Point of Order


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  • #65102 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    I am a disappointed with this moderation comment.

    Your upsetting me. Mods have a word.


    [ Mod: OK, here’s a word for you: “You’re”.

    Maybe someone will teach you how to use it. ]

    I don’t agree wth Dave’s views and I think that is clear. Having a go at Dave because he has misspelled a word or misused a grammar law is low and to be quite honest lame. Dyslexia affects one in ten people. That means one in ten people you work with and one in ten people you deal with. We all know what he meant whether he spelled it correctly or not.
    I may not like Dave’s views but but I understand what he means even if doesn’t spell correctly. This is the reasonable adjustment everone is required to make. It makes sense.

    #65103 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    To be absolutely clear, I am not saying Dave is dyslexic. I have no idea if Dave is or isn’t. I am just saying that was a poor moderation decision.

    #65104 Reply
    SA
    Guest

    I think closing down the forum was also not the right decision. I also feel that some commenters on both sides have overstepped the Mark and Dave has been taunted. Will the mods please consider reopening this forum and perhaps suspending heated or irrelevant posts ?

    #65110 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    I agree with ET and SA, but I sympathise with the moderation team; been there myself. I have more to say, but in private. If the moderation team wish to e-mail me, please relay preferably through Craig, so that I can recognise the originating e-mail address.

    [ Mod: Clark, if you post a comment in the main blog section starting “Message for MODs”, we will unapprove it (so only you can see it) and add the mod email address. ]

    If moderation has become unmanageable, maybe all comments to the entire site should be suspended for a few weeks. Freedom of expression is important, but the right to life even more so.

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by modbot.
    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by modbot.
    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by modbot.
    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by modbot.
    #65119 Reply
    mods-cm-org
    Guest

    Thank you for raising this point of order, ET.

    I think you’re missing the point of the mod comment, which could have been spelled out more clearly. Dave had already accused Clark of feigning distress as a “tactic” to close down discussion and was sardonically invoking the same method himself – except of course in Dave’s case the expression of upset really was feigned and insincere. The mod remark was designed to show, with similarly dry humour, that the sarcastic implications were acknowledged. It wasn’t arraigning Dave for a simple typo (most of which we silently fix for everyone as a matter of routine), much less censuring dyslexia (which clearly isn’t the case here, in view of Dave’s other contributions). Dave’s dry reply shows he acknowledged the point. However, the inherent risk in using sarcasm is that some people interpret the communication literally, as seems to have happened here. So we will resort to making more literal statements.

    The “SARS cov2 and Covid 19” thread hasn’t been closed permanently. It was locked because the mode of communication had degenerated into pointless off-topic sniping, and was getting worse overnight. That thread required continual monitoring and intervention from moderators at a time when we are trying to prepare new guidelines for the forum. When new problems start appearing while moderators are still dealing with earlier ones, it’s time to slam on the brakes (not literally, of course).

    The arguments were overlapping and distracting from each other, and people were posting replies – not all of which are visible – to offend rather than inform, so the thread was locked temporarily to allow the heat of debate to cool down while the moderators develop new forum guidelines. Clearly there were some valuable contributions amongst the mudslinging, and they have not been lost. You are welcome to create your own topics in the meantime to follow particular lines of argument in the locked thread. Incidentally, one of the new guidelines will be that topic titles should define the discussion more specifically – as N_ has done with SARSCoV2 “outbreak” on isle of Barra in Scotland rather than just “SARSCoV2“.

    Regards,
    Mods.

    #65161 Reply
    mods-cm-org
    Guest

    It’s also worth noting that this exchange between Dave and the moderators shouldn’t have been public in the first place. Dave’s comment was first “unapproved” (which rendered it visible only to him and the moderators) and the annotation was added. An inadvertent grammar mistake was spotted later – the mods aren’t immune to typos! – so the entry was edited. Unfortunately, one of the quirks we have noticed with the bbPress discussion forum software is that when an ‘unapproved’ (and therefore private) forum reply is subsequently edited in the admin screen, saving the change automatically and silently publishes it. By contrast, when private blog comments are edited and saved they retain their unapproved status and so aren’t visible to all readers.

    This quirk had been highlighted in correspondence between moderators the previous day, so we should have been alert to it … which underlines the fact that moderators are equally prone to human error.

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