JASKN

Racism is so stupid I'm nearly to the point where I think it's more harmful to engage in any debate about it whatsoever. It deserves no thought. I suppose it's the perfect thing for unthinkers to latch on to: no thought needed at all, just throw a quick glance at his skin tone, and make sure he ain't actin too smart.

It's your life "job" to be as happy as you can be until you're dead -- Rand says happiness is the "moral purpose of [your] life." People can change and thus society can change, but you can't make them. So, you can view a lot of the wrong around you as unchangeable as any other metaphysical thing over which you lack control. Yes, your life would be better if society were more rational, so maybe it makes sense to try to influence people in a positive way. But while you try, consider: is it making you happier? In your 80 years alive, are you happier spending 50% of your time trying to change minds? 80%? 30%? None? You'll have to decide that for yourself. But logically, it doesn't make sense to try changing society at all if you're going to be less happy trying to do it. You might very well be happiest mostly ignoring society and working on an oil rig (or whatever). If you're happiest also maybe spending some time presenting arguments on the Internet, that only makes sense because you enjoy doing it. And of course, you'll do a better job because you enjoy it. That's why the advice, "Be the best you," makes sense in response to, "How can I change society?"

To the extent that the legal system is corrupt, your would-be opponent is right to want it to change "now." But, changing any system is not instantaneous, and since people are fallible, change may take longer yet than what is inherent in the system at its best (ie. what is already *not* "now"). There's really no getting around justice being part of a system. So, change "now" would be ideal, but change "soon" is what's actually realistic. None of that is an argument against a system of justice. Any system would face the same basic reality of change taking time.

Looking at it simply, there's not much point in trying to change anyone's mind who is resistant to your effort. You may find that winds up being most people. I think it makes more sense to spot hints in people that have proven in the past to lead to rational discussions. Otherwise, there's always a forum like this, or you could write a blog, or start a local group, etc. where your time is spent on people who (currently) deserve it.

As was noted earlier, we spend very little time moderating users at all. Most users understand how this forum operates just fine after hanging around for a while. A few select users can't or won't, for whatever reason. I don't see the need to change the forum moderation for those users. But again, what benefit do you see in these changes? Making the record public will not change how the forum is moderated. So, why do it? When a user is moderated, he winds up knowing why, even if it was (unintentionally) ambiguous (which is not common -- usually at minimum a message is sent).

Not sure if you were responding as a way to reply to 2046, but my question was intended to get him to own up to the implications behind his hit-and-run post.

I'm not necessarily opposed to this. But, it would be work to implement. For one, the software is not set up in a way that all moderating history could be copied at once into a publicly viewable area. Invision has gone out of its way to separate moderating activity from other forum activity. No one has time to go through every single thread and find every "hidden" post (as I mentioned earlier), for example, and turn them into "deleted" posts and move them into a newly-created, public "Trash Can" forum (or whatever). Then, a different set of "deleted" posts (left over from moderating under old versions of Invision) would need to be restored one-by-one, and also moved one-by-one into the "Trash Can" forum. So, old moderated content can be considered "lost" to the public, even if we were to try to implement transparency. But, again I wonder what benefit this would give us? We have a small team of reasoned individuals who try to maintain a (sometimes vague -- again, the forum rules might need updating) set of standards. Even after striving to make all moderation publicly viewable, it will still be that same team which decides whether something stays moderated or not, using the same (or similar) methods as we use currently. So, I view it as a bunch of extra time-consuming moderating tasks for virtually no benefit.

It doesn't need to end in an evaluation of the person at all, actually. You could just address the nonsense at face value. There are probably many cases where this is true. But, I don't believe some users need to go around for the "benefit" of other users proclaiming, "You're irrational!" You'll still need to explain why something is irrational, which you could have done without going after the person's character. And yes, I realize, "You're irrational!" could *not* be an insult. Maybe there are some cases where it makes sense to allow banter like that to remain on the forum. That's where the forum rules get enforced differently, where different moderating teams maintain different forum standards of discourse. At this point, to me it seems like we're discussing problems which do not exist on this forum. Like DA wrote earlier, if anything the forum has a lax standard of discourse (though I don't think a low standard).

First you wrote this: I took that to mean you believe evaluations of your opponent's character should be included in your forum replies. But then you wrote: So, I don't know what point you're trying to make. I didn't say anything about disallowing "public sanction." But, if you're going to make your posts a big public sanction in place of a solid argument and focus on the ideas, you should look elsewhere on the net to do it. Ideas *can* be separated from the person presenting them, and on a forum like this with a focus on objectivity, they should be -- again, as opposed to focusing instead on the character of your opponent. I wonder how you think you could accurately evaluate a person's character over the internet. Conversely, ideas can be pulled from sensible writing relatively easily (or not, from nonsense). A person's character doesn't come into play, either way.

1. Moderators are moderated by each other. When a user contacts another moderator about mod action he deems unjust, the situation is posed to all active moderators, including the mod in question. There is no "performance review"... This is a volunteer position! 2. The process is informal, but fairly consistent: if the moderators decide the original mod action is just and fair, the user will be notified as such, and that will be the end of it. If moderators aren't unanimous, a discussion will take place. Almost always, one side will wind up agreeing with the other after different aspects are considered by everyone. This is why I mentioned earlier that I think the team does a good job -- the issue is taken seriously and minds are usually changed. There was one significant time in the past few years where strong opinions on each side never did meet in the middle. In that case, we went by majority vote, more or less. By itself, this thread seems simple enough. But, I suspect you had some motive for creating it. Before having had your fill, I would appreciate it if you would provide your opinion on the answers I've given you.

I agree. I did *not* mean that moderation should be based on argument disagreements. My point was that personality conflicts should not be fleshed out in our forum threads, where the purpose is to share and discuss ideas.

No moderator (and hopefully no user) would suggest that you withhold judgement concerning someone's character. But, when participating on the forum, what purpose does it serve to make your moral judgement explicitly or implicitly clear in each of your responses? Does it matter to the discussion what you think about your opponent? I'm not suggesting we talk like robots, but for the same reason, how you respond makes a real difference to the progression of a discussion. Not taking into account the purpose of your response, and how your tone plays into that, in most cases will make the discussion worse for you, too, with distracting personal conflict. I'm also not saying you should treat people you like the same as those you don't. By all means, choose to ignore and converse with someone else. It's a lot better than wasting everyone's time with petty moral proclamations on others' character.

Personally, I would have removed this post for this last sentence, had the topic not been specifically about the forum members who are moderators. I almost wanted to remove it anyway, since it is basically throwing the moderation back in moderators' faces. We can't really remove this, can we, since it would be proving the implicit thread criticism. I am definitely for suggestions concerning forum moderating. But, it goes both ways. We're all people/users, and I think it would be best for everyone to strive to make the forum a better experience instead of promoting the conflict that we're presumably hoping to fix.

Say the forum moderating was completely transparent. What would that look like? Would you have all the moderated content thrown into a forum area that is viewable by all users? I believe (not sure, though) that we used to have this very thing publicly viewable, before Invision updated the software and made it a mod-only area. But say we could bring that back -- would it make a difference? If you were to see content that Eiuol removed and you disagreed with his decision, the process to restore that content would be pretty much the same: mod review followed by a final decision. You'd still be trusting the mod team with moderation decisions.

What was Furguson about?

Like I said, controversial moderation (whether between moderators or between moderators and other users) almost always sees multiple moderators weighing in. So, it's not often you'd get "stuck" with any one particular moderator.

Deleting posts is just one way in which forum moderators try to maintain and respect the forum rules. The enforcement and interpretation of those rules, however, has changed over ten years under different sets of moderators. In members' post tone, for example, prior moderators might have had less tolerance than current moderators. So: 1. The objective criteria should be the forum rules. Those rules are old and not followed close to "the letter,"and could be due for some updating. 2. Invision software deals with removed content in two ways: "hide" a post in-thread, where only moderators can see the offending content, and delete the post outright, where it no longer exists in-thread and then shows up in another moderator-only area. It's possible but not typical for moderators to permanently delete content from that area (posts exist from 2005), though after a while there isn't much point in keeping it around. 3. Naturally, moderators do not need all other moderators' approval to moderate. That would defeat the purpose of having multiple moderators. However, for especially controversial issues, all currently active moderators usually weigh in. 4. If the offense is ambiguous, a moderator will usually give a reason for removing content (there's a built-in box for this). If he doesn't, he may be asked for a reason later if the issue is ongoing. 5. Ultimately, if there would be such a serious offense in moderation, the forum's owner David Veksler would likely get involved. That doesn't happen often. I think that the moderator team generally does a good job. Even in heated matters (which are not common), in the past it hasn't taken long for the team to cool down and put on a more objective hat even when judging one's own behavior and moderating decisions.

This really goes a long way. It's uncanny how most students in all sorts of subjects will do better under teachers who simply expect better work and who consistently teach with that attitude. This was on display for me recently at a school reunion of sorts. In high school, we had a choir director who decided his students were going to sing at a certain level, usually performing pieces which were above even the skill levels of most colleges. What do you know, year after year, for 25 years, his choirs performed at that level, with members aged 15-18. I know it was above college work because I've been in and seen choirs from many different colleges, across many different types of college music programs. Then, at the reunion, everyone had the best, positive memories of all their prior effort and achievement. Now that I think about it, Teacher With Expectations could be the name of every one of those motivational-type underdog movies.

I don't see why not. Once a child hits puberty, it's pretty ridiculous to act like they're still pre-sexual by hiding facts about their bodies and urges from them, as if it doesn't exist. The separate but related issue is legal recognition of independence. Legally, it's tricky when a kid becomes sexual at 13, their parents forbid sexual activity (even if they've educated the kid about his own sexuality), but the kid has sex anyway. I suppose it would follow that it would also be tricky morally, as an adult outside party. But, I still come back to the blind eye toward young sexuality. Personally, I think it's ridiculous. I can't think of a single young sexual "experience" (broadest sense, here) which "scarred" me for life. I even remember thinking, "When am I supposed to feel violated..?" It all seemed so ridiculous to me at the time, when I was younger.

I think Nicky's point is that it's impossible to "shame" someone without making it personal. No one on the internet knows the woman, nor tried to find her and know her. It wouldn't even have been possible if they'd tried. Without knowing her personal circumstances, not enough is known about her to shame her, even if you wanted to. Maybe you could ignorantly lump every fat person into the exact same context and try to condemn that context, but that wouldn't be shaming, because it wouldn't be specific to one person, and it would be false anyway, since no context is exactly the same. The picture at face value is funny, in the most easily-interpreted context -- woman is so not into exercise that she's sitting in a chair on a treadmill. That's funny to me, anyway! If I knew the lady, maybe that wouldn't be funny, I don't know. But I don't need to nor do I want to know the lady. Who cares! I have my life, she has hers, we share nothing, not even the picture, since the context I've made up for it to laugh at could be completely false for all I know. I'd guess that what you call joke-shaming with malicious intent, Nicky would call only an insult, or at least an attempt at an insult if no context is known. Edit: Also, it's hard not to interpret you thinking that saying, "You have no sense of humor" is an insult, as a further example of said lack of humor! "You have no sense of humor" is a flat judgement when stated plainly. It could be intended as an insult, but in my experience it's usually used as an expression of annoyance at someone taking something too seriously.

Thanks for answering my questions. I think my remaining problem is with the culture's apparent evasion of young sexuality. A blind eye is turned to adolescents having sex with adolescents, but when one party is an adult, it's considered one of the most abhorrent sins. Ignorance of the sin of young sexuality (two adolescent parties) is "innocent," but knowledge of the age context (one adult) is guilty.

Ironically, Mary Kay Letourneau's now-husband of ten years says he would not approve of their two daughters having a sexual relationship with one of their teachers. Was the original affair wrong? When did it become right? Was a seven-year prison sentence justified? http://abcnews.go.com/US/mary-kay-letourneau-fualaau-vili-fualaau-detail-path/story?id=30160737#.VSgVIE0dbQg.twitter

Before you lost 70 pounds, how were you thinking about your body differently, as related to your person? I ask because I can't really imagine going through life without being aware of my own body. Am I misinterpreting?

Am I missing something? She admitted the picture was funny face value. The ruder the comments the less funny and more damning for the commenters' personal character. Why does she care what they think about her? Hm...: "... my billions of whiny, oversensitive cells slough and reproduce like they just didn’t get the memo. And I wake up another day."

You could also try searching the Lexicon under "M".