Calling false things false in a question does not make it a 'leading question' but I know why you think it does.

We need a LC thread, unless it's been decided that that's not desirable...?

Not gonna lie, not feeling the tone change of the forum. And not sure why we're still moving forward with regs in a different non-2+2 location? Is that due to 2+2 admins preferring a house cleaning, or them desiring a new house?

I was a fan of unchained, and I always wanted to see it come back. But I never wanted it to be the only politics forum.

Basically all of the good posters have left.

Like, watching 6ix dunk on people is fantastic entertainment, but I also want more.

I've deleted a bunch of off-topic posts. There was some stuff in there I would have preferred to keep but it didn't seem worth the effort this morning.

I would note there is an LC thread here

You asked about philosophical differences and I tried to give a philosophical answer. I'm going to suggest that you can probably answer this question for yourself, and you might find the answer more convincing that way in any case.

Me neither, fwiw.

Like I said, I actually prefer this style of moderation to the old style. I do think conservatives were too easily exiled from the old forum and I would have rather they were allowed to stick around.

The problem is, the way this was accomplished drove ~all those old posters from the forum.

Can't we move ToothSayer's racist posts elsewhere instead of deleting them? Deleting them, if he's not also getting banned, seems like letting him completely off the hook?

I'm deleting posts in this thread because they have little to do with this thread. I would not have deleted some of the posts you are referring to if they had been posted somewhere else.

Also, I think I should say something more about deletions. To begin with my policy is just to clean up conversations and mostly just delete, because it's quick and easy and it provides some feedback. It keeps things moving, hopefully. But I suspect that there are some people who are never going to actually attempt to participate within the parameters laid out in the forum guidelines. Eventually if I find myself deleting 80% of someone's posts that's going to start being bans.

Anyway, this thread is not the place for hashing out grudges between posters. In fact, this forum is not the place for that.

The last 12 hours or so are also illustrative of the reasons I said this thread would be temporary, fwiw.

I'm definitely noticing a pattern where Toothsayer comes in, never with a quick point but always with a wall of text of random right wing talking points. Then when some other poster goes through the work responds to the points, and points out that most of them aren't even relevant, he just ignores and moves on. Some would definitely call this bad faith.

Reminds me a little of this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/di...tive-blogging/



Which apparently probably didn't come from Karl Rove - but this paragraph really nails the concept of bad faith debate imo:

In the mean time I'm not going to bother engaging him. It's too much work and goes nowhere - especially given the poster's history.

Been a pleasure knowing you all. Most of you, anyways.

What I was doing with ToothSayer's post was not "hashing out a grudge," it was engaging with his ****ing post.

I guess I'll let the forum continue on with strictly on topic conversations about, uh, fine print in commercials and ****.

I don't think my post violated any of your guidelines. I assume by "presume good faith" you don't mean not calling blatantly, explicitly racist posting racist. I was often on the side of less calling / presuming people are racist in these debates but for the love of god, what other productive response is there to that posting?

If that kind of response to that kind of post is not allowed on this forum, I fail to see the purpose of the forum or of letting these ****heads post in the first place. I always wanted them unbanned so I could argue with them, not so they can post that horse**** unchallenged.

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya
At seven pm a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been good t'know ya

TiltedDonkey: I deleted those posts from this thread because they are off-topic for this thread, not because I had a problem with your responses. I understand why you are annoyed by this, and I'm sorry.

The rules of this forum suggest that you should report bad faith posting to the mods via PM or post reports, not by responding to them. I'd just like to reiterate that.

However: I agree, I think TS is doing a bit of trolling, including in the posts I deleted earlier in this thread. I have previously commented on my view about indulging people's motivations provided they allow for interesting conversation, even if that means conversation between third parties. But still, it's a potential problem.

I suspect this will be difficult to effectively moderate, but I'm aware of this concern and we'll call this a public warning. Further discussion about this topic here will be deleted, but you can always PM me.

I'm just going to ignore him and I suggest others do the same. Rules are always going to be tough to pin him down because he'll do whatever it takes to stay just inside them. That's his thing.

I've always thought that keeping threads "on topic" was hugely overrated, but I'm aware that many do not share this view.

You sweet summer child.

I agree that it is probably somewhat overrated, and I'm being especially anal retentive about it here. But that's because I knew that this was going to be the thread that would invite a lot of posting rehashing the entire history of the forum and a bunch of noise about it, of the same variety that exists in thousands of posts in ATF.

I don't think it has a lot of value and I think it contributes to an atmosphere that will make it harder for this forum to work as intended, rather than easier. I accept that politics is inherently meta and "talking about talking about politics" is also talking about politics. But I'd also like to focus a little more on the latter in a more direct way, at least for now.

Also, allow me to say this: I'm not perfect, I will make bad decisions. Or, at the very least, I'll make decisions which some people approve of and others disapprove of. Sometimes there will be more of the latter than the former. There will always be differences of opinion about how to do this. That's OK, and I don't want to be closed to feedback.

But there is also a difference between feedback and just peanut gallery posting from people who don't actually care about making the forum good. I'm not putting you (TiltedDonkey) in that boat, but in this instance your posts were just too intertwined with a lot of other noise and I didn't see how to disentangle them. I considered moving some posts to the LC thread, but it appeared that would look incoherent afterwards. So I made the easy decision to just delete. I realize it was sub-optimal and I understand your complaint.

Try ignoring him while replying to him.

I agree with TiltedDonkey in the sense that I do want legitimate debate with anyone who is earnestly arguing their side in good faith. In the old forum many of these posters would be shouted down before they could even make a point. Or at the least they're instantly battling 20 posters. If there's a right-winger out there who honestly wants to engage - I'll politely debate them all day long.

I actually think some interesting stuff can come out of legitimate debate. I think there's a lot of unraveling of nonsensical talking points that comes out of actual discussion. Like the idea the FoxNews is more accurate than CNN. Or even going the other way - that Trump started family separation.

I think debate is useless and dumb and I refuse to engage. Come at me.

That is kind of a trap, as his strong need and desire to find and have good faith debates will just be used against him.

They important thing is that you always give it your best shot, even if you never achieve what you are trying to do with your posts after the exodus.

All the best.

I'm somewhat surprised that a forum shake up took place, simply because I thought I was about the only one that thought that it was badly needed.
It became, not an arena for constructive and civil debate, but rather a nebulous meeting place for an exclusive club of vitriol and toxicity.
I'm sure the culprits are confused and in strong disagreement.

Well named, well said, well done.