Split from: CPAC 2018

(EDIT: this topic was split from here. - Carleas)

Apparently this topic is not “political discussion”. According to Carleas. Just so you know, apparently nothing in this topic has anything whatsoever to do with actual politics.

Nice video post about… politics, by the way. Black Pigeon knows his stuff.

You are misrepresenting me. Here’s our exchange, where I explain my decision, and expressly acknowledge that this is political discussion:

Moved to the new Current Events forum.

My post is nothing like chanting “CLINTON 2020 CLINTON 2020 CLINTON 2020 CLINTON 2020 CLINTON 2020 CLINTON 2020”. Talk about a misrepresentation.

And since you do not disagree that my post is political discussion, why would you remove it from the… politics forum?

Strange.

But anything to keep our content out of the regular politics forum, eh?

These videos which I posted are meant to start discussion on these political issues. Many issues are mentioned, including gun rights, free speech, the EU, national sovereignty, immigration, etc.

Do we need to start having a discussion about one of these, for you to agree this is a political topic?

Oh, would you say that they are “the germs of deep thought”…?

If you want to make a post where you discuss political philosophy, please feel free. Feel free to refer, in the course of your discussion of philosophy, to any other thinker you like. But in this thread, you just posted a few youtube videos without comment. Your entire contribution to the discussion you think you’re having here has been to copy and paste a URL.

Considering some of the things you have in your politics forum, I find it doubtful that my posting some video discussions on the real political issues I mentioned is somehow off limits. There is zero reason to think that the video discussions on issues that I posted would not spur discussion in the topic on those very same issues, or on CPAC generally which is also… a political event, and regardless of which side you are on.

To me it is obvious that you are moving our Trump related content away from the politics forum and into a smaller, more separate and out of the way forum. What, a discussion on Trump’s achievements and philosophy doesn’t count as political discussion, but this (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=193852) does? Give me a break.

Being a discussion and spurring a discussion are different things.

Agreed, that thread has been moved to Rant.

I also find it interesting that my private messages were posted publicly, by you. Not that I care in this instance, but one might imagine asking a user’s permission before posting their PRIVATE messages to you in the public forum. But maybe that’s just me.

I think I’m justified on two grounds:

  1. When you said “According to Carleas”, you were ostensibly disclosing the contents of our private correspondence, in which case further disclosure of the correspondence is fair game. If you don’t want the contents of a private correspondence disclosed, then don’t disclose them.

  2. When you attributed to me statements that I did not make, and indeed that were exactly the opposite of what I said in our private correspondence, disclosure of the private correspondence was justified in order to correct the record.

They were my impression. That my post was not fit for political discussion, despite that you ultimately agreed it was or at least denied not agreeing. I really don’t care to quote this or that, obviously you phrased your PM comments in a way that did not agree with your actions, either that or I don’t apparently understand the purpose of the politics forum here.

You’ll have to forgive me for getting the impression that, upon having my political topic moved out of the politics forum and into the “sandbox”, and based on what you wrote to me in response to my request to have it moved back, that you were indeed saying precisely what I claimed. But I didn’t post your PMs because it would never occcur to me to do that.

Mentioning what you told me about my own post not being fit, in my own post, is highly relevant, especially considering this is your forum. But I suppose that’s no different, to you anyway, than publicly posting your user’s PMs. Cool.

I’ll just have to keep that in mind.

I think you were justified in invoking what I said in PM, and I think any misrepresentation was a good faith misunderstanding. But it remains the case that 1) you brought the contents of our private correspondence into discussion, and 2) you misrepresented my position.

Perhaps you would have cause to complain if what I quoted from our private correspondence was more personal, or even clearly irrelevant to rebutting your characterization of what I said. But here, our conversation was impersonal and to the point. And the posts rely on each other for their full meaning; especially where your misrepresentation was in good faith, the whole exchange is necessary to show how poorly I expressed myself, and how you could have understood me to be saying something that I did not intend.

The general principles invoked here are:
a) Private correspondence should generally be kept private. (You invoke this; I agree)
b) Law-like pronouncements made privately can be disclosed publicly. (You invoke this; I agree)
c) Disclosing part of a private correspondence justifies disclosing other parts of that correspondence. (I invoke this; agree?)
d) A public characterization of the contents of a private correspondence justifies revealing a sufficient part of that correspondence to allow the public to evaluate the characterization. (I invoke this; agree?)

C and D are fine, so long as A and B are not violated.

It would honestly never occur to me to publicly repost a PM someone else wrote me. I might ask their permission to reference something they said in it. It also never occurred to me that I would need to ask permission to mention the supposed reasons why my topic was moved, being as it would be unreasonable to expect any kind of secrecy about such rules. It also never occurred to me to think of those rules as told to me as “a private conversation”, even though they were communicated in PM. I didn’t reduce the content to the form, which is also why I didn’t repost the PMs themselves. It didn’t matter how the reason was communicated to me, the reason is what I commented on and I didn’t think for one second there would be any expectation of privacy around what that reason is. I did, however, assume there would be an expectation of privacy around the private message itself.

Apparently I’m the only one who sees the distinction here.

Guy X tells me something that I would never even think could be construed as “private information” or that he wouldn’t want communicated to others. I therefore mention what he said (what I think he said, or my impression anyway) where it is relevant to do so.

Instead I just repost the entire private message exchange I had with guy X, without asking him first.

I dunno, seems like an obvious difference between those two scenarios. If I had thought for one second that you might have wanted your reasoning for moving my topic kept a secret, then I would have asked you if I could share that reasoning in the topic. But reposting publicly an entire PM exchange with someone, regardless of the contents of the PMs, would never be something I would consider doing unless I had that person’s permission.

But as I said, I don’t really care that much.

B, C, and D are exceptions to A. A is the general case, B, C, and D are specific cases where it doesn’t apply.

So we started with A, a private correspondence. In it, you questioned a moderation decision, and I replied with a law-like pronouncement. You were therefore justified by B to disclose that publicly. But in doing so, you 1) disclosed part of a private correspondence, and 2) made a public characterization of our private correspondence. I was therefore justified by C and D to disclose the relevant part of the conversation in full.

Right, this is essentially A.

And this is essentially B.

Here you use “the reason” as though the content were agreed upon and paraphrased neutrally. But again, as I read your characterization, it is nearly the opposite, in both form and content, of what I said in our private correspondence.

It’s true that I would have been justified in just denying that your characterization of what I said was anything like what I said, but that doesn’t entail that I was not justified in presenting the correspondence itself. Where you’ve expressed through action a desire to discuss what was said, you’ve characterized what I said in a way that doesn’t reflect my intent and casts me in a negative light, you’ve included one quoted phrase which I did not use, and the whole disagreement about who said what and how best to interpret it can be cleared up instantly by copying and pasting the actual words used, there is no reason not to do so.

This would be better than posting a spun version of what guy X said.

But this is all an aside from the initial complaint, should I take it you’ve concede that point?

This is what passes for an apology.

I don’t need an apology. I get why he’s unhappy with the decision to move his thread, and it is right that I should explain myself.

And there is some ambiguity in exchange and how he described it. I read the quotes around “political discussion” as quoting, but quotes can also be used to accent or call out a phrase. And while I take the emphasis to be the “political” in “political discussion” (not least because he continues, “apparently nothing in this topic has anything whatsoever to do with actual politics”), if instead he meant to emphasize the “discussion”, it isn’t even untrue (though it is still misleading). In context, I read him as characterizing my position as being that the thread is not political, and therefore it is not “political discussion”. But I think it’s fair to characterize my position as being that his thread is not discussion, and therefore it is not “political discussion”.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed this discussion.

Trump related content is apparently not political discussion. Removing someone’s post from politics forum apparently has nothing to do with the post being political or not. Mentioning what the owner of his site says about the rules is apparently no different than publicly posting user’s PMs. Ok.

Yeah I’m done too. It’s been fun.

See here. Trump content is current events. So is Hillary or Bernie or Elizabeth Warren content.