I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this question. Does the moderating team overall exemplify and encourage civil debate and discussion? Are there some notable exceptions? Is the moderating team well representative of various viewpoints? Does it seem that thoughtful arguments are being presented an atmosphere that is free from condescension, stereotyping, strawman arguments, red herrings, and even insults?
Most importantly, are serious and thoughtful people leaving (or discouraged from joining) the forum due to moderator bias?
Do we have a well functioning moderating team here?
Moderator: Moderators
Post #51
I guess that this is where this conversation belongs.
I am not posting here to hide any of this from cnorman’s responses. I am posting here because this is the subject at hand and this is where I can go 30 mph over the speed limit. At no time do I intend to drive faster than EduChris has driven. I feel that cnorman should be able to respond to this post.
I am new here. At the time that I took a very uncivil beating from cnorman, I was VERY new here. He was quick to determine my motives and he was quick to dismiss my points as nonsense and a couple of times as even worse. I don’t think that I ever made a point that was acceptable to him. But more than that, I attempted at several times to soften the conversation only to bump against the same incivility.
I apologized for my opening post.
I offered to send the conversation into a new and more positive direction:
ButterflyTyrant was a new member. No welcome; no benefit of the doubt. The incivility begins almost with the first scene.
And then cnorman posts “We have met the enemy and he is us� But the post was actually far removed from the title. It was a hypocritical attempt to remove himself from the fray when,in fact, he was one of the contributors to the problem of incivility in the forum.
Cnorman was uncivil to me.
Cnorman was uncivil to ButterflyTyrant.
Cnorman was hypocritical in his last post.
But my point, strangely is this:
Do these things make cnorman despicable? No. It makes cnorman human.
Does any of this make cnorman unfit to moderate? No
Cnorman has made thousands of posts that are spot on, congratulatory, witty, supportive, informative, and many more positive adjectives as well.
I give cnorman a 95% (angel) and 5% (*^#*%)
That is a solid ‘A’ where I come from. I would not begin to give myself so high a grade.
As a moderator, he needs to wait on issues that are passionate to him until he can be completely be sure of the intent. He blew it twice---perhaps more.
I am not posting here to hide any of this from cnorman’s responses. I am posting here because this is the subject at hand and this is where I can go 30 mph over the speed limit. At no time do I intend to drive faster than EduChris has driven. I feel that cnorman should be able to respond to this post.
I am new here. At the time that I took a very uncivil beating from cnorman, I was VERY new here. He was quick to determine my motives and he was quick to dismiss my points as nonsense and a couple of times as even worse. I don’t think that I ever made a point that was acceptable to him. But more than that, I attempted at several times to soften the conversation only to bump against the same incivility.
I apologized for my opening post.
His response- nothing. Should this have softened the tone a bit? yes. Did it? No. Should there been a recognition of this apology? yesjohnmarc wrote: At the beginning of this conversation I expressed a concern that the common media biased its coverage in Israel’s favor. This observation came from twenty years of sitting on the sofa with the television on and the newspaper in my lap. I may have expressed it poorly or even provocatively---I do have that fault. My apologies. You could have stated at that time that the evidence that I used to justify my beliefs was not verifiable and therefore not debatable. I would have just moved on.
I offered to send the conversation into a new and more positive direction:
Cnorman’s response:johnmarc wrote: Discovered that you are a moderator. That impresses me also. I don’t think that I have risen into a leadership position in anything. I don’t know if as moderator, you have access to my name and address, but if you do, feel free to look it up to discover that I am indeed John Q Nobody (with a capital N) I don’t belong to anything---I am as middle America as you can get. Your notion that I am other than that is just plain silly.
That being as it is, I think, had I been you and you had been me, I might have handled the first post a little differently.
“Hello johnmarc, I see that you are new here. Welcome to the forum. As a first word of caution, I would refrain from using colorful metaphors. Some of us here get a little queasy when our Sacred Cows get colorful, if you get my drift. As to your media claim, I have been sitting here racking my brain over what on earth I have gleaned from the mass media over the past twenty years. There was the Rachael Corrie thing. There was the Israeli blockage of Gaza thing. There was the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla. And seeming constantly some fuss or another about illegal settlements. I cannot come up with one article just off my head when Israel was not the fall guy for some event or another. Given the huge coverage of these and other negative events, how can you possibly find a majority of positive coverage in television or daily press?�
And that was what I would have done. Apologized for my metaphor and gone down my remembrances and given them to you. No rush to the internet---no fight over whose facts were most germane. No need to call me a liar, no need to claim that I am not who I said I was. Very likely a productive conversation and some agreements reached.
I was a new member. No welcome, no benefit of doubt. The incivility begins almost with the first scene.cnorman wrote: I'm not even going to bother to dissect all that. Suffice it to say that I'm not you.
ButterflyTyrant was a new member. No welcome; no benefit of the doubt. The incivility begins almost with the first scene.
And then cnorman posts “We have met the enemy and he is us� But the post was actually far removed from the title. It was a hypocritical attempt to remove himself from the fray when,in fact, he was one of the contributors to the problem of incivility in the forum.
Cnorman was uncivil to me.
Cnorman was uncivil to ButterflyTyrant.
Cnorman was hypocritical in his last post.
But my point, strangely is this:
Do these things make cnorman despicable? No. It makes cnorman human.
Does any of this make cnorman unfit to moderate? No
Cnorman has made thousands of posts that are spot on, congratulatory, witty, supportive, informative, and many more positive adjectives as well.
I give cnorman a 95% (angel) and 5% (*^#*%)
That is a solid ‘A’ where I come from. I would not begin to give myself so high a grade.
As a moderator, he needs to wait on issues that are passionate to him until he can be completely be sure of the intent. He blew it twice---perhaps more.
Why posit intention when ignorance will suffice?
