General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List')

I guess I always get this wrong then. In English the names of people and places are capitalized, so regardless of what someone's login ID is, when I refer to them in a message I always capitalize it, so arachnophilia becomes Arachnophilia. But I also maintain case for the rest of the name, so ICANT remains ICANT.--Percy

brinksmanship --Percy

To me all words are just vocabulary. The challenge in public forum is to put one's vocabulary to best use. At the simplest level this is just a matter of choosing the right term for your audience, and at the grandest levels it is high art, but when the word doesn't suit the purpose then it just gets in the way of understanding, and a misunderstanding may be at the root of this.Clearly Moose is interpreting at least some of your contributions as troll-like. You can take a "I'm just gonna keep doin' what I'm doin'" approach, sort of the same as the "I gotta be me" approach, or you can take the approach, "Hey, Moose, wasn't trying to piss you off, maybe we can work this out in a way where I don't have to feel like I'm censoring everything I say and you don't think I'm trolling."--Percy

My definition does not rely upon any etiology.Troll: anyone out to make troubleIt isn't uncommon for someone to unintentionally make trouble, and I call this "trollish behavior."--Percy

Have you considered the possibility that you're projecting your own rage on to others when it is not in reality there?--Percy

I think what you think you see inside others is actually coming from within yourself. If we're all in a rage then even the Peanuts comic in your daily paper is in a rage. I think we're all in sort of the shocked and dismayed state one feels when witnessing another human being self destruct.--Percy

I think the thread where you actually wanted to have posted this is Report Discussion Problems Here 4.0(NOT A DISCUSSION TOPIC!!!)[/color].I'm a participant in the Evolution Requires Reduction in Genetic Diversity and so cannot moderate, but I can comment. Dr Adequate does seem to enjoy brinkmanship. Participation in the style he enjoys does raise the question of how much ridicule is justified or appropriate in response to the ridiculous.When moderating such circumstances I try to look for whether the person posting ridiculous content is engaging in serious and sincere discussion. In the case of the The Origin of Novelty thread it appeared to me that Bolder-dash was engaging in serious and sincere discussion. He responded to what people actually said, and his responses moved the discussion forward instead of just repeating his position. So when Dr A persistently made comments directed at Bolder-dash personally I suspended him. Twice.--Percy

Hi Faith,What you need to do instead of blaming everyone else for your problems is to discuss things scientifically, which means backing up your ideas with facts and data from the real world. There is no research that supports any of your unique ideas. They're just things you've made up. Of course ideas that are only of your imagination and that are contradicted by the real world seem ridiculous to everyone else, as if someone came here trying to tell us the world of Harry Potter was the way things really work.--Percy

Hi Bolder-dash,The question concerns how one moderates responses to what I'll call buffoonish behavior. Certainly there are degrees of buffoonish behavior, and not everything you and Faith have said is equally buffoonish, but the statement I had in mind in my previous post was when Faith began claiming, determinedly and persistently, that mutations don't exist. Given the available scientific evidence this is akin to claiming that electrons don't exist, or to shift the focus to something similar to what you've just claimed, is akin to claiming that there's as much scientific evidence against the existence of electrons as there is for.So the question is how should a moderator handle the inevitable responses of ridicule and worse that such claims will bring. What level of protection should a moderator provide to those who, quite literally, invite ridicule? And as I just described, I think it should depend upon how sincerely and seriously the person is treating both the discussion and the other participants. Naturally this is a judgment call and there can be wide ranges of opinion on each incident.Concerning your own case, moderators are responsible for keeping discussion on-topic as covered by both the Forum Guidelines and the Moderator Guidelines. Moderators make decisions about topic all the time. I invited you to explain via PM why you felt the particular issue was relevant, and you instead decided to violate several Forum Guidelines in a single post, thereby demonstrating the issues you have with impulse control, low frustration levels, and anger management.--Percy

I can't take any credit for how I'm currently responding to Faith. Whenever I decide to take Faith on in a new thread I try a new approach. I've tried facts, politeness, snark, insults, irony, etc., and none of them have worked. So far in this thread I've been sticking to the facts and have been able to draw only a single response telling me she's ignoring my messages, ostensibly because I'm keep telling her something she already knows, and because they contain links (they contain no links).I'm not myself in favor of putting any moderator pressure on Faith. Years of experience tell us it doesn't achieve anything. It'll just drive her away, and right now EvC Forum is really just The Faith Show. No other creationists are very active. She's carrying a whole discussion board all by herself.--Percy

I've posted messages describing the information, arguments and evidence for sedimentary deposits accumulating atop geologic columns consisting only of sedimentary layers, which is your definition of a geologic column. Please give the messages a read when you have some time: Message 15 and Message 45--Percy

I agree that Faith treats many people very badly. The way she usually does this is to encourage people into great explanatory efforts, after which she variously ignores or lambastes them. When cornered she invents a crisis so that discussion of the topic ceases. Like now.I also agree about the denial. Faith peering out from her creationist mindset can no more discern true reality and science than could ancient astronomers peering out from Earth to figure out the solar system.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I hope no one actually made such a claim. Creation science wasn't invented until around the 1960's, about a half century after Biblical inerrancy. I'm not sure I follow how you or Phat are thinking about the topic of the thread. I took the thread title at its word, that the originator (you) would be defending the proposition that Bible Inerrancy stands against all objections, and I thought the thread was going along those lines to a good enough extent.--Percy