The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer

Posted on | September 2, 2013 | 37 Comments

— Wombat-socho

I’m going to keep this short, because there really isn’t much to be said, but it does need saying, especially after the messes some people made in the comments yesterday. First of all, much like Anonymous or /b/, I am not your private army. Don’t expect me to blacklist someone just on your say-so. There is exactly one person who gets to tell me who to whack and when, one R. Stacy McCain, owner and proprietor of this here blog. Secondly, I am not going to ban people for disagreeing with a post. We tolerate all sorts here, whether they are social conservatives, libertarians, godless Commies, pinko fellow travellers & “useful fools”, or just confused. Heck, even Stacy’s Crazy Cousin John is welcome to comment here. However, keep in mind that this blog is like Stacy’s living room, and it’s not okay to come in and take a dump on the carpet.

It’s also not okay to use foul language. I realize that some of the trolls are horrible people, who can barely string two words together without using obscenities, but this is no reason for you to descend to their level. If you’re that angry, maybe you need to get up from the keyboard, go have a beer (or six), and calm down. Because if you go over the line, I may extend you the courtesy of a warning – or not. Longevity in the commentariat is no defense. We used to have a guy named Knapp who would drop by and dispense pearls of libertarian wisdom before us religiously inclined swine, and one day I guess he got up on the wrong side of the bed and said some things he shouldn’t have in the comments. Now we don’t have Thomas Knapp to kick around any more. Would you like to be the next Thomas Knapp? I’m certainly willing to accommodate you, regardless of your political and religious inclinations. Are you listening, Mr. Finrod?

We do get people in here that don’t agree with Stacy, or me, or you. Sometimes they’re just trolls. Sometimes, like Amber, they seem to be sincere people that really don’t understand where we’re coming from. Be patient. Engage these people. Who knows, you might just talk one around to seeing the light. You’re sure not going to accomplish that by calling them a**holes and dykes. Rather, emulate Da Tech Guy, a true Christian, who reached out to andria_xx and offered some advice in the hope of redeeming that poor lost soul. Be like Pete.

 

 

ADDENDUM (by RSM): Ace of Spades did a long explanation about his own reasons for banning a certain “Billy Bob,” which boils down to this: Don’t disrespect your host’s hospitality. I had not been aware that Thomas Knapp got himself banned and, as I was offline Sunday attending my wife’s family reunion, I don’t know exactly why Wombat is brandishing the banhammer in the direction of Finrod.

My advice is, everybody should just chill the hell out.

 

Category: Blogging, Da Tech Guy

Comments

37 Responses to “A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer”

  1. Lockestep1776
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 1:45 pm

    A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer: – Wombat-socho I’m going to keep this short, because there rea… http://t.co/xPboJso9Mn

  2. CHideout
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 1:45 pm

    A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer: – Wombat-socho I’m going to keep this short, because there rea… http://t.co/KL41ZBP0hQ

  3. Citzcom
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 1:45 pm

    A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer: – Wombat-socho I’m going to keep this short, because there rea… http://t.co/6aMl8eszXC

  4. jwbrown1969
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 1:45 pm

    A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer: – Wombat-socho I’m going to keep this short, because there rea… http://t.co/P36bD3W9LR

  5. Freddie Sykes
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 3:55 pm

    There should be one exception to using profanity: it should be okay if it is quoting from the original article or any of its sub-links.

  6. JackAfter6
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 3:55 pm

    The question is this: do they really want to communicate or do they see themselves as some kind of a scientific observer—better than us, smarter than us—with a piece of cheese in one hand and a cattle-prod in the other? Are they chatting here because they want to give and receive ideas or they here to prove a point? (conduct an experiment.)

    You made the analogy of “Stacy’s living room” and yeah, that’s a good match. But it’s more than just Stacy’s living room, it’s his living room with lots of guests hanging out. Honestly if you were having a party and guests kept coming to you and complaining that a particular person kept starting arguments, staying nasty hurtful things, causing trouble, etc., you’d most likely show them the door.

    Again it all depends on your own judgement of their particular personality and motivation.. Are we exhibits in their zoo? Are we specimens in their experiment? Or are we people?

  7. Rich Vail
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:12 pm

    Here Here! Well said sir.

  8. joethefatman
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:13 pm

    Dang. I show up a day late and a dollar short everywhere. This time it seems to have been a good thing.

  9. Wombat_socho
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:13 pm

    Well, yes. I was thinking more about the way people address each other in the comments.

  10. Finrod Felagund
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:21 pm

    Yeah, I was up late last night and not in a good mood, and since certain other sites don’t let obscenities be used in the comments at all, I kind of had a surplus of them at the time, and there were plenty enough troll targets to focus them at. My bad, sorry.

  11. Wombat_socho
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:34 pm

    It happens. Just so you don’t make a habit of it.

  12. Freddie Sykes
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:37 pm

    I have had a comment automatically deleted on a Breitbart site for doing just that. I was deeply scarred but adjusted the best I could.

    I found that the resveratrol found in red wine, if taken in sufficient quantities, helped.

  13. Dianna Deeley
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:48 pm

    Looks like I missed a brawl.

    Thanks for the reminders about the ground rules.

  14. Finrod Felagund
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 4:55 pm

    Over on NRO your comment gets auto-flagged for using the word ‘crap’. (eye-roll)

  15. Quartermaster
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:04 pm

    NRO’s policies seem insane. You can post something entirely reasonable and calmly worded and still get it deleted.

  16. RS
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:19 pm

    I tend to go by the rule, “if I’d be embarrassed for my mother to read it, it ain’t getting posted.” Things must’ve gotten heated after I left.

  17. Obama’s Moral Imperatives: Syria… Golf | Regular Right Guy
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 6:54 pm

    […] A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer […]

  18. rmnixondeceased
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:15 pm

    Heh. Not like I’m a stranger to excess at times …

  19. thatMrGguy
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:28 pm

    A Few Words About Moderation And The Banhammer http://t.co/EyFGnOC9WG

  20. M. Thompson
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 7:51 pm

    This is kind of like a bar with regulars, and if the barkeep doesn’t like it, you’re out on your ear.

  21. Garym
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 8:53 pm

    That is because somebody flagged you and the moderator just deleted without reading……..

  22. Garym
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 8:59 pm

    I constantly have to sensor myself, because I speak that way in “the real world”. Sometimes I delete entire paragraphs because (I don’t know how to write) of bad language.
    I will endeavor to keep it clean in the future.

  23. Finrod Felagund
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 9:29 pm

    As it turns out, that whole scene was right after I had been being Hunter S. Thompson at DragonCon for four days. (It’s an easy and comfortable costume, being drunk is being in character, and no matter how weird the situation is, the costume only becomes even more appropriate.) Since HST swears only a little less frequently than George Carlin, well, you can see where this is going.

  24. Finrod Felagund
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 9:31 pm

    I’m convinced personally that a random number generator is involved somewhere.

  25. Tolerance For Thee, But Not For Me | Aewl's Abode
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 10:14 pm

    […] bloggers had to make a post about banning people from commenting on their site. Ace of Spades and The Other McCain gets lots of traffic and commentators. Sometimes the commentators will cross the line and be […]

  26. bet0001970
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 10:35 pm

    There are some people who come to troll. There was one the other day who came to mess with people because of McCain’s reporting on the Hunt story. She went into another post just cause trouble. And I don’t have a problem swinging those people around like a dead cat. You can tell who they are because their accounts are ALWAYS private.

    But the one that Wombat is referring to was not a troll. She was a genuinely polite individual who was interested in having a conversation about the issues. When she made a mistake on something, she conceded it. But the people here just attacked like a school of piranha. It was unseemly.

    I hope they apologize so that she at least knows that she can come back and talk to us again. Otherwise this is the impression she is going to be left with of STACY MCCAIN.

  27. bet0001970
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 10:37 pm

    That’s exactly what it is. We get in bar fights, but it does us no good to start throwing drinks in the faces of non-regulars just because we don’t like the looks of them.

  28. bet0001970
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 10:39 pm

    I don’t think I can comment unless I can curse. It’s not that I need call people twats or bitches. I just need to be able to say twats and bitches. Wait…shit.

  29. M. Thompson
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 10:44 pm

    So, rules like the Drum?

  30. bet0001970
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 10:49 pm

    The strange thing was, I was NOT the one throwing punches in last night’s scenario. I was the SANE and SOBER one.

  31. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 11:21 pm

    Is anyone asking for the ban hammer because they are into spanking?

    Because a lot of freaks tend to get drawn into Stacy’s posts.

  32. Fareedi al Laayla al Qakhaul
    September 2nd, 2013 @ 11:59 pm

    I spent a good portion of last evening reading about internet trolling… And I’m still a bit foggy on what exactly a “concern” or a “false-flag” troll is. Not even urbandictionarydotcom was much help! (I did learn that “poking the hornet’s nest”, as I am wont to do, is considered a form of trolling!) However, I do know what an “agent provocateur” is, and thought that’s what we had here yesterday…

  33. Finrod Felagund
    September 3rd, 2013 @ 4:50 am

    A concern troll is someone who masks their trolling by couching it in the form of expressing concern for what might go wrong. They’re exactly the type that dissuades against decisive action at the times when decisive action is what’s needed. Sorry, I can’t think of a good example right now.

    A false-flag troll is someone who pretends to be of the same persuasion as the rest, but deliberately acts in an offensive manner so as to try to bring discredit to the entire group. On conservative forums, this is very often expressed by a liberal pretending to be conservative but spewing racist and sexist drivel that no one else there would ever condone. This can happen in real life as well– stealth liberals holding up racist or sexist signs at Tea Party events, for example. Every known example of that kind of sign at any Tea Party event has been a false-flag operation. A moby is a specific kind of false-flag troll, named after the singer that advocated such back in 2004.

  34. Finrod Felagund
    September 3rd, 2013 @ 4:53 am

    “I’m proud of three things in my life: I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t swear. Aw shit, I do drink and smoke!”

  35. Anamika
    September 3rd, 2013 @ 3:07 pm

    Looks like I missed all the Finrod fun.

  36. Anamika
    September 3rd, 2013 @ 3:31 pm

    I know we can depend on you to spot and ban a troll. Sometimes trolls do a public service, sort of like broken clocks being right twice a day. Finrod does need a sending-up occasionally but he has in the past demonstrated well his commitment to not reacting to insults from trolls.

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