vintageads | mod note (the last)

mod note (the last)

1) somber_sigh has been banned due to racist/homophobic statements. amadoj0nes has been banned due to a homophobic statement. i hope i am not seen as harsh, and i'm sure all of us will miss them both due to their fantastic postings, but nasty and abusive treatment should never be tolerated.

2) i'm on the lookout for a co-mod to helm this little joint. i am becoming increasingly busy, and i feel that a fellow mod would help this place sail more smoothly.
GOOD!: friendly, even-tempered, liberal/lax, preferably actively engaged in this community, good computer/lj skills, preferably had an lj-account for a while (6-months or longer)!
BAD!: control-freaks need not apply!
if you are seriously interested, please IM me.

this entry turned out a bit awkward, i am sorry!

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wow. I must say that even though her comments were whack I'm going to miss her posts.

BTW you = good mod. No worries.

I'm a guy, and i'm certainly not homophobic. Read on below.

As much of a pain in the ass amadoj0nes can be, s/he sure did help keep this community alive. However, racism/homophobia is never okay. You made the right decision.

Being a mod is hard work (I know! I have a 500+ member community), and sometimes painful decisions have to be made for the overall mood and harmony of the community. I love this community a lot - I'd volunteer to help, but time is so scrunched for me right now, that to be honest, some days I can't look at any of my friended communities. I'm sure someone great will step forward, though!

I think that was some good decision making on your part. amandoj0nes was a great contributor, but I think it would have been more detrimental to the community to not take any disciplinary action at all.

I'm not much of an active member in the community (I do read all the posts, but comment only intermittently and post not at all), so I'm not sure I would be a very good mod candidate, but should nobody more suitable step forward and volunteer, I'd be willing to do so. I'm sure you'll find someone great though. :) There are a lot of good folk here.

Good job mod.
I missed the whole situation. What did amandoj0ones say?

I called the guy out on the fact he's a member of an LJ community called "boy_touching".

The mod here apparently considers pedophilia a homosexual thing, and therefore my comment is "homophobic" in nature.

Yeah, I know.

Hell, I didn't even know the guy was gay, assuming he even is! Silly me, I point out a pedo, and I get banned. :) What bothers me is that she apparently equates homosexuality with pedophilia. Thats kind of, uhm.. wrong? Massively wrong?

I think the point is more that you made it a personal attack, by bringing in something that had nothing to do with the community posting.

you made an assumption. that is wrong. to accuse someone of being a pedophile is very serious.

excellent decision. i saw the wank and was more than a little shocked at some of the comments. i'm glad that you stepped in and brought it under control.

i've been a lurker here for months and i've seen and enjoyed so many interesting, funny, beautiful and sometimes maddening ads from our past, i have to thank you for creating it!

Ya gotta do what ya gotta do! :-)

you did the right thing. thank you!

My supposedly "homophobic" remark, verbatim, directed at Sombersigh:

"I can't help but notice you belong to an LJ community called boy_touching. Maybe you should go back there."

1) How in the WORLD is that a "homophobic" statement? Are you equating homosexuality with pedophilia? I have quite a few gay friends, including my boss, that would be deeply insulted by your linking them with pedophilia. Whats that about?

2) The fact that this guy is fresh off the boat from a community called "boy_touching" is a publically readable piece of information, viewable by anyone in his user profile. I took a screenshot of his user profile to prove it, incase he denied it. I'm evil for pointing this out? That perhaps a pedophile isn't someone welcome here?

As a mod, you're welcome to make any determination you want... It just strikes me as something bizzare that you'd take that one comment as "homophobic". Last I checked, my gay friends weren't looking to fondle young boys.

Did you actually take a gander at

boy_touching before you jumped to the conclusion that it had something to do with pedophilia? It's a community devoted to slash pictures of adult men. The byline of the community is "We like men who touch" (italics mine), for crying out loud.

Oh fer cryin out loud.. Are you that gullible?

Yeah, they like men who touch.

Hence the name of the community.

Men_touching.

Oh wait.

Thats not the name of the community.

The name of the community is boy_touching.

Who cares what it's named, look at the content. Adult women are still sometimes called "girls" or "gals", and their fellow female friends "girlfriends". Adult gay men, of whom I live with three, can and do refer to each other as "boys".

To accuse of them pedophilia or assume that there is some hidden message because of the community name is ridiculous.

Edited 2008-03-15 01:25 (UTC)

Uh, I actually looked at the content of the community. Every single post was about adult celebrities.

Not only that, but the content of the community is not of a pornographic nature, and this is expressly laid out in the community rules. The community is devoted to screenshots of celebrities in movies and television shows "of guys kissing, men holding hands or leaning against each other, or pictures that make you wonder." Really very innocent stuff. Nudity isn't even allowed, even non-sexualized nudity.

Referring to an adult man as a "boy" when you are speaking of them in romantic terms is not uncommon: many love songs have the singer address their object of desire as "boy", etc. The same can be said for women being referred to as "girl".

So, I don't know why you are accusing me of being "gullible", unless you are insinuating that all the stuff I actually saw with my own eyes (and you can see too) is all an elaborate ruse, a secret cover for a child pornography ring. Like, if I knew the secret code, instead of seeing pictures of Johnny Depp with his hand on Orlando Bloom's shoulder, I would get to see nude photos of children. I don't know, somehow I think that's unlikely.

Yeah.

Because no slasher's ever used the word "boys" to refer to men old enough to be her father. And because clearly, clearly, your fear of magically catching The Gay through the computer screen in no way kept you from actually looking at the content of any of the posts in said comm. Got it.

....You know, I just looked up your profile, dude. I cant help but notice you're a member of an lj community called "boy_touching".

Normally I don't raise objections to flames or inappropriate comments, a moderator of a community always has final say in my opinion, but I have to wonder what exactly constitutes a homophobic statement? Two of my best friends are gay and I would say half of the vulgarity they come up with could be construed as a homophobic statement if it were taken out of context.

I have not seen the comments that resulted in these two being banned, so I am not raising questions or trying to defend anybody. Without trying to get into a debate about conduct, a fair question might be: what sort of comments are appropriate and inappropriate? shouldn't this code of conduct be posted in the userinfo for the community? and shouldn't there also be a warning-before-banned policy?

Take a look at the community rules for

roleplayers,

vintage_sex and

worldofwarcraft to get an idea for what I mean.

I'm still kinda waiting on the mod's reply. The accusation that i'm somehow "homophobic" is kind of hilarious. :)

I'm not tying to toll or flame or incite, but please either IM or email the mod -- continued posts of this kind incite flaming by other community members.

Thanks.

I have to say that I am EXTREMELY disappointed that you banned amadoj0nes. His statement (reposted above) might have been snarky and caustic, but it was in no way homophobic. It might have deserved a warning, but you just banned the person who, outside of kokosbolla, posts arguably the most INTERESTING content this community has, and as the result of extreme over-reaction.

sombersigh (etc.), on the other hand, wrote about Jews having drooping noses and called someone a fat faggot.

How do these two equate?

I know you had a a lot of garbage to wade through, and it is clearly your decision. But I think you should reconsider your ban of amadoj0nes.

Edited 2008-03-15 01:38 (UTC)

Seconded.

Agreed on all points.

amadoj0nes is consistently one of the best posters in this community. I don't understand the equal punishment of

sombersigh and

amadoj0nes when

sombersigh/

nocturne333 had been allowed to perpetrate all manner of batshit flouncery in this comm for a good long time.

Agreed on the quality of amadoj0nes' posts. They're consistently excellent.

However, the mod may not mind batshit flouncery as much as control freak asshattery. We all have our differing distastes for human foibles, no?

I speak as someone who has made no contributions to the community whatsoever, so you are, of course, free to ignore me.

I'm in complete agreement.

Agreed!

good job, mod!
sorry that this community has been such a handful for lately. i hope find a willing and able co-mod to help out.

You're going to get a lot of "But that's not homophobic!!" posts.

Don't worry... you're allowed to say, "I'm banning these people because they're acting like asses."

(Although... if they provide great content, a cooling-off period might be more appropriate than an outright ban. Just make sure that they understand that it's not their job to police the community, it's your job. If you're okay with lax enforcement of guidelines, it's their job to be okay with the job you're doing. They may be uncomfortable with that, but that's part of being a member of a moderated community.)

You're free to ignore this, of course. Mod on!

Since you don't seem to actually have a lot of actual volunteers to help here (just a lot of people complaining about the situation), I'm willing to throw my hat into the pool. I already mod several communities including a couple of fairly large communities (

atheist and

darksideofebay, both with well over 1500 members). I'm not to overly controlling, but I don't take nonsense or obvious trolling and will delete/ban if other routes fail, and I'm on LJ nearly every day.

ditto - I've helped run one of the largest Degrassi fan sites online (over 10 thousand members) and assisted moderated some of the larger LJ communities before they were disbanded or moved to other smaller groups (like LJ's Big Brother community - I've been a mod and/or maintainer for most years except this latest one)

I'm home all the time (disabled) and don't mind helping out as well as

midnightmadness. I don't mind stepping in situations that become explosive to stop it before the drama hits an insane peak.

Hello. You've probably no idea who I am and although I have lurked in this community for a while now, I don't post ads and rarely comment, but often plunder ads offered by others. I have a permanent LJ account and have had an LJ account in one of two forms over the last 6 years plus. I've experience in moderating and my lurking here without placing any constraints on peoples' opinions in comments should be proof enough of my broad-mindedness. I am glad to call a wide range of people, friend, even if they'd go at each other with hammer and tongs. >:) I'm a firm but very just person. You've no real reason to select me as a co-mod over anyone else here, but if you do fall short of volunteers that you 'know' have no bias, I'm up for helping you out as quietly and smoothly as possible. I'm not a webdesigner but I know my way around LJ HTML and could spruce up the community page's look, if you'd like, too. Good luck with whomever you chose and thank you for plodding on through these tough times. I enjoy this community immensly. (I just suddenly thought, perhaps some idea of who or what I am might be nice, so, I'm 37, female, US Navy wife, British, living in San Diego, which has the best gaybourhood I've ever had fun in, called Hillcrest, and I am addicted to LJ. That's probably more honest than some folks would be.)

>;)

Freja x

Edited 2008-03-15 04:42 (UTC)

♥

Additionally? While

amandojones's posts are ok, he really needs to work on that attitude. I've seen him be rude to people here for nothing more than accidentally re-posting something. I'd be fine with making the ban temporary if you can somehow manage to dislodge the huge chip that seems to be permaglued to his shoulder.

Seconded! I like the idea of a temporary re-instatement. Something like parole.

The mod sucking up is strong in this one, Obi-Wan...

I read this board all the time, and I love the ads that were posted by ALL of the members, including the ones that were banned. But at the same time, people need to realize that it's just a message board....life is not that serious.

And sometimes people who post (and this goes for all message boards, not just this one) take comments to the next level when the subject matter in general is not that serious. So I can totally see where a mod, not wanting to deal with people like that, would ban people who act that way, because guess what? It's not worth the time and energy to parent grown-ass people who don't know when to say when.

So in that regard, I totally understand why the mod banned the people in question. I mean think about it - people get to hide behind their computers on the internet....I always wonder whether trolls (now I am talking in general, not just on this board) would dare to say 1/2 the shit they say to someone's face that they say on the board? I am thinking not.

Flame me if you want, but I am sticking to my opinion and don't bother to try and change it. :)

That was very well put. I agree wholeheartedly.

You did what you had to do. I wish I had been home last night so I could apply for the co-mod job ;)

Just a thought...have you considered turning off anonymous commenting? Banned users can still post here as long as anonymous commenting is turn on.

Yes, that might be a good idea, actually.

Hiho,

As a mod, you're welcome to make any determination you want... It just strikes me as something bizzare that you'd take that one comment as "homophobic". Last I checked, my gay friends weren't looking to fondle young boys.

Good grief, man. "Boy_touching" has nothing to do with pedophiles. Any more than a 30-year old woman saying she has a "boyfriend" means that she has an underaged lover.

CU,
Andrew

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mod note (the last)

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