James R's Independent Review Process

A Few Words on Issues Briefly Encapsulated and Expressed

Gustav: On Two Questions

Question the First: You're fighting over an opinion, in this case. Comparatively, if I refuse to back the assertion that "[expert's] explanation is wrong because he's calculating the wrong mass for the moon, which is actually made of cheese", that is problematic. James' opinion of your SBE thread? Not so problematic.

What you have in that is a useful example that might already have achieved dead-horse status, and may well have already progressed to "mudhole" stage.

So James was in error as he formed his opinion. This is the sort of card that you don't want to play in every hand.

Think of it this way: James is Australian. No, no, that's not the usual chuckle some folks have over the sensitivities and sensibilities of our neighbors Down Under, which often seem out of phase with American perspectives. Rather, just work with me, here: he's Australian.

I live over a thousand miles north of Los Angeles. And here's the thing: I knew your thread title meant something, but I never bothered to look it up. If you cued us to the meaning in-thread, I never even noticed.

But I did, in fact, think of you, friend, and lacking any booze at hand hoisted my coffee in tribute to your spirit when I saw a cable news segment a couple weeks back about a KCRW transition (Nic Harcourt's departure, I think).

It's significant to my memory because it is the second time in recent years I have been exactly wrong about the prospect of losing a KCRW show. That is, I didn't catch the segment squarely, with the result that I thought MBE was about to go dark. Previously, perhaps two years ago, I heard a news segment on NPR that To the Point was slated for cancellation in the new economic landscape, and mourned that coming loss such that I never did figure out just when the show was saved, or if I was remembering a dream, or whatnot, since Warren Olney is still leading some of the best roundtables in American broadcasting.

But neither was it until a couple weeks ago that I even recognized the phrase Morning Becomes Eclectic.

Not a hint of it when I blew through LA to San Diego in May. Didn't even notice.

I mean, you would think I would have seen a bumper sticker, an advert or article in San Diego City Beat.

Something like that, right? I mean, especially since I'm a public radio fan in general. The odds that I would have caught a whiff of MBE during four days in southern California?

But I didn't. Not until I encountered a strange cable news bit I now presume to be about Harcourt's exit did I even know MBE existed.

Which leads me back to a certain point: James is Australian.

I should know MBE. It turns out to be a very, very important show in the histories of American radio broadcast and pop culture alike. And I've never heard it. Don't get me wrong, I've seen Screaming Trees on Later. I have three television and three separate radio series of Mark Steel's work. In fact, the idea that I've never encountered MBE strikes me as downright odd.

But somehow I missed it. Even with all the musicians I've known over the years, nobody ever put a recording in my hand that was taken from MBE. And, well, given the number of bootlegs some of my associates have collected, I would think at least one of them would have had a recording from MBE.

Just sayin' ....

Right. James is Australian. I cannot reasonably expect him to know the title, either.

Which brings us to the actual substance—as I see it—of this count of your complaint.

And this is more than just James.

Question the Second: For some reason, internet transmission appears to coincide with critical degradation of context. That is, from your fingers to God's ear, you're likely going to Hell because if it went via the internet, God is going to take you completely wrongly.

What chance have we humans?

We've all done it, before. Missed context, that is. Sympathetic sarcasm ends up perceived as vile hostility. I remember one time I upset a member by either my use of the phrase "hep-cat", or else some variant of dancing/marching to a different beat/drummer. I can't remember, exactly. But part of it had to do with the question of whether or not "hep-cat" had a racist context or connotation.

And while that was a puzzling moment for me, this case must leave you scratching your head hoping to uncover a clue, or scratching your ass hoping to find a pony.

James missed the reference. And in this case he's missed it as badly as a number of people who, over the years, missed a point or reference obnoxiously without suffering moderation or administrative wrath.

But he made a very simple, very human mistake that is only highlighted so dramatically because of his administrative station, and because the present thread is intended to subject him to a sort of scrutiny that only becomes proper at our insistence if we say, "He's the Admin, so he deserves this scrutiny that is too much to ask of any of us."

What you have, in the end, if you don't beat this dead horse into a mudhole, is an example that can be soberly recalled at times it might be useful to do so.

It's the changes that we don't notice that are the most significant. In my own circles, it is hard to correct this kind of an error by rubbing it in. Such a course usually has the effect of making its point, but also inviting future sarcasm, snark, and bitterness as the corrected becomes the corrector.

If you don't try to beat him about the head with this one like it's a sockeye fresh off the boat, the longer-term effect will probably include the installation, adoption, or acknowledgment of an obscurity meter.

The number of times I have offended someone by making a remark aside that, by my understanding, they damn well should have understood, yet somehow failed to, is enough that when someone says something that doesn't sound quite right, or seems formulaic, or doesn't necessarily make sense compared to reality, my mind automatically rolls through relevant obscurities; my eyes look around to see who is giving a sly, fourth-frame glance. And, yes, usually that tells me what I need to know. In some company, I have adopted the habit of prefacing these sorts of remarks by saying, "Would it be inappropriate to say ...?" You know, a way of signalling those who might not be in the loop to not be entirely offended by what sounds crass to their uninitiated ears, but actually means something specific to those who know what I'm talking about.

It's also why I often say, "Something about _____ goes here." I mean, if I said something to, say, Quadraphonics, about whacking him with an olive loaf°, can I reasonably assume that he will understand the reference? Or, if he misses it, will he presume I am threatening him? Making a bizarre gay sexual advance?

And as Quadraphonics and I have been at odds, lately, I don't think I would be incorrect to keep a specific wit about me: Will he simply miss the point?° Or will he not only miss the point but leap to the most inflammatory interpretation he can construe?

To a certain degree, after James missed the reference, he presumed the worst. I say to a certain degree in two ways. First, while such a presumption is evident in the outcome, the magnitude of effect is uncertain. Secondly, we must treat the phrase "presuming the worst" in a broader context akin to Original Sin, which predisposes adherents to expect people to make the wrong decision more often than not. That is, we need not presume he is presuming the absolute worst of you, but, rather, that he might well be seeing a negative context for the title because he expects a negative context.

A Conclusion, of Sorts; Or Perhaps a Hypothesis: What I would propose on the question of MBE itself is that yes, James took a swing at it and whiffed. In baseball metaphor, he's hitting well enough; the question is whether he's tanking some plays, or if we're simply noting a weak spot in his game. Even still, there is a danger that James will take the phrase "weak spot" too severely. He doesn't watch baseball. I'm not certain if there is a cricketer's equivalent°. Is it the high and inside he's not hitting well? Maybe low and away?

Handled correctly, perhaps in this case by presenting a reasonable pretense of dignity and understanding, such that you might even prefer it to fretting—no, really, I don't know, y'know?—the occasion itself might have the effect of causing James to think twice when his obscurity alarm goes off. Perhaps he doesn't even notice it right now.

Again, I don't know. But the bigger deal you, we, or anybody makes out of this particular swing and a miss, the less chance human nature usually indicates for future adjustment and accommodation of the factors that led to error.

A Brief Note, Not Entirely Unrelated: Part of the reason I ducked the earlier invitation to get involved in this is that it won't do any good. Ultimately, the broader issue is one of procedure versus interpretation. Or, at least, I think that's a suitably neutral way of saying it. That is, do we continually adjust the rules, or reassess our interpretation of what the rules indicate? Inevitably, both are required; we have some gaps, and we also have differing perspectives on offense and magnitude thereof.

In the MBE example specifically, we are looking more at interpretation, not so much of rules but of content, and thus the nature of offense and magnitude thereof.

Appendix—A Note as a Moderator: Those who know us well enough are aware that the staff periodically undergoes all manner of convulsions behind closed doors, fighting bitterly among one another, and in many cases over the fates of specific individuals within our community. I give you my word that we are all heartily sick of it.

Still, though, the questions remain. Compared to some of the things we haven't flagged over the years, I have personally become somewhat befuddled by some of the things we do let get under our saddles. Under our skin. Up our asses. Whatever. My colleagues and I recognize that this effectively creates variable standards.

Perfectly uniform enforcement is not possible without specific censorship and a large increase in the bureaucracy, either in the form of faceless moderators you sometimes get to yell at or else robots simply replacing words with stars, auto-deleting posts that exceed predetermined quantitative thresholds, and issuing infraction points accordingly; suspensions might even be automated in such a case.

Some interpretive questions resulting in disputes over the rules:

• Should accusations of hate speech and hatred itself be considered violative of rules against flaming and personal attack?

• Should explanations of why a member, argument, or behavior is considered racist be considered of rules against flaming and personal attack?

—Think of it this way: If I say you're a racist, have I just flamed you? It's an unsubstantiated argument, right? But what if I present my evidence, based on your posts, explaining what looks racist, and why? Is that, then, a personal attack? The sum effect prevents people from identifying bigotry in various forms.​

• What constitutes a threat?

• Does the fact of a given volume of complaints about a member or moderator automatically validate those complaints, regardless of accuracy?

• Chicken or egg? Is it appropriate to issue sanctions against those who flame outrageous and violative behavior, but not the originally assesrted outrageous and violative behavior?

• Why is behavior in certain subfora frowned upon in others?

• Is all crackpottery the same?​

And so on.

Truth told, we rarely explore these issues properly when the questions start so specifically. That is, the clash of particulars doesn't seem to lead to any useful general application.

As almost any occasion can be construed as an opportunity, let us then use the present specifics—e.g., Gustav and James—in consideration of a more general application.

For my part, as a moderator, I'm not certain I am comfortable applying the scrutiny I see in some of the infractions against Gustav. As a result, plenty of people who conduct themselves in much more annoying, considerably less productive ways are generally ignored to muck up various discussions and create the appearance of variable standards.

And, well, that appearance would be accurate.

To the other, some of my colleagues do not perceive the intellectual dishonesty I've described to them about other people's conduct.

I issue few yellow cards, as a result, and rarely suspend anyone. But I've lost track of the system by which we interpret offense and culpability; all I know is that if I followed certain examples, I would piss off a great many people. To the other, in not following those examples, I'm leaving many people to wonder what's up with the variable standards.

I do not know what progress we can make, as a community, simply fighting out these particular disputes without considering a more general context.
____________________

Notes:

° whacking him with an olive loaf — Okay, come on. Somebody around here ought to know what that refers to. Anybody? Anybody?

° Will he simply miss the point? — This does not presuppose that our neighbor will always miss the point. But hidden context can be a risk if one is wrapped up in dispute, we can presuppose periodic failures to communicate. A phasing effect, metaphorically, between nonharmonic tones. The primary question, of course, is what to do in order to minimize such occasions. Beside that enigma is the question of what to do when such occasions arise. What can one expect, and how is the gap best bridged?

° a cricketer's equivalent — MLB is big on the nine-square (tic tac toe) pitch-track grid. But several years ago they also experimented with on-screen graphics describing a hitter's strong and weak spots over the same grid. It was a great stat; I have not seen it used in years. I'm not certain why they don't use it; I guarantee the basic statistic is recorded, as it is essential information in a batting coach's repertoire and vital to the proverbial books kept for the benefit of pitchers and catchers. No, seriously. A good catcher will know that on a 2-2 count, with RISP, this batter hits .180 if you set the slider high and inside, but .300 if you hang it over the middle; he hits .325 on a fastball to the high outside, but mostly pops up to a whopping .210 low and inside by constantly getting under and ahead of heaters under 93 mph. Yeah, baseball is a game of stats. Period. Everything else depends on the numbers.

 

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it ended on 7-10-11 at 12.27AM in post #76 like this....

..with post #77 being nothing but a eminently lulzworthy addendum

/snicker

now
since i like seeing you and james sorta bonding over this and the immense amount of respect i have for you, i'll make a simple point and bow out.

a criticism of the wording in that thread title,"sciforums becomes eclectic", can stand on its own. in this instance, the critique was put forth solely on the basis of the topic title's constituent words

an association and comparison of my music thread and topic title, the critique of, to a radio show in los angeles with a similar title is irrelevant and spurious, raising nothing but a strawman

sure i ripped the name off
but that was not the issue


sciforums: a bunch of people posted on that thread
eclectic: 1. Selecting or employing individual elements from a variety of sources, systems, or styles: an eclectic taste in music.

go look
it wont bite

 

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fuck it
i am "heartily sick" of it too so......
my apologies, james, for raking you over the coals like this
it was for the most part, unwarranted since i was aware of the context and dynamics at play......


gee
that was too much of an olive branch

lets instead review an instance where i am penalized with a 2 week ban

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james? tiassa?
my crime please?
and why was i also banned for raising the issue in sfog?

do the review
thanks

 

We all make mistakes . Aye James buddy

 

Isn't it obvious?

Annoying a moderator.

 

But it is fun . Like when you see your naked partner laying on the bed . You have to do at least a little teasing or the fun is just sucked right out of it

 

you mean like.... even though i knew i was rightfully banned for two weeks by string for...

...that, i decided on my return to dishonestly dispute the ban?
is that what actually happened, james?
i mean, if i am held to be trolling for merely disagreeing with a ban in sfog, that must be your preferred explanation right?

 

james, since this.....

Avoid examining the actual evidence. This allows you to say with impunity, "I have seen absolutely no evidence to support such ridiculous claims!" (Note that this technique has withstood the test of time, and dates back at least to the age of Galileo. By simply refusing to look through his telescope, the ecclesiastical authorities bought the Church over three centuries' worth of denial free and clear!)

seem to be your usual modus operandi, let me repost some choice quotes from that thread in sequence ....

and then ask you.... what makes my post stand out from the rest? how do you characterize the other posts?

thanks

 

The Church did not accept the telescope as a valid tool for obtaining information, so they saw no reason or need to look through it.
Possibly, they didn't understand how a telescope works to begin with, and it would have been too much to expect of them to learn it there on the spot.

Similarly, it is too much to expect a forum poster to learn about logical fallacies and apply the knowledge immediately.

It is also too much to expect people to learn about some ethical issue and apply the knowledge immediately.



Habermas's elaboration of a procedural, discursive deliberative democracy extends from his faith in communicative action, in symmetrical communicative interactions played out in an arena of communicative rationality. Yet Habermas expects too much of his agents. His theory of communicative action, built upon the necessary possession of communicative rationality, requires individuals to have clear, unfettered access to their own reasoning, possessing clear preference rankings and defendable rationales for their goals and values. Without such understandings, agents would have no reasons to extend or defend their positions in a discursive interchange; no validity claims are redeemable between communicative participants if the agent cannot access, substantiate or understand their own rationality. The psychological and discursive preconditions that agents must manifest to meet Habermas's conditions as participants in communicative rationality are exceptionally demanding.

source

 

allow me to assure you that no insult was intended by my observation of the methodology you bring to the review of that thread. i mean, you appear to be simply reiterating statements that are being disputed with essentially meaningless descriptors

how about if we dispense with terms such as "troll/trolling", replacing them with something more intellectually substantive to aid in the resolution?

for instance.......

a lighthearted dig at trippy

trippy joking around

...?

there, see?
you try
you can even ask me what i meant by my response in that thread

now
again... what makes my post stand out from the rest? how do you characterize the other posts?

 

wow
signal
impressive!

 

Having lived in SD for something like 14 years now, I had never heard of MBE until this very thread. But then I'm even less of a morning person than I am a radio listener (do read City Beat, though).

You can safely assume that I will pick up on major Bloom County references, yes.

As a more general principle for internet forum interaction, I'd suggest that the "30 seconds on Google" standard is broadly appropriate. Fortunately, it's largely self-enforcing.

 

james?
please justify the rationale behind the initial ban enacted by sci's human resources manager, superstring01, and the subsequent one meted out by you, james r, an administrator, upon my return for questioning the ban.

it would be a service to this forum and its community if the standards and reasoning utilized in the instance above are clearly articulated and defended.

as you indicated.......This leaves Gustav with 4 active infraction points. This still means that if Gustav earns another infraction before 19 July, he may be permanently banned. (james r).

that fact obviously makes this a matter of great import to me

let us thus examine the validity of these infractions....

and for illustrative purposes, lets do a replay with you as the subject...

---------------------------------------------------------

mmph
james playing the innocent
---------------------------------------------------------

this time around of course i am not joking
i am of the opinion that you are prevaricating and engaging in obfuscation

will you ban me for that alleged violation of the tos?
will you ban phlog?

i mean, after all....

..we are all entitled to our opinions just as you are, correct?

 

Also, I'm still eager for some clarification on this point:

Again, I see no reference whatsoever to such violations anywhere in the posting guidelines. Nor is it exactly clear what a "private conversation" is. Yet, Fraggle is describing this as some kind of unequivocal trigger for major sanctions, without apparent disagreement from any of the various other powers-that-be participating in this thread. Please clarify what the relevant policy on this is, including a definition of "private conversation," and update the posting guidelines as appropriate. Thanks.

 

Stabbing the Dark?

A fair question.

For my part, I think he's describing some extraordinary theoretical proposition. We have an established record regarding private messages:

Baron Max: but who gets to determine when it's no longer private?

Tiassa: The person you send the message to.​

In that case, Baron Max was upset because a scorching litany of insults earned him an off-cycle suspension for its severity, and from a moderator other than the one he sent it to. For us, the point of including the correspondence in the back room was to detail where a certain disciplinary issue was at in its process. For Max, it was some semblance of the theory that to for a recipient to show hate mail, for instance, to the police would violate the sender's right to privacy.

And yet, even before that episode, some members chose to make public the contents of private message exchanges related to various disputes.

To that end, our standard is established; one can choose to reveal the contents of public messages, but does so at peril of ridicule or scorn if it seems irrelevant and vicious.

Beyond that, Gustav is not a moderator, and thus cannot raid the Mod Lounge without committing a host of other banworthy offenses to say the least.

But there are some private conversations that I can reasonably construe as equivalent to personal data. For instance, while I doubt she would have minded me passing on the information when I got it, I withheld my understanding of S.A.M.'s wellbeing vis á vis the Mumbai triple bombing until someone asked; I had received the information outside of Sciforums. Similarly, I can understand the prospect that some things people might say to one another in relations extending outside this community might reasonably bear an expectation of general privacy within the Sciforums community.

However, that's as close as I am willing to speculate an answer to your question at this time. I might well be overlooking something about Fraggle Rocker's context; I might well be accidentally screwing yours.

 

As in, something like hacking into somebody's account, copying all of their private exchanges, and posting those?

Reading the cited precedents, the standard seems to be that anything that shows up in one's PM inbox is fair game for publicization - possibly excluding actual personal data? I guess it's a bit unclear, still, in that those precedents specifically concerned mods sharing PM contents with other mods, for purposes of official deliberations. Does it work the same way if a regular member posts the contents of a PM exchange to the regular boards?

 

Vagary and Something Approaching Logic

Aye. At the very least. I would presume a threshold occurs somewhere before that, but I'm uncertain where exactly that would be.

For the most part. The lines I draw, of course, fit my idea of common sense. That is, if I think something is relevant and possibly necessary. Generally speaking, there aren't may reasons for me to open someone's private message to public view. In some cases, it has to do with moderator duties. I can imagine providing an offending PM as evidence if a member decided to publicly protest their infraction; how else can I answer, then, if not to explain just what the offense was?

But, generally, I don't see any reason for it.

Well, that one case was about moderators, but I do recall members have used PM contents in personal disputes taking place in public. I do not recall that we suspended or otherwise disciplined anyone over it; there is a chance I've forgotten something, of course.

But as I said, revealing private message contents in a public dispute risks peril of ridicule or scorn if the information isn't relevant, or its revelation seems vicious. I mean, if one says one thing publicly, and another privately, and tries to con another who has that information via private message, one should not be surprised if the other pulls out that record and asks, "Well, what changed? What's the difference 'twixt last week (month, year, &c.) and now?"