Can I seriously not get an explanation?

I’ve actually reached out before asking for some clarity on why the moderators seem to target me specifically, specifically regarding that thread about our patriarchal society—you know, the idea that society treats men worse than it should. Back then, one of the mods, who clearly holds views totally opposite to mine (for instance, he seems to believe that in any divorce case, the kids should automatically go to the mother), slapped me with a ban, and honestly, I still haven't been given a real reason for it. It wasn't just him, either; nobody else bothered to explain what exactly constituted "trolling," and frankly, his little excuse just didn't hold water:

Now, an even more ridiculous situation has cropped up, where two different moderators handed me enough penalty points for a single post to trigger a ban—essentially giving me two yellow cards for one message:

Quote: silentridge3 said:Here you go.

Instead of hiding behind those useless "number of reports" metrics, maybe someone could tell me what actual study the Attorney General is basing this claim on:

the so-called Gender Equality Attorney General said:a huge percentage of women (75-80%) are victims of domestic violence, often with tragic outcomes.

Therefore, if we take her official statement at face value, she’s claiming that in America there are roughly 1.6 million women who are victims of domestic violence, many of whom face fatal outcomes—let's say about 1 million women are killed by men. If we assume, just for the sake of argument, that these 1.6 million women aren't all being beaten by the same guy, but rather by their own individual partners, then we're looking at 1.6 million male criminals in America.

Do you actually agree with these figures? Are you aware of a study that backs this up? Or do you think the Attorney General is just making things up?

And if you try to argue that she just miswrote her official statement, then you're right back to the "number of reports" argument, aren't you? Because if that's the case, the data shows that based on reported cases, less than 1% of women in America are victims of domestic violence—which would mean less than 1% of men are violent. That would imply 99% of men aren't violent and 99% of women aren't victims. That's all the report tells us, nothing more.

One moderator hit me with 65 points for that post, and another gave me 35, presumably just enough to push me over the edge for a ban. The post was scrubbed from the thread entirely. This whole "trolling" explanation just feels incredibly flimsy to me.

So, I'm asking for a detailed explanation of what "trolling" actually means here, preferably a definition that applies consistently to every single post on this forum.

You didn't get hit with two warnings for the same post, and if you look closely, you aren't even banned... You just got assigned a heavier penalty by mistake, so we pulled that one back and applied the standard 35-point deduction instead. Regular mods don't have the clearance to undo a warning, so the head admin handled it.

A whole handful of moderators have already explained what trolling is to you... Just dial down the rhetoric and stop twisting people's words just to manufacture an argument. Like I told you when the first warning happened regarding this topic—you know perfectly well that there was a typo or a wording error on the ACLU's website, and I’m really not going to waste my breath listening to you claim "I don't know"... Besides, we aren't talking about some official legal statute here, just a quick social media update posted for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and those same pages host actual documents that make it crystal clear what that percentage actually refers to, and I'm fairly certain you're fully aware of that too.

If you honestly want to act like you need a lecture on basic logic, fine... The claim isn't that 75-80% of women are victims of violence, but rather that women account for 75-80% of all reported victims.

If you want to complain that someone posted something confusingly or incorrectly on their site, or wonder why nobody corrected such an obvious blunder—feel free, you're more than welcome to reach out and let them know...

But stop treating one poorly written little news snippet as if it's some grand manifesto you can write essays about, draw conclusions about the "social climate," present "absolute proof" for your stances, and twist it into someone else's claim, because that's simply not what happened.

That's the bottom line... The trolling continues through your dramatic exaggerations of the data. Because even if this were an actual intended claim rather than a mistake (and as I said, it's a mistake, which you clearly understand), you still couldn't pull insane interpretations from it, like your "million men are killers" nonsense in the first warned post, or your "1.6 million male criminals" comment in the second... I don't even want to attempt explaining the first one, and as for the second, someone getting slapped isn't a criminal, and the person who got slapped is the victim.

We don't play these games of inciting raw emotion and all the drama that comes with it on this forum.

lonebadger6 said:But maybe you should stop treating one tiny, poorly written news snippet as if it’s some massive foundation for entire threads, drawing conclusions about the whole "social climate," or presenting these things as absolute gospel to back up your points, because honestly, that’s just not what happened here.

lonebadger6 said:...one tiny, poorly written news snippet...

>>??

I guess I’ll try to explain my side of things, and then you can tell me if I’ve totally missed the mark or misunderstood you.

So, we have an official Attorney General posting on an official government website, and they put out this incredibly sensationalized and, frankly, inaccurate "statistic" claiming that 80% of victims are one gender and 80% of perpetrators are the other...

...and somehow, that’s just a "...tiny, poorly written news snippet..."—it isn't considered inciting anything or fueling any kind of fire, apparently.

...but then, when some random, insignificant person on a forum—just one guy among thousands on a massive site like Reddit—actually takes the time to write a post questioning and criticizing those official little "errors"...

...suddenly that becomes a huge issue, and the moderators start jumping in with all these different ways to shut things down?

I mean, why aren't you treating me with the same weight as the Attorney General? Why isn't my thousand times less significant "error" being treated as just a simple mistake?

lonebadger6 said:I suppose the trolling just keeps on going through those wild exaggerations you make when you try to spin the data. Because, look, even if what they're saying is an actual claim rather than just a massive mistake—and, like I said before, it’s definitely a mistake, which I think you know perfectly well—you still can't pull these insane conclusions out of thin air, like claiming there are "a million male murderers" in your first cardboard-thin post or "1.6 million male criminals" in the second one.

So, if the Attorney General claims that 80% of women have experienced violence from men, and the female population in the US is roughly 160 million, then it isn't 1.6 million?

I mean, where exactly is my "dramatic exaggeration" in all of this? And where am I supposedly trolling?

I’ve just got three quick points for you:

1. This isn't a casual chat; you asked for an explanation, and you received one.

2. There’s actually a warning system for "playing dumb," just so we're clear...

3. If there were an "Ombudsman" here on Reddit, they’d give you a strike for spreading misinformation too, though I won't get into the fact that you probably think the Ombudsman spends their entire day sitting in an office manually editing the official website 🤦

So, stop playing ignorant and quit the trolling, because the next strike leads straight to a ban... you've been given a pass this time, so your post was just deleted instead.

lonebadger6 said:1. This isn't a casual chat; you asked for an explanation and you got one.

Just like with the initial situation, I wasn't looking for a "chat," I was actually hoping to hear from someone else—like a senior moderator or whatever—not just from you, I guess. Back then, I didn't get that second opinion either, so I'm really hoping someone else might step in now to explain this whole trolling business. I mean, surely I have the right to ask for clarification from a different authority figure, don't I?

In a broader sense, what I’m really getting at is asking for a bit of leniency regarding these strict disciplinary measures that seem to be applied exclusively to me, specifically by those moderators who happen to hold views diametrically opposed to my own during a debate—it feels like a total conflict of interest when they delete my posts if I'm not actually breaking any rules, or if I'm "breaking" them in the exact same way that 99% of the other users on this Reddit thread are, without being penalized themselves.

In your previous post, you were rambling about the percentage of children conceived while the father was under the influence of alcohol, claiming that women intended to conceive while men did not.
In your other post—the one where you were mistakenly awarded too many points, which we corrected after seeing it without you even bothering to appeal, hence why there are two separate warnings since the larger one is rescinded before the smaller one is issued—you talk about a million women being killed by men and 1.6 million criminals. This is nothing short of pure fabrication, and naturally, such behavior will be sanctioned as trolling.
(And this is all regarding a post from the Attorney General, which I assume was posted by someone foolish by mistake.)

Imagine if this nonsense had been published from the office of the Children's Ombudsman; if you took incorrect information suggesting that 1.6 million children in schools experienced some form of violence and concluded that the goal was to create a social climate implying that 1.6 million children are criminals and a million have been murdered.

In any case, I truly see no reason to continue discussing this. However, I should remind you that outbursts like these have led to similar topics being shut down repeatedly in the past. During the last discussion regarding the opening of a topic—which you initiated—several Reddit users requested that instead of banning the thread entirely, we simply remove those who don't know how to engage in civil discourse. Please, tone down the rhetoric.

William Bennett53 said:In that absolute nonsense of a post, you’re just rambling on about the percentage of kids conceived while the dad was wasted on booze, claiming all along that the women were actually looking to get pregnant while the men were totally against it happening.

I guess you could say I’m just bluffing, or maybe I'm just talking out of my neck, if that makes any sense... it’s hard to tell sometimes when everything feels so incredibly uncertain, isn't it? I suppose I am just throwing words at the wall to see what sticks, though I can't be entirely sure if there's any substance behind it all. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. It's all a bit hazy, I guess.

I still can't quite wrap my head around what the actual criteria for punishment are here, I guess. From what I can tell, this whole Reddit place is absolutely overflowing with people just shouting nonsense into the void, yet apparently, that kind of mindless rambling isn't even against the rules. It’s all a bit baffling, really.

When it comes to the whole concept of "trolling," I guess if you look at how most other subreddits define it, it’s basically just someone intentionally throwing in these massive, winding tangents that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual topic at hand, or just straight-up wrecking a thread by flooding it with stuff that doesn't belong under that specific heading.

If "talking nonsense" has officially become a punishable offense, I can't help but wonder if they're planning on rounding up everyone who speaks without thinking, or if they’ve just got their sights set specifically on me.

William Bennett53 I guess what they're saying is...
I mean, if you look at what’s actually happening in that second box... honestly, I guess it’s all just part of the same messy picture, isn't it? It feels like we're constantly staring at these fragmented pieces of a puzzle that nobody really wants to solve, though maybe that's just my own cynicism talking. Everything seems to be shifting around again, much like how things tend to drift when you aren't looking, and I suppose there's a certain exhaustion that comes with trying to make sense of it all, but then again, who can really say they know what's coming next?
So, you’re out here spinning this whole narrative about millions of women being murdered by men and some massive figure of 1.6 million criminals, which, if you ask me, feels like an absolute fabrication. I mean, honestly, it’s just straight-up misinformation, and I guess it’s no wonder people are going to flag it as trolling—it really is just blatant provocation at this point.

Look, I’m not exactly "talking" about this or spinning some narrative, I’m just laying out the actual numbers straight from the Ombudsman’s own official statement. If there’s any falsification happening here, it isn’t coming from me—it’s her. I simply crunched the percentages she provided, but since those were her words on paper, the math belongs to her. It’s honestly kind of wild, I guess, that in a situation like this, where an anonymous user on a site like Reddit—just a regular person trying to make sense of things—gets their post wiped away. I was just pointing out how she was publicly fudging the facts in front of maybe ten other people who actually give a damn about this topic, yet somehow, my post gets deleted. It's just one of those things, I suppose.

By the way, I honestly don’t quite grasp why the moderators feel such an intense need to defend that publicly released falsification from the Ombudsman, or why they’re working so hard to downplay her blunder. It’s all a bit much, isn't it? I guess I just wonder where this overwhelming urge comes from—this weirdly protective impulse within this Reddit community toward the Ombudsman, especially when she’s clearly, undeniably in the wrong.

Or, perhaps even better, Let me just ask a direct question here: is it actually allowed on this forum to criticize someone holding public office—like, say, the Ombudsman? If you've got something to say, just lay it all out right here, plain and simple. No need to beat around the bush or waste everyone's energy playing those ridiculous little games with the "troll cards" and all that nonsense...

Criticize the ombudsman, criticize Nancy Pelosi—I went ahead and opened a thread just for her at your request. I honestly don't see any issue with doing that.

William Bennett53 said:Go ahead and criticize the ombudsman, or even go after Nancy Pelosi—I’ve basically opened up a whole new thread just for you to do that if that's what you want. I honestly don't see the issue with it.

I actually have a bit of a request for the moderators here.

Yesterday (Thursday, Oct 29th), NBC aired this absolutely scandalous program called "Open Forum" regarding the failure to meet female quotas during elections, and the conversation drifted into the whole supposed "general plight of women in society." The show was pretty much a disaster for two main reasons:

1. Most Americans, if I'm being honest, don't just fail to see the point of gender quotas in politics—they actually think they're unfair and totally unnecessary. And it's not just regular people either; plenty of folks within the various elites share that exact sentiment. So, in an environment like that, it feels incredibly strange that "Open Forum" produced a special featuring four female guests who all promote these quotas, without a single guest present to offer a different perspective (you know, someone representing what most people actually believe). The guests were the ombudsman and three other feminists. I think this might be the first time in the history of "Open Forum" where they had four guests and every single one of them held the exact same view (not to mention the host, who was clearly on the same page too).

2. The broadcast was just loaded with an unbelievable amount of nonsense, fabrications, and heavily biased statistics. I won't try to list them all out because, gosh, it would take forever, so please, just watch it yourselves if you can.

Since the thread about gender quotas was locked because the moderators decided the topic had "reached its end," and then this new thread was immediately shut down under the logic of "we already had that first topic, so we don't need another one," and then the discussion on Mizandria in American society got closed because of one single post that wasn't quite right...

...well, I'm asking the moderators, if you could please watch the episode on NBC at their request, and then instead of waiting for me to jump in, maybe write a post about the show themselves? Somewhere they feel is appropriate. They could include a link to the broadcast, and maybe even a snippet of what I've written here. That way, we can proactively avoid any risk of me posting in the wrong place, or doing it the wrong way, or opening a thread incorrectly, or trolling, or breaking some obscure forum rule or whatever.

Supposedly, it's perfectly fine to criticize the ombudsman here, though I still haven't quite figured out exactly where the line is drawn. Since this topic is arguably more important than my own personal gripes, I’d ask the moderators to handle the discussion properly themselves, rather than leaving it to me. Thanks in advance, I guess.

Just one more quick favor to ask.
Back on Thursday, October 29, 2015, there was an episode of "Vita jelo, zelen bor" that airs pretty much every weekday. They dive into a different topic every single time, and this particular installment focused on the absolutely abysmal position fathers find themselves in during divorce proceedings and after the split. It was heavy stuff—they brought up some pretty shocking cases and statistics, including those nightmare scenarios involving false accusations of abuse and pedophilia. Both guests, the president of the Equal Parenting Association and Gordana Flander-Buljan, seemed to be in total agreement about how terribly men are treated in the system. Now, I’ve only heard about the show through word of mouth, so I wanted to go hunt it down on "PBS on demand".

But here’s the thing—it looks like that specific episode is just... gone. I mean, I checked, and you can watch every other past episode, but that one from the 29th is nowhere to be found. Everything up until the 28th is there, and then the 30th pops up right after, but the 29th is a total blank. I can't help but wonder if maybe someone actually put pressure on PBS to pull that specific broadcast? Is it possible? Could anyone point out this weird little coincidence in a relevant thread or subforum?

Gugenheim, we’ve had some pretty heavy discussions about this, and honestly, I’ve lost track of how many threads we’ve debated just to reach the same conclusion: it simply doesn't work. You might want to try your luck elsewhere, but on Politics, the answer remains no for the foreseeable future.