Politics ban

I had completed the first step with my KahBoom account, and received no reply, but will contact the mod again.

Ah, it was Mr E who suggested the Dispute Resolution - however, it is a Politics ban I am taking issue with, so I will contact the Politics mod involved. No worries anyway, am in the process of contacting them.

If that was the case, then why was I banned from Political Theory after I closed my account, and why does Mr E pass on that any mention of MMT, may lead me to trouble? (also, who was it that banned me from PT, after closing my account?)

That heavily implies, that what you are saying to me here, conflicts with what is being said behind-the-scenes, and with how things are actually enforced.


The term 'within reason' is, you admit yourself, entirely subjective "what Kyuss views as within reason, and what any third party views as within reason" - think about that:
That means I have to be able to read your mind, to be able to know when you will or will not card me, for bringing up that topic.

This is even more important: If I recall correctly, you carded me when I did not even bring up MMT, prior to the Politics ban - you made assumptions about what I was posting, labeling it MMT, when it was not - so that means I can hardly post at all on certain topics, because I have no idea when I am going to get carded - even when I had not breached a mod warning, because what I discussed was not MMT (and this helped lead to my ban).

The problem is, I can't read other peoples minds, and know what they think is 'reasonable', or when they (entirely wrongly) interpret something as MMT.

It also means that when you 'think' something is a breach of the rules, there is no way for me to contest that, because normally you refuse to discuss whether or not something was actually MMT - again, anyone can reasonably see, that this leaves me with no idea of what I can/can't talk about, or how to quantify 'how much' is too much, and that it effectively censors me.


I think also that you may not be impartial on this topic - I too, think you are an entirely honest poster, and have a lot of respect for your detailed posts on Politics - but you are engaging in ad-hominem here, with stuff like "the evangelical fire burns as strong as ever, and the lack of insight remains total".

Such statements, I doubt you would say about the largely Neoclassical economic views, that dominate the Politics forum (views that are heavily criticized internationally, as being dogmatic/evangelical themselves...) - the forum lacks a plurality of economic views - something that economic students worldwide, are trying to reform within economics right now:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Student_Initiative_for_Pluralist_Economics
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_in_economics

The Politics forum should not reflect one (or a few similar) narrow set(s) of economic views - all should be free to be debated.


It should be noted as well, that the entirely subjective/inconsistent modding here, means that one of the most important areas of political discussion - Post-Keynesian based alternatives to austerity and ways to resolve the economic crisis - is de-facto out-of-bounds for discussion on the Politics forum.

Thanks.

Taltos wrote: »

Also note, all other comments above in relation to other mods who later retracted such comments and apologised, while you may feel a grievance at this all it is doing here is muddying the waters and will be ignored. Let's keep the facts pertinent.

Regarding that, I accepted the apology at the time, and don't have a further issue with that mod - just they are not impartial here - but the private note on my ban is relevant:
Why was it privately marked as trolling? This shows that the real reason why I was banned, was not the reason I was told by mods at the time - which calls the validity of the ban into question.

Taltos wrote:

Mr E also explained about the post closure bans, I see no need to repeat his explanation here, although if you want a timeline of bans / accounts etc I can facilitate that if it will help.

I'm very confused about that post-close ban, so that would help yes, thanks!

Sorry that this has created a lot of work for you - the reasons why I think the ban is unjust, are a bit complicated alright - to the point, that I'm not sure this will get far.

Thanks - it was more the way I personally was moderated against, which I think is directly relevant to my ban - it left me in an impossible position, where I was told I could discuss something 'within reason', but this was (in my view) enforced unfairly, because I had no idea what mods thought was 'within reason' - they never specified this, I could only find out by getting carded - which makes many cardings and the ban unfair.

Otherwise though, that sounds acceptable.

Okey, that clarifies that well - cheers!

(While I clarify my view and the problem I have on a lot of things below, I accept the result of the DR at the end - so, not trying to debate/contest each point )

Taltos wrote:

I have reviewed your infraction history. For Politics and it’s sub-for a it stands at
Warnings = 10; Infractions = 3; Bans = 3. And that is just from 625 posts there.

This is not a good track record, irrespective of the timeframe, but just out of interest in your case this is just since 2012.

One problem I had when I posted in Politics - and this led to a number of my warnings/infractions - is the posters I was debating with:
There is a problem with debating certain topics, where multiple posters would be routinely uncivil/condescending, dragging down the quality of debate in order to be like that, but they can get away with this without mod action, because it is often done in numbers (multiple posters piling on).

I would return the same kind of tone when replying to these posters, yet because I was debating against multiple posters of this type, I would accrue more warnings/infractions.

So ya, I have been uncivil in my posting history - but my defense there is it is nearly always responding in kind, to others who usually (due to numbers) did not tot up warnings/infractions.
This works fine in After Hours, where posters don't gain an advantage by piling-on like that, but in Politics, it's a good way of getting a minority-side to tot-up mod actions, or to just shout them down.

Taltos wrote:

I have gone through some of these posts that were carded as well as your thread in feedback and the thread “A discussion on the rules”. These are the primary ones that are worrying me. The above passion I mentioned for your posts here seems to have blinded you to your behaviour and the impact you are having on the forum. In saying this I already know you probably won’t be able to accept this, you’ll see it as another example of mod conspiracy which for the record it isn’t.

Ah, I don't view it as a mod conspiracy - even though I think it may be a 'little' bit personalized - I think it's more a fundamental (and probably unresolvable - which is why I've not been hopeful with this appeal) disagreement, over the view that economics intersects with and is a part of politics, not something separate.

On the statement where I say "All political discussion is inextricably intertwined with economics" - is that something people disagree with, and take as the point where my enthusiasm for the topic, goes too far?

If so, that might be a good point of focus, for trying to resolve this - but it would probably need to be on Feedback (or better, Political Theory), not DR - I think (after a lot of researching to refine my argument), I could prove that economics is inherently a part of politics - the problem though, is I am almost certain that mods/admins don't want to entertain that (that's how it went down, when I tried before).

Taltos wrote:

But worse in my mind is your willful disregard of the rules – I cannot ignore this:

KyussBishop wrote:

As a side note (unrelated to the point you're making): With MMT, government does not even need to use national debt to fund spending, government can create money and spend it directly

While my point there was unrelated to the persons post, it was related to the topic, as budget deficits are the no.1 topic that MMT applies to.
So the problem there, is how could I know whether that was inside or outside of the rules? This is why I think it is a de-facto-banned topic (even if mods don't intend it to be) - I had no way to know at all, when a mod was going to card me for it, because even when it seemed related to the topic, I was not safe to mention it.

Taltos wrote:

I have to balance the repeated requests from the mods for you to disentangle your MMT economic slant on threads from the political aspect (known as soapboxing), I also have to balance the impact on the forum as a whole, I can see a number of posters who have given up on reporting your posts and have simply closed their accounts. That alone speaks volumes to me, we can’t allow one individual to disrupt the flow of a forum or indeed become such a timesink to the mods (who are volunteers) to this extent. Just looking at your infraction history above in 2 years screams that your posts are generating an excessive amount of work for the team.

We generally call this type of posting as soap boxing or trolling (in some circumstances) or as a poster becoming a time sink.

It's a pity that people view economics, as something that can be separated from politics - as mentioned above, I think that is part of the fundamental disagreement between me and mods/others.

Ya, I didn't like that my posts generated a lot of work for mods, the trouble though is that it is an extremely controversial topic (probably one of the most controversial), which brought out a lot of trolling against me as well (I'd say economic topics, are more 'dirty' than even Israel vs Palestine topics) - and mod action would get concentrated on me, due to the 'numbers' problem described above.

So, posters holding controversial minority views, naturally will create more work for mods - so if you view them as 'causing trouble' because of this, then that tends to lead to silencing controversial/minority views, because they generate more work.

Taltos wrote:

With this in mind I am going to support the Ban from Politics. However, you are not banned from Political Theory, this to me is unusual, normally if you are banned from the parent forum you are banned from ALL sub-fora. However Scofflaw has made an argument to let you stay and the rest of the mod team supported this, I am not going to countermand that.

Here then is my suggestion – take it if you will but think on it at least, prove yourself in PT, don’t run afoul of the rules again and in one year PM the mod team and ask them to reconsider your ban in Politics based on your input over the last year. This is their call though, they may reject it, but if you prove yourself they will at least give it serious and fair consideration.

Please let me know if you are willing to accept this and work with the forum mods or if not you can request an Admin to review your call to lift the ban from Politics.

That is fair enough, and I won't take the DR thread further - can I ask though, what kind of rules are in place on PT? I don't feel I can discuss any Post-Keynesian-economics related stuff there, because I would have the same problem of not knowing when I can get mod action.

Another poster actually made a point, not long ago (on Political Theory), of constantly accusing me of posting about MMT, to try and generate mod action against me - to the point I had to get a mod to step in against him - so you can see, that it is a very easy topic to censor, and can even be used to censor non-MMT topics when I discuss them (how will I know what mods think of as MMT? I have had mod action against posts that had nothing to do with MMT, where it is stated they do touch on MMT), because there is no certainty on when mods might warn/infract me - this actually allows other posters to try and censor me too, just by accusing me of discussing it (this all creates a large 'chilling-effect' on the topic).


Anyway, many thanks for looking this over Taltos You've given a very balanced look at this - I think the main problem I would have taking this further, is convincing people of how economics/politics are intertwined, and how this can't be separated from discussion of politics (and I'm not sure it would be possible to convince people, which is a pity, and probably means can never successfully appeal - but maybe I'll do a PT thread on that).