sittingbison said:
The problem is you and others have no idea what is being said to other members. You have no idea what gentle pushes are being made, or pre warnings, or warnings, or final warnings. You have no idea what gets moderated or what gets deleted. You have no idea who makes complaints, or if those complaints are acted on.
Trolling? Baiting?? your own OP is borderline with the Butch Reynolds scenario. Some believe more than borderline, and risk bans for labeling it as such or have reported it. Yet it has not been deleted or moderated in any way. Nor has the "skyidiot" reference, because your response to that is worth reading.
Mods posting in threads? Then being attacked for being insensitive, inappropriate, sarcastic or inflaming? The flip side is using some gentle humour to alleviate a potentially inflamed situation, but that doesn't always work because various posters have their own agenda that has nothing to do with fair play or ettiquette. And some have a bee in their bonnet.
People will take ANY comment the way they want to, not how it is intended. Which is probably the single reason why some posters think mods should not also post. However mods posting also demonstrates their personal style, so posters get used to them. See amsterhammers posts about Hiero2 and Alpe...it was ALL about the style of the moderator.
Thanks for taking time to respond. And hiero.
And other than a questionable reference to "humour" - I have no reason to believe that you yourself do other than a sterling job in trying to bring sanity into the chaos, as I said - I own a high traffic forum nothing to do with cycling, and I know what a thankless job moderating is, so let me give my vote of thanks to those willing to do it at all.
Whatever nudges are made to others I do know is that in the case I cite of an unprecedented and unjustified 3 month ban no "nudging" was ever attempted, so nudging is certainly selective.
But whatever "nudges" were or are made, they clearly had and have no effect here, since the same poster went on in the very next post to change the insult of sky supporters from "skyidiots" to "skrybabies" for disliking being victims of his continuous ad hominem ridicule, and to describe what I posted with the inflammatory label "your BS".
There is a group of posters in the clinic who have got so used to direct and indirect ad hominem ridicule going unsanctioned as above that it is now ingrained and cultural here.
They tend to appear in groups in concerted cyber bullying of people whose views they dislike and they act as a "herd" in baiting them, instances seen on this thread "herd" is the psychological behavioural word for it, but it is the same as any street gang or mob who think they rule a "precinct".
The hog , now he has been raised, is a fine example of that. The mob "cheered" and expressed support for him, when the hog deliberately baiting Joachim resulted in responses that disproportionately got "hog" banned a week, and joachim perma banned. To the mob that was a result. Also references to "successes" for the "clinic 12" that appear in other posts from time to time demonstrate they identify as a herd.
IT is sad for the forum, because Joachims posts till he got frustrated with the same things that frustrate me were worth reading. They contained useful information not ad hominem attack. In the end I think he lost his caution in posting, not just because of frustration, but because he had seen enough to know that nothing was going to change any time soon.
He voiced exactly the same opinions that Airstream does on another thread. He called the clinic an "echo chamber", where only one view was permitted to be heard. The ones who get banned are rarely the clinic mob with non stop adhominem baiting, but the ones who post views the mob do not like.
I have seen several other useful posters leave in frustration.
You are also missing the point entirely over the Butch reynolds affair - which is typical of another type of insidious posting here.
That is the deliberate derailing of threads. Arguing a detail ad infinitum that loses the original thread completely.
My entire thesis was: and is fact, that the sporting establishment was so worried about how close it perceived it had come to being bankrupted by the Reynolds affair, that it heralded profound changed in the way doping affairs were handled henceforth - the general secretary of IAAF stated they moved to monaco because of it, and the contracts between federations and sports people certainly changed dramatically as fall out from that. All fact. No point in arguing about it. As an athletics official, and with an international athlete in the family we saw first hand the fallout from that.
The mob derailed that entirely by arguing fine semantics on who "won" or "lost" individual cases along the way somehow believing that changed the underlying statement, or was even relevant to it. Not so. It all added heat not light, particularly because those who chose to contest it , did in the normal rude and ridiculing manner. The reynolds affair changed the way sport handled doping.
It really does not matter whether RaceRadio thinks Reynolds won or lost, by digging up long finished cases. What matters is the IAAF were demonstrably so worried, as statements from the general secretary proved, (and other sports bodies looking on, knowing "it could have been them") that they changed they way they do business : sports contracts with federations were changed in the light of that affair across many sports, not just athletics. And that is the significance of it.
So your comment above clearly shows that the responses have so far derailled the original argument that you too seem to think that the semantics of who "won" or "lost" is even a material issue, which it is not, or you would not have made veiled references to "borderline" above. Derailling is a problem here. I got a week ban for telling people something informative about the history of doping!
I note on this thread, that the thread has derailed to details. Not helped by the injection of ridicule from some.. Brodeal seems far more interested in challenging the detail of who reports posts, than the fact of a stream of ad hominem baiting which might lead to emotive responses from me but so far has not.
Back to the substance of the thread.
The substance of it was not one bad decision - it was a sequence of them which implied "presumption of guilt" - the halting of a sensible thread for having "alterior motives" in which I challenge any sane person to find a credible "alterior motive" for wanting to discuss a non contentious cycling issue on a cycling forum! An unprecedented 3 month ban without warning for calling members "historic bad guys" when the evidence shows did no such thing. None of the nudging took place.
Some suggest I should conduct this in private: not so. I was wrongfully and very publicly vilified for something I did not do.Despite a stream of insults that have flowed my way, which seemingly continues unabated on this thread, I never did call other members "historic bad guys" as accused in public, so my defense is rightly public too.
I am disappointed that neither the owners, nor the moderators in question have cared to comment on the matters.
So - sitting bison. I shall now withdraw from the thread - until and if- the orignal moderators or owners comment on the matter.
The owners have to choose. Do they want a forum where ideas are debated, or do they want a place where ad hominem posters ridicule unchallenged in the continual game of baiting people whose ideas they do not like, driving serious posters with alternative views away?
The use of "Skrybabies and Skyidiots " says it all. There is a serious attitude problem of too many long standing posters. The forum will not change until that behaviour is not tolerated. What happened to respecting other posters?
There are all sorts of insidious forms of this, take the frequent replacing of actual quoting with inflammatory replacement [Quote: A poster] <nonsense and troll babble>[/quote], rather than what they actually said... That should be sanctioned every time.
As regards the humour issue - I accept there was no malicious intent on your part, not so of the original post. I can only repeat again that Humour is impersonal and laughing together with others, the ridicule or irony of a situation. Ridicule is laughing at someone specific so your "humour" in that case was ridiculing me for being incensed about wrongful banning, and ergo not humour at all.
I actually think moderators should have two accounts. One to post as ordinary members, the other
"moderator12" or whatever, which is totally dispassionate, only posting on matters of moderation.
As people mods can express or side with any views or posters they like. Not as moderators
As I said earlier on this post, it will be my last until and if the owners, or moderators actually involved comment on the matters in hand.