Fraggle Rocker, slander and inappropriate comments

Discussion in 'SF Open Government' started by S.A.M., May 31, 2011.

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  1. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    Fraggles like the energizer bunny . He takes a licken and keeps on ticken . I admire that about him . Yeah he may be opinionated . Hells Bells he is a musician . We tend to be opinionated. We needs the opinions sos wees can write stereo types that appeal to the masses
     
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  3. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    Signal Is A WOMAN ? Oh My God my hole world is falling apart, The world is up side down .
     
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  5. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    The thing is that she doesn't usually get too upset at such descriptions - the fact that this one came from a moderator seems to have made some major difference in her reaction. My best guess would be that she is perfectly aware that she has long been pushing the limits on what is allowed here, and that it is something of a matter of indulgence on the parts of the moderators that she is allowed to persist at all. In which case, seeing that a moderator has clearly soured on her, and is willing to pop into her trollings to advertize such to one of her targets, must have set off some alarm bells.
     
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  7. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    This is either an exceptionally hilarious troll, or one of the biggest PC-gone-horribly-awry facepalms I've ever seen.
     
  8. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Proposition
    Whenever two sciforummers can't come to an agreement, they should both wear a
    Satere-Mawe Bullet Ant Glove. Whoever wears it the longest wins.

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    Deep in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon lives the Satere-Mawe tribe. To become a man in the Satere-Mawe, a boy must stick his hand in a glove woven with bullet ants and withstand their stings for over 10 minutes without making a noise.
     
  9. Anti-Flag Pun intended Registered Senior Member

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    I thought it was only slander if it wasn't true?



    Bells:
    I've only skimmed this thread, but can you link to the part where Fraggle claims this 'rite of passage' to be about white males vs women in general as opposed to it just being about SAM? I seem to have missed it.
     
  10. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, the term here seems to be getting misused as simply "statements about me which I do not appreciate."
     
  11. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    For insinuating some kind of open season by white males on non-white women on the forum. That was a little out there. His comments might have been inappropriate, but that was the only picture he'd seen and his assumption was that Sam was some kind of conservative religious fucktard, which we all know of course not to be the case. He's already apologized. But WTF has race to do with it? As quadra said: that was PC gone mad.

    Actually, that refers to propaganda, not Nazism. Although I do suspect a sort of the latter, I guess.

    Fuck, I could hardly care less, because I don't conduct unrestrained and biased defense of the Catholic church, Bells, as I hope you remember. Check out my SNOTWUH, for instance. When I dig at what Sam backs in her religion, I find Mawdudi peeping out from under the rug. So, so. :shrug: It's difficult to have a discussion with her when it inevitably gets regressed to some tiny or dubiously related issue, which it almost always does.

    Bells, you've done about as bad before, so: no. None of the above would have occurred. You would not have been banned. You would not have received an infraction. I wouldn't even have reported it; not because it's true, but because it doesn't cross my established line.

    I have a very honest face.

    Not exactly an accurate description there. We've been over this.

    Sam's like a political Happeh, Bells. You counter with fair commentary, and she runs to another issue, rope-a-dopes, and so on. I'm sorry if it's clear I don't respect her, but it's hardly the only such case on the forums. Meh.

    Well, that's too bad, because you wronged him on that one. WTH had race to do with that?

    Sam's already declared her "esteem" for the likes of Mawdudi, so I think that ship has sailed. Her reputation is over, her contributions puerile bomb-throwing: and not very good bomb throwing at that. As for the responsibility of this forum, I think I was drunk-mod-slapped by someone about this time last year, so I tend to take that kind of comment with a grain of salt. Unfair does indeed happen, and the definition of unfair appears to be subjective: yon drunken mod was quite unrestrained in his defense of his drunken moderation. So ethical interrupts ain't exactly Where no (hu)man has gone before. I'd like to see that change, of course, but I'm skeptical that it will.

    Anyway, be offended if you like. Just don't forget to check the mirror before you press "Submit".

    ****

    Kremmen: well said. Topics. Sorry for the diversion. Then again, this is about slander (actually libel) and inappropriate comments. Hell, if anything, this is the place for them.
     
  12. Bells Staff Member

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    It was more in reference to some extreme accusations and comments made in the backroom which were untrue and the admin did not even blink at it nor did they even attempt to refute it. Lets just say I was testing the waters. And sure enough, my opinion of what would have happened in response to my extreme comments was not that far off.

    Guess you had to be there.

    Carry on with your own personal attacks...

    Incorrect.

    Here is how this happened. I and at least 2 of my colleagues were discussing others trolling her and attacking her appearance and her religious beliefs (Bork did apologise to her because even he realised he had been incorrect and had gone too far).

    Fraggle has often expressed his own personal bias when it comes to Sam and several others on this forum in the back room. It seems that when he saw the personal attacks in that thread as being discussed in the back room, he decided to leap in and drop that little bomb. In doing so, he incorrectly assumed that as a moderator, that we would back him all the way. Thus far, no one has thanked him for including us in his "our private joke" and "rite of passage" comment, because that is his personal opinion and does not reflect on the rest of us. I have had one moderator comment that we should just let him embarrass himself, but I wonder at what cost? Sure, we can let him hang himself with his own bias and personal hatred, but really, at what cost?

    His opinion did not come from a moderator. It came from a biased man who used his mod powers to access backroom discussions to further his own personal hatred of another poster on this forum. That to me is inexcusable.

    While you may feel vindicated that Fraggle, a moderator, has done this, I can assure you, I have yet to see a single moderator backing him up for declaring her "our private joke". I would say the opposite is very true.
     
  13. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Oh great, the "let me obliquely characterize the goings-on in the mod space you can't see" thing again.

    Y'all have a serious problem with politics from this private room always leaking out into public. Since nobody can see in there, nobody has any reason to buy into any of the characterizations that get offered (and, of course, you are far from the sole offender at this). Especially considering how they're frequently talking around naming anyone in particular, and consist solely of characterizations of other behavior that just happens to support whatever they're arguing in public right now. Only thing it accomplishes is to portray the mods as unprofessional and dysfunctional.

    If you're going to have a secret forum for only mods, then its contents need to actually be kept secret. As in, the powers that be should not tolerate any public disclosures of goings-on in there - that breaching this supposed secrecy apparently carries no consequences for moderators, is a huge stain on the reputation of moderation here in general. If you don't want to do that, then I'd suggest making this forum visible, but only allowing moderators to post in it. This approach wherein it's secret, except when a mod feels that they can advance a point by characterizing it (which doesn't even work), is perverse and does nothing but damage.

    ? Nothing you say in response there conflicts with my speculation. It doesn't even really address it at all.

    Did SAM report some offense regarding this? Or is this just a cadre of mods who've made it their personal mission to pre-emptively look out for SAM? Because lately I've been noticing a few that do such to the point of getting out in front of her. I'm unconvinced that she appreciates such treatment - it infantilizes and tokenizes her, and sometimes even marginalizes her own voice in conversations about herself.

    The thing is that there's no particular lack of members here who could use some looking-out-for, and who aren't themselves flamers and bigots in the first place. But I guess that playing Guardian Angel for them wouldn't let you pat yourself on the back for defending Muslim Women of Color from the rapacious Imperialist Pimps of SciForums or something...

    But, whatever. Upshot is ineffectual moderation and near-zero credibility.

    I don't see any such assumption evident anywhere.

    You will need to credibly answer that question as it applies to yourself, before you will possess the credibility to go around demanding its application to anyone else.

    Since when it that exclusive of being a moderator around here?

    Are you oblivious to your own abuse of your station to grind personal axes? Because I can assure you that whatever blindspot you may have in that regard is not widely shared.

    Indeed, and most of you lot of mods ought to resign and give some new blood a chance. Y'all have burned so much of your credibility that you can't effectively moderate - not that you even seem to know how in the first place. So, there should be elections to replace you. That's what elections are for, after all: casting off the burnt-out old guard, and bringing in some legitimacy.

    Why would that make anyone feel vindicated?

    So, she's "our public joke?" Or, "our private source of despondency?" Or "our public source of despondency?"

    I'm not clear on what the opposite of "our private joke" is, or what the distinction between "very true" and "true" is supposed to be. How exactly would you characterize moderation's view of SAM and her activities here?
     
  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Another moderator asked the rest of us to look at that thread because they felt that the content of some of the posts may have crossed the line into violating the rules against personal insults. This sounded like a flame war brewing so I checked in. The thread was too long to read at one sitting so I looked at the post that the Moderator had used as a URL and a couple of the ones near it. I said that I felt that both Sam and the other member were getting a little carried away with themselves, but that neither had crossed the line into flaming. The other moderator pointed out a post that I had missed, in which one member had likened another to a famous architect of the Nazi Holocaust and I agreed that that was indeed flaming and probably made the member eligible for banning.

    Looking further through the thread I found a post by one member who seemed depressed because of criticism by Sam that he did not think was valid. Having been on the wrong end of Sam's devices in the past I sympathized and tried to lighten it up by joking that being dishonestly skewered by Sam is a "rite of passage" for membership here.

    Next time another moderator requests help I will probably tell him or her where to go and what to do to him- or herself. I don't mind being flamed by the membership, it comes with the territory. But to be lambasted by my fellow moderators for my long campaign to enforce some standard of intellectual honesty in this place and to single out members who are the worst violators, that goes against my concept of what SciForums is supposed to be: a place of science and scholarship. If we cannot discipline members for intellectual dishonesty--or even make fun of them!--then we make a mockery of the scientific method. And without the scientific method SciForums will become just one more foolish chat room dominated by people asking why they can't get dates.

    Over the years I have observed egregious exercises of intellectual dishonesty, for example, making an assertion and having it falsified, then lying low for a few months and re-posting it on a new thread in a different subforum, hoping no one who remembers the first one will see it. In another example a member took a portion of a post out of context and put it in a quote, making the member who made the original post look like they supported the exact opposite of the position they had in fact stated. I don't believe that this kind of behavior should be tolerated. Everyone should be given the benefit of the doubt once, even if they don't appear to deserve it, but the second time should be grounds for a permanent ban, because these things are so hard to spot that it will be difficult to catch them a third time.

    The other moderators gave me hell over this and insisted that I provide incontrovertible evidence. The next time it happened I did so and they ignored it. Even though the moderator staff includes several full-time professional career scientists, I am first ignored, and then harrassed, for attempting to enforce the rules of science on a website that claims to be all about science. Finally, I am lynched for daring to mention that one of our members has a long history of intellectual dishonesty, which the moderators excuse or simply ignore, to the point that it has become a "rite of passage" for new members to be skewered on it. I have even been accused of sexism by a female moderator whom I personally campaigned to keep on the staff because I felt that an all-male circle of moderators wouldn't be quite right.

    Life is full of irony.
    Well excuse me. I'm a professional writer, editor, musician and software engineer, but in linguistics and the hard sciences I am nothing more than an enthusiastic amateur, a "former future scientist," as I put it.
    Lots of luck getting the other moderators to even participate in a discussion of intellectual dishonesty. I have pounded them over the head with it and they still manage to ignore the issue.
    I appreciate all of the criticisms made by the members, and I thank you for them, so please don't stop. I don't always respond but I keep track and try to do better. Some days I do better than others.
     
  15. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    yes FR, the biggest interlectual dishonesty on this site is the pesona YOU have set up.
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I wish you were still a moderator. That would make two of us who care about this issue.
     
  17. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Well you'd definitely have my vote for mod- you've got a real knack for tunneling down to the core of an issue and telling it like it is, without letting emotions get in the way of calling out someone's hypocrisy and BS. You've got a pretty damn lucid way of seeing into things, and I'm trying to learn from that.
     
  18. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    I see a lot of opinions but no evidence. Can we see some of these examples?

    Yeah, that caught me by surprise too. Almost as much as finding out tiassa is a man [that was some years ago, btw]

    And I'm not even marginally upset; if anyone here is upset, it is probably Fraggle. I just wondered why it was that mods could jump into a topic they were not even discussing, in a forum they don't moderate, make ad hominem posts which address no aspect of the topic [if for example, Fraggle would have incorporated some part of anything I had said in the post as an example of what he calls intellectual dishonesty, I would have let it go. I have done it several times before] and get away with it with no accountability.

    Plus, in a previous sfog issue re:Fraggle, when I pointed out to James that Fraggle has a tendency to target various members and call them names, he wanted me to provide him with links, but after that, gave no more feedback on the issue. Since other members have been banned for lesser offences, and since Fraggle continues to run around calling people names, I wanted to make an issue of it.

    Missed your post for some reason. h/t to quad for bringing it to my attention

    We could take a poll of how sensitive I am on sciforums - I would be very surprised if the majority decided I was thin skinned or easily affected. I was brought up to believe that if you lose your temper, it means you have lost the argument. It takes a lot of provocation for me to get mad - I am so slow to provoke that by the time I could get good and mad, I've already talked myself out of it. In a discussion, if the other person gets mad, its automatic for me to react with calm or humor. The madder the other person gets, the less I can be provoked and I usually dismiss stuff said during hissy fits [there are notable exceptions to this rule]

    If I make an issue over anything, its because I want to address the issue, not because my feelings are hurt. I don't give too many people the permission to hurt my feelings.

    quad would make a terrible mod. He's too egoistic and couldn't handle the pressure. I would never recommend him for a mod

    You on the other hand, would probably make a good mod, maybe even a very good mod, because you have the facility to be objective even when you get mad and even when you get mad - you rarely lose sight of the argument and when you are wrong, you admit it effortlessly. These are basic requirements for a moderator.
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2011
  19. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    No. That's moderator business. I'm not going to share evidence of one member's alleged violations with you or any other members. Particularly since the other moderators have not even agreed that any violations have occurred.

    If you're referring to the times when I accused you of two different types of intellectual dishonesty, I did so right there inline in the threads. Since the purpose of your request to see them again is very likely not to allow the entire membership to see them, you're probably assuming that I don't feel like putting forth the tremendous effort to track down posts from two or three years ago. Given the poor indexing capability of this software, that's a monumental project. You'll just have to sit there for a few months wondering whether I'm really doing it.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    I have been outspoken on the moderators' subforum in my opposition to considering name-calling to be a bannable offense. A great many of our members are, technically, children, and a much larger percentage of them act like it. We can hardly outlaw childish behavior, and in that context name-calling is trivial.

    Obviously an ethnic slur is a violation of another rule so that is not trivial.
    I will vouch for that. You don't have bursts of anger.
    Can't say that I've noticed but I'll take your word for it.
     
  20. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Cheers to you, SAM, that's quite a compliment. I personally don't think I'm objective enough for the position, I'd end up being either too harsh or too lenient out of fear of overreacting, and not at all balanced. I'm not at all comfortable with confronting people when things heat up too much, for starters. I'm also not reliable enough for the position, at least not at this stage in my life. But yeah, I do make some effort to admit my mistakes and correct them, I figure that's what any honest and well-meaning person should do. IMO the ideal mod should have no vested interest in the topic whatsoever, unrealistic an expectation as that may be.

    I personally like quadruphonics' approach, if nothing else I think it's very well-thought-out... I don't see how you could object to it more than my own rhetoric, I think he's just better than me at getting to the core substance of an issue. A lot of times I'll post something, then he posts something and I'm just like "I should have just shut up and let him handle it". But we all have different perceptions of things, so maybe you see some egoism or bias in what he writes, I personally see him as a no-BS, no easy-answers, facts on the table kind of guy.
     
  21. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    I said I was slow to provoke but I should probably revise that to I am slow to provoke with ad hominems. There are some things which provoke me really fast and I think there are at least two occasions on sciforums when I have "lost it" inspite of knowing the other person was being deliberately provocative. When I get gudenmad, then yes, I can be quite er, mad

    This is exactly why you would be a good mod

    You just enumerated why quad would be a bad mod. What makes for a good poster, does not make for a good mod.

    I think there is some kind of misunderstanding at sciforums about what a moderator does [or maybe I falsely assume that moderators on discussion forums should function as moderators in scientific debates and conferences do]. In my experience and opinion, the job of a moderator is not to have an opinion on the content of the post [moderators in scientific debates and conferences for example, never have access or control over what members will say or opine]. Their job should be to facilitate discussion and in some cases, to comment on aspects of the discussion which they agree or disagree with. Of course, in conferences, moderators only have to deal with students or professionals who are trained in critical thinking, so the expectations of similar behaviour from posters or mods is unrealistic on an internet forum.

    But your approach, of being hesitant to provoke and not thinking you know it all, will be far more successful than quads derisive exchanges. Plus, you would grow into the position and learn how to deal with people and since you approach the issue with the opinion that you are not already perfect at it, it would enable you to learn more. And being assertive is very different from being confrontational. It is a good idea to learn different approaches and see which one is more comfortable for you [I gather you are quite young, in your 20s maybe?] . I have noticed in discussions with you [and this is sufficiently rare at sciforums to be noticeable] that even when you are being sarcastic, you are making a point, not having fun at someone else's expense. That degree of detachment cannot be learned. I think possibly fedr08 is the only other young person I have seen at sciforums with a similar ability to be objective while sticking to his opinions. He would also make a good mod although he needs to spread his wings a bit.
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2011
  22. Bells Staff Member

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    I find this interesting Fraggle.

    I reported Geoff's Nazi post on the 25/5/11 (5/25/11 for you). You 'reviewed' that post on the same date and responded to it in the back room on that day and advised it was a banable offense in your opinion. You did not go back to that thread at all, in fact, on 5/25/11 you advised us that you are not a fan of such threads. I then requested a review of Bork's post (aimed directly at string and madant and the admin) on 5/31/11, whereupon you then used that link to post what you did in that thread.

    So which is it? Did you look further on 5/25/11 as you seem to claim and looked into the future and noticed Bork's comment? Or did you go back to it, right after I sought a review from the moderators of WE&P and the administrators and drop that charming post?

    Let me get this straight..

    You hadn't read the thread at all (by your own admittance), so you don't even know what was being discussed or how Sam was conducting herself in that thread, you just decided to accuse her of being intellectually dishonest off the bat after using your mod status to access the mod forum and see the review I had sought about another person's behaviour in that thread that even he deemed to be incorrect and has since apologised for it?

    Is this what you expect me to buy?

    Tell me, what part of science of scholarship can you use to excuse and explain your behaviour? How scientific and scholarly is it to accuse someone of intellectual dishonesty in a thread that you had not even bothered to read? Explain to me how that falls even within the realm of the "scientific method"?

    How about next time, you don't use the mod forum to further your own bias on this forum? How about you give that a bit of a go, eh Fraggle?

    Oh your poor victim.. Poor baby..

    /Pat..

    You had not even read the thread. You admitted to it in this thread. And you admitted in the backroom to not bothering to read such threads. And yet, without reading it, you saw fit to enter it (using a link from the mod forum where I was asking an administrator and String and/or Madant to review a particular post) and accuse her of being intellectually dishonest.. without proof obviously because you hadn't even read the thread. And then you advised another male member (Bork) that she was his rite of passage, after dragging the rest of us into your post and claiming that she was "our private joke". Had you requested our advice on whether we thought she was a joke? What part of the scientific method and how intellectually honest was it for you do make such a claim on our behalf?

    And you're playing the victim here?

    I have great respect for you Fraggle. You are supposed to be better than this.
     
  23. The Esotericist Getting the message to Garcia Valued Senior Member

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    :bravo:

    agreed. those with the thickest skin win!
     
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