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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25454 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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Horseshit. Banned for posting badthink too cogently, using a rule that doesn't seem to actually exist and which I've never even heard of outside the context of this particular poster. Completely transparent.

You guys can't even invent a reason that this post breaks any actual listed rule, so you've concocted a rationale out of thin air where you can ban someone for not making other posts that you feel they should have.

Like what's the proportion of X to non-X posts someone is allowed to make? Does it matter how often they post? Does it matter how long the posts in each category are? You don't know because you're pulling this out of your ass.

Massive loss of respect. You'd look less ridiculous just banning him for being a wrongthinker.

It seems you haven't been here for very long. This forum had this problem a bunch of times and has banned multiple people over it, with different offending topics. Holocaust denial is certainly an all-time-favorite, but there's been a pedo who would constantly top-level-post about age of consent, another who invented a new "scientific" theory of power and would write multiple absurdly long, barely readable screeds about it, and Skookum was quite recent. It's a rule only a certain kind of obsessive tends to run into, but it's important imo.

Skookum got banned for one issue posting, and I think we've had a pro-pedophile poster and the teen liberation guy banned under it as well. It's definitely not a common think to get banned for, but it's been used before.

I also disagree, mod hat off, that his angle is particularly cogent. He’s quite thoroughly on record defending Nazi “resettlements,” but now that he can claim his favorite punching bags are doing the same?

And his evidence for the sameness gives way in favor of paragraphs and paragraphs of harping on eyewitness accounts. It’s the definition of a strawman.

Agreed. I'm not sure I have the writing skills to make a top-level post, but if I did, I'd be lucky to have even a single issue on which I was both articulate and interesting enough to make multiple posts on the topic. I guess that would make me a single issue poster (which there is no discernible rule against).

I'm also highly antipathetic toward governance/justice/moderation being levied based on identity. Judgment, in this and in every case, should be on the merits of the argument, not because of who posted it. Either the ball was in bounds or out of bounds; making that call shouldn't depend on whether Tom Brady or Todd Marinovich threw it. If it does, then we're playing a rigged sport here.

But there is a rule against single issue posting. Which is not to say that SecureSignals necessarily got banned only and precisely because he broke that rule, but there is a rule against it.

The problem with ignoring identity in making mod decisions is that it would leave the site open to people just repeatedly posting minor variations on the same exact thing whether or not it withstood rational analysis, since if mods ignored identity they would be forced to respond to each new iteration as if it was the first ever.

I disagree. I think people would respond negatively to overly-repetitive topics to the degree warranted, regardless of the username posted in the corner above it.

The rule definitely exists.

Look at the post history in question and tell me that SS posts about multiple subjects. I actually thought he was doing better than this. The most recent I found was a month back, and while it doesn’t mention Jews, I’d still put it firmly in the category of apologetics. Go back a couple further, and even his analysis of topical movies has to harp on their Jewishness. Tell me, on what else has he spilled any volume of ink?

I'm honestly impressed at how we can write rules that are so ridiculously lax that I would never expect anyone to run into them, and have people run into them anyway.

Just go post about something every week! Here's a nerd making goat noises! Here's some nerds comparing cards in a game they've never played! Here's another nerd taste-tasting AI-created cocktails! this is not hard

Note to @SecureSignals to make sure he posts a bunch of random bullshit he doesn't give a crap about in between real posts. Just go to the Friday Fun Thread and drop some funny cat videos or something and ignore any responses once you've hit your quota. Just make a complete mockery of this stupid ass non-rule until they reach back into their ass and decide that actually total wordcount per subject was the real metric all along.

2-day ban for egregious obnoxiousness.

Being a snarky asshole is as detrimental to the discourse here as dropping sneering boo-outgroups or sarcastic, condescending insults directed at other people. The mods have always been willing to listen to people complaining/venting about our moderation. But if you all you want to post is neener-neener sneers directed at us by way of expressing how much you think we suck, we don't actually have to put up with that. And your record of low-effort spiteful antagonism is bad enough that I am very comfortable telling you to knock it off or else.

Now listen here, sir. This is the CW thread, and I expect you to be on your worst behavior. None of this light-hearted nonsense!

There is a "Post on multiple subjects" rule in the sidebar.

I think they would look much more ridiculous if they banned him for being a "wrongthinker", given the stated goals of this site, as opposed if they banned him for violating some listed rule(s). But in this case there actually is a listed rule. And in any case, mods have given themselves the option of using the "metarule".

So the question then is, did SecureSignals just get banned because he is a Holocaust denier? I don't think so. I've been around here for a long time and I haven't seen anything to make me think that Holocaust denial, in itself, gets people banned.

I understand your frustration, but we clearly have wildcard rules about how mod discretion ubër alles when we consider a comment made in bad faith or a user who is here solely to proselytize on a particular topic. We're not a constitutional court, the precedent exists, as discussed before.

You guys can't even invent a reason that this post breaks any actual listed rule, so you've concocted a rationale out of thin air where you can ban someone for not making other posts that you feel they should have.

No firm numbers exist, but his mod log is lengthy indeed and has an equal share of AAQCs and warnings for posting about Holocaust denialism.

The latter isn't against the rules, as far as I'm aware. It's not even what he's being banned for. Criticizing Israel and questioning the Holocaust are perfectly fine, but if it's not obvious to you, it's the general opinion of the mod team that he's largely here just for that purpose alone, and I'm sticking to the party line in this regard. You're welcome to disagree, but keep in mind that AAQCs aren't handed out based on user votes alone, but mod discretion, so we have no problems with him when he isn't soapboxing.

After all, SkookumTrees got handed a ban, and that was for Eeyore-posting, which isn't explicitly illegal. It just becomes a massive nuisance when it's all you do, or even most of what you do, and especially if you keep at it when we ask you not to do it.

I honestly don't particularly care myself, even if it's a bit tiresome, but the existing plan was to hit him with a ban when the warnings failed. If that's changed after discussion internally, no skin off my back.

But warnings are not meant to be ignored. And while good behavior earns you a great deal of leeway, he really ought to know better. It seems to me he only behaves enough to get back on his hobby horse, and it's groaning at the knees by now.

(For the record, I didn't ask any of the other mods before making this ruling, so you can lay your disapproval solely at my feet, though I'll ask for their input anyway, given that you make a cogent point, however as @netstack points out, we do have official rules against single-issue posting)

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