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Professor Beetus posted:Yeah I dunno, I've mentioned to Koos several times that they are even less active than me, and has never responded to any of my PMs inviting them to the DND/CSPAM mod discord, but so far he hasn't seen a need to have him removed. Lol.
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Aug 17, 2022 21:39
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:45 |
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Note: Please refrain from saying a certain type of person is a hypocrite for supporting Hamas and not Ukraine, or different type of person is a hypocrite for supporting Israel but not Russia. We've all heard this many times now.
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Oct 9, 2023 05:03
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Greetings. Due to the tremendous amount of reports generated by this thread taxing our moderation resources, it is now under martial law. All infractions will result in at least a day probation. See OP for recommendations on how to participate well and avoid punishment. For comments or questions about this policy, PM me.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:56
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As a reminder, if you're going to talk about something someone said here, reply to or reference specific posts rather than making reference to a group or ideology, as that is posting about posters and often causes the people in the group who did not say these things to become indignant.
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Oct 13, 2023 02:05
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Taeke posted:Yo this probe is bullshit, the source is right there. The primary source the person was claiming was the health ministry, and it wasn't linked, while the person's credibility also was not established. This puts onus on others to verify the information and is thereby going against the thread's first guideline, which is that one should provide proof of their claims themselves rather than putting this burden on others. It would not have been difficult to wait a bit for confirmation, as there have been reports by NBC News and Time within a few hours of that tweet being posted (ex: https://time.com/6323482/israel-white-phosphorus-gaza-lebanon/ ). For further commentary or questions about this policy, please PM me.
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Oct 13, 2023 23:21
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Ham posted:While this thread was under "martial law," shocking factual claims have been posted based on claims made by random Western journalists with no clear trail or sourcing beyond the journalist's statement. Some of those turned out incorrect or grossly exaggerated. paul_soccer12 posted:News from anonymous OSInt warrior twitter accounts is posted here all the time with no secondary verification ever required, let alone slapping the poster with a 24 hour probation on sight Anonymous/unreliable Twitter accounts which are not linking more reliable sources themselves should be reported, and I will act on them (and have, as far as I know). I was not aware of this journalist's reputation, and neither was the person reporting it, but he does appear to have been a reliable source, so I will undo Darth Walrus' probation as the standards were not completely clear. I would still encourage anyone posting journalists who are lesser-known or unaffiliated to make a brief statement about their credibility, and will update the OP accordingly.
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Oct 13, 2023 23:59
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paul_soccer12 posted:Lesser known than what? He's been with Democracy Now!, the Intercept, and other well-known outlets for decades, cumulatively. As this poster pointed out: No, I skipped that due to the number of reports I was handling, though I will attempt to do that in the future. Gripweed posted:It would help if you added a list of sources we can trust implicitly to the OP, so the onus isn’t on everyone else to decide if the source they’re posting needs their reputation established or if it can just be taken as read. That is not realistic. I must now draw a line and ask that further discussion be directed to me in PMs, even if you don't have plat currently.
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Oct 14, 2023 00:11
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After some private discussion about this I've realized that requiring statements of credibility for lesser-known sources is subjective and impractical, so I'm going back to the status quo. You do not need to provide those, but still refrain from using Twitter sources with no credibility (again, Sharif Kouddous is not one of those and that incident was my fault due to sloppiness when handling the report).
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Oct 14, 2023 01:26
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Willo567 posted:When Iran talks about getting involve, do they just mean opening up another front with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Also, for the mods, what counts as "Willoposting"? Willoposting refers to asking other posters to soothe unreasonable anxiety involving a war and, often, the likelihood it will escalate to a nuclear exchange.
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Oct 15, 2023 19:17
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No more posting about the forums, please.
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Oct 15, 2023 23:08
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Neurolimal posted:By the way, I have an earnest request for Israeli and Hebrew-literate goons in the thread: Offering a bounty of a free av change to anyone who knows Hebrew and can answer this.
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Oct 17, 2023 01:35
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Rakosi posted:I simultaneously think Israel is committing genocide while trying to remain objective when huge, unfolding events happen, and base my conclusions on what seems most likely based on the physical evidence available. Immediately after the explosion, it was claimed by Hamas that IDF struck and 500+ were killed. No one waited for evidence of this, they just believed Hamas officials and ran the story. 11 hours ago Gaza Report posted that there were no sign of mass casualties being evacuated to nearby health centers, so unless this information is false it’s likely the death toll is an exaggeration too. And I’m sure we all hope it is. What exactly is Gaza Report? How is it credible? Edit: Saw this has already been brought up and punishment is queued accordingly. Koos Group fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Oct 18, 2023 |
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Oct 18, 2023 23:17
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I wanted to clarify D&D's rules regarding whataboutism. Whataboutism is against the rules specifically when it violates I.B.1: When replying, respond directly to what the poster said. Let me illustrate with examples, assuming that Hamas and the IDF both eat infants, and no one in the thread has discussed this fact yet. If someone says that Hamas is uniquely evil because they eat infants, and another poster points out that Israel also does, that is not against the rules because it is a direct refutation of the "uniquely" part. If someone says that Hamas eats infants, and that's evil, and another person says that's true, and Israel also does it, so it can't be used as a metric to determine which side is worse, that is also not against the rules because it's acknowledging the point and expanding on it. If someone says Hamas eats infants, and that's evil, and another person says no, Israel also does it, that is against the rules because it's presenting itself as refuting the previous poster while responding to a point they didn't make. And if it didn't have the "no," then it would be argument via insinuation as it's not being clear the point being made. For more info on whataboutism, Wikipedia's article is a good summary. It talks about how whataboutism can be rhetorically problematic, but also how accusations of whataboutism can be manipulative and how comparing actors can be good faith and useful when used for contextualization.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:05
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Both the UN and the BBC say that they saw direct video and photo evidence. Since this came up in a report, I should address it. I haven't looked at what the UN saw, but in the case of the BBC, it wasn't technically "direct" evidence. If they saw videos or photos or sexual assault in progress, that would be direct, whereas the aftermath and lead-ups would be circumstantial evidence. However, despite how "circumstantial" is often used popularly to mean "inconclusive," circumstantial evidence can be very powerful when the inference is obvious or there is corroborating evidence, and those are both the case here. So this does not damage your overall point that there is good evidence that the BBC viewed, but rather is only about the exact definition of "direct evidence."
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Dec 8, 2023 20:01
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:https://x.com/AnimalFriendsSh/status/1734504427199869167?s=20 Note: This is legitimate. https://www.tiktok.com/embed/7291463939592883458 However, I would ask that anyone who wants to post a charity please clear it with the mods first to ensure we don't get one that isn't.
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Dec 13, 2023 23:19
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Esran posted:I agree that analogizing to individuals is pointless as you say, but I'm not seeing people claiming Israeli civilians morally deserve to be killed either (I'm excluding settlers here, those aren't civilians). Settlers would be considered civilians by the standard definition, which is a person who is not a member of the armed forces or police force. Esran posted:Okay, then let me clarify what I meant. I meant that the blame lies with Israel's current and past governments, and all the people who decided a fascist ethnostate was a cool project. I'm responding to your assertion that people in this thread are arguing "in defense of the murder of civilians on October 7th" on the grounds that those civilians were deserving of death in some personal moral sense, and that " It's popular to believe that every Israeli on October 7th had it coming for paying taxes to the IDF". To be clear, it is possible to argue that Hamas was justified in killing civilians without arguing that the civilians deserved to die. There was a UN resolution that colonized peoples have the "inherent right to struggle by all necessary means at their disposal against Colonial powers". https://www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f1c955.html The only question would be whether those means were necessary. Stringent posted:I've said it before, but I think it bears reiteration. Israel had the right to defend itself on Oct. 7th. It failed to do so. What's happened since has been in no way defensive. Nobody in Israel is safer because of the actions taken by the IDF since Oct. 7th. Quite the opposite. That would indeed be the correct distinction. The International Court of Justice found that Israel did not have a right to self-defense in order to impose any regime on Palestinians (https://web.archive.org/web/20100706021237/http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1671.pdf page 194). This also has to do with the fact that states' (in the international sense) right to self-defense is based on the attacking entity being another state, and Israel of course does not recognize Palestine as such.
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Jan 19, 2024 23:59
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Alchenar posted:That... not at all the right interpretation of that resolution. The key bit is " The armed conflicts involving the struggle of peoples against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes are to be regarded as international armed conflicts in the sense of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and the legal status envisaged to apply to the combatants in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and other international instruments is to apply to the persons engaged in armed struggle against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes." You appear to be right and that was a significant mistake I made.
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Jan 20, 2024 00:09
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Google Jeb Bush posted:I basically agree, the probe complaint is legitimate but in light of it being interesting and useful content in a rerail I'd probably at most have made a post suggesting the language was getting incendiary. More likely not even that. On the plus side, it's a sixer. Yes, I wasn't sure about that one and it could have been a warning instead. That's why it was only a sixer.
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Jan 23, 2024 03:13
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Woebin posted:I haven't posted in this thread before and only recently started following it as a reader, so here's an outsider's perspective: I was wondering about the weird tone I was seeing in this thread, it's seemed one-sided in a way I wouldn't expect on modern-day SA. Then on these last couple of pages there was someone more strongly speaking out against Israel specifically and they got probed, and others who called that probe out got probed in turn. Thank you for your good faith feedback. It's possible I made a wrong call or two, as I was working through an unusually vast number of reports yesterday. I don't take how much I agree or disagree with a poster's point into consideration while moderating, or at least try not to. This idea is written into the D&D modding handbook and I consider it the most important principle I brought when becoming D&D's head mod. My own beliefs regarding Israel also run in the opposite direction of what is being perceived as the bias. Seven Deadly Sins posted:I think that one of the reasons I appreciate how this thread runs is that it tends to tamp down a bit on hyperbole - the events occurring are pretty starkly bad on their own merits, they don't need the help. An honest conversation about the situation needs honest representations of reality. There's plenty of places to pull out every loaded comparison, this doesn't necessarily need to be one of them. Agreed on all counts. Woebin posted:Sorry, I expressed myself poorly if I came off as saying you haven't. What I meant was that as a newcomer to the thread who's only read the last few pages it seemed like people were being very careful about criticizing Israel, either in terms of tone or content. I'm absolutely not trying to claim that you or anyone I've seen in the last few pages are singing Israel's praises or anything like that. It's intended that one is careful when making any argument in D&D. Which is to say, one should ensure it is being presented honestly, that it is respectful to those who are being debated, and that anything you claim confidently is something you're willing to defend (honest mistakes are allowed within reason). Bel Shazar posted:Except correctly identifying Israel as a Nazi state isn't hyperbole. Esran did not seem to be using it in the sense of "grammar nazi," since it was in a political context and referring to a state that sees a group as subhuman and has a military culture. As Kchama notes, D&D has a particular rule regarding precise language that's not exaggerated or loaded, and this is primarily intended to stop people from using terms that are the most rhetorically sensational or convenient when they don't perfectly fit. It doesn't mean one can't point out similarities Israel shares with Nazi Germany, such as being racist, militaristic, expansionist, and even possibly genocidal. Stringent posted:Apologies for being off-topic, but since the thread is a bit at odds and elbows at the moment I figure it might be ok to ask, when's the next feedback thread scheduled? Haven't decided yet. Rigel posted:I think thats enough probe talk about evil mods. Yes, after this post please PM me with further discussion. I always read and respond to PMs.
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Jan 23, 2024 17:05
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As I said, please PM me if you have feedback regarding moderation of this thread or D&D in general, as the thread itself is for discussing the Israel/Palestine conflict.
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Jan 24, 2024 20:36
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fuctifino posted:PMs haven't solved anything, except waste the time of the people sending them to you and feeding yet more of your shallow ego. This stuff needs to be talked about now, because your bullshit has gone on for long enough. Too many good posters have been driven away by your pettiness. There've been quite a few occasions where PM conversations with me have resolved issues to the satisfaction of the users who sent them, including report appeals, punishment appeals, and general feedback and questions. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by pettiness or ego, but shorter probations over relatively minor or petty infractions are performed for the sake of consistency, fairness and showing what is and isn't against the rules. Jaxyon posted:Either start publishing your PMs or this is just a way to avoid accountability. That would obviously require consent of the person PMing, but I would be willing to put a digest of PMs in feedback threads from users who express a wish to have theirs included. socialsecurity posted:Keeping all discussion of moderations and rules private is terrible for a community. I don't keep all discussion of moderation and rules private. It's why I have feedback threads, and why SA has the leper's colony. It's also why I include descriptions of reasoning for all the rules, so that users can know the intent behind them and use that to discuss when they should be changed. fuctifino posted:All of this has been said many times already to Koos, and they simply refuse to listen or change anything. They continue to make the same mistakes again and again, stifling yet more debate (in the D&D subforum of all places) and they drive yet more people away from this subforum and site. I'm perfectly willing to change rules and policies if I see a good reason to, and have done so before. Gnumonic posted:100% agreed. The moderation here is absurd and leads to an I/P thread that consists primarily of nitpicking discussions about issues that only tangentially relate to the conflict. If that's the sort of discussion the rules are intended to foster, then the rules are poo poo and should be changed. Being a good source of less common or harder to find information is one of my top priorities in D&D, so if the rules or moderation policies aren't fostering or are getting in the way of that, I would agree wholeheartedly that they should be changed.
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Jan 24, 2024 21:11
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PostNouveau posted:I don't see a feedback thread now so You'd actually be surprised. It's a long-running joke in the mod forum that people get more angry over sixers than longer punishments. But we've been considering dropping the martial law here anyway, so this might be a good time to do it.
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Jan 24, 2024 21:37
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Note: a user in this thread (Stringent) was previously banned for something which is not actually against the rules in D&D (denying genocide). Accordingly, he is being unbanned.
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Mar 25, 2024 03:19
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I apologize, everyone, but this thread has not been meeting D&D standards for informative or productive discussion or debate. We also have not been able to keep up with the number of reports it's generated. Accordingly, I must close it for the time being. Hopefully when reports are cleared and we've worked out a moderation strategy, possibly involving an additional mod and/or IK, the thread will be reopened. In the mean time, it goes without saying, I must ask everyone to refrain from discussing this particular issue in other threads.
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Mar 29, 2024 07:10
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Update: I've found a few IK candidates and will try to have this thread opened ASAP, hopefully tomorrow, so the recent developments regarding Israel can be discussed.
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Apr 6, 2024 02:24
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Welcome back, everyone. The thread now has Esran, Irony Be My Shield, and punishedkissinger as IKs. Hopefully this, along with having a couple users removed, will improve the things significantly. As always, please be clear and honest in how you argue, treat other users with respect, and ensure the points you make are as original and rigorous as possible so that they're interesting for everyone else to read.
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Apr 7, 2024 18:43
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Esran posted:Thanks, but I don't think I want to be IK'ing this thread. Is it normal to appoint people IK without asking first? Yes. That's how Main Paineframe became one. But I'll remove you if you really want.
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Apr 7, 2024 19:55
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OctaMurk posted:Lol, so how were IK candidates even identified if they weren't even asked? It was via nominations from PMs to me and discussions in the mod forum.
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Apr 7, 2024 19:56
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Rappaport posted:I thought it was a proud goon tradition that people just woke up one day with buttons (and then accidentally merge the entire forums into a single thread, or whatever that mess was); you're part of a long history. Yep. A long time ago full mods were chosen that way, and weren't even given a private message explaining it. They were expected to eventually notice their buttons and start using them.
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Apr 7, 2024 20:03
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Taeke posted:That works for less serious threads, not a place like this lol I would say the opposite, that it is well-suited for serious and contentious threads that people might be hesitant to IK. And if they ultimately refuse, they can be removed with no harm done. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, and so on.
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Apr 7, 2024 20:22
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Marenghi posted:Lol so people nominated anonymously. Are you sure Irony Be My Shield wasn't an ironic nomination? He's one of the posters who regularly got this thread derailed. I'm not sure. Like the other candidates he seemed reasonably smart and in favor of debate. I was warned that his political views might be upsetting to some people, but to be honest that only made me want him slightly more. Ultimately, IKs can be removed easily and can't do a lot of damage, so unlike mods I'm not overly worried about each choice. Particularly in this case when I wanted the thread back ASAP.
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Apr 7, 2024 20:35
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Lovely Joe Stalin posted:Your complaint was that this thread was unmanageable and needed to be closed while you found a solution. Your solution was sortition, weighted for political views you want to be upsetting to the majority of the posters. For a thread about an ongoing genocide. I believe sortition involves a random lottery element, so this wasn't that. And it wasn't so much about posters in this thread, but people elsewhere who might complain or make a SAD thread about it, which I thought would be entertaining if it occurred. And of course if he actually IKs in an overly politically biased way he'll simply be removed, as is the case with anyone.
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Apr 7, 2024 21:11
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hooman posted:Why would you act for the moderation of this thread to not to be about the people who use it? Isn't this exactly playing interforum drama games? Lovely Joe Stalin posted:Okay, I stand corrected on sortition. Still, why are you making choices for the running of this thread about an active holocaust with an eye to causing drama elsewhere on the site for your entertainment? Leaving aside the matter of it being in astonishingly poor taste, how is that in any way of benefit to the users of SA who want to talk about it in what is supposed to be the more sensible forum for discussion? To be clear, I didn't add him as an ik because it might create some fun. I was going to do so anyway. That was just a bonus.
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Apr 7, 2024 21:38
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Anyway, I'd like to get the thread back on-topic now. As always, you may PM me with further feedback about the thread or my decisions, wait for the next feedback thread if you'd like to bring it up publicly, or post in SAD if you'd like to bring it up both publicly and urgently.
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Apr 7, 2024 21:44
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:45 |
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Netanyahu has doubled down on the plans to invade Rafah, a city in southern Gaza with 1.4 million current inhabitants, most of whom are refugees. This is after the United States told Israel that their their plan was unacceptable, due to Israel's lack of a viable evacuation plan, the subsequent likelihood of civilian casualties, and the humanitarian crisis that would be caused by cutting off aid being delivered to Rafah (called the "third famine crisis of the 21st century" by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan). Whether Netanyahu's statement is to be taken as good faith, however, is debatable. This is not the first time in the past several months an invasion of Rafah has been threatened, and the supposed date was not actually specified, and it comes as Israel seeks leverage for negotiations. Koos Group fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 06:45
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