Very quiet in here

It looks like there was too many successful appeals from CA hence to make things easier they banned appeals outright so Mods have free reign to do whatever they want with zero consequences.

They can give out 5 incorrect/likely to be overturned bans but so long as they actually get the 6th one right they are in the clear.

Its a mental set up I've never seen in any forum.

Only if its the 6th warning which is the insane bit.

I'd love someone to explain what exactly makes the 6th one more worthy of dispute? Why not make it that you can appeal warnings you get on an even day of the month but not ones got on an odd day? Its about as valid a criteria.

Like assuming all moderators roughly treat everyone the same with the same guidelines, IF the 6th is deemed worthy to be overturned then how can it be said in confidence that bans 1 - 5 shouldn't also be overturned or may have been errors?

Ye great point about Anecdotes and that ridiculous warning.

The rule was brought in to stop people who no matter where an incident happened that some posters had friends or family to say everything is great in that place or the posters who had a friend who heard rumours about immigrants causing issues everywhere.

How we have ended up at a pointed warning and someone leaving after 11 years for mentioning a family member is worrying.

What's more worrying is the mods here seem to think this is right.

A message to say no anecdotes and deleting the post would have been harsh enough.

But then for example Garron Noone, we couldn't discuss him in Immigration thread in CA and couldn't discuss immigration in Garron Noone thread in AH, when they were related

It was me who brought Hamachi's dispute appeal into this thread as I believe it was the first dispute ban that could be appealed as it was a 6 month ban but which lead to them then being site banned, also I thought warning points expire at a certain point

I think appeals should start after 1 month ban

I attempted raising this issue in a thread that was shut down immediately, the response was as follows...

While I understand the notion that problematic posters should be removed from the forum the definition of problematic seems to be shifting.

To most people's way of seeing things, problematic would extend to people being abusive to others or spamming a thread with multiple posts in a short period of time, taking pot shots at others. Intentionally ignoring rules after being warned not to etc.

Instead we're seeing bans handed out in situations where a simpler solution could have been sought. I've seen this myself, a ban is the first reaction instead of the mod reaching out and dealing with the situation in a less heavy handed manner, exercising a bit of discretion.

By the same token I see some posters absolutely spamming threads, abusing others and they may be given a polite on thread warning to back off with the aggressive behaviour. I know if I behaved that way I'd be kicked off the forum so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. Why the double standard?

Users just want to see rules implemented fairly and evenly. There isn't a need for half of the bans handed out. At this rate there'll be no one left on the CA forum.

I know I don't post there anywhere near as much as before. It's too risky. My tone could be misinterpreted and I could be banned (has happened already). I don't directly quote people who disagree with my opinions and if they quote me I won't be responding because if there's any form of disagreement I'll likely be serving a ban on foot of it.

I understand that boards is a broad church and there's a ton of specialist forums serving a wide range of interests but maybe it just isn't capable of dealing with a forum like CA anymore.

Is it time to just pull the plug on the idea of a forum where current affairs are discussed full stop? Because we seem to be heading in that direction albeit in slow motion.

If people can't have a frank exchange of views the entire point of such a forum is being missed.

If the mission of CA is to ban problem posters instead of finding a means of facilitating calm and reasoned discussion the ship has already sailed.

I understand it's a swine of a thread and it brings out the worst in people, but there's a few ideas that could make it easier to manage.

1. Demanding links, proof, stats etc should just not be on the table. As you mentioned a lot of what's provided is of questionable integrity at the best of times and tends to just lead to more bickering. I personally just don't post links to anything anymore, people demanding links to stories in the general news cycle on a website is simple sh1thousery, you're on the Internet you can find this stuff with ease, grow up. If someone is stating something as fact and you know it's waffle just ignore them, nobody is legally bound to reply to anyone else, just move past it and save everyone the aggro.
2. Posts should have a reasonable amount of thought put into them, they should be reasonably structured and even if long winded, shouldn't be a pain to read or understand. Posting repeatedly one after the other when you could have taken your time and written one lucid well reasoned post that makes logical sense is a better standard to strive for than multiple posts that derail the flow of the discussion. I'm convinced some people do this purposefully to ruin the discussion, but that's just my personal opinion.
3. There's a general level of snark that seems to have become permissible on that thread, where just about painting inside the lines of the rules while also quite obviously being a d1ck is being allowed to occur maybe with a polite note from a mod to discourage it. There's no need to ban people for this but deleting these types of posts might work better and discourage that behaviour.
4. Just outright stop the use of catch all terms for either side of the discussion, there's nothing to be gained from people accusing others of being fascists for having moderately conservative opinions on immigration. The same can be said for terms like lefties or whatever other phrases (and I've used them myself) that are little more than low level insults being thrown back and forth.

There's a few posters who end up at times running that thread, mostly by posting incessantly and making demands of proof and grandstanding like they're addressing the jury in a bloody episode of Perry Mason.

The discourse has reached a level that seemingly never rises above the most peurile type of ad homenim drivel. No evidence is ever enough, or it can be interpreted in multiple ways and guess what, my interpretation trumps yours because you're opinions are evil and everything you say must be a lie and I'll show everyone how much of a bigot you are blah blah blah.

We don't need more bans, we just need guard rails and simple attitude adjustments and guidance.

The iron fist hasn't achieved anything beyond removing yet more users from the forum, the cure is killing the host ultimately, there's scope for a rethink and it doesn't have to be all that radical.

Demanding links, proof, stats etc should just not be on the table. 

Of course they shouldn't, posters should be able to post whatever they feel like with absolutely nothing to back it up.

If a thread e.g. immigration, is too heated for the Current Affairs style of posting, then perhaps the mods of CA and Politics and AH need to have a summit and consider if discussion of it as per the higher standard of Politics posting would reduce the temperature of the debate and discussion could continue.

I include AH in this as the AH mods would need to be vigilant that discussion doesn't "leak" to that forum, not just as new threads but through hijacking of 'mega' threads.

Politics Charter excerpt:
High standards of debate and quality posts / threads are required. Repeated one liner, low quality style posts will result in a ban.

And this excerpt from the Politics Charter seems reasonable to apply to Current Affairs also:
When offering an opinion, please state so. Every poster is entitled to their opinion - whether it is ill-informed or not. Please do not present an opinion as "fact" - it only leads to flaming and a poster/moderator may demand further evidence. When offering fact, please offer relevant linkage, or at least source. If you do not do this upon posting, then please be willing to do so on request.

To me in a lot of cases these posts are worse than anecdotes.

Someone posting figures as facts and not backing it up with a source, someone can be pulling figures out of their imagination like people with their anecdotes.

But mentioning a family member is a pointed warning, bizarre is not the word.

"Rules were working great up until the past few months"

Really? Is this not the upteenth thread that is heavily preoccupied with the standard of moderation on the site? Were the changes not precipitated directly because of feedback in the last thread about this?

I don't think it's a big dirty secret that certain changes were made to make moderation a bit easier. There was a dearth of proper moderation on the site and certain parts of it were becoming largely unmoderated, so something had to give.

I'd frequent the radio forum. That forum was pretty much The Wild West for a long time, people could seemingly post whatever - even when it was libellous! - and the general standard of posting in a number of megathreads was appallingly witless.

Then the changes came in and moderation is back. And it's back pretty firmly. Tbh I think it is deployed, at times, quite pedanticly, but, it has also cleared up a lot of the absolute drivel you'd see posted in there too.

I agree.

I think it is too important a subject to be allowed fester with no real debate or to stop debate altogether. Let it and other serious questions be moderated as in Politics .

I disagree @Necro that it is the only contentious thread . There were similar complaints about the American threads , the Trans debates , and the war in Ukraine or Gaza threads. Any serious subject should be debated and moderated with respect to those posters debating in good faith.

I think you and @Irish Aris have made some very good decisions and I appreciate both of your styles of moderation which do take poster's posts into context . And you give on thread warnings which give people time to cool down .

Where I find an issue is when one mod , in particular , fires off warnings with bans , for quite marginal posts accusing posters of being ' uncivil ' when they are in the middle of a heated debate with another who doesn't even get told to keep it down !

No on thread warning, just straight in with a ban . And not talking about abusive or attacking posts here btw .

Now it's that moderation that is tantamount to just being on "a banning spree" getting rid of long time posters .

And that to me doesn't sound fair or balanced just vindictive , and not based on what is actually being posted .

Hard to not take that type of moderation personally .