Ratskep discussion split from "What use is..." thread

[Seabass]

Warren, they actually do have a rule against misrepresentation:

1.2.m. "quote mining, plagiarising, or otherwise purposely misrepresenting content from other members or external sources."

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/annou ... t-t76.html

It is the rule that was invoked to suspend Seth.
He can probably verify or correct me on that.

And yet repeated misrepresentations of private gun ownership advocates as paranoid gun nuts, or meat eaters as insensitive murderers gets no like attention.



1.2m? They are writing their own bible.

Yeah, I don't disagree with the spirit of most of the rules in their FUA, but unfortunately there is little that can be done about selective enforcement. I think you would have to wipe the current staff clean and go for a more balanced mod staff with more diverse opinions, in order to get some sort of fairness. They did make Weaver a mod recently, so maybe I can finally get some civilized discourse in them there gun control threads.

Hmmm. Way too many rules in my opinion, many of them virtually unenforceable, lest they intend to ban 90% of the membership. The "trolling rule" is the classic example of this: 1.2.e "attempt to inflame or provoke another member(s)." How on earth do you enforce this objectively and consistently?

It seems to me they only invoke the more abstruse and ambiguous rules when they decide it necessary to expunge, shall we say, certain undesirable elements from the board.

Why any atheist forum needs anything beyond your basic personal attack rule, some rules against racist, sexist, or anti-gay comments, and the obligatory legal stuff, is beyond me. With so many ambiguous, amorphous, malleable rules piled on to one another, ideologically driven moderation is an inevitability.

And don't even get me started on the grossly inconsistent ways in which formal/informal warnings are applied.



I probably shouldn't complain about that forum on this forum; it's just a bit of a bummer seeing the way the "spiritual successor" to richarddawkins.net turned out. I rather enjoyed the Dawkins forum. It had a large, interesting, diverse, and colorful cast of zany characters ; ratskep has......... Nineonefour Team

[Gallstones]

Warren, they actually do have a rule against misrepresentation:

1.2.m. "quote mining, plagiarising, or otherwise purposely misrepresenting content from other members or external sources."

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/annou ... t-t76.html

It is the rule that was invoked to suspend Seth.
He can probably verify or correct me on that.

And yet repeated misrepresentations of private gun ownership advocates as paranoid gun nuts, or meat eaters as insensitive murderers gets no like attention.



1.2m? They are writing their own bible.

Yeah, I don't disagree with the spirit of most of the rules in their FUA, but unfortunately there is little that can be done about selective enforcement. I think you would have to wipe the current staff clean and go for a more balanced mod staff with more diverse opinions, in order to get some sort of fairness. They did make Weaver a mod recently, so maybe I can finally get some civilized discourse in them there gun control threads.

Hmmm. Way too many rules in my opinion, many of them virtually unenforceable, lest they intend to ban 90% of the membership. The "trolling rule" is the classic example of this: 1.2.e "attempt to inflame or provoke another member(s)." How on earth do you enforce this objectively and consistently?

It seems to me they only invoke the more abstruse and ambiguous rules when they decide it necessary to expunge, shall we say, certain undesirable elements from the board.

Why any atheist forum needs anything beyond your basic personal attack rule, some rules against racist, sexist, or anti-gay comments, and the obligatory legal stuff, is beyond me. With so many ambiguous, amorphous, malleable rules piled on to one another, ideologically driven moderation is an inevitability.

And don't even get me started on the grossly inconsistent ways in which formal/informal warnings are applied.



I probably shouldn't complain about that forum on this forum; it's just a bit of a bummer seeing the way the "spiritual successor" to richarddawkins.net turned out. I rather enjoyed the Dawkins forum. It had a large, interesting, diverse, and colorful cast of zany characters ; ratskep has......... Nineonefour Team

I've been thinking I was the only one who thought this.

[Seth]

Warren, they actually do have a rule against misrepresentation:

1.2.m. "quote mining, plagiarising, or otherwise purposely misrepresenting content from other members or external sources."

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/annou ... t-t76.html

It is the rule that was invoked to suspend Seth.
He can probably verify or correct me on that.

And yet repeated misrepresentations of private gun ownership advocates as paranoid gun nuts, or meat eaters as insensitive murderers gets no like attention.



1.2m? They are writing their own bible.

Yeah, I don't disagree with the spirit of most of the rules in their FUA, but unfortunately there is little that can be done about selective enforcement. I think you would have to wipe the current staff clean and go for a more balanced mod staff with more diverse opinions, in order to get some sort of fairness. They did make Weaver a mod recently, so maybe I can finally get some civilized discourse in them there gun control threads.

Hmmm. Way too many rules in my opinion, many of them virtually unenforceable, lest they intend to ban 90% of the membership. The "trolling rule" is the classic example of this: 1.2.e "attempt to inflame or provoke another member(s)." How on earth do you enforce this objectively and consistently?

You don't. The whole purpose of that rule is precisely to enforce popular opinion by effective plebscite. If you espouse an opinion that is in opposition to the standard collectivist/Marxist/liberal majority opinion, you will be accused of "trolling" them, because any opinion other than their own makes them angry. There have been many discussions of more objective criteria, all of which have been rejected precisely to preserve the ability of the Mods to pander to popular opinion by accusing contrarians of "trolling."

It seems to me they only invoke the more abstruse and ambiguous rules when they decide it necessary to expunge, shall we say, certain undesirable elements from the board.

Yup, that's exactly correct.

Why any atheist forum needs anything beyond your basic personal attack rule, some rules against racist, sexist, or anti-gay comments, and the obligatory legal stuff, is beyond me.

You have to realize that Rational Skepticism is neither rational nor particularly skeptical. It's a bunch of ideological hacks who aren't up to anything more that mutual masturbation.

With so many ambiguous, amorphous, malleable rules piled on to one another, ideologically driven moderation is an inevitability.

And don't even get me started on the grossly inconsistent ways in which formal/informal warnings are applied.[/quote

Might as well complain about it here, since you can't complain about it there.

I probably shouldn't complain about that forum on this forum; it's just a bit of a bummer seeing the way the "spiritual successor" to richarddawkins.net turned out. I rather enjoyed the Dawkins forum. It had a large, interesting, diverse, and colorful cast of zany characters ; ratskep has......... Nineonefour Team [/quote

Yup, quite a disappointment. Probably we should open a "Bitch about Ratskep" thread just to contain it all in one place, where refugees from the "lifeboat" can vent their spleen.

[Seth]

Would a Mod split this off into a "Of what use is Ratskep to society" thread?

[Gallstones]

Somebody with access, PM nojesusknowpeace; they're on to him.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/news- ... ml#p729710

[Gallstones]

However, you have the kind of forum you wanted now. Congratulations.

Yes, a forum where moderators don't protect trolls. It's a fun place. You should check it out....oh....wait....

Oh.....wait.......what?
I can do that when my suspension is up.

[Seth]

Somebody with access, PM nojesusknowpeace; they're on to him.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/news- ... ml#p729710

Yup, Mod action for a statement directed at 914's style of debate and the use of the word "sport" in reference to 914.

Oh dear, what an awful attack!

Ignoring, of course, 914's own trolling and personal attacks that provoked the response.

Typical.

[pErvinalia]

ok. "your a bit of a coward" would seem to be worthy of an advisory i suppose. Do you know the report has been dismissed? If so, start a feedback thread. I guess the only mitigating circumstances might be if you had been provoking him up to that point. "stick it up your arse" isn't a personal attack. It's crude, to be sure, but not against the rules. If he kept doing it (or it is at the end of a long line of abuse) it might invoke the trolling rule.

I wasn't the one who reported it. By itself it's not worthy of a report, but with the other post in mind I think it's deserving. I'm getting increasingly frustrated, since a previous report about a member who had been corrected several times and still insisted on misrepresenting what I had said also went ignored.

It's easy to lose objectivity when you are in the middle of a heated debate. Start a feedback thread.

[pErvinalia]

Yes, I'm sure, Warren. I've got no doubt LIFE will have her extradicted to Germany to face charges if she does.

Believe it or not, some people actually believe in keeping their word, even if they woouldn't get punished for breaking it.

She's been slandering the fuck out of the moderators over there. Why is that acceptable, but showing some damn evidence to back up her slanders isn't? Strange ethics if you ask me.

The truth is an absolute defense to a charge of slander.

So you say. But without evidence, it is nothing more than hateful slander.

[pErvinalia]

Are you able to provide evidence for this?

She's been slandering the fuck out of the moderators over there.

Emphasis would be on fitting my content to the definition of slander.

My evidence was provided in the feedback threads I started.
I can't access those. You can.

I'm talking about the slandering you have been doing here.

Anyway, I'm through with this derail, unless someone continues to attack me.

[Wumbologist]

Anyway, I'm through with this derail, unless someone continues to attack me.

You're ugly, you smell bad, and I've heard bad things about your mother.


Sorry, I just find this all too entertaining to see it end.

[pErvinalia]

She's been slandering the fuck out of the moderators over there.

In the U.S., it's only slander if it's false. I do understand the rules are different in the British commonwealth, so I don't know if it's slander where you are from, but Gallstones definitely has truth on her side.

There's no "truth" unless evidence is provided.

How the fuck would you know? They absolutely still have that rule.

If you'd read beyond the first sentence of my paragraph before responding, you'd have seen that the way I knew was that I filed a report and it was handled by someone who had already posted as a participant in the thread. In fact, this happened repeatedly. Obviously that's not possible if moderators are obeying a rule against moderating a topic they participated in. If they have the rule, it's ignored.

No it's not. Just because you received a notification email from the mod in your thread, doesn't mean it was them who moderated on the issue. And as if to further the proof you have no fucking clue, no moderators (except perhaps starr and LIFE), moderate on their own. No single moderator can take action against someone.

EDIT: right whoremonger this is war! :angrymob:

[pErvinalia]

Somebody with access, PM nojesusknowpeace; they're on to him.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/news- ... ml#p729710

Yup, Mod action for a statement directed at 914's style of debate and the use of the word "sport" in reference to 914.

More misrepresentation from you SeEth. The pertinent quote is "Seriously, you are pathetically inept in the art of debate." THAT's a personal attack. You might not like the rule, but it is more than justified being applied to that quote.

[Gallstones]

How the fuck would you know? They absolutely still have that rule.

If you'd read beyond the first sentence of my paragraph before responding, you'd have seen that the way I knew was that I filed a report and it was handled by someone who had already posted as a participant in the thread. In fact, this happened repeatedly. Obviously that's not possible if moderators are obeying a rule against moderating a topic they participated in. If they have the rule, it's ignored.

No it's not. Just because you received a notification email from the mod in your thread, doesn't mean it was them who moderated on the issue. And as if to further the proof you have no fucking clue, no moderators (except perhaps starr and LIFE), moderate on their own. No single moderator can take action against someone.

EDIT: right whoremonger this is war! :angrymob:

The mod who closes the report is whose name appears in the email notification. The program does that automatically. It just didn't happen that one mod would handle a report and another would close it, unless the one handling it was neglectful or absentminded or overwhelmed. As a courtesy to members and staff, the mod handling a report was expected to close it so there was no confusion as to whether a report was still open and needed attention.

[Gallstones]

Somebody with access, PM nojesusknowpeace; they're on to him.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/news- ... ml#p729710

Yup, Mod action for a statement directed at 914's style of debate and the use of the word "sport" in reference to 914.

More misrepresentation from you SeEth. The pertinent quote is "Seriously, you are pathetically inept in the art of debate." THAT's a personal attack. You might not like the rule, but it is more than justified being applied to that quote.

Yeah, there is an obvious difference between that and the response it received.
Nothing personal in this reply.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/news- ... ml#p729082

Really? Aren't you the guy who thinks because he's from Nevada he's an expert and all the people posting in this thread from places where prostitution is legalized like the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand aren't?

Oh, yeah, you are.

Aren't you the guy who thinks that legalizing prostitution will never work, but when challenged to present data to back up his position doesn't?

Oh, yeah, you are.

Aren't you the guy who is incapable of differentiating the fact that prostitution in Nevada is legal in Nye county and not in Las Vegas or Reno and then spends time bitching about the prostitution in Las Vegas and Reno?

Oh, yeah, you are.

IMO NineOneFour is pathetically inept in the art of debate.