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On February 14 2019 00:44 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2019 00:03 travis wrote:
Ah, so now people are more bannable if they have a stance that someone (I guess aquanim or m4ini) defines as a "conspiracy theory". That is a very stupid stance.
What's even stupider is that "conspiracy theorist" is used disparagingly. You'd have to be a goddamned idiot to believe there are no conspiracies in the world, it's not even an opinion it is a fact. Some of them were huge, that's also a fact.
edit: I guess aquanim didn't necessarily imply a negative connotation to conspiracy theorist, unlike the other guy (but I would guess that is how he feels by his post) Travis is correct. This is a very stupid stance that demonstrates a considerable lack of self-awareness. Just to illustrate, consider all of the left-wing posters (including mods) who swallowed the Trump/Russia collusion narrative hook, line, and sinker and peddled post after post accusing the Trump campaign of Russia-related treason. What are we going to do now that the whole, stupid narrative has collapsed? Ban all of those people? Of course not.
So here you just called people stupid and conspiracy theorists, you just equated trump's dirty business with russia which had now seen how many people close to him arrested or jailed, and all in a thread that isn't meant for it. I am quite impressed, oh and all meanwhile talking about other people's lack of self-awareness. You did do all that as a joke, right?
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On February 14 2019 01:28 Plansix wrote:
You noticed now GH never revealed facts about himself or his life experiences. Or his education. Or anything beyond being black.
Why would he post anything about himself while posting solely in controversial threads and making many enemies? Any personal info you give is just asking for people to use it against you or try and push your buttons. I see zero upside to doing it unless you had some sort of admired credentials.
It's interesting the psychological differences between people. Personally I can only dip into politics threads for awhile before all the antagonism gets to me. People who live in these threads must have a very different psychological make up than me. GH was certainly a unique character.
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On February 12 2019 03:10 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2019 02:35 oBlade wrote:On February 08 2019 20:56 opisska wrote:
The ban reason states quite clearly what the priorities of TL moderation is and it is the same reason why I am basically one step from hell here as well: more then anything, they are now about being respected. I fully expect someone to jump here and say it is not true and that it is just "explaining their motivations to them" or something along those lines, but there is now a mountain of evidence that "being respected" is the key priority of at least some members of the TL mod team.
It wasn't like that in the past and the shift was slow and thus never really perceived, until it just brought about a slow genocide of veterans who signed up years ago for a completely different forum. I agree with these sentiments. Coming into TL there was a reputation to take pride in. Because of the exclusive and unforgiving nature of the esports community and TL's place in it. As the site keeps getting older and the users get older you'd expect everything to get better, and although moderation's generally not bad, it's like there is a certain segment of mod culture here which has unfortunately rooted itself in this childish internet tough guy culture which went out of style a long time ago. Kind of going in the opposite direction of maturity as what you expect with the rest of the site. Pride becoming arrogance maybe. The counterargument I see is sure, the core veteran userbase is such and such, but there will also always be an influx of new people who need some negative reinforcement to understand the ropes and assimilate into the community. That's fair enough. But if you look at the people the politics thread has claimed, zlefin, oneofthem, GH, Testie, and others. Not new people. I wonder when did our users get so moderateable? Or is there something else going on. I think you have a bit of a fallacy here. Just because the USPol thread tends to claim veterans (not even sure that is true), doesn't mean the mods are prone to ban veterans more than newbies. It's just that people who come to a Starcraft site for the first time, don't tend to beeline for the USPol thread (except for PBUs), and thus people who get banned for their posting in the USPol thread are generally veterans of the site... just because non-veterans don't really find their way to the USPol thread in the first place. The USPol thread also has somewhat different rules from the rest of the site. If people behaved as absurdly assholy to one another anywhere outside USPol (or TL Mafia, may it rest in peace), they would've gotten banned ages ago. It just so happens that if there is one topic that inflames people with more argumentative ardor than "how OP protoss is", it is politics. So people who are perfectly civil and nice on the rest of TL turn into raging monsters on the USPol thread. xDaunt is a prime example: he was a writer, and put out many thoughtful, high quality HotS articles, but has gotten into trouble more than once for his posting on USPol.
That wasn't the point I was trying to make so I'm sorry it came across that way. I remember (if not specifically) lots of people who came in and got banned within a few hundred posts. And who weren't really connected to the site otherwise.
I see this trope about "x pages of mod notes" a lot, which also strikes me as weird. If you're talking about like a 5-10 year old account with 10k or 15k posts, that metric doesn't contain any kind of rate. If you repeatedly participate in those threads inevitably you'll get moderated and for people like zlefin or GH, and I haven't been paying enough attention to have the right examples, but it seems like it snowballs for those people. The same way a new poster is moderated more harshly, repeat offender is targeted even though maybe he's just doing his same old thing over years and thousands of posts. And meanwhile other people slip through the cracks, either as a result of political bias lensing moderation or mods not being able to keep up with the volume or whatever. And that makes moderation appear capricious. Like some of the people who have left us, if they had posted less, they'd still be here. Even if they didn't post better, just less often. Does this make sense? I don't have an exact point it just strikes me as weird. Like there is a limit, to tell someone even though you came here for the e-sports community, you can only be yourself in the politics megathread for x amount of time before your infractions will have accumulated to have overstayed your welcome. Like well, your posting had some issues for these 4 years but it was still redeemable. But 5 years of posting like this? You've crossed the line now, buster. Meanwhile some among us might be chugging along to an arrival in banville in time for the next election. Just seems like a waste. If someone is posting really so badly get them to improve at the time so as not to subject the rest of us to their posting. Or if they're headed on the way out in a year just leave them be instead so all the time they put in won't end up having been wasted after they're banned. There were some people posting really badly 1-2 years ago but who got over it. Like it was just a really drawn out phase. I don't know.
Certain antagonistic behaviors from mods in these cases, like with inventing the concept of blog ban abuse specifically for GH, they aren't conducive to actually improving threads or individual posting I think, some wrong approaches taken. If those were the goals, anyway. Maybe the goal is just to lead things to mod's preconceived outcome. I used to think fairly applied, strict moderation on the level of like what you'd expect from an old single-issue thread, like the gun thread now even, was the right idea. But despite apparent mod effort the thread hasn't always shown improvement. Honestly GH's blog was easier to read than the main thread. I don't know why. Self-segregation? Slower threads seem more fruitful and less heated. Ones focused on a finite issue. The gun thread, the NASA thread. Maybe a megathread was the mistake to begin with. Wouldn't everyone feel great to post in threads about things again? Or a temporally limited thread, like February in US politics, with an actual OP and subjects, about current events and not just "muh liberals" and "muh conservatives."
Just so much potential wasted in these bans and that thread. Anyway my point is old users aren't new users, they want to post well, everyone wants to contribute, give them a reason to post well instead of trying to give them a reason not to post badly.
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TLADT24920 Posts
On February 14 2019 03:40 Starlightsun wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2019 01:28 Plansix wrote:
You noticed now GH never revealed facts about himself or his life experiences. Or his education. Or anything beyond being black. Why would he post anything about himself while posting solely in controversial threads and making many enemies? Any personal info you give is just asking for people to use it against you or try and push your buttons. I see zero upside to doing it unless you had some sort of admired credentials. It's interesting the psychological differences between people. Personally I can only dip into politics threads for awhile before all the antagonism gets to me. People who live in these threads must have a very different psychological make up than me. GH was certainly a unique character.
My guess is that by revealing more information, he would better back up his points much like the mention of taxes and Kwark being an accountant so you know that he'll likely know more than the average person. Of course, this is the internet and you should only reveal what you want.
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Or you know, humanize yourself so people treat you like a real person, rather than a faceless argument machine. Expressing some level of expertise or experience in a subject is also helpful.
But it speaks to a larger issues with GH and some other folks who argued like him: an unwillingness to articulate their views, opinions and how those were formed. It was very hard to pin GH down to any specific viewpoint or desired outcome. And people became suspicious of that since many of the people in the thread are more than willing to articulate their views.
For myself, I saw his refusal to articulate basic information indicative of someone who valued keeping people in the defensive over communicating with them. If he started to explain his views, he could be attacked for them or wouldn’t keep the person he was arguing with answering questions.
He is not the only one who was fond of this style of argument to be fair. But everyone in the politics thread got real tired of it about 2 years ago.
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the problem is not that people are unwilling to articulate their views or how they were formed. but one problem is that people are unwilling to interrogate those views and how they were formed. that was not a problem GH had. his problem was a matter of technique, too often resorting to a bad kind of escalation
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I saw the unwillingness to articulate anything as part of the escalation. It was more important to him to keep whoever he was arguing with uncertain than to communicate his exact views clearly. His priority was winning the argument. Even after the other person might have lost interest or did not feel the need to continue the discussion.
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Socialist revolution with some (a lot?) of anarchist tendencies seems like a good start
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I agree and would have inferred that from my discussions with him. But that doesn’t change my assessment of his tendency to make mercurial arguments and a refusal to articulate the points he was attempting to make.
As an easily accessible example: in the linked exchange GH is obtuse for no reason other than to hold information over others. People request information or imply that they are not sure what he is talking about. But rather than answer, he just eaclates by with further questions.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread?page=210
This is every discussion with GH and people got real tired of it.
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On February 14 2019 04:01 BigFan wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2019 03:40 Starlightsun wrote:On February 14 2019 01:28 Plansix wrote:
You noticed now GH never revealed facts about himself or his life experiences. Or his education. Or anything beyond being black. Why would he post anything about himself while posting solely in controversial threads and making many enemies? Any personal info you give is just asking for people to use it against you or try and push your buttons. I see zero upside to doing it unless you had some sort of admired credentials. It's interesting the psychological differences between people. Personally I can only dip into politics threads for awhile before all the antagonism gets to me. People who live in these threads must have a very different psychological make up than me. GH was certainly a unique character. My guess is that by revealing more information, he would better back up his points much like the mention of taxes and Kwark being an accountant so you know that he'll likely know more than the average person. Of course, this is the internet and you should only reveal what you want.
And with that I would like to reveal that I did, in fact, graduate top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I have been involved in numerous raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills...
People can and do claim absolutely anything on the internet. I have little faith in absolutely anything anyone claims about themselves to help prove their case, even if I've done that myself a couple of times. And more importantly, people are frequently wrong about things in their own field. Even Kwark could completely misunderstand the economical consequences of a situation or event. If someone's argument doesn't hold up without an explanation of who they are, then it's probably a very bad argument (Exceptions apply).
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Abolish the police. Abolish the police. Abolish the police. I don't think anyone can claim that GH was willing to articulate his views. Instead when asked to clarify, he rather just chant his slogan, constantly say that the other person has the wrong view on what his position was, without ever clarifying what his postion was. Who is GH? Who knows? What is his social economic position? Who cares? He certainly never paid taxes in his life. But what matters is his position and whether he cared to do more rather than play a game of "gotcha! That wasn't my position!"
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On February 14 2019 06:01 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2019 04:01 BigFan wrote:On February 14 2019 03:40 Starlightsun wrote:On February 14 2019 01:28 Plansix wrote:
You noticed now GH never revealed facts about himself or his life experiences. Or his education. Or anything beyond being black. Why would he post anything about himself while posting solely in controversial threads and making many enemies? Any personal info you give is just asking for people to use it against you or try and push your buttons. I see zero upside to doing it unless you had some sort of admired credentials. It's interesting the psychological differences between people. Personally I can only dip into politics threads for awhile before all the antagonism gets to me. People who live in these threads must have a very different psychological make up than me. GH was certainly a unique character. My guess is that by revealing more information, he would better back up his points much like the mention of taxes and Kwark being an accountant so you know that he'll likely know more than the average person. Of course, this is the internet and you should only reveal what you want. And with that I would like to reveal that I did, in fact, graduate top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I have been involved in numerous raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills... People can and do claim absolutely anything on the internet. I have little faith in absolutely anything anyone claims about themselves to help prove their case, even if I've done that myself a couple of times. And more importantly, people are frequently wrong about things in their own field. Even Kwark could completely misunderstand the economical consequences of a situation or event. If someone's argument doesn't hold up without an explanation of who they are, then it's probably a very bad argument (Exceptions apply).
Your argument seems to be "we can't know for sure who's right".
GH comes in with criticisms or opinions built on a very shaky, or nonexistent, foundation of facts. There are folks who have built up some credibility on certain topics based on a combination of their posting history and their (purported) real-life jobs/ academic training. These folks may call GH out on his bullshit. A third-party poster is obviously able to verify who is actually right.
Healthy debate and driving introspection/ critical examination of one's own positions is great, but that was rarely what was happening here. It was more like going through the very basics of a topic to get to a common base of facts from which to build cases for/against or whatever. And then GH would frequently call people shills or whatever and say we weren't thinking big enough, and hang the facts.
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On February 14 2019 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Abolish the police. Abolish the police. Abolish the police. I don't think anyone can claim that GH was willing to articulate his views.
In this case I would say that his view was probably that we should abolish the police.
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On February 14 2019 07:14 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2019 06:01 Excludos wrote:On February 14 2019 04:01 BigFan wrote:On February 14 2019 03:40 Starlightsun wrote:On February 14 2019 01:28 Plansix wrote:
You noticed now GH never revealed facts about himself or his life experiences. Or his education. Or anything beyond being black. Why would he post anything about himself while posting solely in controversial threads and making many enemies? Any personal info you give is just asking for people to use it against you or try and push your buttons. I see zero upside to doing it unless you had some sort of admired credentials. It's interesting the psychological differences between people. Personally I can only dip into politics threads for awhile before all the antagonism gets to me. People who live in these threads must have a very different psychological make up than me. GH was certainly a unique character. My guess is that by revealing more information, he would better back up his points much like the mention of taxes and Kwark being an accountant so you know that he'll likely know more than the average person. Of course, this is the internet and you should only reveal what you want. And with that I would like to reveal that I did, in fact, graduate top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I have been involved in numerous raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills... People can and do claim absolutely anything on the internet. I have little faith in absolutely anything anyone claims about themselves to help prove their case, even if I've done that myself a couple of times. And more importantly, people are frequently wrong about things in their own field. Even Kwark could completely misunderstand the economical consequences of a situation or event. If someone's argument doesn't hold up without an explanation of who they are, then it's probably a very bad argument (Exceptions apply). Your argument seems to be "we can't know for sure who's right". GH comes in with criticisms or opinions built on a very shaky, or nonexistent, foundation of facts. There are folks who have built up some credibility on certain topics based on a combination of their posting history and their (purported) real-life jobs/ academic training. These folks may call GH out on his bullshit. A third-party poster is obviously able to verify who is actually right. Healthy debate and driving introspection/ critical examination of one's own positions is great, but that was rarely what was happening here. It was more like going through the very basics of a topic to get to a common base of facts from which to build cases for/against or whatever. And then GH would frequently call people shills or whatever and say we weren't thinking big enough, and hang the facts.
You misunderstood my argument. My argument was that a post needs to have value for what is in it, not for who wrote it. If Kwark wrote a post about the economic consequences of DACA, you should look into the evidence and arguments that he provided, and not accept it because he's an accountant. So in that case knowing that he's an accountant in the first place is pointless (for the most part. Like I said, exceptions apply. I'm not above the appeal to authority fallacy).
So if GH wrote shit posts, they don't become less shit because he's of any specific color or from any specific place.
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On February 14 2019 07:16 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2019 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Abolish the police. Abolish the police. Abolish the police. I don't think anyone can claim that GH was willing to articulate his views. In this case I would say that his view was probably that we should abolish the police.
But when pressed he would go "no I don't mean abolish the police, I mean abolish the police, are you dumb?!"
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On February 14 2019 07:16 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2019 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Abolish the police. Abolish the police. Abolish the police. I don't think anyone can claim that GH was willing to articulate his views. In this case I would say that his view was probably that we should abolish the police.
When pressed sometimes he would say that he literally means it, and sometimes he would say he doesn't literally mean it. Sometimes he would say he wants to change it, sometimes he he wants it literally be abolished and sometimes he would say that what we call the police is not the police. It depends on which angle you are talking at him from. His position is just some nebulous concept where he can say "that wasn't my position".
I remember in particular that he mocked other posters for believing that he literally wanted to abolish the police, only a few posts later just saying that this is why the police must be abolished and got banned again.
To this day, nobody knows what he means by "abolish the police", no matter how many times had written it. It's probably the best example of this obtuse debating tactic.
It's not even particularly clever. At least Danglars implies his position, and Igne rather pretends to be politically educated, GH is just clumsy.
In the end though he got banned because he rather play a stupid game of "dare to ban me", not because he is clumsy, but it's hard to argue that he has definite position on abolish the police.
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That discussion lasted pages and sucked all the way through. I remember when I tried to discuss reform and overhauls, both of which were quickly deemed insufficient by GH. Though the discussion ended on him saying that drastic changes were necessary, but being super unclear what that would look like.
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But it is also a perfect example of a question that GH forces you to ask yourself when it's more comfortable not to; do you support the police?
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TLADT24920 Posts
On February 14 2019 07:55 Nebuchad wrote:
But it is also a perfect example of a question that GH forces you to ask yourself when it's more comfortable not to; do you support the police?
umm I don't see how that's a hard question tbh. There's nothing hard about saying yes I do but I'd also prefer if they were more careful with avoiding profiling and such etc... Granted, I'm looking at it from a Canadian perspective, not a US one.
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On February 14 2019 07:55 Nebuchad wrote:
But it is also a perfect example of a question that GH forces you to ask yourself when it's more comfortable not to; do you support the police?
Not, not really. Most people just questioned why the discussion happened and why it was so painful. Talking to a smug, self satisfied version of internet Socrates fucking sucks. Especially one that is clearly enjoying the frustration he is causing. As many people have said, he was bad at convincing people of the merits of his views. He was far more likely to frustrate them so much they wouldn’t want to engage with the topic ever. And this is from a guy that mostly agreed with GH on a bunch of topics.
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EPT
