I'm leaving and this is why

I think that's like 1% of the problem. This board is oozing with passive-agressive nitwits who are absolute geniuses at misunderstanding plain English when it suits their purposes.

 

Well if I agreed with you then obviously I'd look for another messageboard.

 

I was thrown out of one forum for suggesting that having a big dog might be almost as good as having a gun. No ****, that was ALL i said, and 3 years down the drain, the odd thing was that I was as anti-gun there as here, go figure.

But don't leave, every board needs a flying cat.

 

I take on board one thing Ritter said - there seems to be very little interest by Americans in the Western Europe forum.

 

All I can say is thank goodness for the Ignore list - mine's almost full!

 

The ignore list is inadequate, for many reasons.

1. If you start a thread, & a few of the posters are on ignore, they can still disrupt & heckle the thread, ruining it for any others.
2. It is difficult, if not impossible, to carry on a civil, thoughtful conversation with mockers & disrupters crapping on the thread, even if they are ignored.
3. There are too many to ignore.. With many topics, the hecklers & thread sh!tters overwhelm the thread, making a civil debate impossible.

I have tried the ignore function, from time to time, & it might be useful if you only post one-liners, or just make an occasional comment in random threads. But for those who get deeper into a discussion, delving into philosophy, evidence, & more debate oriented discussion, the mere presence of the hecklers makes that impossible. Try listening to a speaker at Berkely, if the Antifa thugs are disrupting things. You can't do it.

 

Americans are too busy defending America to take on Western Europe.

I am sorry to see Ritter go I liked reading his posts.

 

No. I've had a mod tell me that they were too busy to go up the line and see what started what. The funny thing though is that I used to be a mod on a forums system that was at least as busy as this one and yet I never had any problem doing just that. I always traveled up and down a thread branch until I discovered who really started what. No problem. But anyway unless that mod was lying or this forums system has changed how they do things over the last couple of years then, no, they do not seek the truth before passing sentence.

 

They don't enforce their own rules even when a clear violation is reported.

That is false advertising. The rules are publicly posted. I went to start a thread in community discussions and found that I can't start a thread there.

Considering what to do next.

 

Your previous boards might well have been 'as busy as this one', but were there more moderators? From what I can tell there are very few here on PF in relation to the number of active posting members. And because of subjectivity in the sense that one mod's interpretation of a problem might differ to that of another one, there might appear to us that there are biases where there aren't any? They have a thin line to tread, in other words. If I accidentally go over any red lines I take my punishment like a man.

 

There is a spot to introduce posters. It is fitting they use a spot to leave. I had little to do with Mr. Ritter and was not aware he is not happy.

 

I don't know how many PF has got but in those days we had six and yet only three of us consistently did the work of moderating. The other three simply got off on being a moderator. Not that it matters as the owners sold and the new owners decided to 'improve' things by going to an 'advanced' forums software platform system that inspired most posters to leave. So . . . it . . . goes.

As for bias, us conservatives felt that the rules were supposed to be equally enforced across the system whereas the liberals felt that the rules were to be enforced ONLY where conservatives were concerned with liberal offenders offered endless counselling sessions and chances to the point that they eventually caught on that pretty much they could get away with whatever they wanted.

 

Constructive criticism?

 

Completely banned? I know at least one forum that has the world's worst mix of mods that are either radical left or radical right and they camp out in a handful of threads and will infract you/thread ban you until you quit if you get on any of their bad side. Complain and it is ,"Well that is their subforum so if they say it is a violation, it is a violation".

 

It's quite easy, and moreso since the new platform, to follow one line of exchange inside a thread. IMO, if a moderator doesn't find the time to do it, then that person shouldn't be a moderator. There's no need to hire people for jobs bots can do.

 

Can't deny that.

Well, that's politics after all. If it wasn't for the petty partisanship and bickering, it wouldn't be politics, but philosophy. Just look at how professional politicians act themselves; that's right, that's our exemple. As above, so below. That's the nature of the beast, and I don't think it changes much from one political forum from another.

It is indeed an American politics forum, for better or worse. There's little one can do about it. I am Canadian myself, and if I wanted to discuss about Canadian politics, I'd likely post somewhere else (no disrespect towards the fellows that roam in the Canadian sub-forum, all three of them).

Happy trails then, Ritter. We were not on the same side of the political fence, but I did appreciate your mental sharpness from time to time. Maybe our paths will cross again somewhere else or, in time, here.

 

IMO the mods in here are doing a reasonable job. I have never been in a forum moderated by a bot.

 

Some warnings I received made me wonder about that last point.

But yes, as a whole, moderators here are no worse than anywhere else. The main problem IMO is in the fact that political discussions are incompatible with political correctness.

 

Bot moderators don't really infract you. The programs monitor your word usage, your volume of posts, and combined with moderator infraction histories, or the site owners can check a box if they just don't like you and let the program do the rest. When they flag you, they passively drive you away by logging you out, slowing the site down for you, making it hard for you to connect to the site, etc, to frustrate you from coming there at all. At least that is my understanding of how it works.

 

The analogy is absurd. Even without the ignore list it would be impossible for a dozen posters to drown out one. Hell, when I post on lightly moderated boards, I love it when people try, because my posts get more views that way.

 

Kinda like leaving a suicide note i guess

 

Yes, that explains the "cult" factor. It does not explain what the OP has pointed out "posts that are on topic are being edited and warnings are handed out almost on random."

Perhaps, but if you've been the victim of the above "random edits and warnings" would you bother?

I've had experience on special interests forums/clubs where he/she who's been a member for a longer period is given carte blanche. The understood message is "Do not dare disagree or offer alternative suggestions/solutions to members other than those suggestions/solutions stated by long-standing members of this forum, or by professionals" (whose credibility is being touted on this forum). I have been off this forum for quite some time and I do not remember if I have had that experience here, but I most certainly have been the victim of the afore-mentioned crime: "posts that are on topic ... being edited and warnings ... handed out almost on random."

 

Another forum that uses almost an identical setup has software that automatically gives you a vacation when the warning point count reaches a certain level. Their moderation team mostly deal with spam and advertisements. The site also has a banned member list.

 

I've had the same problem with them as well, especially with the fact that they lean to the far right so often. Still, one cannot deny there are many great people on this forum (especially those who are patriotic unlike the right wing) and it is always good to have forum friends. And you do occasionally learn things here. That's why I stay.

 

Don't worry. Be patient.