Timbandtech was spouting Russian propaganda, using the bad logic that is easily available on the web. He is silenced until sometime next year. I don’t need to address that again.
If I discuss how this forum is conducted and moderated, that is not an indirect attack on anyone who doesn’t conduct themselves according to those rules. Given the topics we cover here, moderation is a double edge sword, or a razor’s edge, or something. If we don’t allow someone to say they believe in God for example, then we can’t discuss the reasons that person has for that belief. Well, we can, and we do, we generalize about believers all the time. Sometimes we back those comments up with statistics, but, like I said, it’s not an easy subject, it’s hard to know what is going on in people’s heads. We cover other similarly difficult subjects in politics and culture.
That’s the point of an evidence-based forum, to be able to speak freely, but to require that you “show your work”. If your belief is based on something your grandmother said, fine, state that. But don’t say it’s “obvious”, or that you read it in a book (without giving something from that book), or that you have a lifetime of experience that somehow counts as scientific evidence, or any other number of logical fallacies.
BTW, I started avoiding linking to and explaining the technical definitions of fallacies years ago. It’s worthless work on my side and usually just causes people to dig in their heels. If someone thinks they are logical, but aren’t, explaining how logic works rarely solves the problem. It can work, using myself as an example, but it takes time for it to sink in, often years.
So, finally, to the point. How do we moderate? We look for patterns. Trolls can sometimes be spotted right away, with patterns of posting frequently on multiple subjects, but having some sort of theme, the bone they came here to pick. The automated filters sometimes can get these before anyone sees them, then we just click a button to delete them. Another easy one is someone saying something like, “I’m just asking”. Once a few answers are given, and the “yeah butts” consistently repeat, but don’t address points, I point that out. Then they say the forum doesn’t allow free expression, and it goes downhill from there.
I could be off by a percent too, but there is almost 100% overlap with people who do the above, and people who respond with expressions of total surprise that anyone would disagree. These can range from “I can’t believe you think that” to “you are a complete moron” and the in-between of “I have researched this and I believe I know what I’m talking about” (logical fallacy). The second one will get you moderated for sure. The first, that brings me back to patterns. If you study anything about how to have conversations with people with whom you disagree, a common theme is, don’t overreact. In fact, don’t react at all. It takes practice because you also need to give clues that you are engaged and listening. It becomes a dance of nodding, possibly misinterpreted as agreement, and saying, “I see that differently” or something neutral, but not showing agreement.
The third one sounds civil, but if it is repeated enough, without addressing facts with facts and logic with logic, it looks just like the other two. It can be a true statement of the feelings of the person saying it, but a person believing they are right doesn’t make them right.
If you want to see an example of someone that was inadvertently trolling like this, for YEARS, but was never banned, see @mikeyohe. He had a somewhat sophisticated theme about “God is Knowledge” and referenced the Gnostics. When I read Harari’s “Sapiens”, I realized he had mangled the theory of humans self-domesticating. Once I pointed it out, he gave up on that. The last time we saw him, he was defending the misinformation movie “2000 Mules”.
