Forum for discussion of issues by posters who can't start a thread in the Customer Service Forum

So folks should be above our rules because you like them? Are you okay with posters repeatedly posting racial slurs and why? Please explain to me why this is okay with you. And if it's not okay with you - share with us how you would handle someone who repeatedly posts slurs of this kind and ignores us to stop using them.

We don't allow sock creations - if you want to change your username, you need to send a note to the help desk. I thought Tim was an active poster so when I saw 16 posts over a year period starting a thread in Customer Service, it looked like the very definition of a sock. I also sent him a note asking him what was up - because it was Tim I didn't immediately hit him with a yellow card and figured I'd wait for his explanation.

 

Are you aware the terms you were using are racist or should someone start a thread about it in Customer Service?

 

Have you told MS off for doing this though? Do you have friends in real life that regularly make racial slurs and you go to bat for them and think it's no big deal? If this were the N word would you continue to think everything is cool? Why is this different?

 

My question is this:

You and your fellow supermods and admins seem to be sensitive about some ethnic slurs to the point where no reporting by offended parties. But when ethnic slurs are used against American Indians, there seems to be a procedure that needs to be followed. Why is that?

But well done on being flexible to hand down an infraction to ICF for his post, despite the fact that the proper procedure wasn't followed. Mind you, it was a "Abused/Flamed Users - Severe" (5 points), as opposed to "Racism" (10 points), which Mike got, but so it goes.

And if I may say so, being a regular reader and poster in the Politics and Current Events forum -- where Mike is currently banned -- it's pretty obvious to me that actually being a bigot is far less offensive than using bigoted slurs. As long as you don't use the magic words, you can call black people sub-human, advocate that Jews to be sent to the showers, and say that Andrew Jackson didn't go far enough.

 

And while we're on the subject of procedure, it was my understanding that moderators should send bad posts to the Recycle Bin, not delete them.

Funny how all of the posts that we're currently discussing have been "deleted by dark knight." To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it's good to be admin.

 

This may sound funny and ridiculous, but it actually hurts my feelings you want to paint me with this brush, El Jefe, especially when you seem to be outraged about policy -- when you are someone who has never seemed particularly concerned about following our policies and I've defended you about it. I also think I've been straightforward and honest with you in our few dealings - and I've told you I value your opinion so if you have problems with any of our practices you have a platform for expressing that - to snark about this stuff after the fact seems a little self serving to me if you've never raised issues before.

I'm like the guy in Breaking Away who always looked up to the Italian bikers only to be derailed in the race. And, I'm probably only a "supermod" because MS signed off on it back when I used to defend him on the mod board. Ah well, I digress.

You seem a little out of touch to be getting upset about policies - I've been an admin for something like 3 years now? My memory sucks so I'd have to look that up to know the exact length of time.

Is the irony lost on you chastising me about not binning posts when you were the king of editing posts? I don't remember insisting that mods bin. I think we've maybe said in the past binning is preferable, but deleting happens all the time now and if it's a set policy, I don't think anyone is following it. Again, my memory is bad so we may have once said that but like my title change, it's old news. If you are implying I'm somehow trying to get away with some kind of cover up, feel free to say that explicitly. I'm not against moving the posts to the bin where you can view them at your leisure.

We ask that people not circumvent our censor - we have it for a reason and mods can use their discretion on whether they want to infract folks who do this regularly but we've never insisted that mods do it. Folks that do it though can't complain about getting dinged.

I look forward to your answers to my questions. Why do you seem more concerned about a few minor BigSoccer policies than the slurs being used by your buddy? Wouldn't your opinion that he not do that carry some weight? Would you tolerate that kind of thing from your friends outside of BigSoccer? And speaking of conflicts, why do you remain a mod if you have contempt for me and our policies?

This is a mom and pop website - I say this all the time but we ain't McDonald's. We're run by a wide variety of volunteers such as yourself and expecting us to break out the users guide to dealing with racist terms and dealing with it the way everyone wants probably isn't going to happen every time. Decent folks can make a big difference by telling others to be cool so we mods don't have to try to police stuff like this.

 

Here's the deal: I know that I'm not "by the book" and I've never been particularly shy about saying so. But that's a reason why only have and should only have "Moderator" under my name. Not being "by the book" is fine when you only have a couple of forums to worry about. And if The Powers That Be ever told me to do it more "by the book," they'd be justified in it.

But like I said, it's a luxury that I have because I'm relatively low on the BigSoccer totem pole. Supermods and admins necessarily have to be more "by the book"... whatever that book might be.

The difference is that a friend of mine asked for my help because he felt that he was being treated unfairly in this instance, and you know, I agree that he was.

I'll admit to not having the best memory for the comings and goings in the Star Chamber.

Welcome to the dark side, I guess.

The policy, as it was explained by Huss in the mods' forum, was that we should bin posts that need to be gotten rid of.

I'm not implying a cover-up. All I'm saying is that if you're going to hide behind some sort of "well, no one complained" justification as to why ICF's post didn't merit an infraction, then I should point out that things that were laid out explicitly by the big boss that aren't being followed.

So even though no one ever gets dinged for it, the fact that someone does get dinged for it shouldn't strike me as a bit odd?

He got lit up for those slurs. I've already stated in this thread that "he got his money's worth." What more do I need to say?

Mike's a grown-ass man. He doesn't need me telling him what and what not to do.

Sometimes I do. I have friends of all sorts. Some are saints, others are not. Some like to instigate and provoke and use all sorts of naughty language on message boards, others do not. The thing is that I don't take what gets said here all that seriously. BigSoccer resides in the toy department of the Internet.

And I do count Mike as a friend outside of BigSoccer.

The health benefits package.

Seriously, I don't have contempt for the supermods and admins and policies. But at the same time, we're all just glorified hall monitors to varying degrees, and I include myself in that. It's not life and death. And it's the reason why I've usually (though not always) moderated with a light touch, especially in the MLS Rivalries forum. I could seriously find something on which to use my moderating privileges every single day, if I were so inclined. But would that make for a better experience for the users? Nope. So I dip into them once or twice a month tops. Maybe it's also because I've got an easy-to-moderate forum and a should-not-be-moderated forum.

Other moderators take a different approach. If they're not binning or merging or infracting constantly, I guess they feel like they're not earning their keep. I get the impression that they feel as if being a moderator means that they constantly have to be doing SOMETHING. So they hand out infractions for pissant things like dodging the autocensor.

So why am I still a moderator? Probably because it's because I've always been a moderator since the very beginning, with the exception of a couple of months a few years ago. It provides me with a great deal of entertainment, so I give back in some small way.

Look, I gotta be honest with you. Even though Mike's has gotten roughly 344 yellow cards in his time on BigSoccer, I know the reason why he hasn't been ejected permanently like other posters have. It's because he's a good poster, one of the best posters on the site. Is he also a little naughty? Sure. But he knows what'll get him lit up with an infraction or a yellow card, does it anyway, and accepts the punishment. Why? Because BigSoccer's in the toy department. Nothing that happens here does count for anything or should count for anything. About the only thing that matters is that if he gets rung up, other posters should be rung up for similar offenses.

I'll tell you what: I'd rather deal with him than a lot of other posters on this site, who are pains-in-the-ass, but aren't self-aware to know that they're pains-in-the-ass and who don't bring anything good to the table otherwise. (And I don't really understand the notion of giving him a forum ban, but that's a subject for another day.)

And if The Powers The Be -- including yourself, presumably -- didn't feel the same way about him, he would've been given the Sekrah treatment a long time ago. So let's dispense with being shocked, SHOCKED, that there's gambling in this establishment, hand down the infractions when merited to EVERYBODY that merits them, and keep on truckin'.

 

Thank you for that response ElJefe - I really do appreciate it and it reminds me why I'm glad you stick around as mod.

Just briefly - I've actually dinged folks for circumventing the censor and I'm sure others have. In the grand scheme of things - that's not going to be what decides MS's fate on BigSoccer, and it seems we agree that he's getting some special consideration on the one hand - so I personally don't think a minor censor infraction is something worth a lot of debate. Any argument that there's a witch hunt and unfair treatment of him seems to fail on the evidence that the guy is still posting -- although MS will probably agree that my tolerance level has dropped considerably in recent years and I really would have reached for the red card if I was the one who had happened across those posts.

But, having said that, I appreciate where you're coming from where you can chalk this up to BigSoccer being the toy department - but I still don't think you would feel the same way if it was the N word that was being thrown around so easily - so for whatever reason, it seems to me that you and perhaps many of us have a higher tolerance for these terms. I also think we'd have a lot more threads in Customer Service if we took that approach as a general rule. It isn't life and death stuff - but it only makes sense to take it somewhat seriously when we have all walks of people posting here regularly, at least from my point of view.

On the subject of friends, I'm sure if I examined the views of some of my friends on race I might not be totally comfortable about some of them - heck my grandmother despite having been subjected to institutionalized racism wasn't color blind, to put it generously - but I also don't know anyone that regularly uses racial slurs as a means of directly insulting people (as opposed to ironic joking behind closed doors a la Tiger Woods). If I tried to explain to my friends in Texas that we're cool with someone using the term ************** regularly in addressing Mexicans, it would probably get real awkward trying to make it sound justified. Oh it's all just a joke and not real - wouldn't work that great for me with them, and it wouldn't work that great with most folks here.

At the end of the day - none of us knew ********** was such an offensive term and I'm still not convinced that it is the equal of **************, but that's beside the point. If the guy says that he didn't realize that it was an offensive term - even though I think his arguments about it not being offensive at all were pretty poor - we tend to take folks on their word at least the first time. And while I think he probably deserved a trolling infraction, every time we ding folks, they want to have lengthy discussions about fairness and what the other guy got and I just about never indulge that. I know I've handled complainers similarly to how TTM handled this one. I really tell folks not to look to us to be the arbiters of universal fairness. We're not.

MS got off really lightly with just a yellow for those posts, and this guy got off lightly by not getting an infraction for his trolling. The latter has been rectified.

That's the way I see it.

 

I can speak for myself that I had no idea it had any negative connotations other than what Knave pointed out that lots of terms can take on negative connotations in the wrong mouth.

I addressed this in my last post, but this guy says he didn't know it was offensive and we give folks the benefit of the doubt the first time - especially since we didn't know ourselves. I don't see much point in continuing to debate this.