barterer2002 wrote:I respect him and his right to have them and I see no way that they influence his responsibilities as a mod. The implication that they do is just silly.
Noble minded; but you're not quite right I'm afraid.
While this is all getting a bit off-topic (and really warrants a thread of its own), it's fairly clear that our political beliefs do alter our perceptions of things we see. Given that all moderation here is based upon perceptions, it's obvious that political beliefs will colour moderator behaviour to some degree. Indeed, to deny that is 'silly'.
Case Study 1
I see an "I love BNP / similar party" thread, I roll my eyes and think "Retard".
When mods here see that thread, they tend to lock it for being racist or promoting bigotry.
However, if those mods political beliefs were more BNP-leaning, then they'd treat it as a serious "I support political party X" thread, leaving it to flourish in the forums.
"Pah! Pure speculation!" you cry. Well actually it's not. This happened with Firth4eva several months ago.
Case Study 2
A user refers to Obama as a 'Darkie'.
I saw that and thought "you racist bigot".
Our mods looked at the e-ticket I submitted, and thought the remark was fine.
Surely, that's an example of two people's beliefs giving them very different views of how to go about moderating, right?
Don't think it happened? PM me and I'll point out the post (because I don't want to quote the username here).
Case Study 3
I've never seen a single right-wing troll get warned or banned for their antics on this site. I'm not going to name names here, but there are at least three users that consistently troll the 'chat' forum with inflamatory posts and outright abuse.
Compare and contrast that to how many liberal-minded trolls have been warned, banned and otherwise reprimanded for similar antics and you do have to wonder if the current site policy of appointing almost exclusively conservative mods (yes yes Twill, we know you're allegedly a liberal, but you don't actually do much moderating in the areas I'm talking about) doesn't result in some bias to how they percieve the actions of various users on this site.
Do they have a right to those beliefs? Sure they do.
Do I respect those beliefs? Of course.
Do I think that having so many mods with such similar beliefs leads to even-handed moderation which treats right-wing poor behaviour with the same severity it treats left-wing poor behaviour? No I don't, because it's fairly clear that it doesn't.
Am I saying that this is all the mod's fault? Not really, they're doing their best. But their unwillingness to appoint anybody genuinely ideologically opposed to them has resulted in a fairly biased perception of certain user perception on this site. That's a bad thing, and it would be simple to remedy.
Refusal to acknowledge that (for whatever reason) is just plain old lazy thought.
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