[quote]Description of Red Herring
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to “win” an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of “reasoning” has the following form:
Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.[/quote]
Your post is a classic red herring argument.[/quote]
Horseshit…I only mentioned what I thought about Feiren’s moderating record. Feel free to put the topic back on track if you will.
[quote=“Tetsuo”][quote=“zeugmite”]Bullshit. I will apply the “Communist” test. What’s the “Communist” test? Replace the offending party with a “Communist” equivalent and see if you still feel such things will be singled out.
“It probably means even more to Hu’s vanity more than anything he is supposed to represent,”
“Maybe Kim Jong Il’s trying to show he is now ‘genuine’ about getting good international relations. Naaaah,”
“Li Peng should have no time to grin when he is busy making sad faces to appear to grieve for the late Deng. LOL,”
You believe these three will cause even a blip on any mod’s radar? Double bullshit. Such are the standards.[/quote]
Two different issues mate, stop trying to cloud things. I think those comments would deserve moderation too, but I’m not a moderator. They’d be trolling if used in a pro-China context solely for the response they’d get - which rules them out as being considered trolling here - but they’re still bordering on slurs, just like your comments were.
You can cry double standard all you want, but trolling is by definition dependent on the biases of the forum in which you’re posting, and you know very well the biases here, and the comments I quoted were quite obviously deliberately designed and posted to get a rise out of people, hence, you were trolling.
And Jive Turkey - you quite clearly misunderstand the definition of trolling.
So what this explanation basically means is if you say anything that the majority of participants in a debate disagree with or find unpleasant, then you are trolling. This is the same kind of reasoning that is used as an excuse for censoring or banning posters who disagree with the majority on pro-China sites; such sites have very little debate that challenges participants to examine their own views. I rather enjoy the variety that cmdjing and zeugmite bring to the debate here and I find it disturbing that they are being accused of “trolling” just for expressing views that aren’t popular. It seems that some here are going down a very slippery slope.
That’s right. This is not just admitting to a bias, but legitimizing its intrinsic maintenance.
And what is with this “slur” thing? Tetsuo seems to view anything negative as being a “slur.” Are we now not to say anything negative or cast anything in a negative light?
[quote=“Tetsuo”]You can cry double standard all you want, but trolling is by definition dependent on the biases of the forum in which you’re posting, {…}
and you know very well the biases here, and the comments I quoted were quite obviously deliberately designed and posted to get a rise out of people, hence, you were trolling.[/quote]
Based on your own definition to Jive Turkey, Tetsuo, biases of a forum don’t play much function in trolling. Even so, zeugmite’s contention of an improper double standard is valid because the rules as revised are aimed to insure consistency in its application and to limit the subjectivity that was inherent in the previous set of rules. It wasn’t in this particular case. That’s the issue and the contention of the OP.
[quote=“Jive Turkey”]OK, so what is the difference between Zeugmite’s “trolling” and this post in the same thread:
None at all. Would anyone really have complained if yours or his had been floundered?
So, exactly how many posts from that thread were floundered? By my counting it’s Zero - and yet people are complaining of censorship.
In a fairly short thread, zeugmite made several flounderable comments (as identified by Tetsuo), was the main contributor to a (flounderable) off-topic discussion, and (the moderator mistakedly thought) made a religous slur; Feiren then split the off-topic discussion into a separate thread, warned zeugmite about his behaviour, and (i’ll say it again) floundered zero posts. Sounds like fine (restrained) work by the Mod to me :bravo:
On the more general allegation of bias: it is clear that several of the TP Mods have strong political views. It is human nature that this will affect how they moderate comments - but I believe they are concientcious and try to be as impartial as possible; i cannot see any obvious bias in the posts that get floundered.
I am very glad that there are posters like zeugmite and cmdjing, and miss AC_dropout (sniff… the place isn’t the same without him ), to balance out the pro-Green bias of the forum, but find it rather tiring that whenever one of their posts is floundered (or threatened with floundering) there’s this “Help! Help! I’m being oppressed!” cry that goes out.
So, exactly how many posts from that thread were floundered? By my counting it’s Zero - and yet people are complaining of censorship.[/quote]
Censorship can be achieved merely by threatening censorship. Feiren didn’t threaten to flounder zeugmite’s posts, he threatened to delete them:
Jive Turkey - no, not anything people disagree with, anything posted deliberately to provoke people. There’s a difference. zeugmite quite often makes excellent posts that the majority here don’t agree with. And look at the IP forum - there are people that post in there that regularly make comments the majority of posters there disagree with, but they do so in a fashion not inherently designed to piss people off. It’s entirely possible to disagree without seeking to annoy. And I’m not saying anyone should be banned for it, I’m just pointing out what could be construed as a troll. Apparently Feiren would agree that zeugmite was trolling there. And I’m not saying everything he posts is a troll. If you can’t see the difference between trolling and posting something people disagree with, well…
zeugmite - no, I’m not saying “anything negative is a slur.” The comments I quoted seem quite obviously designed to imply that Chen would be attending solely with ulterior motives, which seems to me to be, as I said, bordering on a slur. You’ll note that I didn’t say it definitely was a slur, just that it seemed to be straying pretty close to it. And if you didn’t intend the comments to deliberately get a rise out of people, then I stand corrected. They certainly seemed worded to do so, and the context in which they were in lent itself to that interpretation. Sure, the rules may say it’s based on intent - which it is - but moderators could never be sure of what someone’s intent in posting something was. It’s easy to say you didn’t intend as a troll, but if a moderator disagrees, it’s entirely a your word against his/hers situation.
YC - I beg to differ. The inherent collective bias of a forum plays a big role in what could be considered trolling. You can’t say something, say, incredibly positive and supportive of the Pope hoping to get a rise out of people in a predominantly pro-Papal forum. It just doesn’t work - you can’t get a rise out of people by praising someone in a forum where the majority would agree. You can’t troll an anti-American forum by posting rabidly anti-American ranting, because it’s not going to annoy anyone, whereas in a predominantly pro-American forum it would. So my definition stands. But I do agree that singling out zeugmite over the other posters in the thread that were also pushing it (possibly right over the edge) is off. I don’t know if it’s so much a double standard as the fact that, as you well know, moderators are still human and prone to screwing up on occasion.
I’ve been meaning to ask the same thing. I found him to be a bore and perhaps he was a high maintenance poster to moderate, but I didn’t see anything that I thought was worth banning. An explanation from one of our friendly moderators would be appreciated.
It’s about the public “lesson” directed at one person and about the very alarming “confusion” of two different posters. I’m sure a moderator is supposed to take into account the context of things to determine the intent of posters. Then herein lies the problem, if you can’t even keep straight the difference between two posters and assigning in your mind the faults of one to the other, thinking it was ill intent all along, how is that good moderating?
As did many others by this very standard.
How do you figure? If you look at the split-off thread forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … highlight=
you will see the main veer-off resulting in what followed was not my comment. In any case how do you count me as “the main contributor”? I made 4 posts (arguably only 3 off topic), Mr. He made 4 posts. STV made 2 posts. At most I was a contributor.
Well, see above. This is very bad.
[quote]
On the more general allegation of bias: it is clear that several of the TP Mods have strong political views. It is human nature that this will affect how they moderate comments - but I believe they are concientcious and try to be as impartial as possible; I cannot see any obvious bias in the posts that get floundered.[/quote]
Oh really? How many anti-China posts in the Flounder bin have you seen recently?
I think this is an important thing to point out. There are plenty of times when I feel others’ posts are flippant in tone or wording (content aside), perhaps some would dislike it, others would find it humorous. When these receive no attention whatsoever, I must assume this kind of presentation is within guidelines and merely a style. When I am told they are not, the question becomes, are all posters equal? Apparently neither on the posting end nor on the receiving end. There are plenty of other times when I felt quite “trolled” by some posts, but I don’t emulate those even though those posts also weren’t handled.
[quote=“Tetsuo”]you can’t get a rise out of people by praising someone in a forum where the majority would agree.[/quote]Try explaining this to Masao/Xianggangduli
I see what you’re saying, but I think I disagree. If I understand what you are saying (although I do note that you were not using absolute terms above), only people with minority viewpoints could be trolls (perhaps you meant that they are more likely to be deemed trolls?). Why couldn’t a person who holds a majority viewpoint post something that would/could get a rise out of the minority viewpoint posters?
Actually you’ve got a point, but trolling the minority would probably be a very small percentage of trolling overall. Trolling tends to aim for maximum disruption, and if you’re deliberately trying to start a shitfight, why would you try and piss off the minority when doing so to the majority would make a bigger impact? But you’re right, it’s certainly a possibility. And it definitely depends on the relative sizes of each side.
[quote=“OutofChaos”]Papist?
There should be no room for that here.
OOC[/quote]
Oh so it’s OK to use terms like “Islamist” (generally regarded as a negative term) and allow “Islamofascist” to be widely used in these fora but “Papist” is taboo? That is just a load of white, religious, bigotted, hypocritical, politically correct, supemecist occidental bullshit designed to make those who err away from societal norms cower in fear at the wrath of “God” whoever he may be.
Totally.
Zeugmite, for what it is worth I am with you on this.
[quote=“BroonAle”][quote=“OutofChaos”]Papist?
There should be no room for that here.
OOC[/quote]
Oh so it’s OK to use terms like “Islamist” (generally regarded as a negative term) and allow “Islamofascist” to be widely used in these fora but “Papist” is taboo? That is just a load of white, religious, bigotted, hypocritical, politically correct, supemecist occidental bullshit designed to make those who err away from societal norms cower in fear at the wrath of “God” whoever he may be.
Totally.
Zeugmite, for what it is worth I am with you on this.
BroonArchbishop[/quote]
Broon,
I suggest you read the original statement that used the term. It wasn’t made by Zeugmite, if that matters at all. In fact, the person using the term may be unaware of the negative connotations of the term. My points are
The moderator knew of the nature of the term and ignored it, tolerated it, was the phrase he used.
The word papist seems entirely acceptable to me. Something the pope does is papal (a papal bull etc.). Someone who supports the pope is a papist. Trying to ban this word would be a clear case of excessive political correctness, in my opinion.
“Papist” to refer to a Roman Catholic is on par with
“Chinaman” to refer to a Chinese
“Oriental” to refer to an East Asian
“Negroid” to refer to a person with African ancestry
“Islamist” to refer to a believer of Islam
“retarded” to refer to a person with cognitive disability
i.e. descriptive words that have begun with or since acquired negative connotation through frequent and primarily pejorative use. It may be purely descriptive when said or heard by somebody not familiar with such a word; or more often than not (depending on the currency of such words) that may not be the case. It depends on the situation.
), to balance out the pro-Green bias of the forum, but find it rather tiring that whenever one of their posts is floundered (or threatened with floundering) there’s this “Help! Help! I’m being oppressed!” cry that goes out.
. I’d also be interested in an explanation (but only after at least 7 pages of bitching)