Dispute with mod

You couldn't have picked a worse thread in the attempt to make your point.

And also, fundamentally you are wrong, people of an opposing view aren't simply labelled in that way, they are labelled as being a supporter of someone who can be described as such.

We all know what we saw from Trumps rally Sunday night, in my post above I mentioned videos on Twitter of boats in a flotilla with Huge Trump and Nazi flags side by side. On Monday evening, we had a poster post 20+ times that Sunday night was only a singular joke that people were getting too worked up about.

And you're in that thread long enough and frequently enough to see that people are asked to explain why they favour Trump with tangible reference to real world discernible facts.

But when they don't do that, and when the candidate possesses so many traits associated with racism, fascism, and has been adjudged to have committed rape, should people not acknowledge that his supporters are supporting him despite these facts?

And also, 'attacking the poster' is still something that is easily reported and easily actioned on here and on that thread so if it is happening as much as you say it is, without the justification that I outline here, then report the posts.

I'm going to this detail in responding to you because the central premise of 'you can't refer to the motivations of someone, FULL STOP' leaves the door open to people with bad motivations to spread a lot of poison.

Let's say their are a dozen active posters on a thread and a poster feels one or two of them is posting racist posts.

The poster makes a statement that the thread is full of racism.

Then you have 10 posters who may feel they are being referred to and they respond aggressively or demand proof of racism, which the poster who makes these claims heads off and never responds to.

The appropriate thing for someone to do would be to report the posts or PM a mod.

If you lose your cool and call out a poster, then a mod can assess if you were right or not to call them out.

Making a blanket statement about the thread and then heading off does nothing but cause issues with the thread.

Nobody is suggesting silencing anybody, asking that they call out the racists and not make posters speculate they are talking about them would make threads easier to read.

Making a statement about the thread is gaslighting posters to defend themselves.

Wouldn't it be easier for the people to report the post where the accusation of racism was made and let the poster and the Mod discuss any justification around it or sanction if not?

Because otherwise you are asking someone to report several posts which on their own, may not be an issue, but when viewed in the context of each other, it may be a different story. Reports can't be made linking different posts, each report is a singular event so I feel this route is a lot more cumbersome and less likely to be effective. No?

For a moderator, how do yo stand over numerous posters referring to another poster as a rape sympatizer because they vote republican ?

ok fair enough, A couple of months back it was rampant.

You're correct of course, homophobia is currently against the rules, as it should be imo. So is racism, but there are many anti-migrant posts and anti-traveller posts, (the less said about the anti-trans posts the better 😂)

Maybe I picked up your post wrong, if I did, apologies. I understood it as boards should essentially either ban whatever people want boards to ban, (whether that be calling people out for using (what could be deemed derogatory) terms like MAGAt's, Trumpets, racists, SJW's, TDS etc) or we don't ban anything at all as people can can choose to:

read the things they don't like, not read said things or use the tools of the site to avoid them, namely the ignore list.

Surely you mean trump supporters that claim to be centrists.

So boards should really decide what is allowable and what is not, and then make a sitewide announcement

I think we're in agreement.

Unfortunately, I have stopped using Boards as much due to the Mod in question.

Having been banned from threads for apparently "saying" things that I did not say.

I have kept out of Current Affairs completely as a result. It seems as if the bans are only affecting "one side" of the argument while the other side is allowed to throw slurry with impunity.

It's a shame, what could actually be a valuable discussion forum, is moderated so badly that only one side of the argument is heard. It doesn't take a genius to just open any current thread to see what I mean in Current Affairs.

There’s actually very few if any “Trump Supporters” on that thread - but what’s happening in my experience is that a criticism of Harris, any criticism whatsoever, and it’s like setting off a tsunami of abuse and ridicule and “do you not know what Trump is??” sort of comments.

This is an Irish site and we’re normally pretty good as Irish people at detaching ourselves when commenting on foreign events and being fairly objective - to criticise Harris strategy is not a “vote for Trump” as a fair crowd of posters on there allege- and as we’ve seen in the polls and the highly depressing report last night on RTES prime time from one of the states(depressing if you’re a democrat supporter) , regardless of what Trump is or isn’t, doesn’t mean you can’t criticise the Democrats strategy - but it’s been impossible to even try and start such a discussion on that thread - no one’s listening - hence the accusations of an echo chamber - it’s not us that are voting (maybe bar one or two posters who appear to have a vote) - why can’t we criticise strategy without the emotion and name calling ?

And sorry I don’t intend to get into a Trump Harris discussion here and de rail the thread - im using this purely as an example of where we might be more respectful of peoples views and posts -just want to make that clear in light of the above mod warning

As I'm sure you are aware but for some reason chose to omit, the issue isn't with surprisingly rare valid criticisms of Harris. As opposed to the imaginary, exaggerated ones.

It's the double standard of those criticisms by the not a trump supporter posters

Maybe it's just me, but surely posters that are "fairly objective" and capable of "detaching" wouldn't engage in that double standard.

Wouldn't you agree?

Sorry but I’m lost on this “double standard” thing and to be honest I always have been - I post observations as they come to me - I’ve praised Harris a number of times - I’ve labelled certain moves in this election by Trump as “clever”- purely in the capacity of vote winning and have criticised both candidates - I don’t really understand or “get” the double standards thing- if it’s to do with always criticising Harris and never Trump which I “think” is what’s meant by this then sorry that’s not me - as for others doing it, that’s for them to state - but even then, I’d evaluate their posts based on that point in time - if someone said say a month ago, she needs to distance herself from Biden I’d have agreed with them - I wouldn’t question why they’re saying it - that’s maybe the difference between me and some other posters - I run with what’s there on the day and don’t overthink it - at the end of the day this is a two horse race - Shirley the efforts of both candidates to win that race can be commented on?

These threads are not ideal, are somewhat inadequate because they are an imperfect substitute.
They end up becoming competing factions pleading their case, it becomes claim and counter-claim.

Focusing on CA, as that is the subject of the vast majority of posts here:

If there was more mod capacity, and they could follow threads, they could see for themselves the issues and conduct on the thread requiring action. The reality is that they cannot eyeball every post on every thread.
But, if a thread is generating a lot of reports, if a mod or admin could take a pass over its posts in the last period X or so, they would get a better sense of what's really going on on a thread. What type of posts or what posters need to be clamped down on.

Also, due to capacity, mods are only responding to reported posts, and may not have full picture of the context of a reported post or alleged misconduct. Mods are fallible, time is short. CA warnings cannot be appealed. This increases the risk of warnings being applied that should not be. Even a high batting average of 90% say, that still leaves warnings building up that perhaps should never have been given.
In light of that, I suggest that CA warnings should expire after say 2 years.

Finally, could some of the points be added to forum charter, or the sticky on the new CA rules, eg clarity on "piling on" as per comments here from a mod

So how do you approach a thread? Any thread- forget about Trump/Harris as I said above I don’t want this to be about that topic per se- when I enter a thread if a certain viewpoint appeals to me or if I think of something I want to say I say it - I don’t start from the position of “what motivations do people have to be here? “- but I’m not naive - I know any thread on immigration is going to have certain strong diametrically opposed views points - and a lot of aggro -but then again I don’t tend to contribute to those threads simply for that reason.

Take the Russia /Ukraine thread - I can’t imagine there are many Russian supporters and if there’s a few I imagine they’ve had warnings for trolling at this stage - but that doesn’t mean Zelenskyy is beyond criticism in terms of military strategy or indeed political strategy - it doesn’t mean you want Ukraine to fall to a despot

You know something's wrong when a thread on moderation has over 1k replies !