Unfairly targeted by a politics moderator

Folkstonian

Afternoon,

This morning I received a notice from the politics moderator ancapailldorcha informing me that I have been banned from posting in all threads on the politics forum.

The explanations given by ancapailldorcha were;

‘You’ve basically admitted to low level trolling here.’
and
‘You admitted to not responding to another user because it was amusing you. This adds nothing to the discussion and constitutes low level trolling.’

This line of reasoning for the ban given to me constitutes a wilful disregard of both my actual statement and the context in which it was made. In fact, what I said was the following;

‘it’s mildly amusing to see him carry on about it like he can actually make ‘demands’ and expect people to react kindly’

I hope this shows that I was not engaged in ‘trolling’ and instead had simply opted not to Indulge another poster because they had, on a number of occasions, posted directly to me using language that was both rude and insulting and which questioned my integrity simply because I (very respectfully) disagreed with them on certain issues.
This wasn’t a case of me deliberately causing mischief or discord in the thread, it was exercising a right to not interact with someone posting in quite a malicious fashion and then feeling pressured to explain my decision not to when another poster engaged in similar haranguing.

Ultimately, the fact is that I have a different set of views to the vast majority of contributors on the politics forums on the topic of Brexit, but I have been careful to always post in a sincere and courteous manner to posters who afford me the same basic decency.
This has not stopped me enjoying the different views, experiences and conclusions of people with different spheres of academic and professional competence

Unfortunately, Brexit threads have, in my view, been allowed to become bubbling cauldrons of quite nasty antagonism in recent months because this moderator has wilfully overlooked the new trend among a minority of posters of using abusive, derisory, and insulting words and haranguing behaviour towards me and one or two other posters.
We are posters who are, on balance, marginally pro-brexit but who always engage in conversation with the more interesting, insightful and polite pro-European posters in good faith.
I understand there have been a fair number of ‘trolls’ clogging up and derailing genuine debate and discussion on the Brexit thread for a number of weeks and I have found it as tiresome and irritating as anyone else. But I don’t believe my posts have ever been anything but honest and well intentioned, and I don’t believe the regular posters in the thread would argue otherwise.

Under the stewardship of this moderator, nearly all ‘dissenting’ voices have been cleared out by the ‘mob’, and I was really the last one standing until today. I believe he is wholly aware of this but unfortunately, through inaction, has simply allowed this situation to play out.

I would like to contest the ban he has placed upon me as a wholly disproportionate act.

Kind regards

dudara

I’m not clear from your post if you have attempted to contact the mod and work this out with them.

Can you confim if you have contacted the mod, and if so, what was the outcome?

Folkstonian

Apologies, yes I did. Brick walled with a response of ‘ban upheld’. No explanation as to why the atmosphere of abusive language has been allowed to steadily creep in. I didn’t want to make this a big thing, but was unsure as to whether taking the issue to a second politics moderator would be worthwhile, as I don’t except them to undermine the decision of a colleague on their own mod team, even if I do find it quite unfair

dudara

Thanks for confirming. I’ll ask a CMod to review now, as per the next step in the process.

Please have the PMs you exchanged with the mod ready to share. You can post them here, or else PM directly to the CMod.

Folkstonian

Hi again - just on this request, I’ll retract it. My forum ban was only temporary so please don’t waste any time investigating it. I’m going to close my account instead of seeing the ban out, entirely due to the miserably poor standard of moderation in the politics forum, the total inaction in the face of clearly provocative and abusive messages, and the general sense of ‘mob rule’ that now exists in Brexit related threads.

There are some really interesting, kind posters on the politics forum, but the pervasive unpleasantness in recent months means it is no longer a particularly enjoyable experience to try and engage others in conversation.

Hopefully the mod in question can deal with his own biases and work towards making the forum a generally nicer place again because even in my short time as an active participant, it has gone steadily downhill

Regards

dudara

Please note that should you choose to re-register with a new account within the next 5 days, the Politics ban will still apply