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You've been asked to not do this in the most clear way possible.
Not any other critics of modding have been asked to stop. Just you, and just these kinds of dumb comments.
I am tempted to take your advice and give you a permaban:
After all these sorts of comments you make are obvious trolling.
Community sentiment is generally against perma-bans these days. 30-days for you
Um, no they're not. Trolling is deceptive posting in order to bait a response; Steve clearly does think that netstack's action was "a joke". I do not get "troll" vibes from him in general; he appears to be a sincere, very angry, very radical rightist.
Steve is a frequent flamer (i.e. someone who insults others). That is itself against the rules, but it's not the same thing as trolling.
Isn’t “baiting a response” the important bit? It’s the main reason I was ignoring Steve.
I wouldn't consider it so. Also, my read on Steve is that he's not even trying to bait a response, just lash out at people he gets mad at. Could you maybe link me some examples of Steve trying to bait people?
@SteveAgain, to be clear, I don't actually hate you. I see too much of myself in you to hate you. With that said, "you must learn control". I'd suggest putting some kind of spacer into your post routine so that you have time to calm down before a post goes live, because it's specifically your angry snarling at people that's causing the problems.
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This is a terrible ban and using his comment about the obvious troll poster troll posting and getting away with it because charity is endless to new posters who pretend not to know anything is ridiculous.
But the reason this is a terrible ban is because WhiningCoil's ban was a joke on several levels of both being bad and lazy and sets an assuming the worst kind of rule to the forum as a whole that I'm sure will go well.
But the bad moderating here seems to be here to stay if you can't just admit that you made a mistake and should actually be as charitable to the people you mod as they are supposed to be to you.
We've extended a great deal of charity to Steve. We've asked him to stop making these sorts of comments. He chose not to.
He has also been warned many times for antagonistic behavior, both on this account and the previous account. He was very close to earning a permanent ban with his previous account's behavior. We made a note to ourselves to not completely ignore his previous account's bad behavior, but we mostly did and proceeded to be lenient with him as if he was a newish user.
Other people's bad behavior, even if it is a mod's bad behavior, is not an excuse for bad behavior.
If we specifically ask any user not to do a specific thing. We mean it and we will take note of it. If Netstack had broken every rule we have and gotten de-modded for his comment I still would have banned Steve for his comment. This is a 'fuck around and find out" moment. We literally only have two punishments in our toolbox, the first is asking people to stop doing a thing, and the second is bans.
I clearly said in my comment that no one else has been asked to not provide feedback. Only Steve, and only those types of comments.
I personally think netstack's ban of @WhiningCoil was fine. Its only that he should have been harsher with @Capital_Room. 5 days at least for capital room for clear fedposting. And just one day for whining coil cuz it sorta looked like fedposting.
As far as I am concerned fedposting is one of the few existential threats that this board faces. The other two are zorba kicking the bucket and a democrat party crackdown on free speech on the web.
One day bans are minor and basically nothing. That is us saying "yes really, this is a rule we will enforce, don't do it". For anything resembling fed posting I'm also willing to hand out bans like candy. Don't fucking do it. We can choose to be lenient when it is just the rules we care about enforcing. But this is a rule that the world will enforce upon us if we don't self police. Be annoyingly verbose and add a bunch of disclaimers if you insist on doing it. We still might ban you, because again we aren't really the ones making the rule on this. Sorry it sucks, I don't like it anymore than you do.
The charity I was referring to was to WhiningCoil. But I can see, as usual, you guys can never, ever admit you were wrong or made any kind of mistake in moderation. It's not a small ban that is basically nothing because it's the reason why Steve was just banned. Every modhat is one step closer to a permaban unless you are a mod or someone like Dase who gets to show up like TrannyPorno every month and insult a bunch of people and get a warning for one of the five insults and the others are ignored and each one of those ignored posts and the warning would be a ban for someone like Steve or WhiningCoil because even if you guys can't see it it's pretty obvious to me there is a bias against a certain type of poster that comes down to not liking how they post and never the actual content because I've seen "fedposting" like WhiningCoils about once a week here without any even warning. But the point is Steve just got banned for thirty days for an accumulation, if this ban means nothing about WhiningCoil then it surely wouldn't be used against him in the future for a 30 day ban, right? I've never seen that to be true.
And I'm not advocating for banning Dase (I don't even think TrannyPorno should have been banned) but I do think direct insults toward other users is actually the worst thing to allow to slide in a forum. But even moreso than not giving charity to WhiningCoil, that maybe he didn't actually fedpost because you have to assume things to make that true, but that absence of charity becomes even more absent when this will get used as a accumulation of infractions that gets him further banned for an increasing amount of time. I've said it before but if you want people to not actually post something then actually make the consequences matter because saying "this doesn't really matter but don't do it, 1 day ban" is always going to lead a permaban and at this point that pretty much feels like its the point because I've been pointing this out for years and years.
Here it is, an amazing moment for you:
I am not perfect. I have definitely made mistakes in moderation. Based on what the other mods say and what users say I am often too harsh in my moderation. I have in fact been overridden on my moderation decisions and have had them scaled back before. If self_made_human, amadan, and netstack (or just zorba) say I have been too harsh I trust their judgement and I'm willing to say I was wrong. This has happened a few times. There have also been times where any of them have realized they are too close to an issue and have stepped back and asked other mods to step in and make a ruling. This is basically what I consider a normal process of modding here on themotte. If some mod was totally unwilling to admit fault and completely bull headed they would not last long as a mod.
Generally these moments are not highly publicized and catalogued. If that bothers you, then tough shit. Welcome to the world we live in. I'm not gonna ask any user to make a public flogging tour for every minor mistake they make. Consider any politician or public figure that you like and respect. Should they be forced to go on a public apology tour for every mistake they make? Or would you look at such a request through obvious culture war eyes and realize that your enemies are just trying to get one over on you?
You probably don't get dinged much because you don't post much. This is a problem we are aware of. For highly prolific users we are aware that there is a numbers issue, speak up too much and eventually you might run afoul of the rules. But we are also super forgiving of highly prolific users. As long as they don't violate very specific and enumerated requests we will let a lot of shit go. This is the case with steve, we had a very specific request that he not make these shitty "mods suck" type comments, and we tried to be as clear as possible that he needs to stop them, immediately.
He didn't.
So tell me, what the hell are we supposed to do when a user violates a clear, specific, minor, and reasonable request we have for them?
Common suggestions:
Steve has vocally been in favor of option 3 before.
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Is there evidence for this?
Isn't it more likely the FBI creates dozens of sock puppets to help the fedposters planning or present them with lady governor kidnapping plans?
If there was press coverage wouldn't lots of new users be likely?
Zorba has expressed a lack of interest in sacrificing his life and well-being for this place.
Personally, a media shitstorm, police investigation, etc would be enough for me to drop this place like a hot potato.
This place might continue to exist, but it will be different enough that it will be dead for many of the people that call it home.
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