Mods insulting members?
 

So I've had a mod make an implication that I am intellectually stunted simply for disagreeing with his political views.

Now, I don't really care one way or the other if you ban me. I am troubled by the fact that a mod is abusing his/her power, though. Is this how you run your board?

Just wondering. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Again, for the record: I'm dumbfounded how my presence and ideas somehow were so... triggering to the mod in question. He said all sorts of things that, frankly, made no sense.

He implied that I was purposely antagonizing him. I seriously have no idea what's going on. I was simply voicing my opinions in a civilized manner. I never made any implications towards him or his intelligence. I also did not make ableist remarks against him (the velcro comment). Honestly, I feel like I'm on an episode of Punk'd, lmao.

So be it. Let's begin.

First, this is not a PM, which you had said you'd be willing to take this to.

Second, you're tone here was just as sarcastic and caustic sounding as anything I've said. Assuming my political affiliation and then adding the "Obummer" part wasn't exactly called for. Not that egregious.

The thing that really got me though was this:

In a response to me, you utilized a speech pattern indicative of stupidity. Since you dropped the gauntlet, I was under the impression you were thick skinned enough to take it.

Obviously, I was wrong.

From this point on, I will handle all of these things with kids gloves.

Next time, I'd ask you for the same consideration you demand for yourself.

My using 'orange man bad' was not aimed at you. That is a HUGE reach. LMAO. That's the insult used when people are talking about Donald Trump. They call him Orange man. No insults were aimed at you. Oh, and where did I make any implication about your political affiliation. I didn't I have no way of knowing which way you vote.

Again. nowhere did I insult you or make any type of implication towards you (something you're still doing to me, btw). How about this, let's have an Admin or another mod look at this situation.

Also, how can you make any inference about my tone through text? I am legitimately interested in your answer. I don't see how anything I wrote could in anyway be taken as sarcastic and mean spirited. I wasn't being sarcastic with my post. I was simply stating the truth of the situation.

It is odd, though, that you are a member of a group on this board that uses a racial slur that is aimed at caucasian people.

Honky killer? Wow.

As a POC myself, I find that prejudice to be extremely divisive. How does that type of nonsense have a place on this board? Seriously?

And, frankly, you have struck a nerve with me. How do you think it's at all appropriate to make a remark implying someone is intellectually disabled? Do you not understand the weight that remark has? How do you think that makes actual people with disabilities feel?

Personally, I'm not bothered by the horrible remarks you've made. I just feel bad that a person with an intellectual/physical disability might have had to see that.

Anyway, I hope the admins take a long hard look at this situation. See the way that thread was going before I even responded to it. Look at the antagonizing and horrible implications made at members that were voicing a dissenting opinion and take appropriate action.

Oh, I have also grabbed all of my posts. In case any suddenly disappear.

I just want to show that the mod in question was editing and harassing other members in the thread long before I showed up. He was insulting anyone who doesn't hold his opinion.

There is an obvious bias at play here. I'm not bothered by it (not surprise). I'm just pointing it out.

Frankly, I don't expect any change or anything. I just wanted to point out the silliness of the situation.

Damn Bart, I didn’t think you’d be such a thin-skinned drama queen.

After being called out by your caustic tone you just find something else to blow out of Proportions.

:roll:
You got me. lmao. .

And what's with changing my thread title because of your own political leanings?

Don't even question it, Andrew. He's already told me he plans to delete everything. I guess I'll just upload his tirades to this thread. It's a shame he can abuse his 'power' the way he has.

The guy has accused an ethnic/racial minority of racism. I'm always up for spirited debate, but making horrible/borderline prejudice claims against people is not the way a mod should act.

Soo... I'm going to laugh when I get banned for not agreeing with a prejudice, ableist, racist that can't deal with an opinion that doesn't align with his own so he claims he's been 'anatagonized'. What a travesty of a human being.

The way he deleted parts of his messages to me in our other... Is that the pm system? Is downright staggering. He'd make a horrible implication about me then quickly delete it.

And who in their right mind would think that me saying 'orange man bad' is an insult aimed at them? I mean come on. The way this guy builds narratives you'd think he writes for a TV show. lmao.

BartAllen is a joke.

Maybe stop posting and making political threads which you've been told not to and this won't be an issue?

You mean like the ones Voltron (you know, the moderator) made? Like these?

http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=60848

http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=60851

http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=60818

Fair enough. No more political posts in the GD then.

Don't you understand, Andrew. It's not political when they do it. It's not racist *shudders* when they do it. They can say horribly racist things because they're 'on the right side of history'. The way Voltron was deleting posts after making HORRIBLE comments just go to show that he's not doing any of this in good faith. He's editing things to make himself look better.

I don't care who makes them, they're crap, it's a TMNT board. Sometimes politics and social issues can spill into other topics as we've seen in recent years and it's hard to avoid but at the end of the day political discussions are banned and need to be enforced more since they always turn to crap and rot other discussions elsewhere on the board.

Should mods be allowed to insult members they disagree with? Serious question.

The worst part is the way the posts have been selectively edited to take out the incriminating evidence. It's almost like said mod knows what he is doing is wrong.

Both Andrew and myself have seen the edits.

Allegedly I'm having a tantrum because I am pointing out an abuse of power. lmao.

You do know that mods can see the edits of posts, right?

If you think your posts have been edited by someone else then yourself, contact another mod.

That I do. My posts have not been edited by anyone other than me. There were a few posts in PM that were sent to me that were deleted. I only saw one that was really nasty. The rest weren't all that bad.

You do realize that a thread has been locked simply because a mod disagreed with a post. Only after he insulted a member (he's in a position of power) then claimed he was being sarcastic to cover up for the fact that he broke the rules he's supposed to enforce, right? Nothing I have written at any time on this board even comes close to breaking the rules. I still expect to get banned, though. I'll just laugh as I am doing right now.

I've had the mod imply i'm stupid. Tell me I'm childish and then tell me I'm throwing a tantrum based on the fact I had the gall to question his bad actions.

Oh, and I don't actually care if I get banned. If mods can selectively apply the rules or out and out break the rules that have been set forth and generally just be terrible people then I REALLY don't care if I'm a part of this community. You can have your echochamber.

I think only certain mods have moderator access/jurisdiction over specific forums within the board. It's just the way it's set up by Krang.

So that... might be akin to screaming into the abyss?

I don't mean to be mean, but... we were doing relatively fine with political threads until you resurfaced and took moderator action stemming from your own political beliefs. Impassioned disagreements were had, to be certain, but there wasn't like name-calling or insult hurling. You come back and suddenly people are being called racist, thread titles are being changed to suit opposing political viewpoints, and posts edited to skew things one way.

Thank you.

It is the Trump shutdown, he even said he’d gladly do a shutdown. The thread name change reflected better the current topic of that thread.

Who cares about that at this point. No one. We're here to discuss a mod using his powers in an inappropriate way. The mods are meant to enforce the rules. Not do as they please.

You and Andrew care apparently.

You mean a mod selectively enforcing the rules? Allowing certain members to call other members stupid? Yea, I have a problem with that.

Perfect example of the mod's selective enforcement of rules. Poster calls another posters stupid and what does the mod do? THANKS HIM.

He then (an hour later) decided to edit the post to change the title where it wasn't needed.

So... yea, he isn't doing his job right.

This isn't a right vs. left thing. This is a terrible person using their power to silence people who don't hold his opinion. And he did edit posts. He just did it quickly enough that it didn't set off the little 'last edited by . . . ' in the lower left part of his posts. He's tricky.

How is anything Andrew and I wrote factually incorrect?

He thanked him on the warming not to bother with Mrmaczaps, and that’s bad.... okay? :lol:

Did you miss the part where a poster called another poster stupid? That's against the rules. He thanked him instead of telling him what he did was wrong.

He should have chastised the poster, but said poster shared his opinion he didn't delete the post. It's still up as of right now.

Can I call you stupid? No. You've gotten on me for calling people names in the past. Is it only bad when people who do it don't agree with you? Seriously?

And it's ALWAYS you Kappa. You jump to defend anyone who holds your position.

Oh, and I just added this to show that posts can be edited without the little message popping up.

I reckon the takeaway will be, "And this is exactly why we can't have political threads!" and I think that's both untrue and a cop-out.

The funny part is we were ALWAYS civil to each other. I may not have agreed with everyone, but I never ONCE insulted anyone on this board. Even when I thought they were idiotic virtue signalers. Okay, maybe calling them uninformed.

Frankly, at this point, I don't care if I get banned.

Dealing with people with blinders on is draining.

I love that I can edit posts without it setting off the notification. It's almost like Voltron knew that too and used it accordingly.

There is a little irony that both Andrew and myself are both the children of immigrants. Nah, we couldn't possibly know what we're talking about. It's not like illegal/legal immigration hasn't impacted us on a personal level. We just HAVE TO BE NAZIS. SMH.

One final thing. Admins, PLEASE go look at my initial posts that allegedly antagonized Voltron. Look at how all I did was simply disagree with him and he summarily shut down the thread because he couldn't actually refute my claims. He never did. He called me stupid then sperged out saying I antagonized him and then shutdown the thread.

He and I then had a bit of a PM spat. That's it. He is not applying the rules fairly. He's allowed other posters that agree with his stance to insult others that don't. That's not fair.

Anyway, if you feel what I did crossed a line I will gladly leave. I have no desire to be in a place that can't handle people having a different opinion.

(That last sentence, and this, was an edit, BTW)

The political discourse on this board IS generally fine. We disagree, we may poke fun at each other, but no one has been overtly insulted until these past couple of days. I'm just the only person to make a fuss over it. You have said a lot of stuff that I know to be factually incorrect, but I have never made a comment against you as a person. I have argued against your positions. That was something we did until these past few days...

Nobody's ever threatened to rape anybody's mother or barbecue their cat... at least not that I've seen. We still insult each other, but it's the internet. I don't think it's gotten out of hand.

Nobody has to read the political threads if they don't want to.

Also, this thread has been exceptionally interesting to read.

Haha. My time here is growing short anyway. I might as well have a little fun until I'm shown the door.

Oh, and here's another person in a position of power insulting a member of the community. NICE.

I have a suspicion that If I returned his barb I would be banned. This is the nonsense I'm talking about.

Like I said earlier. I don't actually care if I get banned. Oh, and Voltron agreed with this guy's post, btw.

I wonder who the "big hillbilly" is he was talking about there.

How true.

lmao.

I'd say we should start our own board, but they seem to all be dying a slow painful death anyway. If you post at any other boards let me know.

I mean, he's talking about me, right? I'm pretty freaking far from a hillbilly. Though I do enjoy my week in the woods every year, shooting my guns.

I did that a decade ago with The Ninja Turtles Empire, vBulletin just like this one. Between the Drome and Mikey's TMNT (RIP), though, it just wasn't different enough to attract people at the time. At least, enough for me to justify continuing to throw money at it every month.

I own two boards, The Official Highlander Message Board and The Green Lantern Corps Message Board. I'm not on them toooo much, though.

He is from Germany. Maybe he's only ever seen a hispanic person on television. They don't actually do the best job of portraying us on television.

There will be supreme irony that a guy that was allegedly 'defending' Mexicans shutdown/ put up a wall in a thread where a Mexican was voicing his opinion on a subject.

Honestly, the modding on this board is pretty much a joke. As in, it barely exists and when it does it's over random crap. Whenever something happens where we could actually use a mod to clean up something, there's rarely one available.

Right, I wish I had popcorn

I typically try to restrain myself. For trolls, I make an exception.

I mean, I'll give you credit. Almost by default, you're my favorite moderator besides Jester. Not because he actively does anything in my favor, but because he doesn't say or do anything crazy. In the past I'd either be on a 2 week ban or threatened with one, like it's 1999. Over nothing.

Running two boards, I've occasionally been guilty of being anal about things like correcting punctuation in thread titles, helping people out. But actually changing people's thread titles because of my own stuff? C'mon, man. You're better than that. It's been a while but I thought I remember a time when we talked amicably about... stuff.

Andrew, I appreciate the civility here. If it bothers you that badly, I'll change it back. I have to leave it locked, though, because some other people are bit less. . . composed. And, whether you believe me or not, I do really want to talk about those things. It's fun. I like it.

There are two things I'd like to point out.

1. For my entire duration here at the Drome, there's been one time I can remember when political discussion of any kind was allowed. First in public (which didn't work out for obvious reasons) and then an exclusive board where you had to be vetted to participate. People felt that was unfair, namely the malcontents who weren't allowed in, and the whole thing was shut down.

That's where we get the Volcanic Asteroid from. It was an attempt to allow these types of discussions to exist on the board.

2. Bias works both ways. Unfortunately, we never seem to see our own. Or if we do, we tend to play it down.

I don't think there's a way for me to make a thread that doesn't seem to lean left. That's typically where I fall on the political spectrum, and I while I'm not fond of the "don't assume my gender" SJW crowd, I can see how my views on certain things certainly would rub people the wrong way.


Which kind of brings us back to #1. Sdp is right in pointing out that this is a TMNT board first and foremost. The general discussion section is meant for things like your Loki thread, or the Marlboro cigarettes thread. There's not a whole lot of controversy there. I can't think of an argument a sane person would make over a company deciding to shut down a department.

Case in point: After this all kind of blew up, I asked the super mods to reinstitute the "no politics" policy in the GD. However, they're usually pretty busy with life outside of the board, so it may take some time to come to a consensus on how to proceed.

I have some authority to enforce it, but feel as though it wouldn't be well received with the current complaints leveled against me. I would much rather have someone seen as less biased make the decision.

With that in mind, I'd also go back and close all my threads. Again, I don't want to do something that can be misconstrued as abusing my power and authority at the moment.

Now, with the blessing of the Dromers who frequent and love this board, I will go ahead and start shutting down any new political threads. That is, however, a decision I leave to the members. And even then, I'd be apprehensive about doing it.

So until a more comprehensive and agreeable resolution is formed by the people present, I will work to keep the GD as civil as I can. If you have any specific comments or concerns beyond this, please send a PM to me or one of the other mods.