Skippy the Dead wrote:And this is troublesome. If somebody touches my post, goddammit, I want to know about it. If somebody has edited some one else's post, I want to know about it.
That's a valid concern. The mandate now is that a moderator must drop a note if any original text is altered. Oftentimes I'll alter the
formatting, typically by correcting misplaced quote tags, deleting too many hard returns, placing an extra-long URL into a link to avoid creating a horizontal scroll bar, and things of that sort. I don't bother dropping a note in cases like that.
There was a lengthy thread about this a while ago. Some mod had even gone so far as to correct spelling and grammar (I don't recall editing services being part of the board), although I believe this has stopped.
That was probably me. I don't do that anymore, although I certainly want to.
Jersey Girl wrote:In the above you say that you think it's any bias at all that concerns people. If that is so, Shades, you leave the door open for any former or present adversary of your moderators in discussion/debate, to use the cry of bias in order to screw the mod team.
They can cry bias all they want. If they're wrong, I'll tell them why. If they're right, I'll do whatever's necessary to correct things.
If complainers aren't asked to demonstrate the allegation of bias using the moderators own work, what protects your moderators from bias against them?
In this case, they
have demonstrated the allegation of bias using the moderator's own work. marg herself uttered the two forbidden words, so that's all they needed.
Ray has already admitted on this thread, that "Keeping to the rules isn't the point". If a moderator keeping to the rules isn't the point, what the hell IS the point?
I'd have to see his quote in context to pass judgment on that.
What Ray has done on this thread is to employ the exact same tactic. He hasn't got specific evidences of instances where marg acted with bias as moderator, if two words "Danny Boy" are the only evidence he has, then he's simply blowing smoke or McCue described fog. :-)
The other item of evidence was the utterance of the two unthinkable words.
The current situation is similar to what happened to me and since I saw it again with harmony and now with marg, I see it as a pattern of behavior intended to "get back" at someone a poster doesn't like for whatever reason. The bigger the stink someone can make, the louder they cry out "bias", they wear you down or wear down the moderator to the point of either you or the moderator becoming aggravated to the point of giving up.
That's not true. Take a look at the GoodK/harmony incident: He accused her of weasling her way into a moderatorial position in order to impose her own agenda on the board. This was, of course, factually incorrect, so did you see me get "worn down" or otherwise give up? No. I stuck to my guns, because I knew the whole story.
Sometimes complainants have a point, other times they don't. This is a case where they do indeed have a point.
What concerns me is why aren't you, the person whom these folks work for, involving yourself in facilitating the sorting out of these matters?
I thought I was doing that right now.
This isn't MA&D; there's no law that says the moderators must always win.
Why aren't you asking the complainers for evidence of instances where they think the moderator failed?
Because they already provided it.
Is it easier to let your mods be screwed over than it is to do justice to their work?
marg didn't get "screwed over," I simply refereed the two sides and made the call that I thought was appropriate.
You have good moderators here, Shades. You have a good serious discussion taking place in the Book of Mormon Authorship thread and while harmony and Liz both involved themselves in moderating the thread, it is marg who played a major role in successfully keeping it on topic.
That may be true, but there could've been a better way to keep it on topic. Pretend it was me who had taken on the responsibility of keeping it on track: Would I have made the same decisions and said the same things, do you think? What would Dr. Shades do?
I do not like seeing somebody smeared who has made a significant contribution to babysitting a thread that has presented so much useful information in helping people work through their consideration of the S/R Theory.
I don't like seeing
anybody smeared, but this is a message board and such things naturally come with the territory. You think I haven't been smeared from time to time? I'm not immune, either.
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
--Louis Midgley