Play nice, kids.

That said, moderation is a judgement call, and in my mind a compromise between what the posters want and what the "vision" of the forum is supposed to be. I "hired" Ray to help me (among the others who volunteered) for a couple reasons. First, I am not a "real" moderator. He is my primary conduit to the powers that be here. He helps keep this forum in line with the greater 2+2 vision. Secondly, Ray and I have known each other for the better part of 20 years, and as such, I've had plenty of opportunity to come to trust his judgement. I believe he makes good decisions.

I try to "guide" threads before I kill/merge/close them. It can't always happen.

I made the decision I thought was best, and I presented the reasoning for my decision here. I understand your complaint, and I'll add it to the decision making process in the future.

As I said before:

I think TomGoogle's reaction here proves the OPs were deliberate troll attempts, so thumbs up to the mods for removing them.

Would you care to support how you arrived at that conclusion? And do you even know what the topics of the threads I started that were deleted were about?

Now now girls, you're both pretty...

I'll gladly discuss the why's and how's of moderation here, but if you two want to fight, I suggest PMs.

Be fair. "Trolling" and "desperate pleading for attention" are not quite the same thing.

what is the difference between brick and mortar and mortar and brick forums?

before R bans my arse... AGAIN

The difference, with respect to the reason behind your temp-ban, is that low-/no-content posting is not allowed at all in B&M, but is allowed to some extent here in M&B.

TY... I got it now.

^ see, this type post... TY... I got it now... would have gotten me banned in B&M. Frankly I find that a little "tight" on the banning scale since I am not trying to inflame or provoke... let alone abuse or degrade.

I don't think "TY... I got it now" would. The post that got you banned consisted of just the thumbs up symbol. In a vacuum that would've simply been deleted, but it looks like you'd already been warned several times about making low-content posts like that (I'm going solely by your infraction history and user notes, as I wasn't involved in any of it).

okay... thanks

This is a good example of how most moderators go way overboard in the conduct of their duties. Here, a moderator openly admits his prejudice against a topic, and the discussion of that topic. And, given his way, would squelch the discussion of that topic before it even got off the ground. In this particular case, the mod states he won't squelch it unless directed to; but the very fact he would prefer to is telling.

Interestingly, the topics most mods seem inclined to curtail the most, are usually the ones most popular with the members of the forum.

This is likely due to the inordinate amount of time these overzealous mods spend reading the forum; and the fact that the typical forum is actually very self-moderating. Moderators are virtually superfluous. Basically, they have little to nothing to do, and they spend a lot of time here just looking for something to do. So they have to make stuff up. They have to nitpick. They have to make up rules, and then enforce infractions against them. Otherwise, they would be completely bored to tears.

In the course of this perversion, they rarely get anything right. For instance, right here is this thread under all our noses, I was criticized by three people above who accused me of trolling (first one, and then two more piled on after I responded.) But none of them provided any justification. None cited a single specific reason or even demonstrated any specific knowledge of what I had written when they made that accusation. In other words, they precisely met the definition of trolling which they had accused me of. This is, of course, a very common tendency, and is known in psychology as projection. It is a tendency in a person to accuse others of something that actually matches their own behavior.

Anyway, because these real trolls were generally in support of the moderators actions; the mods said nothing. But when I responded in a logical manner, requesting justification, a mod quickly jumps in and advises to take the discussion to PM. So they leave in public posts that supports them, regardless of how nonsensical or unfair they are; and then require any fair objection to them be taken private.

This is a typical moderator action. They are not fair. They are not open. They are prejudiced, narrow minded, biased individuals, who ply their own agenda, at the expense of open and fair debate and discourse in the forum.

The unfortunate thing is that it is the members of the forum who suffer at the hands of these mods, rather than be assisted by them, in the rare, but occasional event when they might actually be of some use.

So wait. You're complaining because a person with authority admits he has a bias (who doesn't?), but refrains from acting on that bias unless he detects or is alerted to an actual issue?

...and this is wrong because...?

It's wrong because he has a bias! Mods can't be human beings too!!

Ah!

Got it.

Bring on the Mod Bots.

I think you have this forum, this thread, and Ray and myself confused with an entirely different set of people and forums. Not only is the level of moderation here light, but the process is almost completely transparent.

Live in the now. Make all the new posts you want, put a tenth of the effort into them that you put into your rant, and your threads will almost certainly be left alone to fail or thrive on their own merits without any interruption.

If you actually have any questions about moderation here in this forum, I'll address them, here, transparently, to the extent that my prejudiced narrow mind allows.

I hadn't responded to this, but since it's in Tom's rant, I'll remind everyone.

This is an experiment - Mat's experiment, actually - and I have a mandate to follow. I am not a "real" moderator; I only moderate this tiny slice of 2+2 and I don't have access to any USER moderation functions, just POST moderation functions. Ray's position exists so that I have a conduit to 2+2 management and so that there's a "real" moderator on staff to enforce site-wide policies and to issue actual warnings and infractions. Ray fills that position because (1) he offered, and (2) he and I know each other in the real world; I trust him, and I trust his judgement.

Moderation is a subjective job, and as you may have guessed, Ray is an actual person. [I wouldn't have spent $8! on his birthday gift if he wasn't.]

Since the job requires you to make judgement calls, and since I trust Ray's judgement, I'm not going to quibble over SMALL DECISIONS that Ray makes.

So Ray deleted a bunch of TomGoogle's posts AFTER THEY WERE REPORTED because he thought they were too low-content even for here. Tom's not happy about it. Tom's got an explanation of why it happened and a green light to re-create whatever posts he feels are worthy of discussion provided he compromises a little too and puts a little more meat on the bones of what he wants to discuss.

Nobody's firing Ray.

Mat will end the experiment here when and if he's tired of it.

You're stuck with me for a while.

Make the best of it.

More from the files of transparent moderation:

I got a request asking that this be closed as offtopic nonsense:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/20...orous-1199838/

I thought about doing the same thing when I read it today, but figured it was easier to just let it die an unfunny death.

A quick comment that a few more posters have been warned for pretty obvious stuff, like:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...8&postcount=36
..and the "lol didn't read" posts that came after the "no more 'lol didn't read' posts" post in this thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/20...-loud-1211652/

This is the second time a moderator now removes a thread of mine at a borderline situation more or less because it either doesn't perfectly fit or perhaps because there are similar threads in the past if I were to necro them.

Could moderators in the future please send me a PM explaining their actions so that I know who to contact and discuss with.

My reasoning for my specific thread concerning Casinos in Central Europe was that sure, there might be discussions for each country of Europe. But that would mean necroing 4 threads to discuss each country in the specifics I asked.


Sure, not everyone might be interested in what I have to say all the time but it's a forum, its a friendly discussion and there's certainly a bunch of us Europeans just starting out who are interested in the sort of information I asked for.

<Sigh>

In this forum?

I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with the action you're speaking of.

Perhaps it happened over in the similarly named Brick and Mortar forums.

Yeah Achul your thread is active in Brick & Mortar and wasn't deleted. I think you just looked in here by mistake and assumed deletion when you didn't see it.

Whoooo! My appologies!

But...but...why do you have two forums like this? :O!?


And no, the other thread disappeared in the general forums.

Quick Lattimer, move it here and I'll delete it!

*ducks and runs*

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that has a problem with Rapini. Why he is still a mod over in that forum is beyond me. He is, as far as I can tell, an actual troll who became a mod.

He is so utterly vindictive and contemptible, I am shocked. Has anyone brought up these issues to Mat? I have considered it - I collected evidence for my side - perhaps if several of us present a united front the problem could be solved... ?

Alienboy, this forum was Mat's solution. Along with getting Rapini to stop using his geometric progression of infractions for minor issues, and bringing in another mod to B&M to settle things down.