A discussion on the rules.

Greetings friendly moderators,

I have a question regarding shills and the position of the moderators in relation to shills on the politics board as I didn’t see any reference to them in the charter.

I have no problem with debate and I believe we have a healthy mix of lefties / right wingers and piggies in the middle on this here forum. Debate is healthy on this forum and I like throwing ideas out and having them challenged by some of our more pedantic users as when they stand up to honest and honourable debate that’s when you know you have a good position. Note I said honest and honourable debate.

There is one user in particular who I feel does not use honest and honourable debate and I believe that user to be a shill who has the intentions of attacking anything which contradicts the political status quo in Ireland and anything which criticises the current government of Ireland. Some people are good at picking apart other users posts and this is their style of debate and for the most part I think such users are a valuable asset to the politics boards. The Corinthian springs to mind as being a very good debater who uses this tactic and I feel the Corinthian is a great asset to the politics board but the user I have a problem with is a very poor mans Corinthian and lacks any of the Corinthians logic and reason. This I would not have a problem with except for the fact that this particular user deliberately introduces a straw man into most of his/her arguments / misinterprets posts so often that I can’t believe them to be genuine mistakes and shifts the issues by replying to totally separate issues as to the points discussed. I believe in real life politics we call these people spin doctors or even plain and simple liars.

This user has on a number of occasions called anyone s/he disagrees with a fundamentalist which I find rather Ironic as the alleged shill in question has a fundamentalist belief in our present government (FF being the party s/he is most likely to be a member of imo) and is also an unquestioning fundamentalist catholic who is not afraid to throw religion into debates to muddy the waters. I find this user to be extremely close minded, extremely arrogant and extremely dangerous to the effectiveness of this board as I believe it to be his/her intention to disrupt discussions in which s/he has an interest in making sure doesn’t take place.

The user in question has on a number of occasions claimed to be a policy maker or a member of a study group or of having a prominent role in interacting with groups or issues under discussion but always in an ambiguous way and not actually saying what his/her actual role is. This gives the illusion of authority on a subject when the reality could be the user is a member of a group of two people sitting in a pub discussing politics or a member of a FF policy making body. We just don’t know which is true as the user just implies authority rather than stating what his/her authority is. The alleged shill uses these tactics on other forums when defending his/her other interest, i.e. the Catholic Church. I realise that other boards are for other moderators but the consistency in tactics of this user across boards.ie in general has helped me form my opinion as misquoting, straw men and shifting of issues and then putting the onus on the other person to prove or disprove a point which our alleged shill has manufactured to derail a legitimate debate are used universally across many threads by this user.

After becoming increasingly frustrated by this user of this board who I wont mention by name, I decided to look up the definition of a shill and see if it applied to the user in question. This is an extract from the wiki definition of a shill.

“In online discussion media, such as message boards, discussion forums, and newsgroups, shills may pose as independent experts, satisfied consumers, or “innocent” parties with specific opinions in order to further the interests of an organization in which they have an interest, such as a commercial vendor or special-interest group. For example, an employee of a company that produces a specific product may praise the product anonymously in a discussion forum or group in order to heighten and generate interest in that product, or a member or sympathizer of a special-interest group may pose as a highly-qualified expert in a specific field in order to give apparently disinterested support to whatever cause the group promotes.”

“Many people consider the use of shills in journalism—usually by commercial or political interests—to be the most dangerous of all. The term is applied metaphorically, by comparison with the above, to commentators who have vested interests in or associations with parties in a controversial issue. Usually this takes the form of a show or network pretending to be offering news when in fact they are simply repeating "talking points" offered by a political party.

Journalistic ethics, of course, require full disclosure of conflicts of interest, and of any interference by other parties with the reportage. But it is difficult to draw the line between normal influence and illicit interference. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the internalization of sponsors' values by members of commercial media make it impossible to notice such conflicts of interest.”

I believe the above definitions apply to the person in question. There is no problem with any supporter or any member of a political party engaging in debate to defend or praise their chosen party but when a user poses as a partisan debater and then uses tactics such as shifting of issues, misquoting other users giving a false impression of their opponents views and also openly admiting to wanting to attack everything they view as fundamentalist (which I believe in his/her opinion to be everything not government friendly) then I think we have a shill operating who has the intention of ruining every discussion he/she feels might not be favourable to his/her political and religious alligence. This alledged shill does so by means other than fair and reasonable debate.

What is the response to such users? Is this sort of tactic deemed worthy of intelligent debate or do we have a shill problem? I don’t want to name the person here, I just want clarify what is deemed acceptable debate on the politics board and if the above tactics are unacceptable could a note be added to the charter. If requested by a mod I will pm the name of the person I have come to believe to be both a troll and a shill and as such a hostile barrier to honest debate on our otherwise critically fair forum. Perhaps the mods can monitor the user and decide for themselves whether or not we have a shill.

irish1 wrote:

Can I guess? or would that be out of Order.

Actually I suspect everyone knows who "the user" is

I think a public guess might be out of order until we get some clarification from the mods as to whether or not the user in question is simply an awkward poster to deal with or something more sinister. No point leaving your good self open to a ban because you accuse someone of being something that the mods don't recognise that they are. I suggest we await word from a mod on such tactics as I described before we liable ourselves.

clown bag wrote:

The Corinthian springs to mind as being a very good debater who uses this tactic and I feel the Corinthian is a great asset to the politics board but the user I have a problem with is a very poor mans Corinthian and lacks any of the Corinthians logic and reason.

If you were a chick I’d buy you a drink

Seriously, there are and always will be shills and demagogs here. While some may actively be promoting the interests of certain organisations, the more common variety will simply be looking to promote their, often fuzzy, Worldview which they are never actually interested in testing in debate. They’re not working for any organised group, but essentially their modi operandai add up to the same thing - if I had a cent for every nut who’d claimed he’d figured out how to achieve Utopia here, I’d be able to buy a newspaper, albeit a tabloid.

As for dealing with them, you simply pick holes in their arguments. Eventually you will pick so many holes in them that people will simply laugh at them (more correctly, other posters, sensing a poster on a losing defensive, will turn on them). Then they lose their cool, insult you / the other users and get promptly banned. And so another one bites the dust.

Thanks for the replies people. I'll leave the situation in the mods capable hands.

Rock Climber wrote:

Where I'd have a problem,is if the offending poster just mucked up threads with garbage and non listening ism's (to coin a phrase) on a regular basis.

That's more or less how I view this particular poster.

The Corinthian wrote:

If you were a chick I’d buy you a drink

If you happen to see the lady about be sure to come on over an buy me a drink and I'll save you a dance.

PM sent to Tristrame just on the off chance that my little irritation isn't one of the two people under his watchful eye however I'm fairly confident that you are probably already on the case.

The Corinthian wrote:

Seriously, there are and always will be shills and demagogs here. While some may actively be promoting the interests of certain organisations, the more common variety will simply be looking to promote their, often fuzzy, Worldview which they are never actually interested in testing in debate. They’re not working for any organised group, but essentially their modi operandai add up to the same thing - if I had a cent for every nut who’d claimed he’d figured out how to achieve Utopia here, I’d be able to buy a newspaper, albeit a tabloid.

Just about anyone can accuse their political opponents of promoting a fuzzy worldview, and of being a nut with a foolproof plan to achieve utopia. For example, try and argue with a Thatcher/Pinochet supporter about why monetarism was such a failure and you might as well be talking to the wall. As Orwell points out in Notes On Nationalism, having picked their side, people often persuade themselves that it is the strongest, and they stick to that belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against them.

The Corinthian wrote:

Of course they can, don't take this so personally. And just to show I'm a good sport, I'll buy you a pint too when the revolution comes.

You've lost me I'm afraid. Unless you're trying to deflect my criticism of your rather arrogant point by trying to paint me as being one of those nuts you were on about?

The Corinthian wrote:

What did I say about taking things personally?

So how was that 'revolution' jibe anyway relevant to my post, which you have to admit is a fair and accurate observation? I think your response was more than a little bit ironic considering clown bag's post above about the debating tactics of shills/trolls.

Perhaps I was wrong not to include my reasoning behind posting the extract, but as irish1 says, it was intended as an update (an extremely important one at that) to the Iraq/War on Terror/Foreign Policy debate.

As for my supposedly 'controversial' statement, I don't think it controversial that Ireland, in its supply of a military refueling station helped facilitate the US war machine. To the extent that it did, we the Irish people were 'involved with a crime or offence' (for it was/and is a crime, an International crime). Therefore to some extent, yet to (and perhaps never) determined by a court of law, the Irish government and in turn the Irish people (for we live in a democracy?) are guilty of complicity in this illegal war.

This report has as yet not been reported by our national broadcaster. In fact, it has barely been reported anywhere. In the interests of political debate, and considering the 'attempted lynching' of Bertie for a much lesser crime recently (though still what appears by the facts a crime), it is as much a comment on the boundaries of 'acceptable' political debate in this country (in that Bertie will never apologise for our involvement, which many protested, whereas he was forced to, for his financial transgressions).

Best, FYI (male, by the way)

Sgt. Sensible wrote:

I've never voted for FF or the PDs. And no one who did vote for them was ever asked if it was ok for the US to use our country to facilitate an illegal war.

Hence the question in brackets.

oscarBravo wrote:

Whoah, whoah, whoah, this thread is a discussion on the rules, not a discussion on the Iraq war. Take it somewhere else.

Sorry, I realised this after I posted.