But (hypothetically) I keep PMing you. I will not stop PMing you until you either ban the other poster or tell me to stop. Which do you do?

Mason has indicated he will consider un-banning cat face if cat face reaches out to him and asks to be re-instated.

Generally, I make decisions like this when it’s the proper time to make the decision.

Mason

Respectully, this is just a refusal to answer.

Pretty lame. We’re putting in a good-faith effort to change the forum, re-instating him without asking him to grovel as a gesture of good faith seems like a really minor concession.

not sure how paying your authors more has anything to do with what I wrote.

Exactly. Those posts aren't acceptable directed at anyone, even Inso, who is probably rock bottom of politics for me in terms of the respect I have for people. Agreeing that those posts are temp-bans is a bare minimum standard for the moderators we need imo.

He voted for Gary Johnson, for the record. Or at least, that's what he said at the time of the election and I would bet that he really did. It's completely in line with his beliefs for anyone who has read his posts rather than writing him off as a troll or whatever.

Mason,

Have you considered you're out of touch with modern day politics and what the modern day conservative actually is? Not asking out of meanness, but you talk about conservatives as if the ones you know aren't trolls, which very well may be the case, but the whole conservative movement on social media is legitimately just low grade trolling. You see it here on your site with conservatives coming into politics and make arguments that are either inflammatory or in bad faith.

Have you considered the people who complain to you the most might not be entirely honest in their complaints?

What would you say is the moral of that story?

I've been saying the same shiz regarding this 'incivility' issue for 8+ years... why stop now. Caveat: I'm discussing rank-n-file posters here, not the site owner.

Whining about incivility needs to be banned if incivility itself is banned.

This is the exact same situation regarding the "This includes calling a user a troll" clause in our rule #1.

If some fool is trolling, calling out that trolling is derailing the thread. What happens is that the topic switches -from- whatever it was -to- who, or what, is, or is not trolling. The purported goal of fostering 'production conversation'/etc will not now be reached. The proper way for a rank-n-file poster to handle trolling is either (a) ignore the trolling, or (b) smash the report post button.

If some fool posting uncivilly... it's the exact same thingee. Calling out this incivility will guarantee derail the thread. The proper way for a rank-n-file poster to handle incivility is either (a) ignore the incivility, or (b) smash the report post button.

Further...

For those raised by wolves, an estimated 99.8% of complaints regarding incivility by rank-n-file posters are, in fact, overt attempts by them to derail threads.

Let us count the ways... complaints about "yelling and screaming" (unless the thread is actually about vocalizations/etc), complaints about use of the r-word (unless the thread is actually about how words are used/etc), complaints about "the PC Police run amok" (unless that's actually the topic of the thread)... just for starters.

ETA: re: "far left"/etc 99.8% of rank-n-file posters who use that term are trolling.

fwiw I don't think all complaints are created equal, and I've always heavily discounted the vast majority of ATF complaints about this forum, for example, for all the reasons you have in mind.

But, just from my own experience, I find the argument that this forum isn't any worse than other 2+2 forums (in terms of the amount of abuse posters may face) pretty dubious. It seems like the evidence offered for that claim is just quoting posts of people making personal attacks in other forums. That's fair enough, but it doesn't follow from the fact that there exist personal attacks in other forums that all the forums are roughly equivalent either.

I think the qualitative difference in my experience is that in a lot of other 2+2 forums you may encounter individuals being *******s, and there are posters like TS (in BFI) who specialize in being *******s just like there are posters here who specialize in being *******s. But, it tends to be pretty individual and ad hoc elsewhere, whereas it's a bit more of a team sport here. Probably in part that's because posters' attitudes here are more correlated to each other than in other forums. In other forums someone might make a dickish post but it's just as likely the next post will be some third party insulting them back, whereas here the pile-on is more common. It's probably also true that hostility here tends to be more personal because of the topics discussed.

Someone mentioned SE, which I don't regularly read, but it wouldn't surprise me if people there are more likely to take trash talking less personally because of the context? But apart from maybe SE, I think politics is easily worse in this regard than any other forum I've ever participated in on 2+2. So I'm a bit skeptical of the attempts to argue that it's not any different.

And honestly, just stop with the 'fringe left' and 'far left' nonsense.

1. Nobody here is fringe or far left. Even einbert in practice.

2. You most likely don't even know what the 'far' or 'fringe' left even is. It doesn't mean 'really really really whiny SJW'.

3. Something like this should be stickied.


This doesn't just apply to Monteroy.

Yeah the problem is we've debated all of the first half of Cuse's list many many times - which literally is why there are no more conservatives on the forum. Their arguments just don't hold water on those issues, so they give up and leave.

They retreat back to their bubbles where stuff like "I just don't see the big deal with needing an ID to vote " wins the day, and is never challenged wrt to Republicans' actual motives for implementing voter ID laws, or their effectiveness at stopping the demonstrably non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud. Literally the only come back for this is "well even though no one's ever been caught doing it more than one in a million voters, way less to swing an election, maybe it's happening and we just don't know."

Never mind that in person voter fraud makes no sense on any level (mainly risking a federal felony to cast a few extra votes) to have any influence on an election, or that absentee ballot fraud, which does happen, is completely ignored by republicans because old people like to vote absentee.

I believe that literally you could sit down a reasonably intelligent 2nd grader. Show them both sides of the issue. And they would realize the R side is complete and utter bull****. Every time. It's that cut and dried.

And of course then we bring up Republicans doing things like curtailing Sunday voting, early voting, same-day registration, or any other method of voting that they've figured out minorities like to use more than white people. Or shutting down DMV offices to make it harder to get an ID. Or shutting down polling stations in urban neighborhoods to create 4 hour lines to vote.

Without fail, 100% of the time, conservative posters on this forum either ignore those arguments, or say "well I don't know about all that, but I still don't see what the big deal is with requiring an ID to vote." It's the most predictable thing in the universe.

Oh yeah - and the best part - Republicans are prosecuting get-out-the-vote activists to the tune of like 8 years in jail for a minor technicality. They know exactly what they're doing. They figured out a long time ago they were losing the demographic battle. So they decided rigging every aspect of the vote was their best option.

I strongly suspect most sentient conservatives who argue in favor of voter ID laws realize what R politicians are doing and support it. Otherwise I am gravely underestimating the power of the human mind to lie to itself in a motivated situation.

It's actually a great mystery to me that I ponder often. I wanna be in the Republican "barbershop" where they actually admit what they believe to each other, knowing it won't leave the barbershop. Do they really believe voter ID laws are anything other than a minority voter suppression tactic? Because to me no issue in current US politics is as cut-and-dried as voter ID laws.

It's my litmus test of if I'm talking to a conservative who actually has a level-headed POV. To date I think only grizy has passed. Although I did get my Mom to admit Rs motivations were probably less than 100% pure on this issue. Big win.

What is this: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/4...rsion-1733949/

It will get the forum closed in no time. It's exactly what Mason talked about. Gives bad vibes.

What is the over/under P will exist in three months? Sorry to have to ask, and having this kind of betting. I support P in principle.

I've posted in SE a bunch, it is an absolute mile less abusive than Politics. There are posters who are frequent targets of attacks but the attacks tend to be less vitriolic than they are here. It's also moderated more heavily.

A problem unique to Politics is how hard it is to distinguish between trolls and normies who just haven't been through years of discussion on politics issues. Like if some new guy comes on and posts "I don't get it, what's wrong with trying to stop people coming over the border illegally?" they might know very well what the left-wing answers to this are and be trolling, or they might be a normie who lives in a GOP area and watches right-wing media and genuinely has not been exposed to other perspectives. People like Fly get credit for ferreting out the trolls but there's a selection problem in which when he's wrong, the poster disappears and/or people forget about it. I don't know what to do about this because the trolling problem does certainly exist. The revelation that some posters on here thought rara was a troll leads me to think some detectors need calibrating though. I don't think rara has ever posted anything which he did not sincerely believe.

That is the beta version of my mod tracking thread so that posters have a better idea of the types of posts that will no longer be tolerated.

To be fair though, nobody is going to show up, post that, hear the counterarguments and be like "well you've changed my mind, good job, thanks guys". Liberals don't do that either. It takes time to change minds.

The voter ID thing is a good example of what I'm talking about though, where there are a lot of posters (the majority) who post about voter ID with the intention of playing Ben Shapiro and owning us with Facts and Reason, and have no intention at all of engaging with arguments about the motivations for the policies.

Ok, it can be deleted later.

Yes, there will probably be a rolling delete at some point.

I really wanted to believe this about BFI but their group reaction to 'politics poster' borders on delusional. The thread where Sklansky, in their minds, conscripts a fellowship of poliitics posters to storm the gates, is pretty definitive.

I definitely need a link to that.

Thingyman created a very well run Werewolf forum and essentially siphoned off a majority of POG posters and he is still welcome to post here.

This. However I do believe some of these are being broken and have been let slide.

The (understandable imo) reasons for this have been covered pretty well in the cuse post.

However I think ChrisV also makes a lot of good points and reminds me about the groupthink/dogpile mentality on here - which is a real issue.

ChrisV for mod?