an open letter to the mods from Whiney G. Weingarten

i'm backin dp/jj re-election ticket in 2012 tbh, even though i'm always in the press enclosure watching them like a hawk

Whiney was actually on 49 SBs even before that ban and as a result of that thread has since gone up to 52, so nature would have taken its course anyway and the end result would have been much the same. Except without this sense of perceived persecution and Sarahel meta-concern trolling.

Pretty sure Whiney would have come back with an identical posting voice whatever happened. He doesn't seem to want to post in any other way.

I have to lol that at least four of the people attacking this ban clicked the SB button themselves for Whiney. I know it's not exactly the same but still.

peoples got a right to know matt, even if sarahel's usually the first to ask. That's why, imho, there's a comments field in the admin log.

Well actually what Sarahel did was revive this thread to say the temp ban was harsh and THEN go and read the Rollins thread to find out why he was tempbanned. Disingenuous as hell.

well tbh i skimmed rollins thread and still aint sure but i'm a concepts not a details man

ice cr?m killin it itt tbh, these things need to be treated with the appropriate levity

^ sb

h8 u

Man, I Know it's not going to happen, but it would be educational to see what posts people get sb'd for.

like, just in terms of accountability/transparency

Haha that would prove so, so divisive.

finite no of sb's a poster can give in 6 month rolling term imo.

Noodle vague's gonna sb me for that

People taking the fact that hi dere and I have known each other for a billion years and turning it into evidence #1 for how we are rogue mod cop buddies watching each others back can stfu IMO. Shit is getting old.

― O_o-O_0-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, November 4, 2010 12:25 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The fact that peeps still invoke tombot in these threads like you are survivors of some despotic Internet police state is totally fucking pathetic as well btw.

― O_o-O_0-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, November 4, 2010 12:53 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

on one level I do understand where you're coming from and I do feel sorry for kind of putting you in a possibly unfair light in posts. but on another level, it feels like you're trying to embarrass people out of criticizing you, which, y'know, doesn't do you any favors in a discussion about whether mods are bullies.

some dude on the fucking money

it'd be nice btw if every fucking visible mod didn't post from the same slumber party

― avoyoungdro's number (k3vin k.), Friday, October 29, 2010 12:54 AM (6 days ago)

on one level I do understand where you're coming from and I do feel sorry for kind of putting you in a possibly unfair light in posts. but on another level, it feels like you're trying to embarrass people out of criticizing you, which, y'know, doesn't do you any favors in a discussion about whether mods are bullies.

I'm not sure attempting to cast Whiney as a victim of bullying is going to work either dude.

i see where i called Whiney a "gaping asshole," but you'll have to point out where I called him a victim.

2. if you dont want people to give you shit re being a mod, just dont be a mod, easy

― ice cr?m, Thursday, November 4, 2010 1:15 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this should seriously be emblazoned on a plaque at the top of the front door of ilx city hall. I'm sorry, but if you guys want to be able to tell us when we're misbehaving and penalize us when we don't without being constantly criticized or questioned, you have to at least SEEM like you're more mature and thick-skinned than the rest of us.

yeah nobody should be able to do that job, and if someone has to they certainly should be drafted in from another website or recruited or whatever as opposed to being y'know, good posters and good dudes.

i'm not asking mods to be saints, i'm just saying if they don't think they're making decisions out of anger or petty beefs they should maybe work harder and making it look like they're not.

cos just sayin, any time dp, jj or mattdc ever felt the need to pull mod shit on me, i took a good long look first before deciding my internet posting rights had been violated.

the insult to injury "haha i get to call you a name in the admin log as i ban you" thing is pretty disgusting. wasn't that little text box made to explain/justify mod actions?

and imo if you have notions that mods must have an extra layer of skin than other posters, fair enough. It's fair enough on the other side of the coin- have an extra layer of courtesy when dealing with them in their modding capacity.

xp well yeah that was not ideal tbh

different rules apply for whiney, in fact I believe they're called the "whiney house rules"

I would just like a pat on the head for not posting any of the dumb shit that I typed and then erased. thanking u

'cider-by-cop house rules

the whole case here seems to be 'whiney should be treated like an adult!'.

Eh, why? Like the guy a lot but maturity aint his modus operandi afaict.

The 27 days thing, yeah does seem excessive- not hi dere's call.

don't know why you think this is about coddling Whiney. it's more like "if he was at 49, maybe the mod should have just taken that knowledge as some comfort, and waited a couple days for the guys pissing him off to get himself banned."

if you dont want people to give you shit re being a mod, just dont be a mod, easy

And if you don't want to end up being tempbanned, don't be a dick to people all the time, easy.

it's still completely unclear to me what whiney is meant to have done

ban durations are not a force of nature. disingenuous to shift blame to the code.

i've never been banned and probably never will unless i suicide-by-cop out of frustration with you guys, so that's not advice you need to give me. don't know why it's so ridiculous to hold mods to a higher standard than the most aggressive bannable posters.

afaict dp has a pretty solid record of implementing and justifying his decisions in a way that results in clusterfucks. the fact that many of the people posting on this thread sbed whiney themselves is evidence of this, matt, not evidence that dan is modding well. and he doesn't even seem to like being a mod that much. perhaps a sabbatical?

speaking personally i'd much rather mods dealt tempbans independent of the sb system if it's merited. There was accusations of tinkering before iirc ?enrique?

The tempban was independent of the Suggest Ban system.

If you guys want I can officially lift Whiney's mod-inflicted temp ban and then ban him for 30 days because he's on 52 Suggest Bans. Would that help clear this up?

afaict if someone was to ban themselves after a full and public explanation there'd be three clusterfucks within a minute

xp yeah matt was respondin to some dude above re temp bans being kept independent

no reason to cry for whiney but it was a pretty whimsical and arbitrary ban. maybe 'he had it coming' is true but it doesn't look good as precedent.

If you guys want I can officially lift Whiney's mod-inflicted temp ban and then ban him for 30 days because he's on 52 Suggest Bans. Would that help clear this up?

― Matt DC, Thursday, 4 November 2010 12:52 (2 minutes ago)

i think so? kinda

works for me, if you also take away dan's mod powers. who will police the police?

If you guys want I can officially lift Whiney's mod-inflicted temp ban and then ban him for 30 days because he's on 52 Suggest Bans. Would that help clear this up?

― Matt DC, Thursday, November 4, 2010 8:52 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't feel comfortable speaking for Whiney or anyone else, but tbh I think that would be fair. would be kind of ridiculous if he served his 27 days, then got SB ban sentence back to back, seems like it should be one or the other.

I was taking the piss a bit with that post, but I think he'll be off for a month whatever happens.

I mean it comes down to it that the mods agreed with Whiney about the rape username, it was being dealt with. But Whiney was being pointlessly sarcastic and antagonistic (in the way he is with everyone) for no reason other than to be a dick and provoke a fight.

He could have actually put his point rationally and he didn't, which is why he's tempbanned and Some Dude and whoever else is making their point more-or-less straighforwardly on this thread isn't.

I mean it comes down to it that the mods agreed with Whiney about the rape username, it was being dealt with. But Whiney was being pointlessly sarcastic and antagonistic (in the way he is with everyone) for no reason other than to be a dick and provoke a fight.

dealing with this sort of low level assholery (as in not racist/hacking/etc.) trolling is exactly what i thought the sb system was for, at least that's how it was explained (most vocally by dan). if you're not willing to trust it to do this as mods then i have no idea why we even have it any more.

Yeah I don't disagree with that and I without wanting to debate the rights and wrongs of the SB system yet again, the system broadly works. As it happens, in this case the system agreed with Dan, another two people SBed Whiney almost immediately.

The thing that's always exasperating about these discussions is that it's always couched in two things. Firstly is the "who watches the Watchmen?" line, implying it's a shady conspiracy to keep certain people we don't like down, just because we don't like them. Trust me, if I thought I could just get away with banning everyone I don't like then there would be a hell of a lot more people on the permaban list. Actually, the mods ARE accountable. They're accountable to the other mods, and above all to the coders who have the ultimate say. We disagree on things more than people think and that has an effect on policy.

The other thing, which is particularly irritating, is that there's nearly always a "we think X should not be a mod" strand, like people are actively aiming to have someone's mod privs removed. Everyone's entitled to express that opinion but ultimately the same ten or so people who are always on these threads do not have any say in it, that's purely a matter for the people who run the site, and that's always been the case, from Tom Ewing onwards. I'm sure if Keith and Stet seriously thought that any mod was not trusted by the community to moderate the site, then they wouldn't be moderating the site. If you don't like that, tough, really.

It's also worth pointing out that if you look at Dan's modding history, he almost always overturns a temp ban after a day or so and my guess is that would have happened here as well. The 29 day thing is a quirk of the system based on the number of times he's been tempbanned in the past.

It's irrelevant now as Whiney's been 51'ed anyway. I'd imagine he'd be let back in a month, but at the same time going "when I return I will continue to post as I always have" is not really the way to persuade mods to treat you leniently.

remember what happened the mouth of sauron, man, dont be that guy threatening the mob.

I'd imagine he'd be let back in a month, but at the same time going "when I return I will continue to post as I always have" is not really the way to persuade mods to treat you leniently.

― Matt DC, Thursday, November 4, 2010 1:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

not really seeing whiney's steez as particularly offensive

guess i've been here a long time, seen a lotta shit go down

I was about to write Matt's last post almost verbatim (and in fact has said similar to him privately before this).

If Whiney comes back and continues to be an abusive ass with a secret "oh but it's hust jokes, I really love you guys FUCK YOU haha I'm a scamp!" thread on 77, I will permaban him. ILX does not need that shit.