Why?

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Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro

Then they are not mods and I shall treat them as such. Either they are moderators or they are users - it indeed is a binary choice. You can't have it both ways.

There are countless examples of why wearing one too many hats only creates more problems than it solves. For instance, I won't befriend my pupils.

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Why would anyone want to volunteer to be a moderator under those circumstances?

Dread can behave poorly as a poster but so long as he doesn't abuse what little privilege the moderating staff currently enjoys, what exactly is the problem? It should be possible to think of someone being a useless cunt as a person but still be doing agreeably in their "job".

Rand is not a cunt. Not even close. Yet there was a snotty, arguably trolling post in the thread where Wraith told me my posting to Loki was inappropriately personal (true, by the way). So arguably Rand flaunted the new rules, and Wraith failed to call him on it.

There are a couple reasons. First, and probably the biggest, nobody reported it. I'm available for modding around these times, but I still can't always read every single post that gets made. Second, it's way before the line as I see it. Trolling and flaming are already against the rules, but those rules will have to be amended before I can do anything about sarcasm. The mandate was for a forum without flamewars, not total saccharin sweetness from everybody. And if I'd had to call out everyone for things like using sarcasm, I'd have absolutely no possible justification to just give a verbal warning for your own post.

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Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro

Then they are not mods and I shall treat them as such. Either they are moderators or they are users - it indeed is a binary choice. You can't have it both ways.

There are countless examples of why wearing one too many hats only creates more problems than it solves. For instance, I won't befriend my pupils.

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We are not professionals here. If you want someone who is mod only, you would need to pay him. A mod is more like a Vereinsvorstand (~Clubpresident) he is still a normal member at the same time.

Two things that still could be good for a mod:
- Try to live up to the values.
- Clearly stating when a post is made with the moderator hat on.

Also mods should be dedicated to forum sections. This way the mod still has a section where he can write as a very normal member.

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Originally Posted by Wraith

There are a couple reasons. First, and probably the biggest, nobody reported it. I'm available for modding around these times, but I still can't always read every single post that gets made. Second, it's way before the line as I see it. Trolling and flaming are already against the rules, but those rules will have to be amended before I can do anything about sarcasm. The mandate was for a forum without flamewars, not total saccharin sweetness from everybody. And if I'd had to call out everyone for things like using sarcasm, I'd have absolutely no possible justification to just give a verbal warning for your own post.

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Agreed, saccharin sweetness isn't desirable.

I'd argue that Rand's post was trolling, but trolling is difficult to define. The fact that he never posts like that to me (or anybody else) was also striking. I wonder what the special occasion was?

Can't argue with your reasoning that you can only respond to what has been reported. Seeing as other forum members with an ax to grind will be aggressively reporting any of my transgressions, I'll be punctilious about reporting any offenses I see.

I'd argue that your offense-detection system needs some calibrating :p

I can't see how RB's post could possibly be construed as trolling - you have to be seriously stretching to read it that way.

Perhaps Minxypooh is right, and you are being oversensitive.

Or maybe Rand has never posted something quite like that to me.

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Or maybe Rand has never posted something quite like that to me.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Because it's politically convenient.

OMG the rich poli's don't care about sending troops out to die as none of them served, none of their children do. Only poor black kids join the military as they have no choice otherwise they're impoverished. Stop war. Start conscription. :bulb:

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Your problem is that he posted something "like that" to you, not that it was posted at all? Regardless of how silly it seems to the rest of us that you are upset over something as innocuous as this comment, if it truly bothered you I'm sure you would have been better served by either sending a PM to RB telling him so, or reporting it to either of the other moderators. No one else would have reported this, because I don't actually think anyone else would have been offended by it, even if they were mentioned specifically by name. All RB did was mock the mindset.

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Can't argue with your reasoning that you can only respond to what has been reported. Seeing as other forum members with an ax to grind will be aggressively reporting any of my transgressions, I'll be punctilious about reporting any offenses I see.

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Will you be doing this reporting right off the mark, or will you wait to see whether your prediction is true?

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Originally Posted by Ziggy Stardust

Will you be doing this reporting right off the mark, or will you wait to see whether your prediction is true?

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Oh, my prediction has already been shown to be true. :)

An event in the future has already been shown to be true. :bulb:

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Oh, my prediction has already been shown to be true. :)

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Really? Where?

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Originally Posted by Ziggy Stardust

An event in the future has already been shown to be true. :bulb:

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Temporal backwards implication :)

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Because it's the Heritage Foundation? Because their "report" is riddled with partisan manipulation (i.e. dissing certain people and sources while lauding others others in a clearly partisan manner)? Very unprofessional. When the people who generate "science" use the science in their publication as a political bludgeon, I tend to start worrying about the science. This judgment is orders of magnitude more relevant for social sciences, of course.

The study is very selective about their data. A classic example is using the high school diploma as a benchmark. They show that "the military has a higher high school graduation rate." Big fucking deal! That's because the military doesn't allow high school drop outs! So they choose the metric that by selection bias proves their point! And they don't bother addressing that the military does this to avoid mental deficients (a damed wise policy, BTW). The military is also much more law-abiding, because they won't accept recruits with a felony record!!11! Again, well done. How about we measure crime rate in ex-enlisted compared to age-adjusted control group who also didn't commit a crime by that age?

Jesus, and you call yourself a social scientist? I don't know whether this is a commentary on your abilities, your laziness, or your willingness to lose the truth to score your precious "points."

And do we get into the conflation of enlisted vs officers? For the point of discussion here, fatalities are disproportionate amongst enlisted personnel. So when thinking about quality of military or the demographic details of the military, how could any researcher not consider officers and enlisted separately?

How's about we compare other metrics? Say, percentage of ex-enlisted college grad vs non-military college grads to complete post-bacc work? The document you cite decries other studies for using different metrics without defending them. Frankly, the metrics chosen by the Heritage Foundation are far more dubious.

So from now on how about you don't just spam us with a link, but quote the passage that supports your point? You're being both a) lazy by making us track down the data that "supports" your point, and b) disingenuous because your links often don't even support your point you claim they do (witness the high school graduation rate).

So your "proof" is suspect on four levels:
1) I don't trust the Heritage Foundation any more than I trust tobacco company "research," which is to say about as far as I could shot put Baxter.
2) Clearly some of the HF's chosen metrics are intentionally misleading on a quick surface level. Why should I trust their others? That's like trusting Michael Moore on arguments that seem reasonable after you've learned that some of his techniques are quite reputable.
3) The HF report cites other studies that come to different conclusions. Huh, how about that? In a brief look at those, they look less suspect and more professional.

Look, we know that you're training to become a hack at one of these think tanks, but kindly don't insult my intelligence by tarting such crap up as "science" and parading it around as "proof."

And from now on give me quotes that "prove" your point, not lame-ass links. Why? Because I don't trust you. This document was the last straw, and you wasted my fucking time on it. :mad:

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Somebody reported this as being too hostile, apparently. Loki lied yet again, and I told him I wouldn't respond to anything he said by link, but would require quotations from his source. This is utterly reasonable, because he frequently misrepresents or flat out lies about his sources. I was justified in being irate, too, since he once again wasted my time by requiring me to do what he should have done.

Did I call him a dick? Did I sling personal insults at him? Make some sort of slur? Where is the line? Here I thought that Cain-level activity was what was required for censure.

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Look, we know that you're training to become a hack at one of these think tanks

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The pronoun there means the comment's, uh, personal

My mistake. When you said: "will be aggressively reporting", I thought you meant in the future.

Anyway, I see that Wraith "Please calm down." even used the magic word. If you see this sort of behaviour from other posters I fully support you in reporting it :)

Did you get warning points or permanent infractions?

edit: I see you had problems with RB's post, is that the one lolli posted above?

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Somebody reported this as being too hostile, apparently. Loki lied yet again, and I told him I wouldn't respond to anything he said by link, but would require quotations from his source. This is utterly reasonable, because he frequently misrepresents or flat out lies about his sources. I was justified in being irate, too, since he once again wasted my time by requiring me to do what he should have done.

Did I call him a dick? Did I sling personal insults at him? Make some sort of slur? Where is the line? Here I thought that Cain-level activity was what was required for censure.

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You sometimes misrepresent your own posts, but here is what you said:

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Jesus, and you call yourself a social scientist? I don't know whether this is a commentary on your abilities, your laziness, or your willingness to lose the truth to score your precious "points."

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I think the whole point is that we're moving away from using Cain as our measuring stick, maybe it's time you retire that one :noob:

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Somebody reported this as being too hostile, apparently. Loki lied yet again, and I told him I wouldn't respond to anything he said by link, but would require quotations from his source. This is utterly reasonable, because he frequently misrepresents or flat out lies about his sources. I was justified in being irate, too, since he once again wasted my time by requiring me to do what he should have done.

Did I call him a dick? Did I sling personal insults at him? Make some sort of slur? Where is the line? Here I thought that Cain-level activity was what was required for censure.

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Fantastic, and now we're sliding backwards. Overtly hostile posts like the one you made are not continuing here, Tear. Especially when it represents as large an escalation of hostilities as yours did.

Also, please stop trying to bait Loki. He's not even in this current discussion! Please don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about either - starting another argument as an excuse to bait someone is not acceptable. I'm not very patient by nature, and I'm not going to just let people go and do whatever the maximum they think they can get away with is. I'm not an automaton, so rules-lawyering will not work with me.

Good rule to use: if you feel like attacking, attack the argument, not the one posting.

edit: Yes, that means I have to alter my behaviour as well, for instance towards Lewk.

Can't we keep lewk as the exception? :(

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

Can't we keep lewk as the exception? :(

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They have, for years.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

You sometimes misrepresent your own posts, but here is what you said:

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Yes! Thanks! I did quote the entire thing right above!

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I think the whole point is that we're moving away from using Cain as our measuring stick, maybe it's time you retire that one :noob:

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How many orders of magnitude are we talking here? I was thinking that an approximation of "you contracted your potentially fatal disease as an STD by gay whoring outside of military bases" was the kind of stuff we were trying to stamp out. You know, as opposed to Dread and Rand sitting around chuckling about how hilarious Cain is when he does stuff like that. Saying "and you call yourself a social scientist?" in response to somebody claiming they proved something by linking to a scientific still birth did not seem beyond the pale to me. Nor did demanding that the poster in question quote the relevant passages in the future before claiming points, or saying "I proved you wrong." Neither of these are unreasonable statements. If I'd called him a dick, asshole, etc. I think I would have been very worthy of warning.

Was it because I used the word "fucking" as an adjective? Is that too hostile? Let's bring back the word filter debate!

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Originally Posted by Wraith

Fantastic, and now we're sliding backwards. Overtly hostile posts like the one you made are not continuing here, Tear. Especially when it represents as large an escalation of hostilities as yours did.

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Oohhhhkay. How are we sliding backwards? How about we define "overly hostile posting?" You know, we might all benefit from the first person being warned being treated to a little detail about where they went awry, dontcha think? Not a crazy idea. Especially since actual policing of post content is utterly novel here, and was pretty damned unusual even in CC, at least for established members. What was too hostile about it? You could have bolded a couple of things to enlighten us. You know, just the first few times? Maybe say "I'm thinking that this post was too hostile, and this was what I didn't like about it?"

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Also, please stop trying to bait Loki. He's not even in this current discussion! Please don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about either - starting another argument as an excuse to bait someone is not acceptable.

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:rolleyes:

I'm explaining why I was justified in being forceful. I wasn't crude or ugly. I didn't call him X, Y or Z. Let's be parsimonious, OK?

Or I'm just starting a thread to bait Loki. :bored:

Look, if you want Rated G kindergarten conduct, you're going for it. Funny, people advocating for enforcement on extreme posts were NOT advocating enforcement on posts like this. They want to cut the extreme out. This wasn't extreme.

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I'm not very patient by nature,

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This is becoming clear. Lack of patience is an admirable trait for a mod policing bad behavior. Excellent choice. :bored:

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and I'm not going to just let people go and do whatever the maximum they think they can get away with is.

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Because it is absolutely clear what I am doing here, right? And it most certainly is not trying to get at the root of why I was warned for something before I even knew we had a new mod, that this mod would be enforcing conduct rules, or what those conduct rules would be. No, absolutely not looking for clarity, just trying to game everybody and find out what I can get away with.

Say, can you warn yourself for being too insulting and hostile? Can I add defensive to that?

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I'm not an automaton, so rules-lawyering will not work with me.

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Impartiality is critical.

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A non-authoritarian guy with people skills would have tried to establish precedents and ease the community into a new era. You couldn't even quote the post, bold it, and say "please don't do this?"

What I really don't see here is a guy trying to be fair and understanding, and trying to bring a somewhat reluctant community to more reasonable behavioral standards. I don't see a guy trying to arrive at a sweet spot of forum moderation in collaboration with other members. Hell, I don't see a guy who read this whole thread. I see a guy who unilaterally decided to come down hard, with no explanation to grease the wheels. Granted that you could have started off worse, but you could have started off a helluva lot better. If you resent it that much, don't be the mod. If you're going to be an impatient hard on, you'll damage the community, so don't be the mod. I get that you're the brains behind the forum, and you have appreciation and respect from me for that. Those sentiments do not spill over to your modding, where you start at neutral. Respect is earned or lost. Guess how you started out? Somewhat heavy handed, non-transparent and defensive. Not a good start.

I'm sorry, is this too hostile?

Look, I know you loath me. You've made that abundantly clear in the past, and I was utterly fascinated to get warned by you under those circumstances. Let's be honest: I'm not expecting a fair shake from you. So let's have an exercise. How about you strive to be fair and impartial? Because otherwise just emotionally jerk your knee and kick my ass outta here. I will stop calling people names or making nasty insinuations. I won't post stuff that I wouldn't say to somebody's face. I won't take disputes cross-thread. I won't be a pit bull about angry disputes. These are concessions I'd think you'd be happy to see. But I'm not going to stop being sarcastic or calling people out on BS. I will not stop saying "You call yourself a social scientist?" under those circumstances, especially when he knows damned well what inferior crap he was peddling and how lazy he was being. And I will not knuckle under to a martinet. If that means I'm gone, so be it. Consider it falling on my sword for the sake of the community. Or consider it catering to my pride. I don't really give a fuck.

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

How many orders of magnitude are we talking here? I was thinking that an approximation of "you contracted your potentially fatal disease as an STD by gay whoring outside of military bases" was the kind of stuff we were trying to stamp out. You know, as opposed to Dread and Rand sitting around chuckling about how hilarious Cain is when he does stuff like that. Saying "and you call yourself a social scientist?" in response to somebody claiming they proved something by linking to a scientific still birth did not seem beyond the pale to me. Nor did demanding that the poster in question quote the relevant passages in the future before claiming points, or saying "I proved you wrong." Neither of these are unreasonable statements. If I'd called him a dick, asshole, etc. I think I would have been very worthy of warning.

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You still didn't get any WL. It's been explained several times already why the post was inappropriate, and not just by me. Weaving in personal insults, and an overall hostile tone is not conducive to continued civil discussion, and I'm not going to let you try to rules lawyer your way out of it. Context exists, and everyone can see the full context of things. Even when one thing isn't too bad when taking on it's own, a whole run of things that are close can sum to something worth taking action on. Everyone else seems to have a good understanding for this.

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Oohhhhkay. How are we sliding backwards?

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You seemed to understand and be okay with everything before. I thought the matter was closed and everything could continue on. Then up it springs again. Backwards slide.

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How about we define "overly hostile posting?" You know, we might all benefit from the first person being warned being treated to a little detail about where they went awry, dontcha think? Not a crazy idea. Especially since actual policing of post content is utterly novel here, and was pretty damned unusual even in CC, at least for established members.

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Which is why I explained what the problem was when I asked you to calm down, and also why no actual warning was issued - I've been trying to give everyone a grace period here.

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:rolleyes:

I'm explaining why I was justified in being forceful. I wasn't crude or ugly. I didn't call him X, Y or Z. Let's be parsimonious, OK?

Or I'm just starting a thread to bait Loki. :bored:

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No. You were using something else as an excuse to bait Loki. Again. This is all the times Cain brings up Nicaragua. You are responsible for your own posts, and avoiding baiting people. I know you were trying to get this trolling through without actually breaking any rules, but I'm not willing to put up with those games. Again, Cain & Nicaragua - most of his statements along those lines, taken alone and without context, broke no rules. There'd be trolling points now.

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Because it is absolutely clear what I am doing here, right? And it most certainly is not trying to get at the root of why I was warned for something before I even knew we had a new mod, that this mod would be enforcing conduct rules, or what those conduct rules would be. No, absolutely not looking for clarity, just trying to game everybody and find out what I can get away with.

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Yes I know. Well, there's also a pretty good chance you were trying to a build an excuse to do, well, this, but I didn't want to bring that up just then. You were angry that Rand got away with using sarcasm while you got politely asked to stop doing something worse, so I did kinda see it coming.

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Look, if you want Rated G kindergarten conduct, you're going for it. Funny, people advocating for enforcement on extreme posts were NOT advocating enforcement on posts like this. They want to cut the extreme out. This wasn't extreme.

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Good thing I didn't hand out any WL for it then, eh? Waiting until the flamewars start clearly doesn't work here, so I've got to be more preventative.

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This is becoming clear. Lack of patience is an admirable trait for a mod policing bad behavior. Excellent choice. :bored:

Say, can you warn yourself for being too insulting and hostile? Can I add defensive to that?

A non-authoritarian guy with people skills would have tried to establish precedents and ease the community into a new era. You couldn't even quote the post, bold it, and say "please don't do this?"

What I really don't see here is a guy trying to be fair and understanding, and trying to bring a somewhat reluctant community to more reasonable behavioral standards. I don't see a guy trying to arrive at a sweet spot of forum moderation in collaboration with other members. Hell, I don't see a guy who read this whole thread. I see a guy who unilaterally decided to come down hard, with no explanation to grease the wheels. Granted that you could have started off worse, but you could have started off a helluva lot better. If you resent it that much, don't be the mod. If you're going to be an impatient hard on, you'll damage the community, so don't be the mod. I get that you're the brains behind the forum, and you have appreciation and respect from me for that. Those sentiments do not spill over to your modding, where you start at neutral. Respect is earned or lost. Guess how you started out? Somewhat heavy handed, non-transparent and defensive. Not a good start.

I'm sorry, is this too hostile?

Look, I know you loath me. You've made that abundantly clear in the past, and I was utterly fascinated to get warned by you under those circumstances. Let's be honest: I'm not expecting a fair shake from you. So let's have an exercise. How about you strive to be fair and impartial? Because otherwise just emotionally jerk your knee and kick my ass outta here. I will stop calling people names or making nasty insinuations. I won't post stuff that I wouldn't say to somebody's face. I won't take disputes cross-thread. I won't be a pit bull about angry disputes. These are concessions I'd think you'd be happy to see. But I'm not going to stop being sarcastic or calling people out on BS. I will not stop saying "You call yourself a social scientist?" under those circumstances, especially when he knows damned well what inferior crap he was peddling and how lazy he was being. And I will not knuckle under to a martinet. If that means I'm gone, so be it. Consider it falling on my sword for the sake of the community. Or consider it catering to my pride. I don't really give a fuck.

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I know this has worked well for you in the past. Building these arsenals labeled "bias" and "favoritism" by attacking mods who are good people can be fairly effective. They become overly concerned with justice, fairness, and the appearance of the two that it's pretty easy to cow them into giving you immunity by making these assaults on them. Good people are just too worried about the appearance of such things and sometimes let the worries and doubt cripple them into inaction. I am not good people. I am far too invested in this community right now to let it go down in flames to protect something as silly as my image.

If you don't want WL, all you have to do is not give me an excuse. Whether you feel or claim you're being persecuted simply doesn't matter. Just stop it.

I think I'm going to have to be done playing nice here. Stop testing me.

Right. There's some nice insulting stuff in there. OK for you to insinuate all kind of shit, I see. And you still have no inclination actually explain what was wrong. "You're doing stuff I don't like" seems to sum it up, because "hostile" and "weaving personal insults" is vague BS. Brilliant.

A bit of advice: when you warn somebody, or give them WLPs, quote the text, bold what you don't like. Otherwise you're letting your whim rule us, and never defining your standards. That won't go over well.

Of course, doubtlessly you'll say that this, too, is some sort of brilliant manipulation on my part. News flash: I'm not very subtle. Stop imputing motives to me that I couldn't possibly execute.

']['ear, really. Take a break. Have just a little breather. You're only digging yourself deeper :(

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Right. There's some nice insulting stuff in there. OK for you to insinuate all kind of shit, I see. And you still have no inclination actually explain what was wrong. "You're doing stuff I don't like" seems to sum it up, because "hostile" and "weaving personal insults" is vague BS. Brilliant.

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The excerpt I posted from your post was, I think, one of the hostile and insulting bits. That's why I posted the excerpt, because it seemed as if the rest of your post was obscuring the unnecessarily hostile bits. I figured you were having difficulties seeing those bits because you were saying other more relevant things as well, in that post. I didn't realise that you really couldn't see why some of the things you said were unnecessarily hostile :noob:

I say this not because I feel a particularly strong need to engage in policing, I'm just hoping to facilitate your communication. In summary: you got mad, your post was deemed unnecessarily hostile due to eg. calling another member a lazy incompetent fool, you didn't get any WLs for it, and you shouldn't feel diminished by these events in any way (I think).

I think you may be clouding the issue when you get into this business about Cain and STDs and mod-impartiality etc etc. Come on man, one thing at a time. The only reason I can see for you trying to conflate all these things is if you're feeling unfairly attacked from all sides, but I hope you can see this business in less adversarial terms. Nessie's suggestion is a good one. Maybe we all need a bit of a breather to let this settle in :o

You recommend that I stop rules lawyering? Is that a W quote, by the way? Come on, you can hear W complaining to Cheney that those liberals like to do that rules lawyering.

I don't even know where to start with that post, so I won't. But I will say that you've got it all sewn up, Wraithy. Any criticism of your actions is me being evil and sneaky. It's your forum. Far be it from me to argue with you further.

Friends, TWFers, countrymen, lend me your ears and 2 minutes 30 of your time.

Play, close eyes, breathe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS9_ipu9GKw

I heart Ziggy. Smoothest person in this web.

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Agreed, saccharin sweetness isn't desirable.

I'd argue that Rand's post was trolling, but trolling is difficult to define. The fact that he never posts like that to me (or anybody else) was also striking. I wonder what the special occasion was?

Can't argue with your reasoning that you can only respond to what has been reported. Seeing as other forum members with an ax to grind will be aggressively reporting any of my transgressions, I'll be punctilious about reporting any offenses I see.

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How was that trolling? It was a sarcastic, on-topic jibe against a viewpoint that had nothing personal to do with any users :confused:

As for me not being sarcastic before, I must not post often enough any more is the only explanation I can think of as I've often been sarcastic when I think its the right time and place for it and this is the first time I've ever seen anyone complain - about me or anyone else being sarcastic. So are you requesting basically a ban on sarcasm :confused:. Or is it not the sarcasm but the fact that it was a viewpoint being targetted in the D&D forum - surely its entire purpose. Is attacking an argument/position now to be banned, because if so we might as well shut down D&D :bulb:

EDIT: Great song Ziggy :)

Sorry I've not been reading this thread, so just catching up now.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

I came here because everyone else did when Atari decided they weren't going to allow basic off-topic discussion in their off-topic section anymore. I've been asking for more active moderation from you and Rand for years. There is a middle ground between your preferred almost entirely inactive approach and a massive silencing of the community.

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Indeed there is; I would also have to agree that of all the criticisms of Dread and myself down the years, yours is entirely the most logical and consistent that I can agree with.

The irony is that by far the biggest criticism at least in terms of volume isn't that in my experience, but either a complaint of being "inconsistent" or of "picking" on a user when they do cross the line, whever that line is drawn. Followed by criticism of being too active sometimes. I suppose in a sense, whoever gets a warning/their friends tend to be a lot more vocal than whoever doesn't see one issued but thinks there should have been. I am so in-grained now of trying to be consistent for everyone that the line has probably been pushed too far.

The funny, off topic, thing is at work I have a similar issue sometimes. It is my job to ensure I don't allow people to cross the line, but also there I sort-of get to set where the line is but need to be consistent. I have at times (typically when there have been issues) set the line being of "zero-tolerance" which wouldn't be recognisable from my moderation here probably :). But my main issue here is to try and be consistent and fair with everyone. Along with trying to do the sort of moderation that would keep the community healthy and happy.

To be perfectly honest I'm open to whatever the community prefers. If the community prefers a change in the rules I'm open to that. If the community prefers a change in the moderation style or the rules to be enforced more "aggressively" then OK - and if the community were to ever desire a change in who the moderators are, then I'm only here to help and wouldn't want to stay beyond my welcome. The problem is to be honest I'm not entirely certain if the community as a whole does know what it wants and if we push in a new direction I wonder how long before we start to get complaints again. Sometimes its a case of the grass always being greener on the other side I suspect.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

How was that trolling? It was a sarcastic, on-topic jibe against a viewpoint that had nothing personal to do with any users :confused:

As for me not being sarcastic before, I must not post often enough any more is the only explanation I can think of as I've often been sarcastic when I think its the right time and place for it and this is the first time I've ever seen anyone complain - about me or anyone else being sarcastic. So are you requesting basically a ban on sarcasm :confused:. Or is it not the sarcasm but the fact that it was a viewpoint being targetted in the D&D forum - surely its entire purpose. Is attacking an argument/position now to be banned, because if so we might as well shut down D&D :bulb:

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Actually I'd say the same thing, Rand. I was not particularly incensed by your comment, but rather that it got a pass while mine didn't. And it wasn't your sarcasm that I reacted to, it was your insinuation of political expediency when obviously not reading the tripe that was offered as "proof." This is, BTW, why Loki doesn't quote, he just spams the link as "proof." And yes, I have every right to question somebody's lazy or incompetent debating technique.) In my book, accusing me of no ethics and saying I'd say anything for political expediency in that context is more hostile than me asking if Loki calls himself a social scientist in response to the tripe he linked to. Of course, you didn't use the word "fucking" for emphasis, so there's a clean slate. Then again, we have no idea exactly what I said that was inappropriate, do we?

Of course, that's all just rules lawyering. :bored:

PS Nice song, Zigz, but Fogerty's YEAHs aren't terribly peaceful. I'd go with some mellow Chris Isaak song or something.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

snip

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That's all nice, Rand. I appreciate your owning it. But you guys never cracked down on some truly obscene behavior by Cain. Yeah, it's self-pitying for me to complain that you never stopped him from saying evil shit to me, though I think it's justified. But what about taunting depressed tweens? Absolutely unconscionable. Unforgivable as well. You guys didn't just look the other way, you threw ethics out the window.

Hey let's keep harping on about things years past endlessly, that's a good time for everybody

Have you read anything said here

I

:(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pumba

You've got to put your behind in your past.

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Hey, mea culpas are nice, but only if they're accurate. Sanitized mea culpas are arguably worse than not even saying anything at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

PS Nice song, Zigz, but Fogerty's YEAHs aren't terribly peaceful. I'd go with some mellow Chris Isaak song or something.

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All of Creedence works. It's not about peaceful, there's just something in it that makes me feel better.

I found it does work wonders against road rage. During rush hours it's always going in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ']['ear

Hey, mea culpas are nice, but only if they're accurate. Sanitized mea culpas are arguably worse than not even saying anything at all.

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Enough with the blame game already.

It's tiresome.

You're like the little kid who is so starved for attention that even negative attention will do.

Personal attack. Not helping Lolli. :(

][ear. Could you please tell us what your idea is to go ahead from here?