Did Mod cause the collapse of evcforum?

This is the root of my disagreement. You really really think that NJ really thought that Berberry was a rapist? And that he was not musing about moral relativism? Because you didn't know. I agree with the guidlines here. Argue the position, not the person. You can't really tell the poster's intent from this medium. Berberry and Rrhains intents should be irrelevant.So when your talking about things like: I think your're bringing too much judgment of the intent.And there's problems with that... People can get good at trolling. More cleverly hidden insults slip under and the retaliating fuck-you's get the ban hammer.Its the nature of the beast, this medium.If someone's gonna get terribly insulted and upset, then maybe it isn't the right one for them. Ber was being too thin skinned and you guys were overreacting to what you were judging as NJ's intent.I don't think having a "constuctive exploration of the issues" would have done anything. You can't really judge what peoples' intents really are from their posts and you can't prevent people from being insulted from what they are judging the intent to be. Yes, it is. Everyone's judgment is gonna be different and you can't really know what the intent is.The best bet is to just leave intents out of it, and go with the text on the screen. Argue the position, not the person. Like the rules are.And I think Mod did not do a terrible job in trying to inforce the rules. Hell, even Dan said that he expected to be suspended.Now, I think NJ was being disrespectful to Ber. But Ber responded with fuck-you's. Too much was applied to NJ's intent. If the position, as opposed to the person, had simply continued to be rebutted over and over, then it would have been nothing. I do think there's line that can be crossed. If someone would have put together a bunch of NJ's posts proving that he was being disrespectful enough to warrant suspension, then I think it would have happened.But bitching about moderation when its judging the intent differently from you was against the rules in the first place.Percy's right that y'all aren't getting the rules. Jar's right that y'all are crybabies. Its a fucking internet discussion forum, geez. According to the rules, yeah. But you guys want to act like you know what NJ was thinking, argue the person and not the position, and have the rules be different. Bitching about moderation because it isn't against the rules isn't the way to change the rules. As is evident. I think the board is just fine. Its not as bad as you're painting it.I'd prefer the rules as they are. Don't judge people's intent, argue the postion not the person. More formal debating.

I think NJ was pretty clearly on the record for thinking that homosexuality was the moral equivalent of rape, yes. I think that because NJ opened topic after topic to say exactly that, and when he wasn't opening topics to say it, he was saying it in any thread that was even tangentially related to homosexuality.

Well I don't. I don't think you can know what he's thinking from the text he submits on a forum.

No, I don't think he was "musing about moral relativism", and neither did anybody else. Even Percy knew what he was doing: ​ Admin writes: ​ My own opinion is that NJ engages in gay-baiting in these threads, and that he does so subconsciously and isn't aware he's doing this.

He does so subconsciously and isn't aware he's doing it... that's not thinking it.

But for some reason, time after time it was only NJ's intentions that mattered. Nobody asked what Dan's intent was; nobody asked Rrhain's intent; nobody asked Berberry's intent.

Actually, it wasn't that NJ's intentions did matter, it was that they did not.

I apologize but I see no statement or judgement of intent in the material you quoted whatsoever. Intent is irrelevant to whether or not someone is being compared to a rapist - they're either being so compared, or they're not.

Which you cannot know without judging their intent.

NJ's intent should also be irrelevant, but for some reason, the moderator community decided to make it central, and to decide that they simply couldn't respond to NJ's out of control personal attacks until NJ's intent was made perfectly and abundantly clear.

Right, because you can't really tell what his intent was. Even if he wrote exactly: "I think that homos are rapists.", you still don't know if he really thinks that or is just trolling.

The ultimate result - the --> direct --> result - was that Percy decided that no matter what moderators did, a storm of criticism was sure to ensue. Hence the Great Purge. In this judgement he was sadly incorrect, there would have been one course of action that would not have provoked a storm of criticism, and it was the action that had been requested for months: suspend NJ for gay-baiting across half a dozen threads. ​ I mean we only told the moderators what we wanted, a hundred times. They did everything --> except --> that. Astounding.

But that would have to be a different set of rules. Ones where you judge peoples' intents by a few lines of text and then determine what they're thinking so you know how to moderate them. I don't think that's possible and am against the rules being that way.

Everyone's judgment is gonna be different and you can't really know what the intent is. ​ But again - intent shouldn't matter. And indeed, in most cases the moderators acted like intent --> didn't --> matter. Except in the case of NJ, where it was apparently determined that intent was paramount. ​ Why was that? It's never been satisfactorily addressed.

Because you guys were telling the moderators what, you thought, NJ's intent was. Ber was insulted because he thought that NJ really did think homos were rapists. But this is something you guys couldn't really have known, so NJ's intent was paramount in the sense that it should not be being brought up as a problem.

The most reasonable interpretation is that one or several moderators simply --> decided --> that's how they were going to treat NJ, and then the rest of the moderators felt they had to support them in that. The results was months of people begging for moderator action against NJ, who was disrupting threads with disgusting anti-gay hate speech.

To know that it was anti-gay hate speech would require judging the intent, and that's against the rules.

Did you even read the thread? Jesus. We were fine with the rules. We loved the rules. ​ We just wanted the moderators to start following them. That's all.

No, you want to judge peoples' intents and argue the person instead of the position.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

At that point, you're no longer arguing the position but are arguing the person. And you're judging his intent.For all you know, he really was stupid enought to not see that his arguments were wrong. No, but you're limited by the medium. That you think that you can judge people's intents and thoughts from some text they submit on a forum is a problem. You don't know that he was comparing Ber to kids and dogs. That's you judging him. Don't do that. Or that he really did lack the understanding or was simply an idiot, or that he truley believed he had a relavent and valid argument... we don't know.That's why you argue the position and not the person.

Oh, please, NJ was not an idiot. If anything, he was very intelligent. Don't expect me to believe he honestly did not understand the moral difference between homosexuality and rape.

I'm not. I'm saying that when he talked about homos and rape in the same post, that he was not saying the two were the same thing. He didn't understnad, nor do I really, how y'all keep reading that as him saying that the two are the same thing.

If he did it once, then I'd let it go. If he did it twice, I'd begin to suspect. He did it dozens of times in half a dozen threads. If he wasn't comparing Ber to kids and dogs, why did he keep bringing it up and use it as an example?

Maybe because he thought it was a good example that nobody had sufficiently rebutted yet. We can't say that he must have been on a rampage aginast the gay by calling them rapists. You don't know that.

Yes, we did know.

No, you didn't. You thought you knew... and that's a big part of the problem here, with all you guys who think you can judge peoples' intentions like that.

He was an intelligent person. I believe he was intelligent enough to know the moral difference between homosexuality and rape.

So do I. His argument was that the atheist position was in no place to make that distinction. He was wrong, but we wasn't calling homos rapists. That you think you can read his mind and say that he was is your problem, not his.

But after explaining it to him half a dozen times by each of us, it became clear that he was either an idiot (which he was not) or he kept bringing it up across half a dozen threads dozens of times to make a thinly veiled snide argument.

Or that he thought your explanation was lacking, or didn't understand how it was applicable, etc.That you're asribing this motive to him is what the rules for arguing the position and not the person are intended to prevent. that you guys are incapable of doing that is a big part of the problem with all this.

What's the difference between catholics and pedophiles again?

Do you think you should be suspended for that?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

He's not the only one. Berberry, Taz, Crash, Rrhain, Dan, Schraf, etc. all though that making that comparison is saying that you think that homos are kids/dogs.I don't get it either. Its one of those crazy liberal PC things, me thinks.

Right.And even if he did say that they were morally equivalent, like a nihilist might make an arguement about, that still doesn't mean they are saying that they are the same thing. Ones a religion and ones a psychiatric disorder.Should I be crying about how you think all catholics are pedophiles and how I'm deeply insulted by this? His arguments were about how atheists and/or moral relativists didn't have a good argument to distinuish between the two without a moral authority, or something like that.Maybe you really didn't address his argument, I don't remember.

But they were talking about the comment about eating bananas, not about christians raping goats. So, no, it wasn't objectively the same thing at all. But you're wrong. So your judgment of the intent is wrong.This is a great example of why you shouldn't be doing that. No, they don't. What's "clear" to you is wrong. You cannot read peoples' thoughts from text they submit to a forum.

Nope. Totally wrong. You're arguing the person and not the position. I don't think so. Someone who argued that nothing was morally wrong could put homosexuality and rape as morally equivalent without being disrespectful to anyone.And you could very easily be misunderstanding what NJ was trying to say, thereby making his "action" something totally different than what you thought it was.That's why, for you to not be arguing just the position, but to bring the person into it as well, is judging their intent and should be avoided. Yes, you do. Simple lines of text can so easily be misunderstood that you have no place whatsoever to determine if what he typed should be considered as insulting as you are taking it.

Seeing someone admit they were being disrespectful is not the same as thinking you can read peoples' minds and accurately judge their intent to determine that an unobvious disrespect was in fact one.

In order for the arguments to hold any water, you have to be objecting to more than the position. Otherwise, you can't say what he was really doing as opposed to simply what the words he submitted were. And I disagree. Firstly, because I don't think he was saying that gay relationships are the moral equivalent of rape, and secondly, because I don't think it necessarily violates the forum guidelines. It doesn't have to be. And that's why you simply argue the position. It doesn't matter what the examples are to make the point. That someone would find offense at those is unwarranted, especially in this medium. Otherwise, we'd all be tiptoeing around because somebody somewhere can probably take offense to anything that anybody says.And then I could be crying about why you picked cooking as a random example, because I like to cook and now I'm all insulted and offended No, that's not how it should be. I think that's good advice. But too, people are not supposed to be responding to the language instead of the argument. So the thing you're objecting to as a consequence shouldn't be a consequence in the first place. Why? The intent is irrelevant. Look at the position and not the person. The analogy would be better if you weren't even touching them at all and they still said it hurt them. And they shouldn't have been. Besides, the insult only comes off if you're looking at the person instead of the position. I don't think they did. He wasn't calling homos rapists nor saying they were morally equivalent and the offense was unwarranted.

Here's Percy's reply, Message 89:

quote:

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In the case from a month ago, NJ appears to be arguing that if bestiality (I don't believe beastiality is an accepted variant, but maybe someone knows for sure) is judged acceptable, how does one know where to draw the line about anything else.

​

In the case from a week ago, he appears to be assigning to others the view that it's not possible to reject as wrong acts to which we have not been subjected ourselves.

​

I can't see how these are the same thing. Can you find a case where he repeatedly ignores the same rebuttal of the same point? Sort of like Randman used to do with Haeckel's drawings?

---

He doesn't seem to be agreeing, and niether did he the last time you referred to it.

That's what I'm saying. That the arguments against NJ have to be objecting to more than the poition to hold any water, and then they're already wrong to begin with. Yes, the words are there... but what did he mean by them is where the problem enters. I don't think so. And this is your judgement on what he meant, not just what the words he typed were. But you don't know that, nor can you. You're judging his intent and arguing the person instead of the position. You should stop doing that. No, that the text he submitted shouldn't have been insulting in the first place becuase you have to argue the person instead of the position to find that insult. It seems more likely that Rrhain is posting under your name, as you're sounding just like him.

Exactly. No, as though it wasn't his intent to equivocate those things. So therefore his postition was not the one people were ascribing to him, that they arrived at by misjudging his intent from arguing the person, which they should not have been doing in the first place.

Combining the reply..From Message 95: Nope. To get to this: You have to be objecting to more than the text that NJ submitted, because he never said that. No, to what he thought he was saying, judging from his intent and arguing the person instead of the position.NJ never said the Ber was a rapist horse-fucker.From Message 96: But that wasn't his position. That's the position you all thought he was taking because you were judgin his intent and arguing the person instead of the position.

And you have to look past the submitted text to get to the subtext... This is where you'd insert your judgement of the person if you were unable to simply argue the position. You can't get from 'the text that NJ submitted' to 'a personal attack' without bringing in more than his position, you have to consider his intent and person, and even the history, as you've asked me to. As if your interpretation is the only one possible The position you thought he was taking is not the one he actually was. And you arrived at that position by taking into account more that the text he submitted. He did... for weeks.