First of all, let me say that I'm keen to put all this behind us and move on. But I do feel that it's important that I make this point first.
I've been here for over eight years, and seen all the effort Niall and the various admins and mods have put into building and maintaining the cafs unique reputation as a fair and open forum, where as long as you aren't offensive you can put across whatever opinion you wish.
In that time, I've made over 16,000 posts and always remained civil, not getting involved in personal insults, and at the same time not letting myself get unduly wound up by other people... you won't find me running to the mods, demanding bans etc.
So I'm genuinely very annoyed, as well as worried about the state of the caf, following my ban, which was clearly down to a mod throwing their toys at out of the pram. I understand that being a mod is a hard job, but it does have a certain amount of responsibility if the caf's high standards are to be maintained, and one of the basic tenets, in my book, is that mods mustn't use their power just because they don't like somebody's argument. That is what has clearly happened in this case, and I'm afraid the mod in question has let themselves and the whole caf down badly.
The only possible excuse for the ban would be extreme stupidity, in not being to understand the most basic concepts of analogy, as the "offending" post was entirely about showing that an analogy somebody else made about the BNP (I didn't even bring the feckers up!) was totally flawed and irrelevant. However, I know full well that the mod in question is not that stupid (though his side-kick for the day, who even followed the issue into the thread Didsbury started in here... well, I'm not so sure about him).
There seemed to be an element in some of the replies to Didsbury's thread of "we know it wasn't deserved, but we're just trying to make a point in retaliation over the whole MUST legal threats thing". Well, sorry to point this out, but I am not involved in MUST any further than being a member, and am in no way involved in their decisions making. In fact, as it happens, I spent much of my time out engaged in a fairly heated email exchange with Drasdo about their Rooney position (yes, they do reply to emails!), which I've stated already that they got wrong.
Justification of the ban as "well this is what MUST did to us" is totally flawed, and amounts to nothing more than the age old phenomenon of the bullied becoming the bully.
As evidenced by the fact that even people who I was arguning against, such as Rood, called the mod out for the ban being unfair, anybody who read the thread can see there was absolutely no attempt to claim anybody was racist or a member of the BNP.. as I say, Ciderman brought the BNP up, how come he wasn't banned? If literally any hint of suggestion of racism, whether serious, joking or ironic, deserves a ban, then I will quickly find you dozens of members to ban!
Anyway, there we go. I will move on now, but maybe you should think about putting something in place to ensure the standards of the mods?
I'd suggest maybe that you could agree that a mod cannot ban somebody over a debate they have been personally involved in, and they need to instead get another mod in to check there was a genuine offence?
Failing that, at least ensure that there is some proper degree of warning etc - what was particularly annoying for me was that there was no suggestion the ban was coming until I suddenly couldn't post. The annoyance is then doubled when you have to see the mod in question making claims against you in the mods forum, without being able to defend yourself. I'm just glad there were a good few sound posters around who were prepared to argue my case in my absence.
I've been here for over eight years, and seen all the effort Niall and the various admins and mods have put into building and maintaining the cafs unique reputation as a fair and open forum, where as long as you aren't offensive you can put across whatever opinion you wish.
In that time, I've made over 16,000 posts and always remained civil, not getting involved in personal insults, and at the same time not letting myself get unduly wound up by other people... you won't find me running to the mods, demanding bans etc.
So I'm genuinely very annoyed, as well as worried about the state of the caf, following my ban, which was clearly down to a mod throwing their toys at out of the pram. I understand that being a mod is a hard job, but it does have a certain amount of responsibility if the caf's high standards are to be maintained, and one of the basic tenets, in my book, is that mods mustn't use their power just because they don't like somebody's argument. That is what has clearly happened in this case, and I'm afraid the mod in question has let themselves and the whole caf down badly.
The only possible excuse for the ban would be extreme stupidity, in not being to understand the most basic concepts of analogy, as the "offending" post was entirely about showing that an analogy somebody else made about the BNP (I didn't even bring the feckers up!) was totally flawed and irrelevant. However, I know full well that the mod in question is not that stupid (though his side-kick for the day, who even followed the issue into the thread Didsbury started in here... well, I'm not so sure about him).
There seemed to be an element in some of the replies to Didsbury's thread of "we know it wasn't deserved, but we're just trying to make a point in retaliation over the whole MUST legal threats thing". Well, sorry to point this out, but I am not involved in MUST any further than being a member, and am in no way involved in their decisions making. In fact, as it happens, I spent much of my time out engaged in a fairly heated email exchange with Drasdo about their Rooney position (yes, they do reply to emails!), which I've stated already that they got wrong.
Justification of the ban as "well this is what MUST did to us" is totally flawed, and amounts to nothing more than the age old phenomenon of the bullied becoming the bully.
As evidenced by the fact that even people who I was arguning against, such as Rood, called the mod out for the ban being unfair, anybody who read the thread can see there was absolutely no attempt to claim anybody was racist or a member of the BNP.. as I say, Ciderman brought the BNP up, how come he wasn't banned? If literally any hint of suggestion of racism, whether serious, joking or ironic, deserves a ban, then I will quickly find you dozens of members to ban!
Anyway, there we go. I will move on now, but maybe you should think about putting something in place to ensure the standards of the mods?
I'd suggest maybe that you could agree that a mod cannot ban somebody over a debate they have been personally involved in, and they need to instead get another mod in to check there was a genuine offence?
Failing that, at least ensure that there is some proper degree of warning etc - what was particularly annoying for me was that there was no suggestion the ban was coming until I suddenly couldn't post. The annoyance is then doubled when you have to see the mod in question making claims against you in the mods forum, without being able to defend yourself. I'm just glad there were a good few sound posters around who were prepared to argue my case in my absence.
