And look at this post, it refutes her world veiw of me as a man, so she responds right below with just an lol.
That’s trolling.
Also, notice in this exact thread that MagsJ avoided the proof of ban baiting by referring to interactions before the board warning. She ignores the substance of my posts and just makes one sided arguments without offering her own proofs, or even arguments.
The question is… was your warning warranted or not. That is the only thing up for question… everything else is your petty human gripes that you choose to cling on to, which is of no-one else’s’ concern.
Have you submitted all your evidence? Are you done? Any further attempt for discussion will be ignored.
No. I’m sincere as fuck. I have actual arguments that evolve, not only as axioms, but as derivatives of those axioms. So, when i post, it is always new content. Eventually that content will die out and the threads will die and that will be it. Show me one instance where I refused to let a thread die.
Now compare me to iambiguous to that regard.
I think you are a coward for not letting threads run their course in the appropriate forums.
Verbally warned about the use of this / this word countless times, when any debate on the matter became an accusation towards all males and a one-sided rant on his part… a concern which was also voiced by others, but continued to be ignored by him.
This thread was moved to Rant and earned Ecmandu a warning, as it was simply flood-posting old content, when he should have carried on debate in existing threads, and not created a new thread in the guise of Religion.
So, on the question of litigating your claims, I think you’re not doing a great job. You’re alleging specific bad acts and a pattern of behavior which are allegedly present in public posts. But the links you’ve provided are mostly to your own posts, which aren’t particularly relevant or probative of someone else’s behavior. To look at the evidence you’ve provided, you’re telling a story about how awesome your philosophy is, and how dare Mags not see that; but you initially framed it as a story of how bad Mags’ behavior is, and how dare she behave so badly.
Of the 9 links you provide in support of your argument, I’d say you provide 2 that offer direct evidence in support of your claims. The post of Mags’ where she calls you a “pervert”, and the post of yours that is followed by Mags’ single-word reply, “Lol”.
And I say it’s evidence in support of your claims in that it’s not the highest ideal of philosophy, and maybe beneath the lofty standards to which I might wish for a moderator to hold herself. But it is also weak evidence, because I’m not sure it isn’t in line with the ideal of an online discussion forum, or that it’s beneath reasonable standard for moderators who are nonetheless community members, in their interactions in the Community forums (and in Rant House in particular). Your argument would be stronger had these comments been made in your threads that Mags had moved to Rant, but they were made in a third thread, started by someone else, in Rant, and presumably intended for not-so-serious conversation of a tone like the one Mags takes in those posts. And further, your allegations are much broader than two data points; certainly the pattern of behavior alleged is compatible with them, but it is not well established by them.
I also think you missed at least one post that I found more troubling: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopi … 2#p2737612 - MagsJ
The apparent threat, “tell me about myself and see what happens,” seems dangerously like a threat to use her power as a moderator as retaliation for being “[told] about [herself]”. As is often the case, neither the threatened action nor the conduct that would prompt the threatened action are clearly stated, and I am wary of misinterpreting them. In the context of the thread, where, in commenting on women and their capacities for consent, and so implicitly telling Mags about herself, maybe the threat is a warning about how women will respond. Or maybe it is a threat of moderator action, and telling women about themselves means being overtly and specifically ad hominem. There are legitimate interpretations. But there are also illegitimate ones.
And the illegitimate interpretations call into question other actions taken thereafter. Even exercises of moderator power that would be legitimate become tainted by a threat that suggest an illegitimate use of power. Especially at ILP, where the rules are intentionally vague, a reasonable justification for an ostensibly legitimate moderator action can often be found by anyone clever and motivated. A threat to pay careful attention to everything a user does, and to take every opportunity to use legitimate moderator power to police board standards, would be a threat to abuse moderator power, even if each act would be reasonable considered separately.
In the present case, moving the threads in question to Rant seems reasonable. The first was poorly and tersely articulated argument, which does not have nearly the delicacy appropriate to the topics it covers; it fails by the fourth word to balance sensitivity of topic with care in expression. And the second does seem to be an attempt, following the removal of the first, to continue the conversation in a similar tone, and thus to circumvent the original move. In that case, moving it is appropriate, and issuing a board warning is justified.
So there is only the question of whether, so justified, they are meta-justified, i.e. are they justified acts taken towards an unjust end, and thus in abuse of a position of trust? And that question is only raised because, in a series of back-and-forths that spanned days and threads (7, by your count), and was often heated and even personal, upon disengaging from a conversation that implicitly impugned her full agency, she used a turn of phrase that reads like a threat. But for that turn of phrase, I don’t think there would be a question. If she were targeting you for moderation and banning, she had more opportunities than she took advantage of. If she were attempting to bait you, she wouldn’t have left conversations where you were most easily baited. What you allege is at odds with her apparent forbearance, and make the threat seem more like a misinterpretation that did not inform actions nor reveal intent.
I don’t think Mags actually abused her power. Moving your threads and warning you were warranted. Those in positions of power should strive to be above reproach, and I don’t think Mags is entirely above the possibility of reproach here. But I don’t offer her reproach. Being a moderator and remaining a user is an inherent tension, neither fully compatible nor fully separable. Your allegations here demonstrate the ways in which a philosophical disconnect can feel like part and parcel of an act of moderation. And surely it can flow both ways, such that perceiving someone to be unreasonable in one context makes their acts elsewhere seem that much more obviously and egregiously unreasonable. A moderator can apply a healthy dose of self-doubt to mitigate that, and err on the side of inaction, can let things slide and forbear. But we also know that if you watch anyone closely enough, if you look for wrongdoing and you are motivated to find it, you can find it. Mags is among our most prolific users, and among the dozens of pages I was asked to review for this complaint, I found one sentence that gave me pause.
Mags is not a “troll moderator”. She’s a user who disagrees with you, and a moderator who is empowered to enforce the standards of the boards such as they exist. She did both here.
Unlocking the thread for any responses. I’ll lock it again in a day or two.
1.) I could have easily debated her, but the nature of the board warning sent a clear message that even in rant, I’d be banned if I did.
2.) the nature of the board warning has thrown any mention of my topic out of the public forums in perpetuity.
MagsJ defines rant as a one sided argument:
It’s doesn’t get more one sided than what she’s doing in her part.
My language always improves.
You failed, carleas, to mention that I rely on (as an axiom) my proof of human sexuality to make deeper arguments (namely that it’s the primary cause for destruction of the ecosystem and also is an argument against god and Buddha)
I offer that I have a standing thread in creative writing with these concepts.
I can see why you would feel this way, but I think it’s an artifact of the moderator/user dichotomy; neither of these is the case. You have an ongoing thread criticizing and trying to debate Mags for which you have not been warned or banned. Debating her on philosophical grounds is permissible, and I don’t think anything she’s done suggests otherwise.
And her warning is limited to the facts: you circumvented her removal by creating a new thread on the same topic in which you called her out in the opening sentence. Just… don’t do that?
As for discussing your topic outside of Rant, you need to proceed delicately. You’re discussing topics that are auto-bans on most other forums. I want to accommodate hard topics here, but they need to be treated with the maturity and deliberate care of bona fide academic philosophy. Know that you’re dealing with charged topics, and conduct the thread in a way that treats them as such, e.g. don’t evoke graphic sexual violence in your opening sentence before even establishing what the thread is about.
In case you didn’t notice, I’ve not once debated the “offending topic” with MagsJ once since she issued the warning, because she said she’d ban me.
To bring up my other thread in rant is a disingenuous example of the seriousness of this censorship. I challenged her to debate her repeated slander that my argument was one sided and circular
Creative writing because it is the place I’d be least likely to get banned in the public forums, regardless of how delicately I treat the topic.
Mags is under no obligation to debate you or to be convinced by your arguments. She may well go on believing that your argument is circular or incoherent, and that’s her right.
As for placement, you’re not doing creative writing, right? You’re doing some variety of philosophy? I suggest it start it in the Sandbox.
But look, Ecmandu: start it fresh. Don’t call out Mags. Don’t be inflammatory. Write is slowly, proofread it and edit into sentences and paragraphs. Put yourself into the shoes of your audience and try to anticipate what we won’t understand. You know you’re talking about things that you can’t talk about anywhere else. Think about why that is, and balance the legitimate concerns against effectively communicating your ideas. You know that what you’re trying to say is upsetting for people, so do what you can to intellectualize it and avoid upsetting people.
This isn’t carte blanche; you’ve tried and failed to present this idea idea in a way that’s acceptable in the main forums, so you are under advisement that you need to approach it differently.
If the lines aren’t clear (and I acknowledge that balancing tests are never perfectly clear), I’d be happy to proofread a draft of any post and either bless it or explain in specific how it’s crossing the same lines.
Thanks for offering a way forward and hi-lighting the delicacy and tact needed in discussing such topics, and also the need to debate in good faith… whether there is agreement or not.
But this actually is true. You’re a weird guy who has ridiculous ideas that are clearly outside the bounds of reason and you’re really combative about them.