There's definitely a culture problem here. Almost every potentially dramatic CI thread turns into "mods vs. dissenters" where the mods have this monolithic posture determined in a secret lounge and the plebs go back and forth. It would be nice if mods on both sides of an issue could speak publically so we know that reasonable discussion happens among mods and so that we can get rid of this sense of "mods vs. plebs." The only difference between a pleb and a mod is that only one has a stick, not that only one has a brain or that only one matters.
That is not true we do have a stick. We can vote with our eyes. You can go anywhere on the internet. Why come here if it really is as bad as described by some. This site needs members more than it needs mods. If the mods overreach you can leave and go to diestoremoval. The fires did just that.
But if you keep freely coming here then it cannot be that bad or MTGS provides a service that is unmatched or unique.
It's more a matter of principle. The way the closing of the gutter was handled was terrible. It was like the staff basically decided that the gutterites were terrorists and that was that. If the people of DTR weren't such moral individuals, they probably would have let it go, but they have morals and a sense of what's right and they know how they were treated was wrong.
I meant that the only difference between mods and plebs is that mods have the authority to take adverse actions within the forum. Of course, they often use that well to control discussion, but sometimes they don't. They're not special people whose opinions should matter more in discussion (although I realize maybe they're the only ones who should get to vote). I just wish they'd come out here more instead of having parinoid nitpick DTR people and Galspanic/Sene/votan give the company line.
EDIT: It's not like they'd lose some kind of mystical aura of monolithic credibility. Nobody reads CI. Rumor Mill has like 150 viewers (on a slow day) and on a drama day CI just hits 15 viewers.
From what i can tell everyday is a slow day on DTR.
It's obviously not as fast paced as the Sally, but it's a group of great people who discuss MTG and life without ridiculous rules and corrupt staff members.
It's more a matter of principle. The way the closing of the gutter was handled was terrible. It was like the staff basically decided that the gutterites were terrorists and that was that. If the people of DTR weren't such moral individuals, they probably would have let it go, but they have morals and a sense of what's right and they know how they were treated was wrong.
Maybe i have the wrong understanding. I thought Hannes wanted to absolve responsibily of the site. So he gave some or all control to Curse. Curse did not like the gutter so the gutter had to go.
That actually is crappy to loose all the posts, memories, and friendships made in that forum. Create that again at DTR. If MTGS is so bad leave it behind.
It's obviously not as fast paced as the Sally, but it's a group of great people who discuss MTG and life without ridiculous rules and corrupt staff members.
You should sign up and chat.
I actually like DTR. I go there sometimes. I am a real lurker. Today is a slow day for me too.
I know I generally have nothing good to say but I gotta ask this. What if SCG asked MTGS staff to take care of any posts that could be damaging to their business? SCG is a major OP organizer as well as a business and a news site. A few years ago they would have had to suck up any naysayers but they've got lawyers and PR people now. Also, perhaps Curse doesn't want the userbase alienating SCG for their own reasons. *shrug*
I'm neutral when it comes to SCG. They've done some things I liked and some things I didn't like. I'm all for dissent as long as its backed up by something other than the person's gut feeling. Mainly because when there is alot of pointless or unwarranted dissent real issues get ignored as the flames rise and the issue gets clouded by smoke.
The flipside of that, Bitsy, is that an excessively heavy banhammer can turn unwarranted dissent into warranted dissent. The CI ban for Condoms looks like just that kind of issue.
I don't think you can have a serious discussion on market prices without somebody giving a wrong opinion. The poster whose stuff came up in the last thread gave evidence, even if bad evidence, for his opinion. If he's wrong, he should be told so; but he didn't go too far. When people said something, the mod at issue decided to defend him or herself with ridiculous points. Fortunately Sene and the admins decided to recognize the merit to rezombied's complaint. This could have all gone away pretty quickly after that. Instead, they banned Condoms from CI for what appears to be no good reason. See how that happens? When the hammer is too heavy, it garners more complaints. So be careful about what you call unwarranted and what you call warranted. The former has a tendency to get sidelined when it's really unwarranted and actions taken aren't excessive.
From what i can tell everyday is a slow day on DTR.
I think that's because they're too busy posting here to tell us about how bad we're doing. I mean, isn't that why anyone creates a new forum community?
So, I've been away from MTGS for about the past four days. I came back today after work to see this big spat of drama. I just went through and read the entirety of the MTGS threads. I'm going to give the DTR thread a pass (last time I was over there I saw those threads tend to grow, and I can only read so many pages) and simply say what I think after reading through the stuff on our MTGS.
After reading through Rezombied's thread, I was not happy with Condoms/Kpaca's posts. It had nothing to do with the content of the posts, but everything to do with the fact that it was unconstructive (possibly destructive, but your mileage may vary) criticism.
In creative writing, we ask for constructive criticism when you help us improve our work. Telling us that 'your writing leaves much to be desired' doesn't help, because you're not telling us what to improve. Saying 'your writing leaves much to be desired because you can't spell' doesn't help, because while you're telling us what to improve, you're not telling us where. "Your writing leaves much to be desired because you repeatedly misspell common words, such as 'through' typed as 'thru', and you commonly mix up your and you're" is helpful, as it tells us not only the problem, but where it is. Better yet, "Your writing leaves much to be desired because you repeatedly misspell common words, such as 'through' typed as 'thru', and you commonly mix up your and you're. You may want to put your story through a spellchecker to catch the former, and get a human editor to help with the latter". That not only says what the problem is, it says where, and also helps with how to fix it.
Condoms/Kpaca's posts felt like the first example at best. Simply criticizing time and again without trying to help solve the issue. Further, some of his posts were outright scathing and, I hope unintentionally, serve to create an uncomfortable and combative atmosphere that sets the mods on the defensive as opposed to bringing everyone together to fix a problem.
I can't say that I'm happy to have him CI masked, and I'd like to discuss it with the other admins. While I believe that his posts were detrimental to the conversation, I'm not convinced they were made with ill intent. That being said, I am of the opinion that those posts were, again, harming the conversation by creating a hostile atmosphere in a thread that was already becoming heated and charged even before his arrival.
If we're going to make progress here, both in getting the communities together to actually make them both better (and I believe we can), and in correcting problems that the users see in the staff, both the criticism of the staff and the response by the staff need to come from a position of 'let's work together to fix the problem'. If the posts, from either side, come from a position of 'I only intend to criticize them' or 'I only intend to defend myself', then we're not only not going to go anywhere, but we're going to increase a cultural and community divide.
Thank you for posting Nai. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think Condoms's tone rose to a level that justifies a CI mask, especially given the context. He was largely responding to mods—parinoid and skies—either nitpicking or generally being unwilling to give any real space to rezombied's complaint. I also understand you share some skepticism about the mask, and I will be glad to hear what you and the admins have to say. Like I mentioned before, though, I wish a little bit more of that conversation was visible out here. I understand some topics have a bit of a sensitive nature, but the frequency of "we will go talk about it" seems less like sensitive issues are being discussed and more like the admins are the only ones with valid opinions on these how these issues should go down.
Thank you for posting Nai. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think Condoms's tone rose to a level that justifies a CI mask, especially given the context. He was largely responding to mods—parinoid and skies—either nitpicking or generally being unwilling to give any real space to rezombied's complaint. I also understand you share some skepticism about the mask, and I will be glad to hear what you and the admins have to say. Like I mentioned before, though, I wish a little bit more of that conversation was visible out here. I understand some topics have a bit of a sensitive nature, but the frequency of "we will go talk about it" seems less like sensitive issues are being discussed and more like the admins are the only ones with valid opinions on these how these issues should go down.
Open disagreement between admins isn't usually a good thing, it's better that we talk and reach an agreement in a private discussion which we then post to CI or wherever. Right now many admins are absent, which could make that process a little slower than normal, however.
Thank you for posting Nai. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think Condoms's tone rose to a level that justifies a CI mask, especially given the context. He was largely responding to mods—parinoid and skies—either nitpicking or generally being unwilling to give any real space to rezombied's complaint. I also understand you share some skepticism about the mask, and I will be glad to hear what you and the admins have to say. Like I mentioned before, though, I wish a little bit more of that conversation was visible out here. I understand some topics have a bit of a sensitive nature, but the frequency of "we will go talk about it" seems less like sensitive issues are being discussed and more like the admins are the only ones with valid opinions on these how these issues should go down.
I can't speak on the mod's behalf but I think it not only has to do with condoms did, but what he has a history of doing.
Open disagreement between admins isn't usually a good thing, it's better that we talk and reach an agreement in a private discussion which we then post to CI or wherever. Right now many admins are absent, which could make that process a little slower than normal, however.
I'm going to guess that the reason you feel that way is because once admins start going out and talking about their disagreements it can get real political real fast. I would submit that if you're mature enough to talk about it in a private place without it getting political, you can at least give us a sense of how a discussion went without getting too political. As it stands your process invites a lot of criticism; more posts like Nai's above at least would be helpful. Or announcements that say something about there being a close call. Just something to alleviate the sense that you all automatically close ranks around a mod who has done something that deserves discipline.
Quote from "TheEndIsNear" »
I can't speak on the mod's behalf but I think it not only has to do with condoms did, but what he has a history of doing.
That's not exactly a legitimate reason for banning somebody if they're not currently engaged in bad actions. It looks more political than anything else if that's the story.
EDIT:
I mean, come on guys, if we depart from our normal procedures, mask/ban people, etc. for things that aren't even modtexted and infracted, haven't the terrorists already won?
That's not exactly a legitimate reason for banning somebody if they're not currently engaged in bad actions. It looks more political than anything else if that's the story.
Well, there Valarin was arguably still engaged in bad actions (running up to the line and barely not crossing it) and they had been engaging in conversations for a long time to control it. That's an ongoing pattern of behavior. Here, Condoms had a legitimate complaint even if his whining was shrill to the ears. Further, it's a bit scarier that somebody would be disciplined in CI for complaining about how mods hand out cards; Valarin was disciplined for interactions across the entire forum that got normal posters complaining to mods about him. Do we have any reason to think that Condoms had as wide a pattern as the mods claimed Valarin had or that the mods have engaged in PM conversations to tone down Condoms's behavior?
Thank you for posting Nai. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think Condoms's tone rose to a level that justifies a CI mask, especially given the context. He was largely responding to mods—parinoid and skies—either nitpicking or generally being unwilling to give any real space to rezombied's complaint.
I have to disagree with you here. Let me show you why:
Sooooo, does this mean we can now be imfracted for trolling not jst users, but corporations/companies? That's crazygonuts.
This post didn't respond to anyone. He was building off of Macius' post, but in such a way that vilifies the mod staff.
Construction-wise, he makes a statement that reads as an accusation (even if it wasn't, and it may not have been intentionally) that the staff will ban you even if they can't justify it. Then he asks us to respond to a hypothetical, assumes the answer we're going to give, and criticizes an answer we haven't even given yet. This automatically puts the staff on the back foot, makes us defensive, and we respond badly. It isn't helpful to the conversation and actually hurts us.
Rezombied gives an example of an issue he's seeing, in the thread about that very issue. The staff is trying to respond to it, and Condoms essentially just +1s the issue and says 'yeah, that's what I see'. Again, not constructive.
Mind, the way I'm reading it, I see him respond to "It means you can be suspended for using accurate terms that mods have deemed unsavory" with "That's pretty accurate". I may be reading it wrong.
So, no one answered my question. We can now be infracted for "trolling" companies, groups, and other non tangible entities such as but not limited to political parties, interest groups, etc? That's insane. What about all the posts in entertainment criticizing those in the entertainment industry or sports world?
Wow.
Less than 12 hours after he makes his initial post, he lambasts the mods for not responding to his question. Keep in mind, not only was the initial question posted at 12am CST (GMT -7), a time when most mods are sleeping, only one staff member has actually had a chance to respond to the thread at this point. Only one staff member COULD have answered his question, and they weren't in a position to do so.
Once again, he also assumes the answer the staff is going to give will be bad, and responds accordingly. Once more this makes the conversation hostile.
It's like talking to someone about (insert hotbed issue here). Let's assume something like gay marriage. One person defends gay marriage, the other responds with "So you're disagreeing with the Bible concerning the sanctity of marriage? That's insane." You may believe everything the Bible says about the sanctity of marriage, but they've automatically vilified your position.
Basically all I'm getting at this point is "well infract as we see fit based on if we agree with your opinion and no you won't know if what you are posting is okay"
I guess everyone should never say anything negative about anything?
Hooray special snowflakes!
Still, no staff member response between his posts. Further words put in the staff's mouth, further vilification and begging the question, etc.
Now, I may be wrong about all of this. I completely accept that possibility. But that's the problem. I, the staff member who has to work on this and try to help the community, feel as if I'm being vilified before I've even opened my mouth. I feel as if I'm walking into a shark tank (proverbially, since I need to respond to an upset user and try to help them and fully expect to have them bite at me) and someone's just thrown offal at me. I expect the environment and atmosphere to get even worse and charged due to these posts.
As I said, I may be completely off-base. But that's how it feels to me, and I wasn't even involved in the thread. This is why I feel that there was a problem with his posting. I may be entirely wrong, and I need to be able to play devil's advocate with someone so we can go over both sides.
I'm going to guess that the reason you feel that way is because once admins start going out and talking about their disagreements it can get real political real fast. I would submit that if you're mature enough to talk about it in a private place without it getting political, you can at least give us a sense of how a discussion went without getting too political. As it stands your process invites a lot of criticism; more posts like Nai's above at least would be helpful. Or announcements that say something about there being a close call. Just something to alleviate the sense that you all automatically close ranks around a mod who has done something that deserves discipline.
Galspanic is running Market Street, but he is not around right now. I can't really say anything 100% one way or another before having talked with him, as he will simply most likely know better than me on the matter, just like I would know better if this was an issue pertaining to Limited or Standard. At the moment though, I think the infractions could probably be overturned.
However, I won't agree that the mod "deserves discipline" - it's not always apparent that the staff works as a team, and that infractions that are issued were run through a few other guys and ok'ed on beforehand. That happened this time, and it's no individual mod's fault. It's not even clear to me yet that it's a fault at all - like I said, we gotta do the little talk first
This post didn't respond to anyone. He was building off of Macius' post, but in such a way that vilifies the mod staff.
Construction-wise, he makes a statement that reads as an accusation (even if it wasn't, and it may not have been intentionally) that the staff will ban you even if they can't justify it. Then he asks us to respond to a hypothetical, assumes the answer we're going to give, and criticizes an answer we haven't even given yet. This automatically puts the staff on the back foot, makes us defensive, and we respond badly. It isn't helpful to the conversation and actually hurts us.
...
Once again, he also assumes the answer the staff is going to give will be bad, and responds accordingly. Once more this makes the conversation hostile.
It's like talking to someone about (insert hotbed issue here). Let's assume something like gay marriage. One person defends gay marriage, the other responds with "So you're disagreeing with the Bible concerning the sanctity of marriage? That's insane." You may believe everything the Bible says about the sanctity of marriage, but they've automatically vilified your position.
As I see it, he was attempting a Reductio ad absurdum, which is a valid rhetorical technique. Essentially, he's saying that if the infractions were valid that implies a certain policy which would also require infracting a large number of innocuous posts, which we can all agree would be absurd.
Could he have been more eloquent/polite? Sure. But it seems to me like he was at the very least making a good-faith attempt at a constructive argument, so I don't think any punishment is justified (at least for those posts).
Thank you Nai for posting again. And okay, I understand that you feel vilified and attacked. I think it's helpful, though, to point out that the whole complaint in the thread is that a moderator acted without justification to infract somebody who voiced a "legal" if wrong opinion. In that context, Condoms did build off of Marcius to say
Quote from "Condoms" »
Or even if they can't justify it!
Sooooo, does this mean we can now be imfracted for trolling not jst users, but corporations/companies? That's crazygonuts.
Now, in context we should be able to see why he said that about justification—if the point of the thread is that the rules gives mods carte blanche, Macius has actually mischaracterized the complaint. The complaint from the beginning really was about the mod not having justification, not "as long as they can justify it." So Condoms clarified the complaint.
After that, he did make an accusation about corporations or whatever. But remember that he really is building off Macius and Skies. And Macius and Skies have basically defended a very expansive interpretation of the rules at this point. Condoms was responding to that interpretation by asking the admins collectively about this. He didn't like that, so he called it crazygonuts. I think the better interpretation would be that you could have gone in there, agreed with Condoms, and undone the Skies infraction. If we spend more time on the context than on the mechanics Condoms used, I think we can agree with me that he's making a valid point (if wrongheaded or weak) about rules interpretation.
Quote from "Condoms" »
That's pretty accurate.
I really don't think we should fault him for +1ing a question/complaint. That shows importance and seriousness. If nobody ever +1s a question/complaint here, how would we know whether one was important? This affects me all the time. People ignore my threads on CI frequently, and mods/admins treat them with less importance accordingly.
Quote from "Condoms" »
So, no one answered my question. We can now be infracted for "trolling" companies, groups, and other non tangible entities such as but not limited to political parties, interest groups, etc? That's insane. What about all the posts in entertainment criticizing those in the entertainment industry or sports world?
Wow.
Condoms did complain about not having a question answered within twelve hours. That might be silly, but it's not something that deserves a mask or ban or whatever you want to call it.
Further, although he characterizes it as complaining about a question not being answered, he is actually responding to somebody that obliquely answered his question. Parinoid obliquely implied that companies could be the subject of a flaming/trolling infraction. Further, up to this point Skies did defend an interpretation of the rule allowing infractions for flaming companies, if for no other reason than that the underlying infraction was for just that. Condoms shared his opinion on this rules interpretation. I agree with you that his tone appears to be very negative, but I would also point out that he is very clearly criticizing the position, not any particular admins. He appears to be genuinely outraged about the direction of the conversation.
Quote from "Condoms" »
Wow. This is an Internet forum. Infracting people for strongly criticizing the things I listed is beyond ridiculous. Beyond it.
I assume the entertainment subs should soon be littered with retroactive infractions under this new wonderful interpretation of the rules then?
I see that "[o]nce more, before a staff member can even respond, he continues to put words in the staff's mouth about how we act, and then continues to vilify." But that's not an entirely accurate characterization of the conversation. He's having a back-and-forth with parinoid or jeffbcrandall, who are defending expansive interpretations of the rules. In context he's expressing outrage at not your rules interpretation but theirs. Further, is parinoid a mod? If not, maybe he shouldn't talk like he's got an authoritative interpretation of the rules with an official-sounding (Rules Guru?) bolded title. I could see Condoms being confused on that—I know I was.
Quote from "Condoms" »
Basically all I'm getting at this point is "well infract as we see fit based on if we agree with your opinion and no you won't know if what you are posting is okay"
I guess everyone should never say anything negative about anything?
Hooray special snowflakes!"
Ditto with above.
So to sum that up, Condoms was having conversations with other people, not mainly attacking you or the admins writ large. Every opportunity was present for an admin to come in and agree with him (which Sene sortof eventually did). He also reserved his criticisms, outraged though they were, for the ideas in play. He did not once mention a particular person he was criticizing. To expand on that, it's not healthy to interpret these threads with a pair of "mod vs. dissenter" glasses. That's exactly the cultural problem I've been talking about for two or three pages of this thread. If admins/mods would be more willing to have conversations like this one, we all might be able to get away from that sense of things. To put it another way, this is not Yahoo! Answers. These CI threads are not one person asking mods a question and waiting for a response. Other people frequently chime in and there is a back-and-forth. If we interpret every post on one side of an issue as "anti-mod" or "anti-staff," we will have a cultural problem.
That is not true we do have a stick. We can vote with our eyes. You can go anywhere on the internet. Why come here if it really is as bad as described by some. This site needs members more than it needs mods. If the mods overreach you can leave and go to diestoremoval. The fires did just that.
But if you keep freely coming here then it cannot be that bad or MTGS provides a service that is unmatched or unique.
From what i can tell everyday is a slow day on DTR.
EDIT: It's not like they'd lose some kind of mystical aura of monolithic credibility. Nobody reads CI. Rumor Mill has like 150 viewers (on a slow day) and on a drama day CI just hits 15 viewers.
It's obviously not as fast paced as the Sally, but it's a group of great people who discuss MTG and life without ridiculous rules and corrupt staff members.
You should sign up and chat.
Maybe i have the wrong understanding. I thought Hannes wanted to absolve responsibily of the site. So he gave some or all control to Curse. Curse did not like the gutter so the gutter had to go.
That actually is crappy to loose all the posts, memories, and friendships made in that forum. Create that again at DTR. If MTGS is so bad leave it behind.
I actually like DTR. I go there sometimes. I am a real lurker. Today is a slow day for me too.
This is clearly slander on the DTR name. I demand this user be infracted accordingly.
My 360 Commons Cube
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I'm neutral when it comes to SCG. They've done some things I liked and some things I didn't like. I'm all for dissent as long as its backed up by something other than the person's gut feeling. Mainly because when there is alot of pointless or unwarranted dissent real issues get ignored as the flames rise and the issue gets clouded by smoke.
I don't think you can have a serious discussion on market prices without somebody giving a wrong opinion. The poster whose stuff came up in the last thread gave evidence, even if bad evidence, for his opinion. If he's wrong, he should be told so; but he didn't go too far. When people said something, the mod at issue decided to defend him or herself with ridiculous points. Fortunately Sene and the admins decided to recognize the merit to rezombied's complaint. This could have all gone away pretty quickly after that. Instead, they banned Condoms from CI for what appears to be no good reason. See how that happens? When the hammer is too heavy, it garners more complaints. So be careful about what you call unwarranted and what you call warranted. The former has a tendency to get sidelined when it's really unwarranted and actions taken aren't excessive.
EDIT:
BTW, lulz at sig, better watch out.
That's cute
I think that's because they're too busy posting here to tell us about how bad we're doing. I mean, isn't that why anyone creates a new forum community?
(Also known as Xenphire)
After reading through Rezombied's thread, I was not happy with Condoms/Kpaca's posts. It had nothing to do with the content of the posts, but everything to do with the fact that it was unconstructive (possibly destructive, but your mileage may vary) criticism.
In creative writing, we ask for constructive criticism when you help us improve our work. Telling us that 'your writing leaves much to be desired' doesn't help, because you're not telling us what to improve. Saying 'your writing leaves much to be desired because you can't spell' doesn't help, because while you're telling us what to improve, you're not telling us where. "Your writing leaves much to be desired because you repeatedly misspell common words, such as 'through' typed as 'thru', and you commonly mix up your and you're" is helpful, as it tells us not only the problem, but where it is. Better yet, "Your writing leaves much to be desired because you repeatedly misspell common words, such as 'through' typed as 'thru', and you commonly mix up your and you're. You may want to put your story through a spellchecker to catch the former, and get a human editor to help with the latter". That not only says what the problem is, it says where, and also helps with how to fix it.
Condoms/Kpaca's posts felt like the first example at best. Simply criticizing time and again without trying to help solve the issue. Further, some of his posts were outright scathing and, I hope unintentionally, serve to create an uncomfortable and combative atmosphere that sets the mods on the defensive as opposed to bringing everyone together to fix a problem.
I can't say that I'm happy to have him CI masked, and I'd like to discuss it with the other admins. While I believe that his posts were detrimental to the conversation, I'm not convinced they were made with ill intent. That being said, I am of the opinion that those posts were, again, harming the conversation by creating a hostile atmosphere in a thread that was already becoming heated and charged even before his arrival.
If we're going to make progress here, both in getting the communities together to actually make them both better (and I believe we can), and in correcting problems that the users see in the staff, both the criticism of the staff and the response by the staff need to come from a position of 'let's work together to fix the problem'. If the posts, from either side, come from a position of 'I only intend to criticize them' or 'I only intend to defend myself', then we're not only not going to go anywhere, but we're going to increase a cultural and community divide.
My helpdesk should you need me.
Open disagreement between admins isn't usually a good thing, it's better that we talk and reach an agreement in a private discussion which we then post to CI or wherever. Right now many admins are absent, which could make that process a little slower than normal, however.
I can't speak on the mod's behalf but I think it not only has to do with condoms did, but what he has a history of doing.
I'm going to guess that the reason you feel that way is because once admins start going out and talking about their disagreements it can get real political real fast. I would submit that if you're mature enough to talk about it in a private place without it getting political, you can at least give us a sense of how a discussion went without getting too political. As it stands your process invites a lot of criticism; more posts like Nai's above at least would be helpful. Or announcements that say something about there being a close call. Just something to alleviate the sense that you all automatically close ranks around a mod who has done something that deserves discipline.
That's not exactly a legitimate reason for banning somebody if they're not currently engaged in bad actions. It looks more political than anything else if that's the story.
EDIT:
I mean, come on guys, if we depart from our normal procedures, mask/ban people, etc. for things that aren't even modtexted and infracted, haven't the terrorists already won?
There is precedent though Valarin's Suspension and a Proposal
Well, there Valarin was arguably still engaged in bad actions (running up to the line and barely not crossing it) and they had been engaging in conversations for a long time to control it. That's an ongoing pattern of behavior. Here, Condoms had a legitimate complaint even if his whining was shrill to the ears. Further, it's a bit scarier that somebody would be disciplined in CI for complaining about how mods hand out cards; Valarin was disciplined for interactions across the entire forum that got normal posters complaining to mods about him. Do we have any reason to think that Condoms had as wide a pattern as the mods claimed Valarin had or that the mods have engaged in PM conversations to tone down Condoms's behavior?
LOL
I have to disagree with you here. Let me show you why:
This post didn't respond to anyone. He was building off of Macius' post, but in such a way that vilifies the mod staff.
Construction-wise, he makes a statement that reads as an accusation (even if it wasn't, and it may not have been intentionally) that the staff will ban you even if they can't justify it. Then he asks us to respond to a hypothetical, assumes the answer we're going to give, and criticizes an answer we haven't even given yet. This automatically puts the staff on the back foot, makes us defensive, and we respond badly. It isn't helpful to the conversation and actually hurts us.
Rezombied gives an example of an issue he's seeing, in the thread about that very issue. The staff is trying to respond to it, and Condoms essentially just +1s the issue and says 'yeah, that's what I see'. Again, not constructive.
Mind, the way I'm reading it, I see him respond to "It means you can be suspended for using accurate terms that mods have deemed unsavory" with "That's pretty accurate". I may be reading it wrong.
Less than 12 hours after he makes his initial post, he lambasts the mods for not responding to his question. Keep in mind, not only was the initial question posted at 12am CST (GMT -7), a time when most mods are sleeping, only one staff member has actually had a chance to respond to the thread at this point. Only one staff member COULD have answered his question, and they weren't in a position to do so.
Once again, he also assumes the answer the staff is going to give will be bad, and responds accordingly. Once more this makes the conversation hostile.
It's like talking to someone about (insert hotbed issue here). Let's assume something like gay marriage. One person defends gay marriage, the other responds with "So you're disagreeing with the Bible concerning the sanctity of marriage? That's insane." You may believe everything the Bible says about the sanctity of marriage, but they've automatically vilified your position.
Once more, before a staff member can even respond, he continues to put words in the staff's mouth about how we act, and then continues to vilify.
And the last one I'll discuss:
Still, no staff member response between his posts. Further words put in the staff's mouth, further vilification and begging the question, etc.
Now, I may be wrong about all of this. I completely accept that possibility. But that's the problem. I, the staff member who has to work on this and try to help the community, feel as if I'm being vilified before I've even opened my mouth. I feel as if I'm walking into a shark tank (proverbially, since I need to respond to an upset user and try to help them and fully expect to have them bite at me) and someone's just thrown offal at me. I expect the environment and atmosphere to get even worse and charged due to these posts.
As I said, I may be completely off-base. But that's how it feels to me, and I wasn't even involved in the thread. This is why I feel that there was a problem with his posting. I may be entirely wrong, and I need to be able to play devil's advocate with someone so we can go over both sides.
My helpdesk should you need me.
Galspanic is running Market Street, but he is not around right now. I can't really say anything 100% one way or another before having talked with him, as he will simply most likely know better than me on the matter, just like I would know better if this was an issue pertaining to Limited or Standard. At the moment though, I think the infractions could probably be overturned.
However, I won't agree that the mod "deserves discipline" - it's not always apparent that the staff works as a team, and that infractions that are issued were run through a few other guys and ok'ed on beforehand. That happened this time, and it's no individual mod's fault. It's not even clear to me yet that it's a fault at all - like I said, we gotta do the little talk first
As I see it, he was attempting a Reductio ad absurdum, which is a valid rhetorical technique. Essentially, he's saying that if the infractions were valid that implies a certain policy which would also require infracting a large number of innocuous posts, which we can all agree would be absurd.
Could he have been more eloquent/polite? Sure. But it seems to me like he was at the very least making a good-faith attempt at a constructive argument, so I don't think any punishment is justified (at least for those posts).
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
Now, in context we should be able to see why he said that about justification—if the point of the thread is that the rules gives mods carte blanche, Macius has actually mischaracterized the complaint. The complaint from the beginning really was about the mod not having justification, not "as long as they can justify it." So Condoms clarified the complaint.
After that, he did make an accusation about corporations or whatever. But remember that he really is building off Macius and Skies. And Macius and Skies have basically defended a very expansive interpretation of the rules at this point. Condoms was responding to that interpretation by asking the admins collectively about this. He didn't like that, so he called it crazygonuts. I think the better interpretation would be that you could have gone in there, agreed with Condoms, and undone the Skies infraction. If we spend more time on the context than on the mechanics Condoms used, I think we can agree with me that he's making a valid point (if wrongheaded or weak) about rules interpretation.
I really don't think we should fault him for +1ing a question/complaint. That shows importance and seriousness. If nobody ever +1s a question/complaint here, how would we know whether one was important? This affects me all the time. People ignore my threads on CI frequently, and mods/admins treat them with less importance accordingly.
Condoms did complain about not having a question answered within twelve hours. That might be silly, but it's not something that deserves a mask or ban or whatever you want to call it.
Further, although he characterizes it as complaining about a question not being answered, he is actually responding to somebody that obliquely answered his question. Parinoid obliquely implied that companies could be the subject of a flaming/trolling infraction. Further, up to this point Skies did defend an interpretation of the rule allowing infractions for flaming companies, if for no other reason than that the underlying infraction was for just that. Condoms shared his opinion on this rules interpretation. I agree with you that his tone appears to be very negative, but I would also point out that he is very clearly criticizing the position, not any particular admins. He appears to be genuinely outraged about the direction of the conversation.
I see that "[o]nce more, before a staff member can even respond, he continues to put words in the staff's mouth about how we act, and then continues to vilify." But that's not an entirely accurate characterization of the conversation. He's having a back-and-forth with parinoid or jeffbcrandall, who are defending expansive interpretations of the rules. In context he's expressing outrage at not your rules interpretation but theirs. Further, is parinoid a mod? If not, maybe he shouldn't talk like he's got an authoritative interpretation of the rules with an official-sounding (Rules Guru?) bolded title. I could see Condoms being confused on that—I know I was.
Ditto with above.
So to sum that up, Condoms was having conversations with other people, not mainly attacking you or the admins writ large. Every opportunity was present for an admin to come in and agree with him (which Sene sortof eventually did). He also reserved his criticisms, outraged though they were, for the ideas in play. He did not once mention a particular person he was criticizing. To expand on that, it's not healthy to interpret these threads with a pair of "mod vs. dissenter" glasses. That's exactly the cultural problem I've been talking about for two or three pages of this thread. If admins/mods would be more willing to have conversations like this one, we all might be able to get away from that sense of things. To put it another way, this is not Yahoo! Answers. These CI threads are not one person asking mods a question and waiting for a response. Other people frequently chime in and there is a back-and-forth. If we interpret every post on one side of an issue as "anti-mod" or "anti-staff," we will have a cultural problem.