Apologists Harassing Critics

[_EAllusion]

"Do it again and you are on the queue" is nearly the same as being on the queue in terms of deterrence. It's less frustrating for the user, but the point of the queue isn't to punish. Just report it if it happens, guys. If I understand this ruling correctly, after that, it's preclearance.

[_EAllusion]

"Trolling" is extremely hard to moderate without being biased on the basis of what you agree and disagree with.

This is a discussion board that discusses things related to Mormonism and its critics and defenders. Mormonism isn't an easy thing to defend because it is not reasonable and even sincere attempts to offer apologetics look like trolling to me in all but the most cautious, highly intelligent posters. Those are quite rare. Defending any dubious, fringe idea is going to result in "You can't possibly be serious" moments for those not of the same mind. I would also suggest, and I appreciate that this will be controversial to people who don't share my take on the LDS faith, that habitual defense of dubious ideas in the face of people skilled at debunking them tends to warp people into bad thinking and interaction styles. It just comes with the territory. I don't know what people expect. Mormons to just admit they are wrong and renounce their faith? Mormons to come up with solid rational defenses presented well? Do you seriously expect that?

Fortunately, we don't sanction "trolling" so I don't have to make judgement about who is sincerely ridiculous and who is parodying that for inflammatory purposes.

We do have a rule against derailing threads that I try to follow the spirit of while being respectful of the fact that tangents are a natural part of conversation on message boards. We also have a rule about personal attacks that I try to follow while being respectful of the fact that criticizing a person's point of view or thinking can read as a personal attack. MG, it seems to be widely agreed, was habitually derailing threads. This is what there currently is scrutiny for and what may land him on the queue if it does not desist immediately.

I agree with others responding to Shades that it shouldn't strictly matter if MG appreciates what he is doing if he is in fact doing it. What I would caution is that I'm not going to hold MG to a standard of staying on-topic that I don't others. He has been moderated by me for this problem before and if that kind of issue comes up again, that's when I'm going to recommend queuing. (Note: I had already recommended queuing). I don't read this forum much, so what I'd ask is for people to point out problems if they see them while understanding that I might not see it quite the same way you do.

[_RockSlider]

"Do it again and you are on the queue" is nearly the same as being on the queue in terms of deterrence. It's less frustrating for the user, but the point of the queue isn't to punish. Just report it if it happens, guys. If I understand this ruling correctly, after that, it's preclearance.

I said [deleted] recently in the terrestrial forum, which I believe is against the rules. Woops I just said it again. I believe it's basically the total lack of ANY moderation which enable all of us to break the rules. My grandmother used to always say, "I give you an inch and you take a mile".

When the only moderation that happens is at the point people are leaving in protest of a lack of moderation there must be some blame here on moderation. And when the pot boils to the point of a moderation response, the result is to give the violator another mile (which now is two).

I was once a moderator here. I quit because of the way I saw Shades treat (and ultimately chase away) a poster that had much to offer this site. No one complained about this poster except Shades. Many stood up for this poster, all of which was discarded by Shades. This at a time that Shades continued to protect Eric whom many complained about and was a destructive force for the site.

Perhaps a 'clone of Shades' is NOT what is best for this site, but some diverse thinking which Shade's would allow their thoughts help him see and change his strange behaviors to unique individuals of which he takes some personal interest/bias.

[_EAllusion]

Is the fact that he is one of the only Mormon apologists of any sort who can stick around for any length of time such an asset that we are willing to put up with him more than we would tolerate one of our own acting similarly?

Is my perception of this hopelessly skewed?

No, it's not that. Speaking for myself, it wasn't even on my radar until an explosion of a problem about month ago. And then not again until just now.

[_Maksutov]

Lurking here has actually become annoying, trying to wade through (past?) the exchanges from both parties. I can only imagine there are others out there similarly tired of the drama. I am not keen on censorship, but if neither wants to contribute to the actual discussion and instead just wants to troll, then why allow them to impede the intelligent discourse? I walk away from such foolishness in person, and it is not like the community members (or moderators on their behalf) have to tolerate it here.

I don't understand how easily intelligent people allow spam trolling (trolling to destroy the readability of threads, distracting them from the OP's intent). It sounds like grindael is having some RL stress at this time and has taken a break. MG's spam trolling has become all the more rewarding to have been successful in driving him away. But ten fold must be the reward for this whole episode blowing up to such a fervor of several major MormonDiscussions.com players threatening to leave.

I shake my head in disbelief of how successful MG has been. Kudos to MG for being of mediocre intelligence taking out several of the brightest around here, simply because they can not ignore the buzzing fly dropping fly turds, which everyone then turns into large wet cow pies.

Guerilla war is fascinating. Vandals and terrorists are very successful in leveraging their relative impotence into real impacts. Stalking someone without confrontation still affects their life. These are not academic discussions of abstractions and civil liberties. If people feel that the board favors the rights of one to stalk and drive out another, they will not remain. Nor should they. And so we begin an exercise in reporting, reporting, reporting. Every report will become a point of contention about bias and interpretation. We will be discussing how to discuss, arguing about arguing, chasing our tails until implosion. Who will benefit? We are told that we should not threaten to withdraw because of perceived problems, but if other avenues have been pursued and exhausted and the situation continues, then leaving, boycotting, or even starting new fora, is a perfectly valid response.

[_EAllusion]

"Do it again and you are on the queue" is nearly the same as being on the queue in terms of deterrence. It's less frustrating for the user, but the point of the queue isn't to punish. Just report it if it happens, guys. If I understand this ruling correctly, after that, it's preclearance.

I said [deleted] recently in the terrestrial forum, which I believe is against the rules. Woops I just said it again. I believe it's basically the total lack of ANY moderation which enable all of us to break the rules. My grandmother used to always say, "I give you an inch and you take a mile".

When the only moderation that happens is at the point people are leaving in protest of a lack of moderation there must be some blame here on moderation. And when the pot boils to the point of a moderation response, the result is to give the violator another mile (which now is two).

I was once a moderator here. I quit because of the way I saw Shades treat (and ultimately chase away) a poster that had much to offer this site. No one complained about this poster except Shades. Many stood up for this poster, all of which was discarded by Shades. This at a time that Shades continued to protect Eric whom many complained about and was a destructive force for the site.

Perhaps a 'clone of Shades' is NOT what is best for this site, but some diverse thinking which Shade's would allow their thoughts help him see and change his strange behaviors to unique individuals of which he takes some personal interest/bias.

I've been critical of Shades myself and I'm a moderator. I think he has aspergery foibles that he'll pester people endlessly about while missing the bigger picture or nuances in communication. I'm not exactly sure who you are referring to as we were moderators at the same time. I strongly disagreed with how our resident Hungarian poster was treated and said as much on several occasions.

I don't read this forum much, so most of my moderation of it comes when people bring to my attention issues. I'm not sure if people know this, but most complaints are dismissed by me as I think most reports don't actually rise to a level of needing action. Since you were a moderator, you probably know there is a distinct bias in reports that we get in favor of critics being frustrated by LDS posters. I feel wrong about calling out names, but there are some sketchy posters who are critics of the LDS faith here who manage to basically never get reported because it is entirely possible for people to just mentally ignore them.

I think it's fair to say that there needs to be more active moderation of this forum. That probably requires more manpower to do it. I think there's a shortlist of people who have the "right stuff" as it were to moderate in a relatively unbiased fashion that goes to the spirit of the rules. The Xenophons of the board, if you will. If one of them volunteers, I'm all in favor of adding them in. One thing that concerns me is one of our resident board nannys persuading Shades to let them be a moderator and watching them moderate like a petty tyrant. It's got to be someone with the right disposition.

[_RockSlider]

No, it's not that. Speaking for myself, it wasn't even on my radar until an explosion of a problem about month ago. And then not again until just now.

My point exactly. There are no moderators that follow the threads daily.

[_Shulem]

I'm not out to make enemies but look at what you're defending. Do you want to reward him? Do you want to see more MGs invade the board once the TBMs see how easy it is to cripple discussion?

Bring them on. I'll cram the Explanations of Facsimile No. 3 down their throats just like I did to zerinus who has since run with his tail tucked.

I asked MG what the king's name is in Facsimile No. 3 and he failed to respond. He has no answer. His faith and apologetic tricks are not up to par at all.

He's back on ignore.

[_RockSlider]

Guerilla war is fascinating. Vandals and terrorists are very successful in leveraging their relative impotence into real impacts. Stalking someone without confrontation still affects their life. These are not academic discussions of abstractions and civil liberties. If people feel that the board favors the rights of one to stalk and drive out another, they will not remain. Nor should they. And so we begin an exercise in reporting, reporting, reporting. Every report will become a point of contention about bias and interpretation. We will be discussing how to discuss, arguing about arguing, chasing our tails until implosion. Who will benefit? We are told that we should not threaten to withdraw because of perceived problems, but if other avenues have been pursued and exhausted and the situation continues, then leaving, boycotting, or even starting new fora, is a perfectly valid response.

Don't get me wrong. I understand the vote with our feet mentality in these cases. Per my previous post and experience here, the current moderation will dig in their feet with a single man's bias'es (and his only clone) seemingly cutting off his nose to spite his face.

With EAllusion's noting that he seldom even follows here, (my total lack of moderation observation) my amazement is with how well this site does do, with us basically moderating ourselves. I'm just disappointed that our own moderation (JUST IGNORE HIM) has failed so badly in this one case.

[_Lemmie]

Is the fact that he is one of the only Mormon apologists of any sort who can stick around for any length of time such an asset that we are willing to put up with him more than we would tolerate one of our own acting similarly?

Is my perception of this hopelessly skewed?

No, it's not that. Speaking for myself, it wasn't even on my radar until an explosion of a problem about month ago. And then not again until just now.

thanks, that helps in understanding the situation. For example, when grindael announced he was chosen to present at the Whitmer conference and showed us some of his research and mentalgymnast posted the below about his in real life, I made the mistake of defending grindael:

by the way, loser, we are already well aware that you don't believe in the Divine calling of Joseph Smith...so what's your point in preaching to the choir? You already know you're gonna just get high fives. So what's your point? Much ado about nothing, isn't it?

You're a loser, grindael. Ya, I know I just called you a loser. But the shoe fits.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44421&start=63&p=1017680&view=show#p1017680

Going forward, I will simply report it, correct?