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Are you a Whining Coil?
That is pretty a stupid and insulting question but I will answer earnestly against my better judgement.
I picked the figure Belisarius because he was the greatest general in the fight for the restoration of the roman empire, but I certainly don't see myself as a general, or great general. And it was a bit random I chose that name over different ones. Just one of the figures of history I liked. It is good for us to be inspired by history and part of a degenerate and declining age is this hostility to a positive historical heritage. Why should I have to be attacked by you for picking the name of a great general?
Procopius was generally considered unreliable writer who promoted plenty of sleaze which is what is these claims are based on. Even if one was to accept that his wife really was a whore, he is still a positive figure in general.
It is your choice to take this kind of framing on a figure that is certainly much more known for being a great general than his wife's alleged exploits. We have enough problems dealing with much more common collective cuckholdery of our times to worry about the purity of Belisarius wife.
I truly, truly wish you could see from my perspective how hilarious all this is. I mean, I know now that you can't. But I wish you could.
This was not drive by derailing, I've actually had a hard time keeping up this week since I've been building my wife a new chicken coop, and reading Gibbon in the evening to unwind. I literally did just read the chapters about what a (apocryphal?) whore Belisarius' wife was, and thought it'd be a fun conversation starter since you are obviously a fan. I don't literally think you are a cuck.
Also, I mean, I guess it's uncouth to talk about this. But I've been getting all these notifications tonight that I can't see because I have Amadan blocked. I find his argumentation style tailored to try to get me to break the rules and then punish me. I had to check the thread in incognito mode to even see what the hubbub is about. So yeah, no love lost there.
For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to literally imply your wife is a whore. It's like if someone said they were a huge fan of Bill Cosby and you asked "They show.... or the other stuff?" The joke is how obviously it's not the other stuff. Obviously Belisarius is notable in history for being the greatest general of his age, not the biggest cuck.
Don’t brag about blocking people, it’s a shameful thing. Then you can spare us the excruciating story on how you had to remove your own barriers.
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Be less antagonistic, and get a sense of humor.
I would expect this quality of moderation from 4chan, not TheMotte.
Of course you know I have had a beef with your partiality and believe that you treat users and tribes you are sympathetic to favourably, but this is an entirely new level of tendentiousness. User A makes an off-topic post trying to relate User B's username to a common slur/fixation, User B responds in a mildly standoffish manner but actually clarifies the origin of the username, and User B - only User B - gets a modhat reprimand? Of course, I fully expect that any objections will be met with the same old "I disagree, and no, I am not going to justify anything" sort of response from you. Is that what it is going to be, or do you have something better to offer?
(I don't even understand what you find so funny. Is it just "haha bro just called him a cuck"?)
The fact that you think I am being favorable to @WhiningCoil, of all people, or his "tribe," is much funnier than anything posted in this thread.
I have occasionally been accused of reading people wrong, and I'll cop to it when it happens. I read @WhiningCoil as injecting a bit of jocularity concerning a historical name he happened to have just been reading about. Not literally accusing @Belisarius of being a cuck with a famously whoreish wife, or being general of an empire in decline. I read it this way because I know @WhiningCoil's posting habits, and I also know @Belisarius's tendency to be aggressive and overly serious with anyone who argues with him about anything.
If the post was just an attack on a user for his username because WC didn't like him and saw an opportunity for a cheap shot, my response would have been different. Instead, I told @Belisarius to cool it because the exchange doesn't warrant this kind of heat and he is prone to escalation.
Is that a sufficient answer for you? Because that's as much as I feel like justifying myself to you, because yes, per that post you linked to, I think you're a bad faith objector whose objections are purely tribal, and I will continue to dismiss your demands that every time two people have an exchange, I carefully admonish everyone involved and make sure I am evenly distributing my admonishments along tribal lines.
Does the objection here break along tribal lines somehow? I couldn't tell who of the two is more "right-wing" for sure. At most, my sense is that WhiningCoil is more of a prolific and popular user that I figure you like, and my objections are "tribal" insofar as "users that Amadan likes" constitute a tribe. In that case, though, any objection against favouritism is definitionally tribal, and in your concept space, the only people who can have "good faith" objections to moderator bias are those who benefit from it. Maybe you think that is right and well, but then I can only say it is unfortunate if it turns out you only favour users who lack the principles to protest favouritism they benefit from.
(Though maybe you think that not finding a beloved right-wing slur intrinsically funny is already sufficient evidence of bias against the Right that rises to the level of bad faith...?)
To be fair, I should say I do appreciate that you explained your reasoning here. It does help me understand why you arrived at that decision, though I still think that the optics of it are terrible and it betrays an extreme double standard that you can muster the level of charity to interpret WhiningCoil's post, which really does not read as anything other than a wanton drive-by attack to me, as an innocuous "bit of jocularity" while also the level of anti-charity to interpret Belisarius's really rather level-headed response as "antagonistic".
Your sense is lacking in perspipacity.
That you believe this confirms my belief that you do not actually pay attention to moderation and are only complaining because you have an axe to grind.
I mod people I like all the time, often with great regret. Even more often, I decline to mod people who have been reported on what I considered insufficient grounds, even when I frankly dislike that person very much.
Wrong. While someone who gets modded a lot for their behavior and complains that our moderation is unfair does obviously present an obvious bias that we're going to factor in, we do hear everyone out. If I were only taking seriously people who benefit from moderation, I'd put more weight on your objections - to my knowledge, you have never been modded.
I know the history of "cuck" as a right-wing slur, and maybe you should consider that the word triggered a disproportionate response from you when @WhiningCoil was using it in a more literal sense (and talking about the historical figure Belisarius, not the poster @Belisarius).
Now if WC speaks up and says "No, actually, I did wonder if @Belisarius was into cuckolding" - well, I'll own to granting him too much charity (and give him a warning not to do that again).
The logic there does not check out - the latter would follow if the insinuation were they you take all people who benefit from moderation seriously, not that you only take people who benefit from moderation seriously (= do not take people who don't benefit from moderation seriously). Anyway, I think that not being moderated oneself is a pretty low bar for "benefitting from moderation", coming across as somewhat alike in flavour to a tinpot dictator saying that all the people on the streets should just be grateful they have not been imprisoned yet. All that happened is that I had the sense to avoid fights with people who are evidently moderator darlings. Certain individuals getting lots of leeway for things including general culture-war obnoxiousness and even personal attacks, while any attempt at proportional defense is punished harshly, is in fact the primary way that moderator bias here manifests itself - and, of course, you don't generally mod people for attacking you, which makes it easier to suspend disbelief and maintain narrative that you are actually quite even-handed.
Do you not realise how absurd this sounds as an argument for your impartiality? "Well, of course if he were to step up and outright admit guilt in this specific fashion, I would have no choice but to punish him (that is, give him a stern warning)"
I can't say I have seen any clear examples of that. In fact, I had you pegged as a clear instance of the "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" sort of authority.
My response was triggered by your post, not WC's. If I had seen that post on its own, I would have mostly likely dismissed it as typical 2025-motte low-quality posting (maybe, if I were in a particularly futility-seeking mood, I'd have reported it as a low-effort post, expecting nothing). The thing that set me off is that the recipient, who evidently did take it as an attack (perfectly reasonably!), responded in a level-headed manner that could even be taken as defusing if the previous post was in fact meant as a personal attack, only to earn a modhat comment from the moderator that I had already previously taken note of for doing the "rules will be applied to people I dislike when they have slightly heated arguments with people I like" thing before. I knew very little about the exact political position of the two users (I figured they were both somewhere on the right), but given how much more prolific WhiningCoil is, it seemed plausible enough that this was yet another instance.
All of this could have been avoided if you didn't think it is a good idea to exempt users "in good standing" from the rules as written - even if you want to have the charity to consider it a joke, aren't jokes that are plausibly taken as personal attacks among the things that "Make your point reasonably clear and plain." is supposed to guard against?
You're wrong.
That is not what happened.
I have honestly tried to hear you out, but everything from your initial complaint and your report to this convinces me that you have no insight and are so wildly off base that even the most basic statements you make do not conform to the visible evidence. Whether you actually believe everything you say or not, there is nothing to be gained here. You are unhappy with moderation (specifically, mine). You are not alone. Duly noted.
I will leave your report for another mod to adjudicate (as I always do when people report me).
I generally like the modding on this forum, including yours, but this whole sub thread dropped my respect for you as mod pretty significantly. I’m mostly a lurker on here and I don’t really follow individual users closely enough to have prior opinions on anyone involved expect for you (and that only because mod names jump out when the mod hat goes on). I found the initial mod action jarring and unexpected, but your responses to other people pushing back were worse. You generally do a good job as far as I can tell, but I think you got this one wrong.
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You can't just ask if someone imagines himself a great general or is a cuck with a whore wife and then say just joking. You might find it funny if you dislike the target, but you are only showing a lack of impartiality.
WhiningCoil was being antagonistic and I assumed I offended him when I suspecting Hlynka was the OP and I replied with relative restraint all things considered. Or offended him by arguing against the people I argue, and by my type of argument. Hence "Great General". Saying that it is stupid and insulting to ask if someone imagines himself a great general or a massive cuck is not a particularly antagonistic response to an actually antagonistic post.
Knowing you, and your own sense of humor, I know that you would have responded harsher manner and likely at least threatened a mod action if you have been the target of this kind of "joke", adapted to your circumstances.
If someone wants to be funny about historical figures in a manner that is insulting he can easily do so without making it personal about the user but instead make it about the figure.
Well, yes, actually you can, and if you had even the tiniest sense of humor, you'd know it. Just like when people ask if my username means I am a great fool.
If there is one thing I am nearly 100% certain of, it is that @WhiningCoil is not @HlynkaCG. Hlynka is very recognizeable and shitty at disguising himself (he's tried a few times), and @WhiningCoil has a long history here and on reddit going back multiple usernames.
You're mistaken. I have no sense of humor, but that's in the job description.
I'm nobody but you look like shit here. Anyone who's lurked this place longer than a week or two has seen people catch hell for less obnoxious comments than WhiningCoil's. Modhatting the levelheaded response to it is ridiculous.
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FYI my respect for towards you didn't move when Coil made the crack but dropped when you proved unable to roll with the punch. Self-seriousness will make you a target.
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I think you are taking someone obliquely implying you picked your namesake for his cuckoldry entirely too seriously. This is an internet forum for witches, not the UFC ringside. Profuse defense of masculine honor looks out of place here, IMVHO.
In Current Year, defensive of masculine honor is a witch characteristic.
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