Rationalskepiticism,lol.

[Strontium Dog]

Subjective to the point of biased, yes. At least now the world can see what I have been saying for years.

And yes, poor Samsa gets away with even less than I do. I could point out 100 more posts from the past week alone which were more provocative than what Samsa has been warned for.

Although frankly you're a fool if you touch any thread to do with feminism or sexism on that forum. There is no value in it. Apparently I am a racist and sexist for saying that Pakistani Muslim girls are more promiscuous than white girls. Go figure.

[Audley Strange]

If its so bad why don't you all leave? Except of course for the ones kicked out

[Strontium Dog]

If its so bad why don't you all leave?

That's what they said to the Jews in 1930s Germany

[Audley Strange]

If its so bad why don't you all leave?

That's what they said to the Jews in 1930s Germany

And if they had, they wouldn't have had the shoah to milk for 70 years.

[Strontium Dog]

So basically, you're saying the RatSkep outcasts should invade someone else's forum and set up home there

[Audley Strange]

So basically, you're saying the RatSkep outcasts should invade someone else's forum and set up home there

Yes. I hear JREF loves such political refugees.

[Mr.Samsa]

Those RatSkep double standards in full

1) Chairman Bill writes to me:

Oh fuck off with your trolling. FFS, what a deeply idiotic comment. You should be ashamed of yourself, posting such arrant nonsense

Result: no warning, no advisory.


2) I write to Beatsong:

Fuck off with your trolling

Result: warning given.


3) Beatsong writes to me:

No, sorry - you can fuck that right off [...] If that's not something you can accommodate within your fragile self image, then you can fuck off somewhere else...

Result: no warning, no advisory.

The mods really have no leg to stand on there, Beatsong's comments there are far worse than anything I've been warned for on that forum.

It's not as simple as you portray it to be. History and context come into it too. Of course, that makes it ultimately very subjective.

I see Samsa has been suspended again. Didn't seem like he did much to deserve his warning.

Yeah, I made the same mistake that SD has - assuming that if someone says something to me and doesn't get sanctioned for it, then I should be allowed to say the same thing. But of course people are allowed to attack me but if I copy and paste their comments back to them then I am a horrible person that needs to be warned.

[Audley Strange]

What makes me laugh more than anything is that I spent some time and effort a long time ago attempting to make the point that the FUA was open to capricious and arbitrary abuse which would lead to little more than a circle jerk and some of the folks over there, who are now over here whining about it being used against them, dismissed my concerns. some of the shit that I endured from idiots over there was tragic.

The warnings signs were obvious when people started claiming that Ratskep should be "a safe space" and started claiming that I might as well be a white supremacist and was a "discontent". I found their willful rejection of even discussing it disturbingly totalitarian so I left, realising it was their FUA and not a place for me. Narcissus can only ever hear Echo.

Funnily enough the most reasonable discussion I had about it all was with rEvolutionist. (what happened to that guy I wonder?)

[pErvinalia]

[Mr.Samsa]

What makes me laugh more than anything is that I spent some time and effort a long time ago attempting to make the point that the FUA was open to capricious and arbitrary abuse which would lead to little more than a circle jerk and some of the folks over there, who are now over here whining about it being used against them, dismissed my concerns. some of the shit that I endured from idiots over there was tragic.

I can't remember what your arguments were or what rules you were arguing against but I've thought the rules have been pretty shit for a long time and part of the reason I left as a mod was because it became clear that my views on the rules weren't shared by the other mods (which was fine at the time because I thought it was just a difference of opinion, I didn't realise that they'd start blatantly disregarding the rules and implementing whatever actions they personally felt like). They wanted to go a more subjective and laid back route where they didn't need to justify their decisions to other mods and users, and I was pushing more for clear guidelines behind mod actions so that decisions can be explained to users (that way, I reasoned, meant that even if users disagreed with the rule itself they could at least see how a post fell afoul of that rule).

The trolls in the feedback forum have always been a massive problem and some of the mods (particularly some of the older ones) tried desperately to justify coming up with a rule that would allow us to crack down on them but we couldn't come up with anything that wouldn't shut down valid discussion in the feedback forum or have unfortunate consequences in other ways. It was always incredibly frustrating though where a reasonable complaint will come forward and the usual fanboys will jump forward to "defend" the forum regardless of the claim when really their actions were nothing more than trolling. That's why we initially started suggesting that people bring complaints to the mods first before the feedback forum, so we could cut out the trolls, but this approach has now been adopted by the current mods as a way of stifling complaints about the forum where you just run in to the brick wall known as "THWOTH" who explains that the decision was made because: "That's what the mods agreed on".

The warnings signs were obvious when people started claiming that Ratskep should be "a safe space" and started claiming that I might as well be a white supremacist and was a "discontent". I found their willful rejection of even discussing it disturbingly totalitarian so I left, realising it was their FUA and not a place for me. Narcissus can only ever hear Echo.

Funnily enough the most reasonable discussion I had about it all was with rEvolutionist. (what happened to that guy I wonder?)

People wanted RatSkep to be a safe space? I've only seen disagreement to that idea.

[pErvinalia]

Audley thinks limiting certain types of hate speech equates to "safe space". His view is just as extreme as the other end of the spectrum at A+. A middle ground seems like a decent compromise to me.

Trolls in the feedback forum? There's a couple of obvious ones. Both former mods at either ratskep or rd.net.

[DaveDodo007]

I have never read a FUA in my life. I just post bollox and ignore any mod notes that come my way. It's the fucking internet, how does anybody take it that seriously. I get the spam/trolls and you have to follow the law of the land where the forum is based in but everything else is a power wank.

[Audley Strange]

@ Samsa

My main point was that the rules were unclear and should either have been definitive and adhered to or more lax, one or the other.

I think we may have discussed this before but the main issue I had became glaringly apparent when Dawkins sued Timenon and those who strongly defended the "don't attack the person" rule (many of whom did nothing but) wanted the rule bent so they could all abuse him when he became a member. The crass and blatant hypocrisy of that position sickened me and I left shortly after, realising the place was not best served by its members and some staff.

I have to admit, I still find it astonishing that THWOTH is so unreasonable, he seemed (heh "seemed") one of the more reasonable members.

[Beatsong]

Those RatSkep double standards in full

1) Chairman Bill writes to me:

Oh fuck off with your trolling. FFS, what a deeply idiotic comment. You should be ashamed of yourself, posting such arrant nonsense

Result: no warning, no advisory.


2) I write to Beatsong:

Fuck off with your trolling

Result: warning given.

Not that I give a shit about your pathetic little narcissistic self pity trip any more - but as usual you destroy your own case by deliberate omission of crucial facts. In fact it's hard to make out, in light of those facts, what your case actually is.

The mods closed the thread, HAVING ADMITTED THEY WERE WRONG AND APOLOGISED FOR IT. Here is the mod note in case anyone cares:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/feedb ... l#p1947016

On review, we acknowledge that we made a mistake in failing to act on the reports in the exchanges between chairman bill and Strontium Dog in the 'Thatcher dead' thread. At the time, chairman bill's post, and the post of Strontium Dog it quoted, had both been reported, and we felt that chairman bill and Strontium Dog were engaging in a robust exchange over the merits of polarized political positions. In retrospect it seems, we should have acted differently.

So let's see: You see what you feel to be a double standard in how you've been treated. You start a feedback thread about it; it gets discussed (most people, including me, agree with you). As a result, the mods ADMIT YOU ARE RIGHT, and APOLOGISE FOR THEIR MISTAKE.

Which of course means that you have to come here and complain about it, because there's nothing to complain about there any more.

Feeling starved of oxygen, are we?



There are of course reasons for the different treatment of the third example you give, which involves crucially different statements in different contexts (especially when not quote mined). But I'm not convinced there's any point going into them when you clearly have no intention of being honest about anything here.

[pErvinalia]

The members are sticking up for you, Samsa. I wanna see some good feedback thread action over this when you get back!