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I can tell you that the mod team, and I personally, have not intentionally chosen to prioritize retaining/growing membership over consistent rules enforcement. Believe me or do not, but I strive to be consistent and even-handed, and I believe the other mods do too. Maybe you think we're all terrible at it, but you are definitely mischaracterizing our motives.
I am kind of curious in what way you think we do not enforce the rules consistently, but I fear it will boil down to "Ban the people I think should be banned, and don't ban the people I don't think should be banned," because it always does.
There are people I think are bad faith actors and poisonous to the environment whom I would boot in a heartbeat if we took the more expeditious route you are suggesting. But I am fairly certain you'd find at least some of my choices objectionable.
Just to pick at this a bit, if I understand your argument here, it's basically that we let terrible people like Darwin and Julius (and ymeskhout, apparently) run amok until they drive good posters away. There may be some truth to this (in that I'm sure that all those individuals have driven some people away, some of whom might have been good posters). On the other hand, the people often mentioned as "good posters who were driven away" are people like trannyporn (on one end of the spectrum) or Impassionata (on the other). Do you think any of the people complaining about all the people driven away by so many threads about HBD and Jews and progressives-are-cancer might have a point as well?
Is this the "You give leftists extra slack to try to cultivate ideological diversity" argument again? Because I recall one time when Zorba said something like "Yes, we have a problem keeping leftists around and so we might sometimes go easier on a lefty who's taking a lot of flack," and for years since y'all have beaten that particular horse to death. I can tell you that at present, there is definitely no intentional extra slack given to left-leaning posters.
I do believe you try to. I also believe you are fallible, and susceptible to the same sort of biases that people like to think themselves above. I also know that mods have regularly appealed to personal subjectivity towards those they moderate as they do.
I do believe you try to be even-handed, I challenge that even-handed is subordinated to other concerns, and I base this off of mod comments in ban-posts or kicks which elaborating why certain degrees are inflicted. The words to use them may change- 'not becoming an echo chamber' or 'don't want to drive away key counter-balances' or 'you were a good poster and we'd like to be again"- but past compromises compromise future credibility.
Of course it does, you made a truism of a generality. Nobody goes 'ban the people I don't think should be banned,' because it creates a paradox. This is what I mean by mods not being above logical failures when under their subjective presence.
But, if that feels too confrontational, let me ask a question in turn-
Amadan, how many times in all my years at the Motte have I ever reported someone asking for them to be banned?
Certainly. But the point of a legitimate justice system isn't being non-objectionable, it's being consistent/credible and legitimate. The conflation is why I believe there is a breakdown, and interjects the biases I was mentioning before.
Or me. I am well aware that geopolitics is a hobby horse.
Not drive them away- drive them into not responding to them.
When you have a mix of 'good' posters (those who will only respond in accordance to the rules) and 'bad' posters (those who will respond emotionally, and at risk of the rules) facing a 'nasty' poster (who is not going to change or engage in good faith), the 'good' posters will avoid risk by disengaging. By ratios alone, that makes bad posters a larger share of the remainder, which in turn changes the dynamics of reporting and perception of bad posters, because rather than one bad poster against many good and a few bad, it becomes one bad against many bad and now even-handedness rears it's ugly head because what does 'even handed' mean in practice when dealing with one-vs-many? It certainly doesn't often mean joining in with the unsightly crowd.
This is the environment which drives people away- where dogpiling is very obviously occuring on unpopular positions by obstinant people, where the optics are of mods taking greater actions against those objecting to those in bad faith than against the actors they will eventually ban anyway, where good-faith engagement is hard to find because the good-faith opponents left and the remainder are the sort motivated by emotion, and where even-handedness struggles to handle two different sorts of 'bad'.
This is not the worst environment, or even a worse environment than alternatives, but is the climate of the motte when unmoving bad-faith arguments are raised time and time again.
I absolutely think they have a point, and encourage them to make it- because I believe the mods have a point to, in that a key purpose of this forum is how to argue, not what to argue. This is not a curated garden of harmony, this is a moderated battleground. Siege warfare is our literal visual metaphor, and the motte is for defending points under challenge.
Points are not to be dismissed from consideration, they are to be defeated. Even if people are being driven away by HBD and Jews and progressives-are-cancer... so what? What would you do differently if that were true, that you would not do despite it being true?
Whether there is an intention is irrelevant to whether there is, because, again, biases and other concerns and how subjective things get framed in the context of incentives other contextual priorities. And, of course, prior interest such an intention, even if it's not formal (or even informal) policy at the present.
Yes, of course we're subjective and fallible, but none of that answers how we're failing at consistent enforcement.
I don't know how many times you have reported someone, and I have no way of knowing whether if you reported someone it was your intention to get them banned. If you're asking me to guess, I think you do not seem like someone who usually makes spurious reports or tries to get someone banned.
Nothing, because I agree with you that being able to lay siege to (and with) those arguments is the point of the Motte. Of course we lose some potential contributors who don't want to argue with Holocaust deniers or conflict theorists who view them as cancer. And I'm sure we also lose some contributors who are infuriated by certain posters being allowed to make repetitive arguments in what they consider to be bad faith.
I still don't see how you think we can somehow select the "bad" posters and apply rules to them in a way we are apparently not doing right now. I get that you think we didn't apply the rules consistently to Darwin, or JB, or ymeskhout. I don't agree, and you haven't tried to convince me, you've just claimed we don't.
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