i do want to take a second to explain some of the history here. when i was freaking out and closed the politics forum, temporarily at first, RR came to me and suggested he be allowed to take over moderation of atf.

i agreed, reopened the politics forum (temporarily) and he immediately shut down complaints about politics. that rule was, therefore, in place for the old politics forum as well until it was shut down.

i would also like to point out that the old politics forum was not shut down because people complained about it in this forum. people were going directly to Mason with complaints. he directed me to address them. i failed to address them in a way that made enough people happy and he and i eventually agreed that the politics forum as it existed was not one we wanted on this site.

the new politics forum on this site will likely become a problem as well and when it does, it will quickly be jettisoned.

all that said, i hope all the people who left here and have started their own forum with a political foundation have great success. and i hope they also post here about things other than politics.

i don't really know all the details about oot issues regarding this other forum, but i don't believe there should be any and i hope it's all resolved before i am forced to intervene and make things worse.

Are you against reopening the old p forum? Some of the those threads are epic and most of the minions you hate wont come back anyways.

as read only? it can still be accessed now, it's just off the menus. open for posting is not an option right now.


don't be mad. hasn't caused any problems yet. if it has to be incinerated, i'm sure you'll be the one suggesting it.

I'm picturing a scene not unlike Darth Vader's funeral pyre

People are arguing there that black people are genetically less intelligent than white people, but I guess that's not a "problem"?

they clearly have problems. i have faith that well named will make that clear to anyone watching and maybe even them.

There is actually no one arguing for that position. There is a thread which involves a discussion of Sam Harris' interview with Charles Murray. Murray is (in)famous for writing a book which suggests that differences in social class are largely the result of genetics, including average differences between people of different races. I have allowed discussion of Murray's work, and hence there has been discussion about that claim and various bits of science related to genetics, intelligence, and so on.

I have not allowed anyone to argue "that black people are genetically less intelligent than white people" (I deleted one post which came close), and given that I haven't allowed arguments for overtly racist conclusions it's unsurprising that in fact no one is making them.

Hmm:

Well, has any of that discussion included people supporting Murray's conclusions?

Also, one of the "problems" most highlighted by Mason was the personal attacks. WN lets posts like these (from one of, like, three threads in the forum I've even opened) go unmoderated. Is that a "problem"?

I know Wookie would have moderated both of these in the previous Politics forum, so it's a bit puzzling that the old forum (which dealt better with vitriol like this than WN) apparently needed to go!

Given that you know that I've responded as a moderator to those posts in the one thread where I've not deleted them, and given that you also know my explanation for why I've been looser in that thread, and given your apparent lack of interest in even contemplating the amount of vitriol coming from Fly in that same thread (also allowed, for similar reasons), I'm not willing to pretend that this argument is being offered in good faith.

I believe that Mason and I had different reasons for wanting the old forum to go. But one of my reasons is that the subject makes people post like that.

True, every disagreement can bring that out in people, but if you tell me I am a horrible person because I like 5 guys better than in in and out, i probably won't take it so hard and lash back so much.

as far as the current moderation, right now, well named is 100 percent in charge. if mason takes an interest we'll go from there.

suzzer,

in no particular order...

-you posted politics garbage in OOT. That is literally Rule #1. Not sure what you thought the result was going to be, but containment is pretty tame out of all the options.

-while you may not have infractions or whatever, your mod note is pretty dang spot on.

-you're probably lucky Mat didn't see the part you decided to delete.

-containment is never meant to be permanent, it is to fix your poor posting and then set you free into the wild again. So either do that and dance monkey, or take your ball and go home like lolreplol, senorkeed & namath did. Or don't, I don't really care.


I was going to add that you should maybe read the sticky, but will save you the time. FTR this was written over 6 years ago by killa and not me, but I sure subscribe to it. Literally the first rule:

What OOT isn't:

A politics forum- we have one of those, and that's where any political discussion belongs. It's here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/41/politics/***(If you are a regular poster in the politics forum, consider yourself already on thin ice when posting in OOT, and expect the consequences for posting badly to be accelerated)***

My current approach to moderating that forum is basically just my best (mostly ad hoc) attempt to balance a number of goals, some of which are in tension with each other some of the time, e.g. allowing ideological diversity without allowing too much noise from posters getting pissed off at each other, and within some reasonable boundaries of acceptable content.

All of the issues goofy has brought up involve a single thread, and there's no doubt that particular thread is the most problematic in the forum. I decided to to try to allow it, despite some pretty strong reservations, because it felt appropriate given the forum goals and because I didn't want to allow my personal biases to dictate the boundaries too strongly. I don't really have much interest in goofy's complaints about the forum (for a few reasons), but I definitely think the moderation decisions in relation to that thread are the most debatable in comparison to other threads in the forum.

The main reason I say the above is just to make clear that if, at any time, you or Mason see something and think "that conversation is not worth having at 2+2" then please tell me. I doubt we will always agree about all of my decisions. But hopefully most of the time it will be easy enough to address. In this case, if you or Mason were to read that thread and decide it wasn't worth having, it would be easy enough to close. I don't personally feel like it's necessary to close it right now, but I do think it's worth making clear that I would close it if you objected to it.

So why did you immediately bring back a new forum that would inspire people to post like that, with a moderator who doesn't particularly care to do anything about it?

I have no idea why you didn't delete that post, you didn't answer my question, Fly's been doing this long enough to know that telling someone to read a book is different then calling them stupid, and I'm quite struck by your refusal to presume good faith on behalf of others.

What did senorkeeed do to earn containment? He has no OOT posts since days before Politics was closed, and those posts were largely in OOTV.

JFC Goofy, no way any of this **** should be that important. It's a dying poker forum during the dark ages of poker.

****s not a big deal

everybody knows i don't give a **** about anything. if someone asks me for something, unless there is an extremely obvious reason not to, i will always say yes.

You might even say it belongs in a thread titled...

And if you'll notice I didn't complain anywhere about your comically dramatic "You are hereby CONTAINED" post.

I was done with it. Like I said I probably deserved it. Truth is I just look at my subscribed threads now, and didn't even consider that the thread was in OOT. Although I knew it wasn't in Politics. Btw I've now unsubscribed from all OOT threads just to avoid running into you in your fiefdom again.

But I guess that wasn't good enough for you and you felt the need to rub it in a little more? Do you always troll people with unprovoked juvenile put downs over PM after you CONTAIN them, or am I special?

I can understand that you probably didn't notice during your grand mal seizure on the other site, but I was not one of the ones attacking you. Nor did I have anything to do with the AOC/Miss OOT stuff that I know riled you up. I generally go out of my way to avoid conflict - at least in the last 4 or 5 years on this site.

But I feel pretty strongly about how the old Politics forum was handled, and saw an opportunity to speak my mind (since we're not supposed to in ATF anymore). So if the consequences were I'm contained - then I'll take it. I did say I was done with the conversation in my last post. You could have always just deleted or ignored the posts and not gone into full consequences mode.

Actually, I usually send a PM reiterating a poster is contained in case they don't see it in the thread. But you were a special case, because you were obviously playing a stupid game which resulted in you winning a stupid prize.


What did the mod say when you PM'd them about posting a PM publicly? Asking for a friend.

So a mod trolling a poster unprovoked is fine, but the poster making that troll public is the real crime? How did I know that was coming?

What the hell game do you even think I was trying to play? Someone posted they missed the old politics, I spoke my mind. You may need to sit down for this but "I'm going to play a game with 27offsuit", or even that the thread was in OOT, never remotely crossed my mind.

You need help. Seriously. You are drunk on power over the smallest silliest thing imaginable.

I'm done here.

Nothing, 27o? I'm sure it wasn't because you're a butthurt snowflake who "contained" someone for something completely unrelated to posts in OOT, right?

It is now June, you need to move on buddy.