Can we talk about AH?

xi5yvm0owc1s2b

Boom_Bap wrote: »

OK, so again, this is about PC, not AH.

I think the point is that people will continue to post political threads in AH, regardless of what the charter says, until such time as the Admins offer a workable alternative -- and Politics Cafe has proven itself not to be that workable alternative. The forum was rebooted under its current guise in June 2017, nearly two years ago now, and is for all intents and purposes a dead forum by this point, getting only a handful of posts per day.

But AH should not 'suffer' due to that protest of the access rule

Totally agreed. It has been proposed numerous times to create a Current Affairs forum for fast-moving debate on the issues of the day, and that would solve many of the problems, I believe. The only mystery is why the proposed Current Affairs forum never seems to proceed beyond the "we're thinking about it" phase.

Boards.ie: Mark

Lawson Tinkling Fishhook wrote: »

The only mystery is why the proposed Current Affairs forum never seems to proceed beyond the "we're thinking about it" phase.

Because we're trying to avoid a situation whereby we have 3 forums dedicated to Politics and people still resort to posting in AH / raise a complaint when a thread gets moved to a more fitful forum.

We have seen issues where people could post about politics in a more "relaxed" environment. The result of that was that the forum had to be shut down and restarted in a new guise. The latest solution involved implementing an access process (of 250 posts and an account that's 3 months old), while keeping moderation pretty relaxed.

---

If people would like to suggest alterations to the access request element of Politics Cafe, I'm open to suggestions.

Zorya

Lawson Tinkling Fishhook wrote: »

It has been proposed numerous times to create a Current Affairs forum for fast-moving debate on the issues of the day, and that would solve many of the problems, I believe. The only mystery is why the proposed Current Affairs forum never seems to proceed beyond the "we're thinking about it" phase.

And when After Hours gets its ''Current Affairs'' sidekick, pulllllleeease call it ''The Snug''.

Beasty

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Because we're trying to avoid a situation whereby we have 3 forums dedicated to Politics and people still resort to posting in AH / raise a complaint when a thread gets moved to a more fitful forum.

Just to add, there were very differing opinions expressed about such a forum, with some saying it was not needed. I was, and remain, supportive. However we also have a current request for a "Brexit" forum - I'm not sure at this stage whether that should follow the "Politics" format, or perhaps an open "Politics Cafe" style of forum. If the latter it could become a bit of a testing ground for the Current Affairs idea - yes just the one underlying subject, but one that posters perhaps want to discuss many different aspects of. Equally if we do have it PC-style, maybe we should be prepared to be dishing out permanent bans to posters looking to disrupt the place as opposed to an access process

xi5yvm0owc1s2b

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Because we're trying to avoid a situation whereby we have 3 forums dedicated to Politics and people still resort to posting in AH / raise a complaint when a thread gets moved to a more fitful forum.

I agree with you that there's no need for three forums. I assumed that Current Affairs would replace Politics Cafe and that AH mods would then move threads either to Current Affairs or to Politics as appropriate.

I also agree with Beasty's suggestion. Rather than implementing an access system, which has been shown not to work, just swiftly permaban troublemakers while letting everyone else post freely.

Boom_Bap

So could an immediate solution be to remove the access red tape from PC and rename to Current Affairs?

Zorya

Beasty wrote: »

Equally if we do have it PC-style, maybe we should be prepared to be dishing out permanent bans to posters looking to disrupt the place as opposed to an access process

I have seen bans doled out inappropriately. Site bans, thread bans. It's a more prohibitive way to deal with messers than to have a post count requirement as it is open to abuse by mods and by cliques of posters who report en masse against ideas they do not like. The post count requirement in a Current Affairs forum could be low - say 20 - which will weed out messers who just register to troll specific threads. Bans should at the most be partial - ie time limited - unless for very severe transgressions. Otherwise they are a political weapon.

Kivaro

Beasty wrote: »

Equally if we do have it PC-style, maybe we should be prepared to be dishing out permanent bans to posters looking to disrupt the place as opposed to an access process

Zorya wrote: »

I have seen bans doled out inappropriately. Site bans, thread bans. It's a more prohibitive way to deal with messers than to have a post count requirement as it is open to abuse by mods and by cliques of posters who report en masse against ideas they do not like. The post count requirement in a Current Affairs forum could be low - say 20 - which will weed out messers who just register to troll specific threads. Bans should at the most be partial - ie time limited - unless for very severe transgressions. Otherwise they are a political weapon.

Here's the crux to the solution, and I know it's a subjective term, but we do need impartial modding e.g. if a mod wants to partake in a thread discussion, then he/she should really not be modding that thread also. I believe that was a major part of the problem on the old PC.

Someone told me once ....... that mods are human. So it's only natural for a mod involved in a heated/spirited debate to react impulsively with a mod action to something that they do not agree with.

Let's give it a go though. We've been talking about Current Affairs for some time. And I do appreciate/understand the overhead involved on the back-end of this solution.
But it would bring peace on earth ..........

the whole discussion seems to me to be very vague on how anyone makes the distinction as to whether a topic is political or not

sure, everything is politics

Beasty

Kivaro wrote: »

Someone told me once ....... that mods are human.

Jeez!! Who said that???? Think I need to be having a quiet word with someone



:pac:

Boom_Bap

beep bop boo bop I am a robot beep bop boop

Cookie_Monster

dulpit wrote: »

That's an issue for PC. If the thread doesn't belong in AH, moving it is correct approach.

but few, if any, threads on other topics are moved. Political / current affairs threads are specifically targeted while others are ignored, there is no consistency what -so-ever

Beasty

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

but few, if any, threads on other topics are moved. Political / current affairs threads are specifically targeted while others are ignored, there is no consistency what -so-ever

Not sure that's lack of consistency per se. It could be turned round and argued that Politics thread are fairly "consistently" moved to PC, and that's pretty much what PC was created for in the first place (and hence the specific link to PC at the head of the AH front page)

It's widely recognised that AH is not a "subject-specific" forum, but caters for a wide variety of topics. The problem with political threads was/(is) they tended to dominate AH. The odd political thread is permitted. Even some commentary on Soccer-related topics (such as the Adam Johnson case) are permitted. If anyone starts a thread discussing Manchester United or Liverpool they would quickly be closed and posters referred to the soccer forum. I'm sure you've also seen a number of Cyclist threads and indeed motoring threads in AH. However you will rarely see more than one such active thread, and if there is the mods will typically move one of them. That's fairly consistent with what happens with politics threads. The odd one, perhaps that has not had recent AH "coverage", may be permitted, but loads of political threads at one time are not

Equally there can be a political angle to many topics, but it may be that other aspects dominate the discussion making it less suitable for a "pure" political forum

KyussB

Zorya wrote: »

I have seen bans doled out inappropriately. Site bans, thread bans. It's a more prohibitive way to deal with messers than to have a post count requirement as it is open to abuse by mods and by cliques of posters who report en masse against ideas they do not like. The post count requirement in a Current Affairs forum could be low - say 20 - which will weed out messers who just register to troll specific threads. Bans should at the most be partial - ie time limited - unless for very severe transgressions. Otherwise they are a political weapon.

This would be a pretty good way of doing it. Prevents forums turning into an echo chamber through attempts to target and remove specific posters for their views, by getting their posts dinged; allows the mods enough flexibility to fuck up occasionally without that turning into a saga dragging out over extremely long periods of time (any poster dealt an unfair hand just has to wait it out); also means mods don't have to be hardasses about the letter of the rules either; allows a much better diversity of discussion.

It will never be lighthearted like AH, because you can't have a full-on current-affairs/political forum without cliques and tribalism and mostly-serious/testy discussion being the norm. To get it like that, you'd need to allow AH-style non-serious/pisstaking threads alongside the actual political stuff. Which would not necessarily be a bad thing, as it'd allow the forum to develop its own kind of style/sub-community.

Cookie_Monster

AGS to allow members to wear religous and ethnic garb while on duty
British Para regiment under investigation for shooting at posters of Jeremy Corbyn
Leo worrying about meeting Kylie? WTF
Ireland rejoining the British Commonwealth
ISIS people returning thread
Mass shooting New Zealand Mosque - MOD NOTE POST #1

The above are all on the front page of AH now and are all current affairs or political threads...
Maybe the NZ wasn't initially but htere is nothing to be added to it now apart from the politics of the gun laws reforms happening right now.

so yeah, no consistancy.

Equally there can be a political angle to many topics, but it may be that other aspects dominate the discussion making it less suitable for a "pure" political forum

which was the whole point of the cafe, no? But as has been pointed out many times it is not fit for purpose currently.

osarusan

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Because we're trying to avoid a situation whereby we have 3 forums dedicated to Politics and people still resort to posting in AH / raise a complaint when a thread gets moved to a more fitful forum.

We have seen issues where people could post about politics in a more "relaxed" environment. The result of that was that the forum had to be shut down and restarted in a new guise. The latest solution involved implementing an access process (of 250 posts and an account that's 3 months old), while keeping moderation pretty relaxed.

---

If people would like to suggest alterations to the access request element of Politics Cafe, I'm open to suggestions.

People post political stuff in AH because it has the lowest standard of moderation and they get to talk more shyte and never have to defend any of it.

PC went to hell because so many people just wanted to talk shyte and never have to defend any of it. So they get banned, re-reg, and do it all over again, and thus you need access criteria.

Your fundamental problem is the people who just want to to talk shyte and never have to defend any of it, and who fcuk up the threads for everybody else. Moving them around just moves the problem around.

Beasty

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

AGS to allow members to wear religous and ethnic garb while on duty
British Para regiment under investigation for shooting at posters of Jeremy Corbyn
Leo worrying about meeting Kylie? WTF
Ireland rejoining the British Commonwealth
ISIS people returning thread
Mass shooting New Zealand Mosque - MOD NOTE POST #1

The above are all on the front page of AH now and are all current affairs or political threads...
Maybe the NZ wasn't initially but htere is nothing to be added to it now apart from the politics of the gun laws reforms happening right now.

so yeah, no consistancy.


which was the whole point of the cafe, no? But as has been pointed out many times it is not fit for purpose currently.

How many of those would you consider "serious" political stories? I reckon a couple the ISIS one and the NZ one. Maybe the AGS one, but I've not looked in that thread

As I've said previously people look to start discussions on all sort of topics that belong "better" elsewhere, but so long as those topics (and in particular the serious ones) are not dominating AH I'm perhaps seeing more consistency than you

Basically a couple of "current headline serious" threads, intermingled with a load of topics that can have the p!ss ripped out of them, and some chatty ones

Just looking through the first few pages, going back to the beginning of the month, I can see 3 threads moved - one of them political and another starts with
"I know its the wrong forum but thought there would be more traffic here"!

Ultimately though the front page is dominated by threads that people want to post in

hatrickpatrick

IF people want to stop the discussion of social and political issues, and the ongoing 'culture war' which seems to be the source of most of the stuff the OP and others don't want to see, then reopen the Politics Cafe as a public forum and move threads there.

The problem, as always, is attempting to tame a wild beast. Crowdsourced political discussion will never meet the standards of 'mature discussion' which some are demanding of it, particularly when it involves Irish people who in general like to talk sh!te and take the piss. If you're going to have political discussion on an Irish forum, you're going to have people talking sh!te and being irreverent. It's an integral part of Irish culture.

Closing the Politics Cafe to general discussion and making it an elitist members only club was a symptom of a much similar problem - trying to control the discourse. You can't. If you're going to host political discussion on an Irish forum, the Irish way of talking about things is going to find its way into that discussion one way or another. An internet forum is more akin to a night in the pub than an episode of Prime Time, and that's what it's supposed to be FFS. If you try and force it to be something else, then people will simply stop using it. Personally that's why I never applied for membership of the Café when it went invite only, despite being a regular poster who was absolutely guaranteed to be allowed in - I didn't want to post in a sanitised echo chamber, you discuss politics online to debate with people. I doubt I'm the only one who boycotted the forum out of solidarity with those who were going to be turned away because their views are considered socially unacceptable.

And thus, political discussion spilled over into AH after several years of the Cafe managing to keep it fairly well contained.

Like it or not, there is a major cultural clash going on at the moment, there has been for four or five years, centred around the Overton Window and the concept of defining "acceptable" political beliefs. Hell, this is why Peter Casey went from a fringe candidate in the presidential election to a widely publicised one grabbing a large chunk of the vote - society's views have shifted, and the Overton Window has yet to catch up with them. Some are fighting to ensure that those views continue to be considered socially unacceptable, but in my view they're fighting a losing battle as there is now clearly a very, very sizeable chunk of people who are fed up with being quiet and have found a voice for their long-buried beliefs.

Most of the negativity mentioned in the OP is people venting against the paradigm of sacred cows and "off limits" subjects of political discussion. This is happening in society right now, so obviously a discussion forum is going to reflect that. There's probably a good point to be made that this stuff doesn't belong in AH, but the problem is that if it belongs in the Café, then the Café has to be allowed to be what it is. It will always be vitriolic and contain political views which some people find repulsive, because that's the nature of society's political discourse at the moment. If you don't allow that, you don't allow political discussion at all - it's a central part of the issues society is currently grappling with, so it cannot simply be excluded from a general political discussion forum.

Tl;dr, reopen the cafe, and just accept that it's going to be a space which many will find unpleasant and offensive.

Nobody is forcing those people to participate in it. The Politics General forum is there to cater for those people. The whole point of the Café in the first place was to provide a space for that kind of less sanitised discussion - AH in nature, but politics in subject.

The members only thing was a gigantic mistake - a moronic solution to a non-existent "problem". If people posting "offensive" (to some other people!) views and getting heated in the discussion of those views is considered a "problem", then what this actually means is that Boards.ie does not allow political discussion, or at least it doesn't allow everyday chat style political discussion as opposed to the sanitised, broadsheet style which is found on the general Politics forum. If this is an official policy, then Boards will return to the paradigm of several years ago in which people deserted the site in droves, because that's simply what people want to talk about at the moment.

There has to be a space for it, and it can't be a members-only space with an immediate perception of elitism and censorship about it. I'm not opposed to the idea that AH is not the space for it, but if it's not, then the Café must be run exactly as AH is now, without the scourge of "off limits" topics of conversation, and with any member of the site being allowed to participate. Make the Café what it was originally supposed to be - AH, but just for politics.

And as I said before half jokingly, reopen the thunderdome with politics and let the cards fall as they may.

Give the posters with the most vitriol their own place to vent.

Chips Lovell

To qualify for permission to post, you must meet all of the following criteria:
A minimum post count of 250
Be a member of the site for 3 months or more
Have a relatively clean record (at mod's discretion)

Welcome to the Politics Cafe 2.0

In this incarnation of the Cafe, the moderation will take a hands-off approach.

There are 2 rules, in addition to the site Terms of Use:
Don't be a dick.
No discussion of illegal activities

Other than that, the floor is open to discussion.

I know the word "elitist" gets bandied around a lot in a hyperbolic fashion these days. But this is taking it to a whole new level:

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

...making it an elitist members only club...

hatrickpatrick

Chips Lovell wrote: »

I know the word "elitist" gets bandied around a lot in a hyperbolic fashion these days. But this is taking it to a whole new level:

When the perception has always been that mods are biased against those with right wing views, and when those with right wing views have in the past been carded and banned disproportionately, the effect of these restrictions is to reinforce the "only certain types of political viewpoint are welcome here" perception.

I appreciate that the site has changed hugely in the last couple of years in particular (many of the discussions currently taking place on AH would have resulted in numerous thread locks just one or two years ago) but the closure of the Café to non-members predates Boards getting its act together in this regard. I acutely noticed it as a poster with acceptable views, back in those days - half the time you'd see an interesting thread from someone on the opposing side, hit 'reply', craft a decent and hopefully pot-stirring response, only to be greeted with "this thread has been locked" upon hitting the submit button on your post.

Whether this is fair in the current era or not (personally I believe that it isn't, moderation has been relaxed and improved substantially in recent years) the words "at mod's discretion" are absolute anathema to those with non-mainstream political beliefs, because of how the site used to be run until relatively recently (circa 2012-2017/18), and that's why I for one never signed up for the Café and I'd imagine is one of the main reasons the place is dead.

What no one has ever explained is why it was restricted to begin with. All I ever saw was people using it for what it was for - AH-style political discussion. Irreverent, heated, piss-taking. The cumulative effect of repeated tightening of the rules on the Café rendered it essentially just a clone of the Politics forum, and then its closure to non-members more or less killed it.

Again, as I've said numerous times over the years, the issue here is that for a long time, there seemed to be an unwritten, or secret, list of topics which were off-limits for discussion on Boards.ie. Most of them would tick the boxes outlined in the OP of this thread, as topics which make AH "unpleasant".

Why can we not try the Café again as literally a second AH, but for all the posts categorised as political? Same moderation leniency, same charter, etc - purely just a forum used to categorise threads away from AH and take AH's focus away from politics?

That's what the Café was originally envisioned as, and it worked for quite a while before the "that's enough of that, now" brigade got involved. As Beasty said above, ultimately the threads which are popular are the ones people want to post in and the subjects people want to talk about. Killing discussion for no reason other than a vague "we don't like where this is going" runs contrary to what a discussion forum is supposed to be about.

Just my two cents anyway. Politics Café should essentially be an open AH subforum with nothing different from AH other than the categorisation of what belongs there and what belongs in AH. Give that a try and see what happens.

Chips Lovell

I think you're unwittingly creating a false narrative and then railing against it. That doesn't help anything. You're proposing a solution to the wrong problem.

The original Cafe wasn't shut down because people were expressing right wing views or the mods were being too uptight about people expressing non-PC views. The problem was that there was just tidal waves of s**te, most of it generated by people who were just out to cause trouble. I should know, I modded for a while.

The new Cafe has the same hands-off moderation style, just asks that you've been on the site a while before posting there. That's the only difference. It's hardly elitist.

Boards.ie: Mark

Why not try the new Cafe? As posted above, the charter is quite relaxed. You mentioned that "the words 'at mod's discretion' are absolute anathema to those with non-mainstream political beliefs," BUT the site has always had the same view with regards to the "right" of freedom of speech. i.e. there is none and there are other sites/blogs for that.

Sometimes, it's how people make their points / posts that results in cards. And yes, there are times when what they are saying is going to result in action. Why is that? Well, we have a Terms of Use and FAQ that outlines the things that will get you in trouble. Where people feel that action has been inappropriately taken, there is the dispute process. If a CMod and an Admin is in agreement that the action was justified, then it is far less likely that mod bias is the reason for the card, ban, etc.

An open Café was tried in the past. And it resulted in "More mod, CMod and admin time has been spent on the Cafe in the past three months than all other forums combined, and that's simply not sustainable," as outlined in the closing post of the original. As I said, I would like to hear suggestions for a new access protocol, but I don't believe that just giving it another go is feasible.

Zorya

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Why not try the new Cafe? As posted above, the charter is quite relaxed. You mentioned that "the words 'at mod's discretion' are absolute anathema to those with non-mainstream political beliefs," BUT the site has always had the same view with regards to the "right" of freedom of speech. i.e. there is none and there are other sites/blogs for that.

Sometimes, it's how people make their points / posts that results in cards. And yes, there are times when what they are saying is going to result in action. Why is that? Well, we have a Terms of Use and FAQ that outlines the things that will get you in trouble. Where people feel that action has been inappropriately taken, there is the dispute process. If a CMod and an Admin is in agreement that the action was justified, then it is far less likely that mod bias is the reason for the card, ban, etc.

An open Café was tried in the past. And it resulted in "More mod, CMod and admin time has been spent on the Cafe in the past three months than all other forums combined, and that's simply not sustainable," as outlined in the closing post of the original. As I said, I would like to hear suggestions for a new access protocol, but I don't believe that just giving it another go is feasible.

How about, I don't have a ''clean'' record, so would maybe not be eligible for the café, and I think that I am not the worst of posters around. It seems to be fairly easy to fall foul of moderators if one has opinions that are not wholly mainstream. Or if one is reported by cliques. I have seen plenty worse than I have ever said go completely unremarked because the snide comments or baiting were addressed to posters with thicker skins who did not report them. So the clean record requirement for a start is completely subjective.

end of the road

i do believe that if going back to the old style cafe really isn't going to be an option, then as i see it we are ultimately at a deadlock here, as doing exactly that seems to be the only way it will actually work, and is, from what i can see, what the userbase and potential users actually want. as i see it, either that or full closure are the only real options. trying to fix the access system or going to the opposite of much much heavier moderation, i don't believe will work in making politics cafe a forum where people would specifically want to take part.

McMurphy

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Why not try the new Cafe? As posted above, the charter is quite relaxed. You mentioned that "the words 'at mod's discretion' are absolute anathema to those with non-mainstream political beliefs," BUT the site has always had the same view with regards to the "right" of freedom of speech. i.e. there is none and there are other sites/blogs for that.

Sometimes, it's how people make their points / posts that results in cards. And yes, there are times when what they are saying is going to result in action. Why is that? Well, we have a Terms of Use and FAQ that outlines the things that will get you in trouble. Where people feel that action has been inappropriately taken, there is the dispute process. If a CMod and an Admin is in agreement that the action was justified, then it is far less likely that mod bias is the reason for the card, ban, etc.

An open Cafas tried in the past. And it resulted in "More mod, CMod and admin time has been spent on the Cafe in the past three months than all other forums combined, and that's simply not sustainable," as outlined in the closing post of the original. As I said, I would like to hear suggestions for a new access protocol, but I don't believe that just giving it another go is feasible.

Over modding, and more than just a touch of inconsistency might just have been the problem there.

They're all adults posting in the place, so what if two lads are going at it hammer and tongs, I see little need for mod intervention save for they're calling each other c**** or whatever.

Inconsistency Mark. Inconsistency is a big problem with moderation on the site.

Timberrrrrrrr

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Why not try the new Cafe? As posted above, the charter is quite relaxed. You mentioned that "the words 'at mod's discretion' are absolute anathema to those with non-mainstream political beliefs," BUT the site has always had the same view with regards to the "right" of freedom of speech. i.e. there is none and there are other sites/blogs for that.

Sometimes, it's how people make their points / posts that results in cards. And yes, there are times when what they are saying is going to result in action. Why is that? Well, we have a Terms of Use and FAQ that outlines the things that will get you in trouble. Where people feel that action has been inappropriately taken, there is the dispute process. If a CMod and an Admin is in agreement that the action was justified, then it is far less likely that mod bias is the reason for the card, ban, etc.

An open Café was tried in the past. And it resulted in "More mod, CMod and admin time has been spent on the Cafe in the past three months than all other forums combined, and that's simply not sustainable," as outlined in the closing post of the original. As I said, I would like to hear suggestions for a new access protocol, but I don't believe that just giving it another go is feasible.

Here's the thing

In order to be considered eligible to post in the Cafe, a poster must meet all of the following criteria:
A minimum of 250 posts on boards.ie
A minimum of 3 months on boards.ie
A relatively clean record (mod discretion)

1:If i decide to close my account tomorrow and create a new account i would have no access to PC until i had 250 posts.

2: If i decide to close my account tomorrow and create a new account i would have no access to PC until i was posting for 3 months

3: If i requested access to PC it would depend on the mod/admin who reviewed my access, one might grant access one may say no. I do have access now but if i change account that may not be the result in the future.

Kivaro

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Why not try the new Cafe? As posted above, the charter is quite relaxed.....

Actually it is not quite relaxed.
I checked it out previously and the majority of the club-members were of the same mindset, including the mods.
And I know many others haven't joined the private members forum for that reason. It curious how one side of the socio-political divide wants to keep that forum closed .................. hmmmmmm.

And the real reason why the original PC forum imploded was because of the thread on immigration. 2 of the PC mods who moderated that thread and were frequent posters on that thread, advocated for open borders. Those of us who didn't agree with that concept 'coincidentally' ended up getting banned. It was overtly biased and unfair.

For the admins and mods; ask yourself this question: why did the vast majority of posters leave PC then and didn't rejoin the new private forum?
There must be a reason, and to many of us, it's quite obvious.

Why not have a fair, open, and impartially modded forum?

Cookie_Monster

Boards.ie: Mark wrote: »

Why not try the new Cafe?

er, because it's dead as a doornail??

There should be a system in place that allows posters to request that a certain mod cannot moderate their posts. The mod reports it for other mods to take care of it.

I'm being straight-up bullied getting infractions for the most minor things. Things other posters would get a simple mod-note for, or nothing at all. It's all just the build-up to the big one, the one-month ban. And then I'll get a year. And then I'll be one of the reregs I guess.

It's disgraceful. I've been a solid contributor to this site since 2005, and this mod is silencing me, not because of my posts in the particular thread, but because of old posts in another thread that he doesn't agree with. I am not a problem poster, but I'm treated like I'm a troll. And every one of these stupid warnings is used to justify big bans.

I got one yesterday for the most inconsequential "quip" as he calls it. There is not a chance that the posters who align with him would have gotten a warning for it, and I even align with him on this topic, but the other one has him out to get me. He would have thanked that post if it weren't me. It's complete and utter nonsense. He just randomly deletes my other posts as he sees fit even though they're not breaking any rules.

When you start screenshotting posts that are likely to get deleted by an overly zealous mod, something is wrong.