Charles Anthony

You seem to be implying that a member who spreads lies and or disinformation should be banned. Am I understanding you correctly? It goes back to what moderation considers trolling, and how their definition is not applied equally.More precisely: It goes to when moderator intervention is necessary. If PersonA trolls and PersonBtoY ignore it but PersonZ complains, then we tend to do nothing because we see that there are members of the forum who set a good example of ignoring what they perceive to be trolling. There is no need for a moderator to intervene if most folks ignore the post. If PersonA trolls and PersonBtoY respond cleverly in such a way as to include the substance of the troll post but keep the discussion on topic, then we tend to do nothing again even if PersonZ complains. Moderator intervention can be more disruptive than it is worth if folks ignore what they perceive to be trolling. Please avoid excessive quoting. Quoting the entirety of a fellow member's post is rarely justified. We understand the intention of preserving all of the previous member's words so that there is no doubt about your rejoinder. However, we are telling you not to do that. Please rely on the SNAPBACK hyperlink to demonstrate the flow of your response. A short SNIPpet of the previous member's post is sufficient to allow your reader to verify the source. It is off topic. Perhaps it does. From a moderation frame of reference, it promotes thread drift. Your intent to steer the direction of the discussion towards a comparison between a fellow member's thoughts and those of other people is not the subject of the thread. If that is what you want to discuss, go ahead and open a new thread. Sure, you "have given these posters yet an other opportunity to whatever" but nobody is under any obligation to reply to anybody else's post. If you keep repeating your request, at some point, it becomes trolling. Not as a general rule. The vast majority of members would have been banned by now. We intend to give folks the opportunity to clearly express their opinions rather than to impose censorship upon the discussions. Howevever, if you want that as a general rule, be our guest. When you encounter flame-bait trolling, report it and make a suggestion for an intervention. Tell us what you want us to do. A temporary suspension? A permanent ban? Not all flame-baiting is equal. Remember how Argus believes Any idiot can see quite plainly that the world is flat. is an archetypical troll post. Some posts are clearly meant solely to annoy. However, some annoying posts are also meant to further a discussion -- i.e., they have substance to them. We mods see through the snarkiness and trolling. Moderator intervention depends on the poster, the post in question and the flow of the discussion. To put it a different way, if we mod staff can understand the point of a post and if that point furthers the discussion, we tend to leave it alone if we see others are ignoring the trolling. The most effective way of dealing with trolling is for everybody to ignore it.

...are mistaken? We do not operate on that presumption.

--- because we are not confident any currently active members could help.

Guys, This flame-bait thread is locked.

Guys, This thread is locked. If any of you want to continue your discussion, start a new thread. You can even re-hash this title. However, please make sure that you are not trolling, flame-baiting, thread drifting or just otherwise being an ass about it. Ch. A.

Sorry, guys. My mistake. The thread is open again.

Irrelevent. It is illegal for us to broadcast election results like this until everything is in. This thread is locked until all polls close.

Guys, Avoid thread drift.

Guys, Avoid thread drift.

If it doesn't have an auto mail feature it ought to be easy to add one.No. It is not. We wish it was easy. That feature should be re-instated in the next release of the forum software. This issue is not forgotten in the least. That is 1 way of describing your post. I describe your post as a cross between off-topic and flame-bait trolling. At best, yours would lead to absurd thread drift. Perhaps I am wrong! So, I re-opened your post for all to see, engage and or ignore. Here it is.

The terms have lost all their meaning in my view.That is just it. Agreed. Possibly but that depends on the disposition of your target. Regardless, calling someone a leftie or a rightie reflects upon you and your perception. As mod, I hold the position that those terms are ambiguous and or insulting. I leave it to the target to care to make that difference because as far as moderator intervention is concerned, the ambiguity trumps everything. The ambiguity is what leads to the terms crossing the trolling threshold. For instance, if a member of the Red Team calls a member of the Blue Team a Lefty (or a Righty?) and then the discussion goes on and on and on and on about who is a righty or a lefty or what is the definition of righty or lefty, then the thread is drifting and it has only 1 place to go: ever increasing meaninglessness. As far as moderator intervention is concerned, it does not matter whether the members are offended or not anymore. Even if they were NOT offended, the matter may warrant an intervention. Personally, I used to get mildly offended whenever somebody called me a lefty or a righty but now I laugh it off because as GH said, the terms have no meaning and yet, they are presented as if they do. So, whenever somebody calls me a lefty or a righty, I immediately say to myself: "Slow down. You are not dealing with a person who knows that of which he speaks. There is no intelligent conversation to be had with this person. Smile and pretend you are stupid." Ha! Ha! I suspect you did not intend to make a joke but thanks! You made my day!

Guys, Please avoid making the discussions personal. It is thread drift which is trolling. If your post was deleted, the reason is because you were either trolling or responding to trolling which is a subset of trolling anyway. Mark that down on your list. None of you are all that exciting either so, it is boring and distracting to have to scroll through your shenanigans.

Guys, Stick to the topic and stop trolling.

This thread is locked. Members are free to discuss this topic in the Harper the Disgrace thread.

The threads were not deleted. The threads were merged into this thread: Harper the disgrace which is still open. ... has nothing to do with the moderator intervention. The intervention was made because there was no compelling reason to have multiple threads. This thread is locked.

Yes. That is it. Rule of thumb: If your reply takes less space than your quote does, then you quoted too much. Using the [ Quote ] Feature: - 2005 NEW RULE! - Trim Your Posts - 2006 Trim Your Posts and Quotes - 2006

Done and or doner.

Pardon the thread drift but does anybody dispute that "posting the same thing over and over again" is a form of thread drift? What difference, at this point, does it make??!?

Done.

.... it is being locked due to a demonstrable intention to violate the forum rules and guidelines: Posting "Harperites" is clearly inflammatory and only meant to annoy. Feel free to re-post this topic but make sure that your renewed attempt does not violate the forum rules and guidelines.

Of course. Add "posting the same thing over and over again" to that list.

I did not say it was inflammatory. I said it was inflammatory and or ambiguous. There is a big enough difference to make ignoring it and moving on the prudent thing for you to do at this point. See, I edited the title because it looked like you mis-spelled Stephen Harper's name. "Stephen" -- not "Heartless" -- is his 1st name. The title was long so, I just took "Heartless" down.

I edited the title. There was a spelling mistake in his name. ---- If you want to interpret that as pro-Harper censorship. Go ahead. There is more than enough record to show that there is no moderator bias. The "Heartless" tag was clearly meant to be inflammatory and or ambiguous. That is discouraged here in this forum. By the way, feel free to discuss the "Heartless" tag. Nobody is stopping anybody from discussing that.

It was deleted because it is repetitive. You can not repeat the same thing over and over again in this forum. That is trolling here. Trolling is not allowed. That is not true and we really do not care what accusations of bias are levelled at moderator staff. We get them from every angle.

What about allowing self-moderated posts? You would not be able to delete replies but you could move them off to the side. Imagine each thread having a column in the right-hand space --- kind of like where the Status Updates is located on the home page. If you do not like a reply to your post, you could drag and drop it into the right-hand column so that it stays out of the main thread. The reply would be clearly identifiable as a sub-branch from your post but any further replies to it would stay in the right-hand column.