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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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The votes seem to agree with me, and the mod team discord defense force doesn't. That should tell you something.

Could there be a bigger "consensus building" attack than this? Jesus dude, they should ban you just for this. The mods are not even corruptible, I tried about a month ago when I was stuck at home with a knee injury.

It's written in the rules that the mods will try to respect user sentiment, so user opinion of moderation is actually useful information. Also, consensus-building is most harmful against other users; in the case of mods, it is easily offset by mod powers. The point of the rule is to prevent users from suppressing views they disagree with, and he has no power to suppress mod actions.

It would be pretty cool if people stopped trying to fight the refs and just accepted that we're trying to maintain a system that actively does not want to exist, especially given that that forks with variant moderation have in fact been tried and have not gone well. Unfortunately that is never, ever going to happen.

The bribe attempt was in fact pretty funny, though.

Hey there is always money on the table. Zorba basically said a million to start. That is far beyond what I can pay for a little leeway. I know people that can, but they would just laugh at my parochial interests.

To elaborate, you are straightforwardly wrong that either @Amadan or any of the other mods pick people we dislike and twist the rules to go after them, and you are also wrong that @Amadan is the worst mod on the site.

You are coming in with an adversarial mindset, and allowing that mindset to color every interaction you have. There's no actual need to do that, and it's hard to see the benefit even if we're lying and you're right about everything. We are actually committed to fostering communication across the tribal divide. We are actually trying to implement the rules in good faith and with the explicit goal of keeping this forum performing its intended mission. You've gotten modded by @Amadan because I've been trying to engage with you directly, and we have a policy of not modding conversations we're involved in. Some of your comments are quite good, and some of them are pretty bad, and the distinctions between the two are not subtle. I am hoping at some point you can entertain the idea that we aren't trying to game you, simmer down a bit, and just lean into the productive discussions that I think you are entirely capable of. I want this to happen because I think your perspective and receipts-heavy approach are valuable, and I want to see more of it, but that isn't going to happen if you don't actually see value in calm, rational discussion with people who disagree with you.