Mods abusing powers to take the piss

Brown Bomber

Hello,

I'd like to register a complaint. I feel mods are abusing their powers to belittle and patronise users of this site.

I opened a thread in the conspiracy theories forum titled The Science Delusion - The Banned TED Talk

Without going into too much detail it is a interesting TED talk by a noted biologist which TED censored themselves (conspiracy 1) and it challenges the dogmatism of the scientific community (conspiracy 2)

This was swiftly moved to the Atheism & Agnosticism forum for reasons unknown and worse unstated.

From there I am not quite sure what happened. It has somehow ended up merged into a thread entitled "The Hazards of Belief" - again without even a note of explanation.

It has no place being there. The "Hazards of Belief" thread serves little purpose as far as I can see other than atheists mocking non-atheists. I went to the OP to find out what the thread was about and it was a story about a mentally-ill Christian man being mauled to death by a lion. This was greeted by chorus of laughter and hateful comments of how the world is better off without this man, how lucky that he now can't reproduce etc.

On the whim of a mod my perfectly valid thread has been afforded unique treatment/punishment where it has been delegitimised and equated with a mentally-ill Christian being savaged by a lion.

There are no genuine reasons for this. The stated reason by Robin is that the scientist in question has some vague religious beliefs. However, his personal beliefs are irrelevant to the talk he has given.

As this is the second time this has happened in succession I am inclined to believe that it is personal. Robin has previously thanked posts that contained personal abuse towards me and handed out personal abuse to me also in the forum he is supposed to moderate.

I would like to point finally that I have stuck to my word and have enforced a self-imposed exile regarding the A & A forum and have had no dealings with the forum or the mods except for when Robin came onto a conspiracy theories forum and oddly started issuing mod instructions to me and he had to get kicked off the thread.

coffee_cake

Brown Bomber wrote: »

This was swiftly moved to the Atheism & Agnosticism forum for reasons unknown and worse unstated.

From there I am not quite sure what happened. It has somehow ended up merged into a thread entitled "The Hazards of Belief" - again without even a note of explanation.

Really?

Penn wrote: »

I should point out, this was originally posted in Conspiracy Theories but I moved it here as there was no conspiracy outlined and this forum seemed a better fit for it.

robindch wrote: »

As Penn pointed out above, your thread was moved from Conspiracy Theories and as it didn't warrant a separate thread here, the posts were moved -- as I said above -- into this thread which is the forum's best match for Mr Sheldrake and his silly ideas.As the thread title and the OP suggest, this thread is for posts about the human tendency to elevate unevidenced beliefs over reality, and the people who do that kind of thing. Mr Sheldrake fits this description well.

You were told by both mods why it was moved to where it was

BB wrote:

As this is the second time this has happened in succession I am inclined to believe that it is personal. Robin has previously thanked posts that contained personal abuse towards me and handed out personal abuse to me also in the forum he is supposed to moderate.

Robin didn't move your thread from CT, by the looks of it, so it has zero to do with him.

Zaph

This relates to a specific issue, and is therefore better suited to Help Desk rather than Feedback.

Brown Bomber

bluewolf wrote: »

Really?

You were told by both mods why it was moved to where it was .

Yes really. Perhaps you could pay more attention to the details. Penn moved the thread without a request of the OP (me) to explain the forum relevant angle of the topic. This is something I would have been happy to do and the standard way of doing things in the CT forum

Penn informed Galvasean, not me. This was Robin's half-arsed non-explanation:

Mr Sheldrake stopped doing science many years ago and in recognition of that
fact, that post has been moved here, to the "Hazards of Belief" thread.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=85196862&postcount=3641

Rupert Sheldrake has not "stopped doing science". As I've said there was no valid reason to move the thread to a scrap heap of unwanted opinions other than Robin's personal reasons which have no place in influencing his moderating decisions.

bluewolf wrote: »

Robin didn't move your thread from CT, by the looks of it, so it has zero to do with him.

Again, you need to familiarise yourself with the details. While it's nice that you rush to the defence of your nearest and dearest I would prefer a more objective input.

RDM_83 again

I'm confused as why it would be moved to A&A though over the other forums I mention, I haven';t watched the entire talk (and don't agree with it anyway) but why not move it to a board in the Sciences section or the Humanities/Philosophy forum where it could be critiqued there or possibly the Paranormal forum. Each of those seem as valid as A&A, particularly since the op is banned from A&A??

Penn

The reason why your thread was moved from CT in the first place was because going by your OP, the video on TED was about a talk about atheism which many atheists disagreed with so TED removed it from their main site.

That's not a conspiracy.

I'd also point out the following link from TEDs blog which still contains the videos (which means they haven't fully removed them) and explains why they were removed from the main site:
http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/

Given the main theme of the thread being related to atheism, and the lack of a conspiracy, I felt it could make for a good discussion on the A&A forum. I would note however that I did check to see if you were banned from A&A before moving it, as moving your discussion thread to a forum you had been banned from probably would have been "taking the p*ss". I was not aware of any "self-imposed exile".

Dades

BB, I think you have a point about where your post ended up. Looking at the content of the video, and the as the furor associated with it, CT does seem like a better fit.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

This was swiftly moved to the Atheism & Agnosticism forum for reasons unknown and worse unstated.

Regarding how it got there, I have my thoughts.

It probably had something to do with your remarks that accompanied the video:

Brown Bomber wrote: »

As it attacked the religion of the militant atheist, materialism, this lead to some militant atheists throwing their toys out of their prams and getting the talk removed from the TED website.

Which hyperbole in turn probably resulted in the swift moving of the thread, within A&A, into a thread it was felt such comments deserved. A little quid pro quo, perhaps.

So, what remains now is to decide what to do with it. If you want I'll request the CT mods accept it back (with or without subsequent A&A comments). Or it can be left there... or it can be purged completely. Your call, BB.

Brown Bomber

Penn wrote: »

The reason why your thread was moved from CT in the first place was because going by your OP, the video on TED was about a talk about atheism which many atheists disagreed with so TED removed it from their main site.


That's not a conspiracy.

I'm reluctant to point this out and apologise for doing so publically but I believe it is necessary. There are a number of problems with your decision making and/or actions:

1 - You either need to get a better understanding of the forum's charter or change it. This is from the charters first line (with added emphasis)

This forum is for the discussion of Conspiracy Theories, as well as the culture surrounding Conspiracy Theories.

2 - Ideally you would have a better understanding of what this "culture" is. If you did you would have known that a staple of this "culture" is that the fix is in regarding science/medicine/education and so on - not something I personally believe FWIW
3 - I strongly believe and with good reason that your knee-jerk response to move a thread based on a talk without actually viewing the talk or asking for more information was lazy and a basic error. I certainly don't hold that against you though.

Penn wrote: »

Given the main theme of the thread being related to atheism, and the lack of a conspiracy, I felt it could make for a good discussion on the A&A forum. I would note however that I did check to see if you were banned from A&A before moving it, as moving your discussion thread to a forum you had been banned from probably would have been "taking the p*ss". I was not aware of any "self-imposed exile".

Like I said, in my opinion you made a genuine mistake. It's understandable. Perhaps you -- as a vocal boards atheist -- your heart ruled your head in this instance.

Anyway, thanks for the response. As a friendly suggestion I can tell you from experience that should you ever be moving threads again it would be appreciated if the OP was to receive some kind of basic information and courtesy.

Brown Bomber

Dades wrote: »

BB, I think you have a point about where your post ended up. Looking at the content of the video, and the as the furor associated with it, CT does seem like a better fit.
Regarding how it got there, I have my thoughts.

It probably had something to do with your remarks that accompanied the video:


Which hyperbole in turn probably resulted in the swift moving of the thread, within A&A, into a thread it was felt such comments deserved. A little quid pro quo, perhaps.

So, what remains now is to decide what to do with it. If you want I'll request the CT mods accept it back (with or without subsequent A&A comments). Or it can be left there... or it can be purged completely. Your call, BB.

While I appreciate your attempts to resolve this I believe you are missing a trick.

There is no requirement on me as a user to be objective. There is on the other hand an absolute requirement on any moderator to be objective. It's quite disheartening for you to not acknowledge this; doubly so to have to once again go through this rigmarole, which generally involves much time and effort being pissed into the wind. And why? I merely put a topic forward for discussion in good faith.

The answer is a vindictive mod is happy to abuse his leverage and powers against common user to demean users he has a personal vendetta against.

Not surprising unfortunately when you apparently have no problem with it and choose instead to blame the injured party.

Dades

I wasn't blaming you, I was addressing your incredulity as to why it ended up in the A&A forum. Furthermore I agree the thread should have stayed in CT, and I also agree it was misplaced within A&A for probably the wrong reasons - i.e. the history you have in the forum.

What exactly would you like to happen now?

Brown Bomber

Dades wrote: »

I wasn't blaming you, I was addressing your incredulity as to why it ended up in the A&A forum. Furthermore I agree the thread should have stayed in CT, and I also agree it was misplaced within A&A for probably the wrong reasons - i.e. the history you have in the forum.?

I'd like to point out that I am not incredulous that it was moved to A&A. It conceivably could have been suitable there along with a number of other forums on here but including CT - so no need to move. My problem was moving a perfectly valid thread into a stickied thread used exclusively for gathering around in groups and back-slapping, pointing and laughing.

Dades wrote: »

What exactly would you like to happen now?[/QUOT
I'd like to bury the hatchet and moved on. I respect you as a poster and a mod and you've generally been fair with me so I don't want to be a burden.

Ideally something good could come of this. What I'd suggest is that if you must have a forum that involves self-appointed intellectual superiors pointing and laughing at people they view as beneath them and especially if you have mods that engage in this same pointing and laughing at the dangerously inept then under no circumstances move threads posted in good faith there. It is highly demeaning and antagonistic and can't lead to anything good.

I have no idea if Robin undertook this irrational and biased course of action if he was biased against me personally because I push his buttons or if he was biased against Rupert Sherdrake.

I also don't know if Robin has in this instance made a special case for me or if this is a regular occurrence but it is highly inappropriate modding to disrespect users of this site through abuse of mod powers.

I think it would be a positive step forward and also prevent this ever happening again if you would make a commitment to this never happening again.

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Obviously I don't mean threads that are actually relevant to the forum. For example someone opens a thread.

"HAHA religious Man thinks world is coming to an end, massacres whole family before turning gun on himself. HAHAHA.

= Relevant

Whereas someone opens a genuine discussion about a loved one being a member of a doomsday cult

= Not appropriate to move.

Dades

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I think it would be a positive step forward and also prevent this ever happening again if you would make a commitment to this never happening again.

I'm not sure one can prevent anything happening again, but certainly one can act if something similar does happen (though I'd hope it won't).

Reported posts are usually only read by the forum mods, and Helpdesk threads can go unnoticed for days, so I'd suggest dropping me or the CMods a PM next time.

Tentatively marking this as resolved.