder or a deviation; rather, it is that a moderator's decision cannot be to allow anyone walking through these digital halls who insists "homosexuality is a disorder"—without providing any actual reasoning—to simply hide behind their "right to an opinion." Because, let me repeat, that isn't an opinion. It's just noise.
That is one matter; here is another. Regarding the recent ways in which Powerlock’s stances (which are, admittedly, better reasoned than what he was attempting to shield in the aforementioned examples) might influence moderation, consider the timeline of when and why the original thread regarding General Brodarac was closed (was it deemed irrelevant? outdated? pushed out of scope?) and when it was subsequently reopened. It was shuttered at 9:58 AM on the day of General Brodarac's death, only to be reopened much later at 2:37 PM that same day following a comment from a user. A six-hour silence? (And please, I mean no disrespect to the tragic nature of the situation or the legitimate questions surrounding the circumstances of his passing: those factors could not possibly justify closing a thread concerning allegations of war crimes in Sisak only to redirect the conversation toward entirely different content and tone.) Suddenly, a nonsensical instruction appeared on the thread: "Please refrain from mentioning the late General Brodarac..." (and to add insult to injury, they wrote "General," but let's move past that). Only then did someone mention that there were actually two other suspects involved and that the thread exists as a standalone entity (effectively admitting that for at least six hours, the moderation was being driven by personal bias):
Thread Closed
Thread Reopened
These are merely illustrative examples; if you look at the thread concerning Brodarčev's death itself, you can see a series of exchanges (and deleted posts) that specifically critique such moderator steering.
It was honestly uncomfortable to watch people struggle to explain that these two things—and these two distinct threads—cannot be treated as one and the same.
Look, when a topic starts blowing up like crazy, the posts just pile up way too fast for any Moderator to actually keep up with. It gets messy. In those cases, sometimes we just gotta lock the thread for a bit—just a temporary shutdown to clear out the junk, do some basic cleanup, and get everything back in order before we open it back up again.