S crossed the line into troll too many times. — schopenhauer1

Amen. Moderation - any job that carries responsibility - has its moments. But that's why the mods get the big bucks. My first vote is for appreciation for doing the job and for the job that's been done.

And I have no reason to believe Pattern Chaser was a paranoid bloke... — Wallows

Pattern-chaser was a philosophical theist, and ‘S’ was misotheistic.

"First they came for the assholes, and then there weren't many left." — Bitter Crank

Yes, I never said he should be banned but constant assholiness engenders nothing to no one and ya know, asshole is what asshole does.

But interestingly, I'd hold you up as an example of as someone who is good at disagreeing without being disagreeable. :clap: . That's the very opposite of the S approach.

Yes, agreed.

Really? Engenders nothing to no one? Did you miss the parts of this thread where people were sad to see him go? Some even said they liked the guy. Imagine for a second not everyone shares your delicate sensibilities and next thing you know you’ll be swimming in the deep end with the other adults

Really? Engenders nothing to no one? Did you miss the parts of this thread where people were sad to see him go? Some even said they liked the guy. Imagine for a second not everyone shares your delicate sensibilities and next thing you know you’ll be swimming in the deep end with the other adults — DingoJones

What do you want from me? I said what I personally thought about the guy's style. To me, he didn't engender warm feelings. I value arguments where you don't get personal, you don't make petty comments about other people's arguments, and you try to look for positive intent in the other (until you know otherwise). He just didn't do any of that. Because others disagree, I should withdraw my conclusions? It's nothing to do with delicate sensibilities. Look how many times I've had to defend myself against numerous interlocutors, often at the same time, over many years. I really have no problem most of time. I didn't like his super aggressive style. That's my assessment.

‘S’ was misotheistic. — Wayfarer

Inflicting punishment on gods by ceasing to worship them.

He really was a mean bastard.

Soon we'll have gangs and factions in here.

Mijo, save me the toughness contest.

Maybe he'd been abused by a priest. ;-)

Soon we'll have gangs and factions in here. — Wallows

If we could pit the fideists against the nihilists that would be fun. Anyone left standing would be good people.

I wish he could come back just so I could call him The God Punisher. So cool :cool:

S is my friend. It has been so moving to me how he has changed over the last year or so. I can't believe you banned him now but didn't two years ago. @Baden, @jamalrob, you have no loyalty. You should be ashamed.

I love the forum, but I'm done with it.

Watch this

What do you mean soon? That's been a progressive realization for months.

What do you mean soon? That's been a progressive realization for months. — Shamshir

I blame Donald Trump.

I'm pretty much laissez faire when it comes to speech, so it's kind of upsetting to see such a long standing contributor fall...

That said, the upkeep of this place makes necessary some sacrifices, and I would like to thank the mods for the constant effort the spend in doing so.

Fairness is an elusive a double-edged mistress...

I'm kind of curious, as a newcomer here, if there's somewhere I could read (or if someone could briefly write up) a kind of overview of the social dynamics of this place?

So far, in the less than two weeks I've been here, I'm finding things a lot less detached and dispassionate than the philosophy I did at university, where the individual people didn't seem to matter, it was all about the ideas, and nobody was ever really judged on whether they were right or wrong in their conclusions, just sound or not in their reasoning, clear or not in their explanation. Whereas around here it seems like people care a lot more about how Someone Is Wrong On The Internet, and it's usually This Guy, and I'd kinda appreciate an overview of what all is going on in that respect if it's available.

I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you. Written arguments from the security of anonymity means people will overreact as there are no verbal clues that normally mitigate a lot of the excesses you see here. It's par for the course of an Internet forum.

I really did like S. We had some good times, but what can you do if someone tells you to fuck off and to ban them when they are being moderated? — Hanover

You can understand that that person is acting in a self-destructive way.

I really did like S. We had some good times, but what can you do if someone tells you to fuck off and to ban them when they are being moderated? — Hanover

You can realize that sometimes people do things that they later come to regret. The timeframe varies.

I really did like S. We had some good times, but what can you do if someone tells you to fuck off and to ban them when they are being moderated? — Hanover

You can offer a temporary suspension.

With friends like that...

:yikes:

Be well Sapientia.

around here it seems like people care a lot more about how Someone Is Wrong On The Internet, and it's usually This Guy, and I'd kinda appreciate an overview of what all is going on in that respect if it's available. — Pfhorrest

The trouble is, students at your university were all epistemic peers and part of a community with a shared objective (understand the arguments well enough to be able to use them to pass a degree). Here the lack of either of those constraints, I think, leads to the problems you encounter.

We have a range of contributors from the wackos to the full blown professors (though I don't think - tellingly - that we have any actual philosophy professors), but there's no system of automatic recognition as there is in an institution. So one problem is the 'professor' types getting increasingly angry that they're not simply having their word taken as gospel (or at least with due reverence) as they are used to. On the other side of the coin, the random wackos get to play at being professors without having to actually do the work, they think this is easy (professors make it look easy) and get angry when it isn't and people present straightforward counters to arguments they had thought made them basically the next messiah.

Then there's objective. Understanding the arguments is a necessary stage in university. One can disagree as much as one likes, but not before first showing sufficient understanding to pass the exams. This need to understand creates, I think, at least the tiniest crumb of respect for the person expounding them, even where one disagrees profoundly. Here, there is no such objective. Most people here - objective-wise - seem to fall into three camps; the "I've got a brilliant new idea that no-one's ever thought of that will change philosophy" camp (hint - no you haven't), the slightly more measured supporters of the status quo, and the ones who have a huge store of information about philosophy (or occasionally some other topic) that they're just desperate someone will ask their sagacious advice about. Actually, none of these are very conducive to a discussion format because none of them have any interest or incentive to understand significantly opposing opinions. But again, the other side of that coin is that the arguments you'll be discussing at university are understandable in the first place, so you don't have to contend with something which is obviously garbage, you don't have to basically re-iterate the whole history of investigation in some subject matter, just to counter it.

What would make a good place to discuss things in the atmosphere you're after would probably require an impossible level of moderation (and would probably eliminate half the moderation team too). The best thing that happened to this place was when 'the lounge' was moved off the front page to some other place. The next step is to consign two thirds of the threads/posts there too.

Drama comes, and goes, with any human community. When it's at its best TPF is a place where only ideas matter, creativity is high, and intellectual discord doesn't beget emotional disharmony.

And perhaps the world today is just a bit more tense (and therefore sensitive) than in recent years and decades... We're across-section of the English-speaking and internet-having world, after-all, and nobody is truly immune to passion and the throngs of their environment.

With the amount of turmoil in the world today, we might actually be doing a pretty good job of things on the whole...

Most people here - objective-wise - seem to fall into three camps; the "I've got a brilliant new idea that no-one's ever thought of that will change philosophy" camp (hint - no you haven't), the slightly more measured supporters of the status quo, and the ones who have a huge store of information about philosophy (or occasionally some other topic) that they're just desperate someone will ask their sagacious advice about. Actually, none of these are very conducive to a discussion format because none of them have any interest or incentive to understand significantly opposing opinions. — Isaac

For my part, I'm here looking for a little bit of 1 and a little bit of 3, both on my part and in other people.

What I loved most about being in philosophy classes at university was constantly being exposed to new ideas, and the contests between opposing ideas that often each seemed to have good and bad points, and the opportunity to come up with syntheses of those antitheses that it seemed like nobody had thought of before, because the professors weren't teaching them, though in time on my own reading I keep finding that lesser-known but professional published philosophers have often come up with similar ideas already.

Meanwhile one of the things I've loved most in the decade-plus I've been out of there has been being able to expose people who are still mired in those (what seem to me now) trite contests of tired old antitheses to the syntheses either that I've come up with independently or that I've since read about, and the continued process of discovering that other people have already had similar ideas to mine that maybe provide food for thought to further build out my own philosophical system.

Most of the philosophical conversations I've had since school have just been random topics that came up on random internet forums, and it was tiring to keep coming up against the same people completely unversed in any philosophy and yet so completely assured in the rightness of their own tired old opinions I've seen countered a zillion times. I came here hoping to find other people with their own new ideas on how to get past those tired old arguments, or recommendations for published authors to look into for such ideas; or people looking for that themselves, to whom I could maybe provide one or the other.

FWIW I'm not completely disappointed and don't intend to be complaining at all here. Just talking.

Whereas around here it seems like people care a lot more about how Someone Is Wrong On The Internet, and it's usually This Guy, and I'd kinda appreciate an overview of what all is going on in that respect if it's available. — Pfhorrest

Only a percentage of what goes on here is actually related to philosophy. It’s just an online chat forum for quite a few of the people that sign up. That included the most recent subject of the discussion IMO.

Surprised to hear calls for giving friends special treatment. As it happens though, because @S was a long-standing member, @Hanover and I both PMed him to try to find a way to not have him banned. I suppose that is special treatment. But he ignored both of us. Also, there are no temporary bans. That's written in the rules. Which we stick to. Anyway, it should go without saying that no one is immune to getting banned and there is no closed club of veteran members that protect each other at all costs. Anyone who thinks that is the case should leave, frankly. And I'll bet @S didn't think that. Evidence is the fact that he banned @TGW for refusing to change his writing style. And there was no profane abuse or requests to be banned there just TGW's flat refusal to change and the united mod attitude that you play by the rules or you get out no matter who you are. And by the way, I took the public flak for that, not @S. So don't talk to me about loyalty or shame. I stuck by the guy for years, but the principles of this community and how it functions come first. If that doesn't suit you, as I said, please do feel free to leave. And good luck.

Now, anyone else got two cents or are we done here?

There's a teething period. You'll find out who you find worthwhile to engage with and who you find worthwhile to read.

In my view, we don't restrict discussion to approaching academic quality discussion since the public nature of the forum makes that overly restrictive. We don't ban-hammer tone as much as would be expected in academic discussion; just consistent bad behaviour.

In my book it's a shame we get irritated with our fellow idiots, or even get irritated at others' irritation. Though it is expected and usual.

Now, anyone else got two cents or are we done here? — Baden

I'd just add, consistent with what you said, is that we can no more protect our friends with relaxed rule enforcement than attack our enemies with strict rule enforcement. Treating everyone as an equal is fundamental to fairness.

I'd also say that bannings are not difficult to avoid. The S situation was really not a complicated one from a rule perspective. When modded had he said "I'll try" instead of "fuck you," I'd expect a different outcome. This wasn't a case of simply failing to comply. It was a refusal to comply. In fact, it was contemptuous, disrespectful defiance.

As you said, the efforts we made to rectify the situation were ignored. We tried and I wish things didn't turn out this way, but we had no other options.