You’re talking about the exchange featuring your statements “The victim gave consent (as far as a 12-year old can do that of course). She in fact started self-harming because he got convicted and still does not regret or feel bad about the encounter.” and “According to the case notes, the attraction was mutual. He did not have to coerce her, by her own statements. It’s why he wasn’t convicted of grooming. Seriously, do at least a modicum of research.” Right? That’s the only time I see that anyone moderated you. Also, it wasn’t FlyingSquid that gave you that ban. They were just arguing with you, and then I think someone else banned you for your statements.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about Steven van de Velde:
He was convicted of child rape in 2016; in 2014, when Van de Velde was 19, he raped a 12-year-old British girl, after contacting her on social media, travelling to Britain to meet her, and giving her alcohol.
This is, to me, yet another example of FlyingSquid doing absolutely nothing wrong, and then people spreading rumors about how they’re terrible.
Hmm, I must have misread the modlog then. I thought I swore I got a message from them stating I was banned.
Just to clarify (without getting into it any further), that guy was convicted for rape (never disputed that) but explicitly cleared of the grooming charge, because there was nothing in their exchanged messages that suggested grooming at all. The broader argument was that this guy is definitely a total fucking idiot who should have known so much better, but he didn’t have the characteristics of some precalculating serial child rapist or something. The case details is also why he was convicted of a lesser charge in the Netherlands. He took all the necessary steps (therapy, avoiding solo contact with kids despite being cleared by therapists, etc…) to avoid this from happening again. I challenged his “irredeemability” that was present in that thread, which is a very accepted view in the Netherlands but not so abroad. Possibly because whilst Dutch sources have a lot of the details of the case, the English sources are much less in-depth.
I don’t really have any other grievances against FS btw. They can be a bit headstrong and combative at times, but I don’t know much else about them.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think you should receive a temp ban for those statements. I think you are wrong, but I don’t think we need to remove every wrong statement from the comments to keep them as “correct” comments only. I think people can say things, and we can just all talk to each other, and it’s okay. There are some things that I think should be banned from the comments: Misrepresenting why you are saying what you’re saying, or deliberately egging on a confrontation, or using multiple accounts to create a false consensus. But almost any real individual who’s just saying what they think and why, I think is okay.
The point that I’m making about FlyingSquid is that the way you told the story was that you argued with them, you were right and they were wrong and you demonstrated that with evidence, and then they banned you. Then, looking into the facts, nothing remotely similar to that happened in any respect. That’s the pattern I’ve consistently seen about people who are critical of FlyingSquid’s moderation. I don’t know why that is, although I have a theory that because they are generally on point about moderating certain types of toxic individuals, there’s a whisper campaign by certain toxic individuals trying to paint them as some particular type of bad moderator even if the facts don’t support it.
It’s not even all that hard to misconstrue some event that happened into some huge malicious deal that it isn’t, as you just discovered.
I wonder if perhaps FS has a higher tendency to use the report button, triggering moderator action more often than average? Even if it’s justified it could create the appearance that comments in discussion with him are removed more often than average.
Perhaps it would help if the mod log was more visible, e.g. if a comment gets deleted and the user banned, it could show the given reason and the moderator’s handle for transparency.
FS has a bad habit of engaging in fruitless arguments, often devolving into outright flamewars.
Haven’t seen any questionable mod action myself and I tend to think any objections spring from these, though I do think it’s a behaviour unbecoming a moderator.
I got a three day temp ban after providing examples and further context disproving their arguments.
Usually I think they aren’t that bad, but they do sometimes lose their cool on sensitive subjects.
You’re talking about the exchange featuring your statements “The victim gave consent (as far as a 12-year old can do that of course). She in fact started self-harming because he got convicted and still does not regret or feel bad about the encounter.” and “According to the case notes, the attraction was mutual. He did not have to coerce her, by her own statements. It’s why he wasn’t convicted of grooming. Seriously, do at least a modicum of research.” Right? That’s the only time I see that anyone moderated you. Also, it wasn’t FlyingSquid that gave you that ban. They were just arguing with you, and then I think someone else banned you for your statements.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about Steven van de Velde:
This is, to me, yet another example of FlyingSquid doing absolutely nothing wrong, and then people spreading rumors about how they’re terrible.
Hmm, I must have misread the modlog then. I thought I swore I got a message from them stating I was banned.
Just to clarify (without getting into it any further), that guy was convicted for rape (never disputed that) but explicitly cleared of the grooming charge, because there was nothing in their exchanged messages that suggested grooming at all. The broader argument was that this guy is definitely a total fucking idiot who should have known so much better, but he didn’t have the characteristics of some precalculating serial child rapist or something. The case details is also why he was convicted of a lesser charge in the Netherlands. He took all the necessary steps (therapy, avoiding solo contact with kids despite being cleared by therapists, etc…) to avoid this from happening again. I challenged his “irredeemability” that was present in that thread, which is a very accepted view in the Netherlands but not so abroad. Possibly because whilst Dutch sources have a lot of the details of the case, the English sources are much less in-depth.
I don’t really have any other grievances against FS btw. They can be a bit headstrong and combative at times, but I don’t know much else about them.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think you should receive a temp ban for those statements. I think you are wrong, but I don’t think we need to remove every wrong statement from the comments to keep them as “correct” comments only. I think people can say things, and we can just all talk to each other, and it’s okay. There are some things that I think should be banned from the comments: Misrepresenting why you are saying what you’re saying, or deliberately egging on a confrontation, or using multiple accounts to create a false consensus. But almost any real individual who’s just saying what they think and why, I think is okay.
The point that I’m making about FlyingSquid is that the way you told the story was that you argued with them, you were right and they were wrong and you demonstrated that with evidence, and then they banned you. Then, looking into the facts, nothing remotely similar to that happened in any respect. That’s the pattern I’ve consistently seen about people who are critical of FlyingSquid’s moderation. I don’t know why that is, although I have a theory that because they are generally on point about moderating certain types of toxic individuals, there’s a whisper campaign by certain toxic individuals trying to paint them as some particular type of bad moderator even if the facts don’t support it.
It’s not even all that hard to misconstrue some event that happened into some huge malicious deal that it isn’t, as you just discovered.
I wonder if perhaps FS has a higher tendency to use the report button, triggering moderator action more often than average? Even if it’s justified it could create the appearance that comments in discussion with him are removed more often than average.
Perhaps it would help if the mod log was more visible, e.g. if a comment gets deleted and the user banned, it could show the given reason and the moderator’s handle for transparency.
FS has a bad habit of engaging in fruitless arguments, often devolving into outright flamewars.
Haven’t seen any questionable mod action myself and I tend to think any objections spring from these, though I do think it’s a behaviour unbecoming a moderator.
It’s usually just best to stop engaging.