Thread derailment! Sound the alarms! Danger!

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You're making a false accusation of someone attempting to make other people do as they'd wish, a Svengali -type figure.
"Tries to get threads shut down" is also a pretty negative opinion of what you think someone is doing.

So what if Fnord is a frequent poster to the mod. attention thread? Are you keeping track of what he says there?
I'm not, nor of anyone else posting there.

From memory, most posts made to that thread are generally useful and give a good indication of areas possibly needing watching. Well, apart from all those others asking for things like threads to be merged with earlier versions, or reports of duplicate threads, or threads that might be better placed in a different forum, and so on.
All assist with everyday housekeeping and are very much appreciated.


This is still related to what constitutes "off-topic", what constitutes "derailment". Conventionally the OP of a WP thread has always been regarded as its owner and if they're not happy with how it's going, they get to make the final judgement of how it's to proceed. Or not proceed, as the case may be.

Sometimes they can be gently prodded into seeing that there is still a lively on-going conversation which could mean that they walk away from their thread and leave it to continue.
Other times they're rightly annoyed - especially if they'd made posts about it - at how something else is being discussed.

Clearly there's a large "to what degree?" component involved in all this, which is why that definition of "off-topic" - and let's add its sibling, "derailed" - would be so useful.

"Running to the mods" is also problematic rhetoric.

It was an obvious attack. Saying otherwise is just ludicrous.

Oh boy, you're really determined to stretch the definition of "attack" to the limit, aren't you? One, the accusation is not false, two, I never said anything about a "Svengali type figure", that's your own editorializing, three, he does try to get threads shut down, quite regularly in fact, and four, so what if my opinion is negative, it's my opinion.

Is pointing out your biased moderation now an "attack" as well? It's my opinion and it's not positive, guess no one is allowed to criticize the job you're doing here anymore.

Also, if that's now the standard, I'm going to be sending you a huge pile of offenses that I'll expect to see action on, in fact I'll instruct every heterodox poster here about the new standard and how to report it, if that's how you want to play this.



So what if I am? I frequently check the mod attention thread, it's been a habit of mine for years due to frequent issues with moderator bias, and I have a good memory for names and posts. As to why it matters, you're claiming my accusation is false, and those posts are evidence that it is not, whether you feign ignorance of them or not.



I'm not debating the usefulness or efficacy of the mod attention thread generally, I'm referring to specific posts by a specific poster that prove the truth of the claim I made that you say is false, none of what you said here is relevant to that.



WP convention or not, the thread "ownership" thing should be eliminated for posts in News and PPR, as it causes more problems than it solves in those forums. In my experience, that's an unusual rule, most forums that I use don't afford the OP any special privileges over the thread beyond editing their original post and sometimes the title.

Because it was an observation on the situation I was addressing. Moderators can make observations too, you know.

Hastily deleted? Not at all, merely as I'd completed other actions - and factually you have no idea, yet you choose to mischaracterise it as something underhanded. But since when were you made the arbiter of what threads are worth? Why should anyone care if you think they exhibit something you characterise as an obsession? So what if it is an obsession - are you about to step in with counselling advice? No. Privately express concern about the worrying degree of obsession? No. Why would anyone care about the remote possibility that somehow, through some magical mechanism, Jones might actually receive support because of something posted here?

So give us workable definitions of "off-topic" and "derail" - ones that can be reliably used with any topic. I think you'll rapidly find that to a large extent, these depend on the OP - and that's the problem: there is no checkbox answer in these situations.

I've already addressed this and I have nothing more to add and nothing to prove, least of all to you who simply wants blood.

A quick deflection into another accusation.
Here's another observation for you: the people who tend to complain most about others' so-called privileges are very rarely those who make reports - but tend to be quick off the mark with accusations of favor.

A cheap shot and a sly way of naming a member, and in the process add a derisive "Figures" - but you omitted the eye-roll. Or was that just another example of innocently using a word with no intended negativity?

Can I report this for calling me ludicrous?

You can if you like.

I didn’t say that you were ludicrous. I said that this specific act of manipulative behavior was. Your post was an obvious personal attack. Your post justifying it was manipulative and ludicrous.

Yes, you can, but when they're aggressively pointed, clearly aimed at a specific poster, and not in any way related to a rule break, they should not be made under the mod flag, that's like allowing free hits in a fight. That's why I quote replied to you on that, because it was so clearly aimed at me and snarky, to take your own advice it was something that could have been better handled via PM.



I never made any claims to being such an arbiter, I was merely offering my own observations, something I thought was allowed in a political discussion in a political forum. There also is no need to mock any "magical mechanism" as I laid out a very clear path for someone to get from reading about Alex Jones here to going to view his material for themselves in order to confirm the accuracy of what is said here about him and getting caught up in his web of deception, which his success has proven to be quite powerful. I believe I even qualified it as a minor issue, but an issue nonetheless.

If you're going to now claim that making any observation about the motives of other posters is an attack, I'll again refer you back to Fnord himself and his cohort, who constantly challenge the motives of people participating in "their" threads with accusations of deliberate derailing and sabotage, shilling, deflection, etc, it's practically a calling card at this point. As I mentioned in a previous post, if this is the standard you insist on, I'll abide by it, but I'm going to go out of my way to make sure everyone else abides by it too, and I don't think that's going to be much fun for anyone.



I did, left field posts completely unconnected to the topic under discussion with no OP privileges given in News and PPR.



You know it looks really bad, gotcha.



Do you really want to take that tack with me? I've been very transparent over the years with the amount that I've cooperated with the mod team post 2009, if anything I'd have thought you'd be accusing me of being a hypocrite because of my own frequent reports rather than claiming I don't know what I'm talking about because I don't make any. I've absolutely noticed who gets come down on and who gets treated with kid gloves despite repeated bad behavior, often because it's been me reporting the bad behavior.



Why bring Sly into this?

I'd also call it more informed speculation and/or reconnaissance by fire than a cheap shot, like I said I keep an eye on the mod attention thread, and someone frivolously reporting me multiple times in short period has a way of getting my attention. Sounds like a hit to me.

More mischaracterisations. Paraphrased - You accused him of shutting down threads as a means of exerting control, of stopping them (and I think it was you who added a condition to the effect of "when he doesn't like the way a thread is going" but it may have been someone else. After this number of paragraphed points I'm past caring).

Opinions can easily be made into attacks, of course. The one is not necessarily the other and the whole depends on the means of communicating an opinion - but I expect you'll fisk the balls off this too so I'll give up to avoid providing more paragraphs to play with.

Fine, but you'll need to be careful that a flood of reports is not being made for vexatious reasons. If they are judged a vexatious quantity they are likely to be ignored.

I don't care in the slightest if you check that thread - it's public, after all. I was idly wondering if you're correlating and cross-referencing posts made there.
But you're not merely pointing out something that may be factual, you're trying to make some sort of point out of it (boo, hiss - Fnord is often seen in the mod. attention thread and sometimes asks for threads to be closed) and it's in that process that the attack lies.

You don't like Fnord or what he posts or what he sometimes requests. What is this, nursery school?
Next...

"Most forums" aren't WP.
The alternative you're suggesting here, with no useable definition of "off-topic" or "derail", is demanding an OP accepts whatever crap is posted to their thread, or that because several people are involved it must be allowed to run on in whatever direction it's going.

So, my post pointing out that Fnord tries to get threads locked, e.g. pointing out his bad behavior, is somehow against the rules, but your posts claiming that my reasoning is ludicrous and that I'm being manipulative, are somehow okay?

Show me in the rules of this website (not the ones in your head) where reporting derailed and inflammatory threads is “bad behavior”.

Your characterisation, not mine.

I didn't say you made claims of being an arbiter, only that you were acting as if you were.
It's a bit of a stretch to suggest that because someone posts X here it might end with Y elsewhere - where no-one is responsible for Y except those using Y. It reads like a kind of warning to be careful what "generic you" should post, lest it be misused. Well that's true of practically every opinion posted here - anyone could take it and make something of it outside of WP.

Again you mischaracterise what I've said into it being a claim that "any observation about the motives of other posters is an attack".
I'm not going to keep repeating myself.

Link them in this thread and I'll have a good look at them. Anything that makes moderation easier is always welcome.

And that's really all you're after here - a gotcha.

But I was addressing "the people who tend to ...", not you. Clearly not you for having made all those reports over the years - or is this another attempted mischaracterisation to make some other point?

No, it's still a cheap shot at taking a dig at a named member.

You were just “pointing it out?”

Come on, once again you are using manipulative wording. No one is buying it.

By the way, there was no “bad behavior.”

It's not bad behavior to request a thread lock. That's your mischaracterisation, made sans facts.

So, you're claiming that it's the addendum "to exert control" that converts "poster X asks for a lot of thread locks" to a personal attack? Okay, that's completely new and never been enforced that way before, but whatever, though I'll add that I could prove that part as well if I wanted to put the effort in, as there really is a lot of supporting evidence in this case.



So you don't have a good answer.



Oh, another new rule pulled out the hat, I wasn't aware that vexatious reporting was a thing here, I'd have been reporting people for that years ago had I known. Sure seems like a convenient way to justify ignoring certain reports though.



You keep saying "attack" when what I did was point out a pattern of behavior, a pattern that is easily confirmed via his own posts. Are you claiming that it changes from an observation to an attack when I "try to make some sort of point out of it"?

Why don't you go back and look at the original exchange, Fnord accuses me of telling him what to do, and I retort with the implication that telling others what to do is more his bag; why is it that only my comment is being raked over the coals here? Do you not realize how much pain you could be saving yourself by simply not trying to stretch the rules here in order to hassle me?


Wow, talk about a deflection; what do my personal feelings towards Fnord have to do with whether the facts support my claims about him? For the record, I also argued in favor of his reinstatement many years ago when he was banned under a previous mod regime.



So you're demanding solutions to a problem that you then refuse to fix because of an idiosyncratic "tradition", got it.

Last edited by Dox47 on 08 Aug 2022, 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Adults are entitled not to like people.

(Nothing against Fnord by the way).

And yet, one of us has the power to clear that up by posting the deleted post that now resides in the mod archive, yet won't. Curious.



Even if I accept that uncharitable version of my posts, where are the rules being broken?



Then explain when an observation becomes an attack, clearly and concisely, which you've yet to do.



You're going to have to give up this idea of OP privilege in two forums to make it work, which you seem unwilling to do for some reason, despite that being an unusual and unwieldy custom.



I don't know about you, but if someone made an accusation against me that I could easily disprove with a screen shot, I'd jump all over the easy win rather than going round and round with quote replies accusing my accuser of bad faith while avoiding the question.



Come on now, are you really going to try and claim you weren't trying to lump me in with those people? Even I wouldn't try and rules lawyer that.



What dig, and what named member?