Choosing Moderators?

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101

That may well happen, James. But I’m not sure that is really a problem. Why, for instance, would it matter to me what is being said about me on a string I don’t really care to go on to?

All I’m addressing here is the the very real possibility that there are people who cannot interact because their sensibilities and assumptions are such that any hope of respectful discourse (or even productive discourse) is unlikely to happen. There comes a point at which 2 people are facing a wall and all that is left is force. And force, in the context of the boards, tends to come in the form of of insults and backbiting. It just seems to me that by allowing people to decide who and cannot participate in their discourse, all the backbiting and insults become less necessary. Plus that, it allows us to deal with trolling in the many subtle forms it can take by isolating those who willfully choose to engage in TlBs (troll-like behaviors).

102

It also seems to me that anyone who chose to disagree with the author would be banned in most occasions and only those who agree with the author will be allowed. Not everyone is as benevolent as you are, good sir. And perhaps in a fit of anger you might ban someone for simply disagreeing with something you said in a manner you didn’t like.

I think it’s time for people to learn that they aren’t sensitive and delicate little flowers. They can actually withstand quite a lot more than they think they do and they hold themselves back. Eventually, you will have to learn to hold your own and to remain secure in it even against those who violently disagree with you.

103

More than true. But until then… :-k

104

they’ll just have to suffer. Or cry so loud that people will feel sorry for them and spoil them.

105

We had these discussions along time ago, I tried really hard to push some sort of self-reflection on the results of coercive force and its social after effects… it all went over peoples very thick skulls here, and by over I mean deflected.

You cant argue with brownshirts like Magsj. I’ve said it a hundred times, look at the posts of the site ‘now’, and earlier eras. The moderation killed it… this place now debates eating plants for science in a era of Hadron Colliders in the science section, in a era when Putin invades Ukraine, and Obama is in Afganistan and Libya is out of wack, the big debate is Homosexuality in the statecraft section… the rest of the forum is pure childish filth as well… I never could touch the main forum, its got the feel of computer generated vocabulary babble.

There is nothing to save here. There is nothing to discuss with Carleas about saving… he thinks comparatively, something is actually right about this site… a Dung Beetle does a more respectful job by removing the shit from site, Carleas advertises the filth as philosophy.

  1. This site caters to racists, pedophiles, and Nietzscheans, and fools who lack everything save their delusions of grandeur. Infact, a racist thread currently dominates a whole sectiom of this site. This site set the record for pedophilia discussion rankings on google a while back. Fuck this place.

Your projecting your own sense of self-worth, and a handful of partial discussions, isolated and rare (they were overlooked by the moderation) as the good of this site.

Honey tastes sweet, and can be thought of as good. However, once lost in poison, you have to forget about extracting it, or how to only drink the good, cause the whole elixir is fucked. Toss the lethal honey water out. Dont even think about it.

You all live in hell here. Too damn the fool, and lacking sny self respect to leave. Pleading with Carleas for improvement is like asking the devil to admonish his demons on their terrible etiquette.

If Carleas owns the site, and the site is extremely fucked up, and has been repeatedly warned its deeply fucked, his procrastinations and mocked denials his only response, we can safely assume this formula:

Carleas > or = The Fucking Problem.

The culture that resulted is causally interdependent upon his outlook and approach. In essence, it can only exist because he accepts it by never bothering to adequately counter it, if anything, he’s defendes the ludicrous behavors that are now the norm.

I’m Leonardo DeCaprio from Deception, washing upon these distant shores with only one mission now, to warn you to stop trying to make it better, its all a false sickness… just leave this cursed shit smeared crackhouse… don’t argued, leave.

106

When the people of the world give up trying to exist in a better one, what hope is there? Hopefully your voice does not speak for everyone, though it carries large amounts of the truth within it.

There is still a lot of good here and in mankind, if only they would believe it.

Funny, and here I thought I was like Leo.

You’d be surprised at how many people tell me to give up hope. Very few tell me to keep going with what I’m doing. Very few people give ME hope.

Sadly, regardless of the hope that others give me, I must generate my own and I must still conduct my business. And really, regardless of the negativity and hate you lay out for me; I’m used to cesspools and I’ve seen far worse than this place.

Are you going to just lay down and roll over and die like a good boy? I’ve chosen not to. I will go out fighting for what is right, even as people tell me not to. To give the world one last good legend and to keep the spirit alive as long as possible. Your words fall upon deaf ears as assuredly as you view mine to. And, I must say that your attitude isn’t going to help matters.

If you’re that unsatisfied with this place, no one is asking you to stay and you obviously have no intent of making it better or fighting against the darkness. You’re not a bad person, you’ve just largely given up. Don’t do that.

107

Again: noted: Again: Move along please.

108

You’re a part of the problem, iambiguous. A lot of the people here are part of the problem. Why do you think Carleas and the mods gave the fuck up in the first place? You all need to open your eyes and realize that none of you are blameless.

109

But let me guess: You and CN are part of the…solution?

Why don’t the two of you discuss it in a separate thread. Call it, “If I were administering ILP”.

I mean, how long could it be before it devolved into a verbal slugfest?

110

No, actually, idiot, Ambig makes a rather obvious point: if you guys really hate what is going on here, why don’t you find a board more suitable to your expectations rather than stay here and bitch about what we’re doing?

Whatever it is you, James, and contra think you are doing here, what you are actually doing constitutes little more than heckling. You complain about the silly things people are posting about. But what could be more silly and mediocre than what is going on on this string and what you guys are doing?

I mean it seems to me that rather than sit here and bitch about the quality of what is going on, you could be posting and starting strings that demonstrate the quality of inquiry you feel everyone else is missing. But I have yet to see any of that out of any of you. What that suggests to me is that none of you know shit about authentic intellectual inquiry and supplement the absence through bitching about what everyone else is doing. This is because it is the only hope of feeling like you have anything authentic to offer.

You guys are little more than mediocre morons participating in schoolyard tactics. You may think what you’re doing puts you above everyone. But all I’m seeing puts you at grade school level.

111

Carleas, this string is a waste of mine and Ambig’s time. Yet it tends to draw us in like, well, pretty much anything else that might suck: a kind vortex of the moronic. And while I welcome any opportunity to jam with Ambig, it wouldn’t compromise my process in the least if this one got locked down before it gets even nastier.

I mean who really cares what these guys have to say anyway. They claim to want serious discourse. But all I’m getting out of them is a lot of heckling and sniping.

112

The thing that sucks for me (the shame on me( is that I always tend to get caught up in the nonsense when I’m in between flows. It always happens when my studies are not producing.

Do you have a similar experience, Ambig?

113

And tell me something, idiot, James, contra, what philosopher are you studying right now? I’m just curious what footwork you guys are doing to justify your claim to serious intellectual pursuit.

I’m also curious how you justify the hypocrisy of berating me for wanting a system in which we don’t have to deal with people that make us uncomfortable while basically perpetuating a string based on your not wanting to deal with people that make you uncomfortable -that is while people who happen to come off as naive seem to be pretty much harmless while you guys have shown yourselves to be little more than authoritarian goons and assholes. I mean much of what you guys have been arguing actually looks like whining to anyone that is actually comfortable with ILP as it is. Plus that, idiot’s pic suggests trailer trash that has kicked a few asses and now wants to feel like he’s a little more than a knuckle dragging ape:

“Yesterday, I could not spell intellectual. Now I are one!”

In fact, I would argue that the reason that he chose that pic is to intimidate in order to compensate for his lack of intellectual integrity or that which we have yet to see.

114

At the same time, the cool thing about strings like this is that it draws out the real trolls. This string, from the beginning, has been about the intellectual equivalent of stroking one’s ego through negativity. And I have already established the mediocrity of doing so. It is a form of sentimentality as compared to a balanced approach that seeks something more than a 1 to 2 dimensional approach to intellectual and creative curiosity.

It’s all right here, guys, for everyone to read and judge. That’s what trolls tend to forget. They think, out of ignorance, that it is purely a matter of winning the individual language game they happen to be engaged in. This is why they think their schoolyard tactics work. This can be easily confirmed by a short visit to KTS. They tend to think that because they happen to be part of an in crowd (they do tend to exploit the cult dynamic that finds strength in numbers) they are automatically right without providing a real argument as to why they are. This is what allows their usually ad hominem attacks, such as that on my more democratic approach as a boo-hoo approach, to seem more legit than they really are. It sounds witty while not really being that witty. Still, if there are others reinforcing it it must seem wittier than it really is.

You BOYS (schoolyard punks) are little more than a study in how intellectual inquiry can go really wrong.

115

"You cant argue with brownshirts like Magsj. "

This, of course, is the perfect example of how true brownshirts work in order to justify their utter fucking nonsense! They try to reverse the observation on those who made it in the first place by zeroing in on some aspect they can tweak enough to make it seem like the people who are trying to do the right thing (which maj always is beyond any question in my mind) in order to misdirect. The right (the self indulgent) uses it on the left all the time.

This is despicable and the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh referring to the latest pope as a socialist just because he happened to change the emphasis of the Catholic church from catering to the needs of the rich to the needs of the poor. This is pure misdirection from the self indulgent ego stroking of her accuser. And the only reason she is probably being accused of it is because she noted the brownshirt methods of whoever made this totally ignorant statement.

Let’s be clear on this: Maj has never been less than pure of heart -more so than even me. And Contra, only a knuckle dragging moron could make a statement like this.

116

If people learned to stand up together against the trolls when they came, they would have found no ground to stand on or stay here.

If people had been on top of them selves and teaching them selves proper habits, they could have prevented a lot of the arguments from happening. As it is, I see more people prone to arguing for the sake of arguing just to insult than I see anything real actually being said. And you can call me the hypocrite all you want; but since I’ve been here, I have said countless more real things about this world than many that have graced this place with their presence.

You can call that me stoking my ego; but it is only ever cognizance of self. I recognize my self and am confident in what I do.

Obviously, the nice and peaceful methods weren’t working were they? Noooooo, otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here bitching in this thread to begin with, would you? Banning the trolls doesn’t work, because then they just make a different account and come back. And, if you ban their IP, they can use a proxy or change it completely. There is no getting rid of a troll that wants to be here, so make them not want to be here. Stand up together against them and they will go away.

I showed you all the power of a single man to come in here and stand up to every single faulty form of argument there is and how to break it down and you’re going to tell me it’s impossible for you all to stand together to make this a better place?

Instead of fighting me over the brilliance of my ideas and the simplicity of it all that you just don’t think will work; maybe you should just stop thinking and give it a fucking try and man the fuck up instead of coming at me sideways when I tell you to actually do something productive around here and secure your invested fucking interest in this place instead of complaining like a little bitch about it to mods who are sick of hearing people complain like little bitches and seeing them act like kids. Look at you; wahhhhhhh, wahhhhhh. I don’t want to hear it. You have no leg to stand on and coming at me side ways doesn’t solve the problem either. In fact, it makes you stand with the trolls, defending them. They will win because you thought my methods; which yielded the only results this forum has seen in ages; are fucked up.

No, suck it up. You’re not just going to get your way just because you think you should get your way. That’s bullshit. You’re just getting emotional and hating on me because I’m getting on you for your shit. Fuck off. If you can’t handle the heat, don’t step the fuck up. I will knock your bitch ass in the fucking dirt.

117

First of all, thank you Carleas for not kicking me off. I came on here half (if not more than half) expecting that to be the case. Clearly, you’re sleeping on the job, brother.

Secondly, in the frenzy of mudslinging I managed to get myself drawn into, I now recognize a major oversight when I argued that there was little effort at philosophical significance. I had completely forgotten Jame’s sincere effort at creating a blueprint for choosing a moderator. Even if I disagree with it, I still have to admit that it was above the mudslinging this has degraded into.

Idiot:

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

I know the type. I’ve bought drugs from guys like you and have even lived among you. And not all of you are bad -or idiots.

That said, I just think you guys are participating in the very activity you are thumbing down your nose at. You complain about what everyone else is doing here and how trivial it is. But how philosophically significant has the bulk of what we have been doing here actually been? It just seems to serve my process better to not concern myself with what someone else is doing since it allows me to focus my resources on what I’m doing: MY Process. But all too often on here, I see people throwing around certain buzzwords like rationality, logic, the scientific method, etc., etc… But what I don’t see is an actual demonstration of how those things can benefit a process. You break the cardinal rule of any creative writing class by talking about it (abstractions in this case) and not actually showing it in action.

118

I can accept the second claim, but not the first. ILP is by now an old site, it’s an institution, it has a history and a memory and an inertia that’s hard to redirect. When I took over, people were already talking about how the mods suck and the site wasn’t what it used to be. Let me clearer about that: almost half a decade before you even came to ILP, people were complaining that ILP wasn’t what it used to be. I can accept responsibility for many of the failings of ILP; probably some of the things I have done, and certainly some of the things I have not done, have led the site to be less than it could be. But I won’t take responsibility for the history and inertia that are still part of what makes ILP what it is, and I think that inertia is at least a part of the problem.

And I won’t take responsibility for the fact that everyone who comes here leaves a different person. Take as premises:

  • The reason people come is that they’re looking for the kind of discussion that goes on here.
  • The reason people leave is that the discussion that goes on here is no longer what they’re looking for.
    Given those things, at least two things can explain every person’s dissatisfaction and departure: 1) the discussion has changed, or 2) the person has changed.

And I say that as someone who has changed. I can’t tell whether the discussions here are comparable to what they used to be. I know that I have grown up; I read some of the things I wrote before, some of the arguments that I was absolutely compelled to pursue, and I can’t understand what drove me. I can’t read today’s discussions through the eyes that wrote what I was writing 2 years ago, and Contra, neither can you. And it’s not enough to put two threads up side by side and ask if the old one is better; people will disagree, and the people that come here today and the people that leave are doing so for their own reasons, and not by any objective criteria. Keep that in mind while you thrash how “this place isn’t what it used to be” that there is always, always an implied “…for me.”

Idio (which, to avoid confusion, is how I’ll shorten IdioticIdioms, unless you have a preferred abbreviation), I appreciate your optimism. I was once optimistic, and I retain a lot of common ground with you. But over time I’ve realized that a big limitation on giving people the room to grow is that ILP isn’t a society. People come and go, they make multiple accounts, they come here intentionally to make trouble as a pass-time. That means that giving certain users the space they need to grow will actually just result in worse discussion for everyone, and will drive away the kinds of participants that are necessary to show fledgling philosophers how to fly. That’s a big problem in trying to cultivate rather than to attract the kinds of users that make a good forums.

But we do want room to grow; we want the kind of site that would accept our younger selves, back when we were knuckle-dragging kids. But we want those knuckle-draggers not to chase out the already upright.

d63, I feel your frustration, but constant criticism of the site and how it’s run is useful. And if it’s not useful, it’s at least damn interesting. It’s like if Sir Thomas More were god, and had to put his Utopia into practice and see how it really fared. It’s a beautiful exercise.

EDIT: Oh yeah, stop insulting people.

119

You sit well on that throne. Better than most I’ve seen in charge. I will call you my better and learn from you.

120

That was a disturbingly good response Carleas, and I commend you for it, you’ld make a good lawyer.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Everything is a poo-poo sandwich. Nothing has changed. You’ve elicited a good emotive response, but not a single parameter has changed for the better… a Battleship Potomkin, without a port.

I’ll make you a deal… triple the number of mods, but restrict the power of the new mods from banning or really any moderator power… simply use the long term members as a advisory council… they can debate and discuss the necessity of banning or modifying posts in the mod forum… and THEY can approve and refuse mods from messing with posts.

Make sure two things… long term dissenters are on board (the current system of all the mods getting along, choosing one another, and cluster fucking individual posters suck- you should encourage opposing viewpoints so a balance of power evolves) and secondly, give people the power to edit their posts.

My posts were being modified against my will, and Im a published author now. There is too much Magsj using my name as her sock puppet, and this site gets archived elsewhere offsite. The old excuse doesnt work… and you admit, alot of the stuff written here is pure shit anyway…

If you do those two… let the older guys fix the posts, and set up a advisory council of long term users as petite mods to investigate and discourage abuse, I’ll stand down. No more.

(And dont put me on that advisory council, I got stuff to do, but its obvious some of the ones who should be, they have alot of posts and are outspoken about abuses. If you do admit to issues, acknowledge people do change… then this is a simple solution, and it will run itself once established. I wouldnt have a basis to complain.)