Castin

All I hear is that the mods can't handle the stress, the workload, or are even willing to do their job. The lot of you should resign.

I'm not disputing the humor, but I'm seeing a disturbing penchant for dismissing users with jokes instead of addressing their concerns.

Read this. This is almost a unifying belief system espoused by satanists https://archive.org/stream/MightIsRight_966/MightIsRight_djvu.txt

Satanism at its essence is making oneself an idol before God.

Now with that understanding, and the eyes to see, satanism is actually very popular and even covertly encouraged by culture today.

Most satanists claim to be atheists. Really though, they take themselves as god. It is reflected in their pride and arbitrariness.

But the forums are the only place where people, y'know... talk.

The comments on a debate are de facto forum threads.

What justification was given for selecting Castin as a moderator? Did it go any further than "people like her?"

She was, of course, widely respected. She was also engaged with site issues, was impartial and not overly deferential, and could likely muster a consensus of support for her modship. 

RM, I was thinking the same thing. That is why I deep dived into these subjects and sought professioal help, despite my skepticism of psychology as a whole. I am paranoid, but when I look into the paranoia it really is more along the lines of hypervigilance and other ptsd type symptoms. I've had some auditory hallucinations and atleast 1 visual hallucination. These hallucinations are not as rare in the general population as you may think. I think something around 33% of people have had auditory hallucinations. I hear knocking at night sometimes and hear my name called occasionally. Not as uncommon as you might think. I've certainly had delusional thinking. I thought that a trickster God had attached himself to me and was helpibg me to become a stronger person. I would pray to this entity I called Loki. Telling him thank you for putting me in so many abusive environments or for causing me to suffer so terribly after certain events. I thought Loki was training me for something great by tearing me down so much. At times I have thought time travelers were trying to kill me. I have always thought I was special, thinking an alien dropped me off and that I actually had a loving family and that the one I was in was just something I had to put up with until my alien parents returned to take me to their loving home where somebody actually cared for me. With that being said I think it comes from some other type of schizotypal personality, seeing as how they are prone to living in fantasy worlds, especially in response to trauma. The disordered thinking symptom did get to me for a while, but it is not the same type of disordered thinking descfibed in schizophrenia usually. Their disordered thoughts have no logical connections my disordered thoughts do. I was reading some stuff written by psychologists differentiating between both types of disordered thoughts. I don't really isolate myself. I prefer veing alone but I still socialize and deal with the public. I think I am a mix of things unfortunately. OCD, PTSD with bipolar and some sort of anxiety disorder mixed with some sort of schizotypal personality. The Bipolar is probably genetic and the rest are likely just responses to the high stress enironments I was put in. 

LM was offered the position of an assistant moderator for forums.

A member quickly expressed their preference for post deletion. Short of threats or doxxing, I am against post deletion, personally. 

Perhaps some indicator (other than deletion, perhaps even a note saying "post in violation") could be added to posts that are considered in violation?

Without some explicit indicator or flag or label or note or strike-through, the bad behavior could easily appear to be accepted practice.

There is too much emphasis on the forums, too few people participate in formal debates, too many people participate exclusively in the forums, and the moderators are defending their moderating style based on what people say about them on the forums.

So the reason I'm highlighting the excessive forum participation vs. the debate participation ratio of all your examples is to demonstrate that it is almost entirely forum users who think the moderators are too "heavy-handed" (as you say), but people like myself who mainly emphasize debate participation (or have a more balanced approach) are frustrated by inconsistent, ineffective and heavily delayed moderator actions on the debates/comments/votes.

Essentially, to spell it out for you, I'm saying you have a flaw in your statistical analysis. You are claiming that a majority of users are voicing complaints about "heavy-handedness", when in reality your examples show that all such users making those complaints are forum-heavy with little or no debate-participation. You have excluded a large part of the user-base from your analysis to focus only on a vocal minority.

Wait why does "reports have been handled" mean "mod approved"? Poly was temp banned for two days following that post. 

Perhaps some indicator could be added to posts that are considered in violation?

Without some explicit indicator or flag or label or note or strike-through, the bad behavior could easily appear to be accepted practice.

Moderation of content (vis-a-vis its deletion) shouldn't care about intention.

Moderation of users (vis-a-vis banning, restriction of rights) should.

Pretty much this.

Ok, that’s nice.

What I’m talking about, though, is what is the intent behind the “sources” category in the debate voting, what is this trying to say so that voters have a clearer picture of how and why to cast votes instead of everyone having their own idea.

but thanks for your input.