The problem was in the Easter discussions as referenced.

However the issue I had was, at the time, posts were being made that were incorrect about the church's views on gambling. Those posts were being left in while my posts describing why they were wrong were being deleted. it was for that reason I kept posting and taking the hit from the biased moderation policies. Had posts on both sides of the issue been taken down at the same time I would not have had an issue.

Sounds like we really missed out by having your posts removed.

It sounds like what you are trying to say is that the Rapini-style of moderation actually made the situation worse instead of better.

I don't know if you missed out or not, depends on what you know if the issue.

The only reason I was upset with my posts being removed is that the other side of the discussion was left up to be viewed and continued. If you're going to leave one side of an off topic discussion you are failing in the task of fair moderation.

The line that caused the issue was:

To me it's borderline; but in other forums on here; I've seen similar posts get deleted with the mod sending a note along the lines of "it wasn't bad, but it caused bad reactions, so I nuked it. Sorry. "

Also, Latimer was in there warning people for a while; so the other option would've been to start deleting the moment Easter came up, but that seems too heavy handed.

I prefer leaving offending posts up and the mod posting that it stops there and anyone who runs through that stop sign will be punished. I like the transparency of having the evidence of why someone was punished (infracted/temp-banned/permabanned) accessible for everyone to see and want to avoid any potential for accusing the forum cops of scrubbing evidence that might allow someone to question their judgment.

The question of whether simply deleting offending posts is too heavy-handed of a mod technique is something that has recently been mentioned in a forum like Politics Unchained.

I'd transport the entire subthread to the cornfield [appropriate forum] and leave a signpost [link] for anyone interested.

That seems like a legitimate complaint to me. Are the other posts still up, or were they eventually deleted?

I think

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...l#post37633833

is a post in that general discussion.

Searching that thread doesn't show a whole lot of "the Catholic Church believes X" around that time.

That's what I often do in a forum like Internet Poker - stepping in with a "Hey, enough with the derail about X" post is usually pretty effective.

Also a good strategy at times, although we want to be careful about dumping threads into forums that won't want them - not necessarily because they don't want that topic discussed in that forum, but there may already be a thread for it. But there are times when doing this is appropriate. Sometimes moving a discussion into an NC/LC/chat thread can also be useful.

Yeah, we know you think it would be - you've made that patently clear with post after post bitching about anything and everything. But guess what? Not everyone feels the same way you do, and I'm not talking about moderators or administrators. This is far from the only forum on 2+2 that tries to keep most threads clear of derails about things like politics and religion. In two of our busiest forums, NVG and Internet Poker, I can tell you that political and religious discussions have been shut down many times.

I see you've been banned (by a non-B&M mod), but I'm sure you'll see this anyway.

Because those posts were deleted. That link is about where that was all taking place. The decision to delete those posts wasn't because they were on one side as opposed to the other. It doesn't matter if the religion aspect of the poker related post was wrong. Replying to it solely to correct that aspect of it sparks an off-topic derail about an emotionally charged topic (like tipping, religion, politics, etc), and we were proactive about preventing it.

Anyway, I don't know why we're digging up something from 2 years ago when Mat's now in charge and he said he doesn't care about the past.

Because you asked what thread he was complaining about.

Right. He was complaining about something that happened 2 years ago. Why.

cf mentioned the thread in response to a question by Rapini. Rapini asked the question in response to claim by Minimalist. Minimalist said something because of something that I don't know because I'm not interested in reading that far back. Follow the chain all the way back and perhaps you can find the prime mover of Aquinas and Aristotle.

Nah too much work.

Mr Aristotle would've received mostly infraction points for OT derails.

Derail of the century.

Yes, the city is rioting and burning and you're worried about the effect it'll have on playing poker.

Priorities. Your's are a little off.

It's not for you to tell others what their priorities should be. Go preach somewhere else.

And the problem was my explanations [essentially] of what I was taught by Jesuits and others about the use of Bingo, lottos, and similar was that if you're going to donate the money to the Church anyway, why not have some fun doing it?

From what I looked at, it seems like the offending bits are gone.

The problem, as I've said, is that when it was happening the only side of the discussions being taken down for a while were mine (perhaps others, though I didn't see any) which were defending the Church's position, not those that were bashing the Church.


Lattimer, I brought it up because Rapini asked for examples of when he's banned people for opinions expressed or just not liking someone behind the screen name. I gave one. That's why its being discussed.

As for Mat's position that the past doesn't matter, that's his thing. But if the past is brought up by people its going to get discussed.

Fair enough. I was on my phone at that time and it's a pain to dig through the thread to see how the convo started. Thanks.

If we didnt discuss the past here, we would have to close this thread like in OOT, since there are no issues with modding anymore.

Rapini, I firmly believe that all the "remove Rapini" stuff is ridiculous and it's generally just a case of a few select people that can't follow the rules and are eternally butthurt, but when it comes time to do your duty and act on your role as a moderator, it looks really bad on you when you make posts like the one about 'MaxValue making ******ed posts' instead of just using your PR voice/verbiage


Just tryin' to help. That's precisely the kind of ammo you don't need to give the trolls. They don't deserve such low hanging fruit.

Thanks for your message. I also received a similar one via PM from someone whose opinions I respect a lot, so I thought I should respond with some history to put my comment into perspective. Below is the post Reid references:

That was after 3 or 4 low-content posts from MaxValue1234 in the tipping containment thread, including hotlinked memes I had to delete. MaxValue1234 is known for this kind of posting, particularly in the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Venue Thread where regulars have complained about him trying to turn that thread into a low-content live blog and also for trolling, privacy violations, and namecalling. Additionally, he's been banned multiple times in the past in other forums, so he should know that his previous style of posting isn't acceptable.

If it were his first violation, I would have done what I did with the first few violations he had here in B&M as MaxValue1234: send him a warning, make a user note, and hope he improved. At some point we have to switch from polite pleading to more aggressive tactics. I know that Mat prefers not to ban users and he likes self-policing, so that's what I tried this time. It seems to have worked because MaxValue1234 hasn't posted in the thread since then.

Of course chillrob also shares responsibility for this issue because he started the derail, but it never would have escalated if MaxValue1234 were capable of ignoring the post instead of trolling chillrob.

So all of the above is why I chose to be hard on MaxValue1234 in public rather than give him yet another private warning. My wording was aggressive on purpose and I wouldn't have used that kind of language with a newbie or someone who shouldn't have known better.

Appreciate that Rapini.