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Alternatively, your moral resistance to racism observably diminishes so long as it's aimed at the "correct" race. Suppose the Count is wrong on the particulars, and an examination of the statistics reveals that, in fact, migrants in the UK are "worse", by whatever standards you are now flirting with, than the native underclass (and note the obvious dishonesty of comparing all immigrants to only the worst of the natives). If it turns out the natives are in fact better, does that mean the white supremacists had a point all along, or does it just prove that your entire interest in the topic begins and ends with its utility toward bashing the outgroup?
Between this and the luria-posting last week, Hlynka continues to age like fine wine.
This is not a reasonable argument that is worth replying to. Please don't reply to my posts---I'm not interested in discussing things with you since it's extremely tedious and unpleasant to deal with this sort of mess of malicious misinterpretation.
In this situation, I understand why you might choose to exercise the block button. However, I’ll ask you to avoid such a substance-free dismissal. If you aren’t going to respond on the merits, please don’t discourage others from doing so.
Do you think there's any substantive response to make here besides "please read what I wrote more carefully and try again"? Playing into someone's bad-faith debate games by trying to defend "no, I actually said (blah)" never goes well when they're actively trying to confuse the issue.
It's really not a good look for a moderator here to be employing this sort of tactic given your stated goals. If FCC's reply wasn't violating
then I don't know what is. But, again, it's your guys' website.
Then don’t play into the games. Don’t respond. Block him, if you must. We won’t hold it against you; blocking exists specifically for times when someone thinks a response is worthless.
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You're free to report any post you think violates the rules, even a mod's. (Trust me, we get reported all the time.) But no, I don't think @FCfromSSC was violating any rules. People are allowed to point out what they think is hypocrisy if they are civil about. You can deny it, rebut it, or choose not to respond.
(And you're getting a response from multiple mods because I happened to be the one who saw this post in the new-user filter and approved it, not because we're all ganging up on you because you argued with a mod.)
Are you arguing that "obvious dishonesty" and "or does it just prove that your entire interest in the topic begins and ends with its utility toward bashing the outgroup?" are civil?
Idk, I get the impression that some of you are unhappy about the way this site is going---there have been enough discussions about echo chambers and things like that. Yet you keep refusing to listen to people who tell you the clear reasons why such things might be happing. Totally understandable if you don't take my word for it, but you guys should at least take something from the whole Tracingwoodgrains discussion earlier.
There's a political consensus here and many toxic arguments arguing in favor of the consensus are not moderated. Beyond this current example, I've pointed out before that racism violating "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be" is very often ignored (though somehow the entire discussion where this last happened was memory holed. I can only see the comments in my inbox with all links to the actual thread broken). You even put one of the worst perpetrators on the mod team!
This makes the environment quite unpleasant for people arguing against the consensus so most just end up leaving.
My stack of nickels keeps growing.
Yes, I get it, you want us to mod the other side more heavily and your side less heavily.
Would it shock you to know that the other side thinks we should mod your side more heavily and their side less heavily and that our failure to do so is why the site is dying?
No amount of evidence will convince you (or those who argue the opposite) that this isn't true, so ... shrug.
Being racist is not forbidden here. Saying "Blacks are stupid" would get modded; saying "I don't like black people" or "I think the US would be better if we were a white ethnostate" would not.
Who do you mean; @FCfromSSC? First of all, I don't recall him posting racist things. He's definitely a rightist and an accelerationist, but not a racist (though he can speak for himself). And he was put on the mod team by Zorba's complicated dogue system in which many members were involved. So we put him on the mod team, and by we I mean the Motte.
Look, I really do appreciate it when liberals choose to post here, but unfortunately, you are following a familiar pattern that reaffirms my observations here and everywhere else: liberals don't really believe they should have to put up with people who express views that are noxious to them. This is true of rightists too, of course (we have a couple of people who report all liberal posters like someone tapped their knee with a hammer), but far more so of leftists. You (and Trace) aren't completely wrong that a sort of consensus culture has formed here (not universal; I am certainly to the left of the median Motter) that is right-leaning and sometimes hostile and toxic, but that's due to a bunch of selection pressures. It's not just that people like you find it too toxic here and leave; it's also that people like you drive the sort of person who'd post here off of every other site.
This is actually a great example of a phenomenon I think greatly contributes to moderation issues here. You're rounding me off to a pattern you've seen a lot before---"liberals don't really believe they should have to put up with people who express views that are noxious to them"---instead of noticing that my actual complaint is different: I'm only opposed to the way in which these "noxious" views are being argued. I've complained before that @naraburns is also pretty bad at rounding off recklessly in this way.
I'm perfectly happy discussing with people who's values I think are very opposed to mine as long as those people are actually responding to the points of what I'm saying instead of strawmanning or making unjustified personal attacks (Just to link some interactions with a particularly hostile poster who somehow never ever got moderated for these). Case in point: I'm not saying FC is one of the worst perpetrators because he may or may not be racist or accelerationist or whatever, but rather because he has one of the worst habits of rudely accusing those he's arguing against of saying a billion things they didn't actually say!
All I'm asking is that you actually apply your rules on tone and argument style consistently instead of judging based on rounding discussions off to preconceived notions from your previous experience on the internet.
You were wrong then, you're still wrong, and now you've brought a third moderator into this conversation.
Your complaint, every time we have these conversations, boils down to "other people did bad stuff and got away with it." That is certainly true! We do not moderate every bad post. We do not moderate all of your bad posts. Why? Well, as I've explained to you before, we have to weigh the costs and benefits of every second we spend moderating. The rules ultimately function only in service of the foundation. Sometimes a not-great post just isn't worth the hassle, and isn't doing sufficient harm. Sometimes a not-that-bad post is worth the hassle, or is doing sufficient harm. Sometimes we just miss it because no one reports it. Sometimes we're busy with other things. "Consistency" is not the goal; the goal is to serve the foundation to the best of our abilities.
But since you seem to at least want more consistency, here you go: I've consistently told you that the bad behavior of others is irrelevant to your own. Arguing with us about what other people have or have not "gotten away with" is meaningless. We've banned leftists, we've banned rightists, we've banned more flavors of political perspective than most people know even exist. But always in service of the foundation. We've never yet banned someone "based on rounding discussions off to preconceived notions from your previous experience on the internet." As long as you believe otherwise, you will continue to believe something that is false.
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