Discussion of hsquizbowl.org's rules

[Mechanical Beasts]

2) Andy Watkins was banned from the board once, in 2008, for backseat modding before he was on the staff. His claim that he was banned for any length of time for the "shut the [naughty word] up" incident while he was a moderator is untrue.

Huh, I misremember, then. I forget why I was tempbanned, before I was staff; I _do_ know that I supported my own tempbanning in the staff thread Sorice started once I was staff.

[in on these shenanigans]

Ed Powers was not banned for violating the new rule prohibiting getting super upset about free services, he was banned for his subsequent post in which he called out board staff, accused me of not reading his post before responding to it, and dismissed the notion that the rules should apply to him.

User was banned for 1 day for arguing with rule in-thread/all-caps freakout at board staff

What does "rule in-thread" mean here? I'm interpreting that as "rule created in this thread," which leads me to believe that your clarification isn't accurate, but I suppose I may have interpreted that wrongly.

ETA: Yep, misinterpretation, per below.

[Matt Weiner]

It means that the only place one is permitted to argue about what the rules are and how they are enforced is the thread we are in now. Doing it in other threads is prohibited backseat moderation.

[huff paste]

1) The rules about post content do not apply, and never have applied, to board staff.

I can understand the reasons behind this rule, but I feel like it should act more of a "necessary and proper clause" than a free pass for an admin or mod to do whatever he wants. If I were a newer member, I would be turned off from the community somewhat if I saw an admin unnecessarily call someone an idiot.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

So, earlier today, this happened in the Excelsior Rankings thread.

It's 4 hours later and our "doppelganger's" statistics are still intertwined with ours. Further, we have somehow accumulated 2 more losses to phantom teams, changing our record to 17-18. If you take our publicized results of 7-5 at HSNCT and 5-9 at the NSC, our precise public record should be 12-14, not 17-18. The season is over, and it is not a big deal, but I would think that you would want your records and whatever rankings these might result in to accurately reflect the capabilities of your new ranking system.

Oh no, not four whole hours!

This is my official request as an administrator that people not use the board to hector people who are providing interesting services for free, outside of the bounds of reason. If you have a problem with someone's rankings, you may certainly post as much, but from here on out unreasonable "you didn't fix my problem within the running time of Gods and Generals" posting is not something I want to see.

Depending on how you interpret the word "request" and/or phrase "request as an administrator," this may or may not be a new HSQB rule; it was certainly applied as a rule to ban Ed Powers an hour later, pretty much for posting an Ed Powers post. Say what you will about administration's ability to create rules on the spur of the moment; say what you will for administration's ability to ban for tone. I'm simply going to note that, if it's a rule and not a request, then the rule as stated -- "people not use the board to hector people who are providing interesting services for free, outside of the bounds of reason." -- might want to be retroactively applied to ban Matt Weiner for his post hectoring Jonah for his maintenance of the QBWiki, as well as potentially many other posts by many other people.

There are some key differences that dilute your comparison:

1) The QBWiki was not Jonah's original idea, he simply volunteered to keep track of it, so it would be unfair to say that this is his service to provide when it has existed long before him.
2) Jonah handled the QBWiki in a manner that a lot of people (not just Matt Weiner by any means) found dumb. In particular, letting Charles Hang's page grow to the size of all the collected volumes in the Library of Babel put together and suppressing all attempts to explain in-jokes to the not-in-crowd
3) There were no unreasonable demands made of Jonah at all, certainly none expressing disgust for not fixing issues within a four-hour timeframe.

[Papa's in the House]

3) Ed Powers was not banned for violating the new rule prohibiting getting super upset about free services, he was banned for his subsequent post in which he called out board staff, accused me of not reading his post before responding to it, and dismissed the notion that the rules should apply to him.

Now anytime I see the phrase "request of the moderator" (or some similar nonsense), I'll just wait the hour and a half or less it takes before the "request" becomes a "rule" that bans me. Oh, and I'm sure that "rule" will be made without consulting the remaining moderators of this board. Reading this was a perfect way to sober up after my birthday.

[Howard]

The rules about post content do not apply, and never have applied, to board staff.

What exactly does this mean? That staff can say whatever they want and get away with it or something more specific like "staff can tell users how to post, non-staff can't".

This is certainly an interesting question, and I'd like clarification on this as well. And I find no reference to this idea in the forum rules. Does this mean it's a-ok for board staff to initiate ad hominem attacks and stifle actual tournament discussion? If not, an explanation about what specifics do not apply to board staff or subsets of board staff would certainly help the understanding of the board populace.

Ed Powers was not banned for violating the new rule prohibiting getting super upset about free services, he was banned for his subsequent post in which he called out board staff, accused me of not reading his post before responding to it, and dismissed the notion that the rules should apply to him.

There are several problems with this. Mr. Powers indicated he was not super-upset, nor was he really upset at all, and in fact, he started with an apology. His accusation of not reading his entire post was a reference to the area of said post which explicitly spelled out that he was not upset. So I think, rather than discussing the new rule and dismissing that "rules should apply to him," he was pointing out why the post in question was not even in violation of the stated rule.

Lastly, I think that posting rules in threads without a crosspost to the rules section is a bad idea. Certainly those people providing useful services for free should not be ridiculed even if those services are not the best; regardless, these people are providing a net positive contribution. My fear is that this rule will now be applied to all threads without the knowledge of people who haven't stopped by to read the stats thread.

[Mechanical Beasts]

The rules about post content do not apply, and never have applied, to board staff.

What exactly does this mean? That staff can say whatever they want and get away with it or something more specific like "staff can tell users how to post, non-staff can't".

This is certainly an interesting question, and I'd like clarification on this as well. And I find no reference to this idea in the forum rules. Does this mean it's a-ok for board staff to initiate ad hominem attacks and stifle actual tournament discussion? If not, an explanation about what specifics do not apply to board staff or subsets of board staff would certainly help the understanding of the board populace.

In the staff forum we're currently discussing (well, so far "we" is me and Jeff Hoppes) to what extent what Matt said is what any of us wants (and to what extent what Matt said could possibly be what Matt meant).

[Matt Weiner]

Now anytime I see the phrase "request of the moderator" (or some similar nonsense), I'll just wait the hour and a half or less it takes before the "request" becomes a "rule" that bans me. Oh, and I'm sure that "rule" will be made without consulting the remaining moderators of this board. Reading this was a perfect way to sober up after my birthday.

Ed Powers was not banned for violating the new rule prohibiting getting super upset about free services, he was banned for his subsequent post in which he called out board staff, accused me of not reading his post before responding to it, and dismissed the notion that the rules should apply to him.

[Matt Weiner]

Lastly, I think that posting rules in threads without a crosspost to the rules section is a bad idea. Certainly those people providing useful services for free should not be ridiculed even if those services are not the best; regardless, these people are providing a net positive contribution. My fear is that this rule will now be applied to all threads without the knowledge of people who haven't stopped by to read the stats thread.

Nobody has ever been disciplined under this rule, no rule has ever been retroactively applied, nobody will be disciplined under this rule until it is discussed in the staff forum and added to the master rules post, and, I feel obliged to point out because people are hellbent on intentionally ignoring it, Ed Powers was not banned for violating the new rule prohibiting getting super upset about free services, he was banned for his subsequent post in which he called out board staff, accused me of not reading his post before responding to it, and dismissed the notion that the rules should apply to him, i.e., for doing things that have been against the rules for years.

[Cheynem]

I would assume that one thing that Matt meant in terms of "rules applying to moderators" is that obviously moderators are going to at times to have to tell people how to post and make meta-references to board rules and poster histories.

[Camelopardalis]

Certainly, moderators ought to have liberties with regard to telling people how to post and responding to tone (as opposed to just content), since that's an integral part of warning people of rule violations and doing their jobs. But I think one of the issues is that moderators, as participants in these discussions themselves, are able to use the rules of telling people how to post as part of their arguments and have the ability to ban people with whom they are arguing, so even if it's unintentional, there seems to be potential for bias in the application of the rules.

I obviously wouldn't suggest that moderators do so intentionally or are meaningfully malevolent about it. For the record, I think mods generally do a great job, and also make good points as experienced, respected members of the community. But my main point is that the system allows for bias when you're simultaneously trying to moderate someone and argue against them. For those of you who participate in debating tournaments, it would be a faulty system that allows you to simultaneously debate someone and also levy penalties against them when you think they're breaking the rules.

Maybe some way to remove that bias is that only moderators who are not participating in the discussion at hand are allowed to enforce the rules of the board. I'm not saying that the people who generally get banned aren't doing something wrong or aren't making bad points - if they are, they should absolutely be called on it - but I think the warning or ban would have a lot less controversy if it came from someone who wasn't in the midst of an argument with them. In short, I ask mods or admins, are you able to make universally unbiased decisions regarding users with whom you are debating as opponents? Even if these users make uninformed points - which is obviously bad, but also not necessarily a violation of the rules - is there are way to retain objectivity in applying those rules to those users?

[Camelopardalis]

To help answer the question above, I've found a few examples where users are banned by admins and mods while in debates with admins and mods. In all examples, other posters who violate rules, but back the moderators' points, go unbanned, while those who violate rules, but attack those points, are banned.

NB: In no way am I defending these users' arguments. Indeed, I disagree with all three of these users' assertions, and I think that any terrible point should be argued against and brought to bear, within the bounds of the rules. But how can someone be fair in their application of the rules while also viewing that person as an opponent? I know that I would have a hard time doing it.

• Here, a user was acting inappropriately and trying to stifle discussion while in an argument with a moderator. Several non-moderator respondents attack that user, calling them a "jackass", noting that their "education in the area of logic is mind-boggling and horrid" and explicitly telling them to "stop hiding behind semantic arguments to avoid addressing X", which seems to be telling someone how to post. None of these posters were warned or banned. The original argument-starter attacks the moderators' arguments in largely the same way, like saying "stop bringing up individual examples", and is immediately banned for telling people how to post. This is not to say that the original combatant should not have been banned for what he said, but if the others weren't banned, is bias at work?
  
  
• Here, a user was arguing a certain point with members of the quizbowl community. Among these members were no less than 5 administrators or moderators, who all disagreed with his assertion. A non-moderator (whose argument is on the same side as the moderators above him) makes a post in which he claims that the orginal arguer "may be stupid and your idea may be stupid", possibly violating the rule about polite discussion, and a moderator says "teams dominated by [original posters]'s sort of thinking are going to lose to [everyone] because they suck", which is exaggerated truth, and which may goad them into responding impolitely and violating the rules. When the original poster responds to that claim - inappropriately, admittedly - he is immediately banned for complaining that "the majority have not [been respectful]." If a moderator that was participating in that discussion banned them (and again, there were 5 of them arguing against him), how could they not have been influenced by bias?
  
  
• Here, a user is arguing with several collegiate members including 3 users who also happen to be moderators. He's not making very good points, but isn't breaking any rules at first. A poster who agrees with the moderators says "stop this inane debate in which you have no leg to stand on", which seems to attempt to stifle discussion and/or tell someone how to post. That user is not warned for the post. The orginal arguer again disagrees with both the moderators' points and their defenders, and responds to one user's metapost (for which that person isn't banned) with another metapost (for which this person is banned). Moreover, that user is then banned for "not following the basic rules of logical argumentation" while in an argument with a moderator. If the very same moderators involved in the argument banned the user for making a bad argument, is bias at work?

Again, I'm not trying to attack the moderators' decisions or defend those original posters who were making bad points. I'm presenting these examples to let each make their own decision about whether there might be a better way to enforce the rules, which is what this thread is all about.

[Mechanical Beasts]

To help answer the question above, I've found a few examples where users are banned by admins and mods while in debates with admins and mods. In all examples, other posters who violate rules, but back the moderators' points, go unbanned, while those who violate rules, but attack those points, are banned.

These are all, in my opinion, genuine examples of administrator bias. (Note that only administrators can ban users; as a moderator, I cannot.)

[Matt Weiner]

"Exaggerated truth" and "goading someone into responding impolitely" are not against the rules. Please familiarize yourself with what the rules are before accusing people of ignoring them. "Being impolite" in the college section may be against the rules as they currently read, in which case I will seek to change that rule.

I'd like to reiterate a few things:

The moderation around here tends to be cumulative and forgiving; i.e., you need to repeatedly screw up to get even a warning unless you do something really egregious. In most of the threads you linked to, you have Good Quizbowl Person X popping in to take a potshot and leave, compared to Crazy Person Y making ten or so rule-breaking posts and finally getting a warning for the last one.

Since good quizbowl is preferred because, by definition, it is the endpoint of rational consideration of the goals of quizbowl, it is inevitable that arguments for bad quizbowl will have to rely on logical fallacies, critique of "tone," and other prohibited practices. Thus, it can appear that arguing for bad quizbowl (or "disagreeing with the moderators" as you so charitably put it) is being punished in and of itself, when this is not in fact the case.

Furthermore, the one thing that is pretty much guaranteed to be disciplined right away is people saying "screw the rules, I dare you to ban me." This is a surprisingly common tactic of bad quizbowl proponents who wish to be seen as martyrs, and they will get what they want every time. I do not recall more than one good quizbowl ("agreeing with the moderators") person ever doing this.

Lastly, I remind you of what I have been saying for the past eight years, which is that the purpose of this board is to spread quizbowl and spread good quizbowl. At this time it is not the judgment of anyone on staff, that I know of, that we should censor bad-quizbowl proponents. One day, maybe it will be. Sometimes, doing things that would not make sense if this were an Internet humor forum are the thing to do in order to achieve the goals of having this website. The purpose of this board is not to provide an open forum, to treat all ideas equally, or to make people feel "welcome" on the Internet. So, I once again urge everyone to stop appealing to those things in their arguments, as I don't care about them and I hope no one else does either.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Matt, I am very happy that you made that post. It is brutally honest, and I admire honesty a great deal.

If those are your principles and motivations, why not just straight up ban advocacy of bad quizbowl? It would be a lot better than the current approach of "here are some rhetorical strategies that we ban [because in the past some bad quizbowl advocate used them] [and also we don't enforce them except against bad quizbowl advocates]".

This approach is confusing, especially to those who aren't up on board history, and it is intellectually dishonest. It makes the board staff and rules seem more arbitrary than they really are. And worst of all from your perspective, by being reactive and ad-hoc, it allows bad quizbowl advocates to always stay one step ahead of you

[cvdwightw]

In most of the threads you linked to, you have Good Quizbowl Person X popping in to take a potshot and leave, compared to Crazy Person Y making ten or so rule-breaking posts and finally getting a warning for the last one.

Forgive me if I'm putting words in Chris's mouth, but I think what he's worried about is that there are, in all of those threads, multiple people in the role of Good Quizbowl Person X, all of whom pop in to take a potshot and leave. Because of this attack-by-committee approach, no single poster is warned or banned for rule violations (except, of course, the person who feels ganged-up-on and lashes out in entirely inappropriate ways). Therefore, the only time any "good quizbowl" people are told by the admins that what they're doing is not appropriate is when Dees goes all CHARLIE SMASH on things.

Since good quizbowl is preferred because, by definition, it is the endpoint of rational consideration of the goals of quizbowl, it is inevitable that arguments for bad quizbowl will have to rely on logical fallacies, critique of "tone," and other prohibited practices. Thus, it can appear that arguing for bad quizbowl (or "disagreeing with the moderators" as you so charitably put it) is being punished in and of itself, when this is not in fact the case.

But, it is not inevitable that arguments for good quizbowl will not rely on logical fallacies, critique of "tone," and other prohibited practices. I don't think anyone is arguing that the people making inane arguments in favor of even more inane positions should not be banned. Rather, the issue is the perception that any argument in favor of good quizbowl or against bad quizbowl is considered to be rational argument simply by being in favor of the only defensible position.

Furthermore, the one thing that is pretty much guaranteed to be disciplined right away is people saying "[comedy word filter to circumvent Board Rule #12] the rules, I dare you to ban me." This is a surprisingly common tactic of bad quizbowl proponents who wish to be seen as martyrs, and they will get what they want every time. I do not recall more than one good quizbowl ("agreeing with the moderators") person ever doing this.

Well of course good quizbowl proponents are not going to straight-up dare the board administration to ban them, because good quizbowl proponents are almost certainly on good terms with most if not all of the moderating staff and regularly interact off-the-boards with a significant number of those people. Random "bad quizbowl dude" who knows no one here shows up, gets attacked, and decides it's not worth his time to remain part of the community. Why so many of them feel to urge to flagrantly disobey the rules while making their exit from the boards is a mystery.

the purpose of this board is to spread quizbowl and spread good quizbowl...The purpose of this board is not to provide an open forum, to treat all ideas equally, or to make people feel "welcome" on the Internet.

I hope this becomes the skeleton for a new rule explicitly delineating the purpose of this board and, therefore, makes this explicitly something that new users ought to read before posting rather than a community guideline not known by new members.

I think we need to realize that, as much as we want to pretend otherwise, the group of regular posters here forms an online community. This online community (especially the board administration) is an insular group of people who, for the most part, hold rationally unassailable positions on important quizbowl-related topics and, therefore, sometimes forget how to talk to people who don't hold those positions. Speaking entirely in hyperbole, this board spreads good quizbowl like the Spanish Inquisition spread Catholicism. I'm dead serious here. Every time a new poster comes on the boards in favor of CBI or NAC or even something like computational math, that poster is automatically labeled a morally reprehensible person for supporting positions also held by morally reprehensible people or organizations. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think that's awfully close to noted logical fallacy guilt by association. It's one thing to tell bad quizbowl proponents that their positions are wrong, explain things to them rationally, and hope that they get it; it's a different thing entirely to start off by assuming that only horrible people could have those positions and that, therefore, they are horrible people. Too often people on the board go for the easy way out and do the second thing.

[Howard]

Lastly, I think that posting rules in threads without a crosspost to the rules section is a bad idea. Certainly those people providing useful services for free should not be ridiculed even if those services are not the best; regardless, these people are providing a net positive contribution. My fear is that this rule will now be applied to all threads without the knowledge of people who haven't stopped by to read the stats thread.

Nobody has ever been disciplined under this rule, no rule has ever been retroactively applied, nobody will be disciplined under this rule until it is discussed in the staff forum and added to the master rules post, and, I feel obliged to point out because people are hellbent on intentionally ignoring it, Ed Powers was not banned for violating the new rule prohibiting getting super upset about free services, he was banned for his subsequent post in which he called out board staff, accused me of not reading his post before responding to it, and dismissed the notion that the rules should apply to him, i.e., for doing things that have been against the rules for years.

I'm glad to hear the first part of this. As for the second part, it sure seems like he was invited to make the subsequent post by the rule created in the thread-- almost like a moderator saying: "Please post about X. Ha! You've now posted about X, I'm going to ban you."

At the same time, I fully agree that moderators not only have the right, but also the responsibility to tell others how to post; that's their job. So if this is what is meant by content rules not applying to moderators, I think the current wording "people who are not moderators" suffices to make this understandable.

In addition, sometimes within a thread, it's not clear whether what a moderator is saying is part of the discussion of the thread or a directive to those in the thread. Not sure how this would be accomplished, but a way of delineating the two may be useful.

[Bartleby]

Since good quizbowl is preferred because, by definition, it is the endpoint of rational consideration of the goals of quizbowl, it is inevitable that arguments for bad quizbowl will have to rely on logical fallacies, critique of "tone," and other prohibited practices. Thus, it can appear that arguing for bad quizbowl (or "disagreeing with the moderators" as you so charitably put it) is being punished in and of itself, when this is not in fact the case.

Something that I've noticed around these parts is that it seems people are often given a lot of leeway "in defence of 'good quiz bowl'". Now, I actually agree with a lot of what you say- particularly that this is not a board for all quiz bowl, but just for good quiz bowl. However, all three of Chris' examples were not about , nor were they promoting horrible quiz bowl. They were:

A) A horrible, horrible mis-application of an at-best vague statistic to a mirror of noted good tournament MUT
B) A discussion on grad students in quiz bowl
C) A discussion on "regular" high school difficulty

What I've found posting here in the last year is that very often, it seems acceptable that when someone makes an ill-founded suggestion regarding the standard practices of good quiz bowl, people find it sufficient to simply reply"YOUR ARE A STUPID" to the person making the suggestion. Now, none of these threads were great threads, but is it any wonder that posters who make suggestions that they think are legitimately good get riled up when people treat them in the fashion that they do?

[Edward Powers]

I would like to weigh in on the recent evolution of this thread and the controversy wherein I was an interested party which triggered most of the discusion here over the past few days. Further, I would like to thank everyone who has participated in this dialectical analysis and dicussion during this period, whether you made efforts to support my position or Matt's, for more than anything else I think such dialogues are at the heart of a healthy website, and at the heart of supporting Matt's idea of spreading good quizbowl, which he defines as the central purpose of this site. And given the conflict I had with Matt recently, it may surprise some of you that I agree with Matt on this core question, with one caveat that I might as well mention here at the outset, which is this: We might all agree that spreading good quizbowl is the ultimate purpose of this site, but I can hardly agree that even if this is the goal, that we always know how to do it or to advocate it, and in fact, given the spirited nature of the members of this community, we might even sometimes engage in passionate disagreements about how to achieve good quizbowl. Some who are merely spectating at these disagreements might support one side or the other, but in many, if not not all cases, it might be impossible to say with certainty who has the better of the argument. Therefore, even if the goal or telos of this site is agreed upon, to assume that those who support this goal always use unassailable reasoning in the defense of their passion for this goal is a highly questionable assumption indeed. And since this is a thread about rules and their application, I submit that if we are going to be truly candid and as reasonable as we can about the ultimate purposes of this site and the rules which must therefore guide them, I think we must add another root goal as a co-equal goal of this site as well, one that must also be defended by the rules, in fact, one without which this site becomes a meaningless bastion of self-congratulatory orthodoxy. So what is this co-equal goal or end that must simultanelously be guarded by the rules? It is the creative principle of this site itself, which is rooted in an assumption not often made explicit, perhaps, because it is so obvious that we sometimes forget its centrality, and it is this: Goodness in quzbowl is not always self-evident, hence the give and take that goes on here all of the time. That give and take is rooted in a wonderful combination of our rationality and our individual gifts & imaginations, so, as much as possible the site should encourage and allow the free flow of ideas without an intrusive censor stifling discussion or contacts between members, the veritable citizens of this site, without having profoundly good reasons for doing so, about which more later. Further, if we are spreading quizbowl, and further, if we are endeavoring to spread good quizbowl, we will inevitably have the good fortune of attracting new members to this site. Of necessity these will come in all shapes and sizes with a broad range of raw talent, achieved knowledge and skill, a varieagated degree of spirit and passion, and a potential wide range in age and life experiences. So even if all are determined to support good quizbowl, what that means at any point in time will vary from indiviual to individual, so, the free flow of ideas among these constituents must be a co-equal goal if our other goal of achieving and expanding good quizbowl is to have a chance of being accomplished or at least improved upon on a fairly regular basis in the first place. In short, we are in fundametal ways all members of a wonderful "Republic of Learning", and the the most dynamic means we use on this site to make this Republic flourish and thrive is the means of honoring what I have called above the "creative" principle in our very beings which, in fact, makes such a republic or community possible and vital in the first place, and that is the free use of our minds and imaginations in converse, affiliation and perhaps even friendship with other members.

So, if this analysis has merit, and my guess is that most of you would agree that it does, then we run into a core dilemma: How can we allow such a vital and wide ranging freedom of expression, aimed at producing both joy for the members so involved and the larger goal of supporting and expanding good quizbowl, while at the same time recognizing that in any complex commuinty there will always be some who want to stretch the rules and in fact violate them in order to serve their own self-interested purposes, whatever they might be, often in ways that undermine the co-equal ultimate goals I have discussed above? And in this we all concede, I think, that this board must have guardians who protect the very defining purposes of the board from such persons, such "rascalians" if we prefer a humorous mode of defining them.

I certainly concede this. But by way of analogy to try to enrich this analysis, when discussing a truly more complex and actual Republic, which had to deal with political, economic, diplomatic, military, cultural, religious and social issues, all of which could lead to controversy and debate over the rules, James Madison, in Federalist 51, raised perhaps the central issue of all Republics which endeavor to create a civilized and ordered liberty for all of its citizens, and it is this: Grant that the governors must control the governed, who then will control the governors? This, I affirm, is an extraordinarily difficult, but not impossible, question to answer, and it has echoed through the centuries, and we face a variation of it here. So, if we all concede that this site must be governed & regulated, and governed by intelligent and intelligible rules, in harmony with the spirit of this community's goals in the first place, we still face a serious and even defining issue, one this thread has been addressing recently, but not exactly in the explicit form I have just articulated.

Now I have my own answer to this issue, and, as you might well imagine, it was the prinicple I employed when I challenged Matt's on the spot articulation of a new request/rule when he decided to make an "official request" which he then somehow turned by the end of his sentence into what may or may not have been the promulgation of a new rule. Before possibly discussing my overall set of actions in that unfortunate incident, allow me to make explicit the rule I employed in answering the core issue of regulation this board must face if we do concede, as I think the vast majority does in fact concede, that this board does have to have guardians to protect its noble purposes if those purpsoes come under assault by rascalians of any stripe. If we concede this, then the truly central question is "Who will guard the guardians?". Well, if the guardians are acting in harmony with the puposes of the site, there is no need to guard them. But as Matt himself might say, "Let's not play dumb". Since the Guardians of our site here are human, with skills, abilities, interests and passions, and with human frailities potentially entangled within all of these as well, some might actually annd inevitably need to be guarded from themselves and from harming the larger commuity itself. As Madison suggested for a far different Republic to be sure, none of us are angels, all are fallible, and all too often, even the best of us can act in purely self-interested ways while telling ourselves the opposite. So, in this classic case, what are we to do if it occurs here on these boards?

My answer the other night when I thought Matt had overstepped his bounds was to apply the following principle: Either other administrtors will step in and chastise Matt, or he must be challenged with a spirited argument by the person most directly involved in his new rule---I saw that as a possible obligation on my part to the larger goals of this site, and the community it serves, and, since upon reflection I thought other administrators were probably either not online, or if they were they were viewing other forums, or, if they were reading the forum where the emerging conflict with Matt and myself might soon occur they might defer to Mat's judgment, all options which meant that Matt could get away with impulsively creating a request/rule/veiled threat that nowhere deserved the august title of a rule or law to govern rational people engaged in a thoughtful give and take that, in addition, Matt was completely unaware of in the specific and ongoing give & take between Ashvin and myself. In short, I did not think he was intervening with the profoundly good reasons which alone could justify such an intervention. So, I posted what I considered a reasoned argument designed to elicit a thoughtful response from a talented & respected leader in our community. The one error I surely made was closing that argument with sarcasm about Matt's hermeneutical skills, but at that moment I thought several things about that bit of sarcasm, to whit: First, he had earned it by sarcastically holding up a post of mine that he had completely misunderstood---and if asked I can show that he completely misunderstood it--- for nationwide ridicule, as an exemplar of an unreasoning and ridiculous request of a beenefactor to our site, and he did so by using the weapon of sarcasm, so I thought he deserved a taste of his own medicine, and secondly, I reasoned that he was a big boy who could handle it. In hindsight, I regret the sarcasm, and I apologize for it, and I would bet, although I cannot prove it, that it was this, more than anything else, which led to my ban, for Matt's expressed reasons for banning me can be shown be little more than airy fantasies of a self-interested type. But I will not go into this now---perhaps at a later date I will, if it seems necessary. For now, I wonder what the rest of you think about the ideas here, especially the idea that it is incumbent upon members of this commuinty to challenge leaders when they try to pass off ill-conceived and poorly articulated "requests" as simultanelouly being rules. The merest tyro can see the difference---a request allows for optional responses, a rule is a form of a command--so how were readers that night to interpret what he said? I interpreted it as an argument needing the spirited challenge of a rational member of this community responding to a well respected and rational leader of this commuinty who in this instance did not speak or read as rationally as he could have and should have. So, given this, I thought Matt, one of our guardians, had overstepped the bounds of his authority, and that it was incumbent upon me, being the citizen of this board directly involved as I was by way of Matt's ridicule of me and his "request", to speak in defense of a reasonable interpretation of my post and in defense of the right of members of this community not to be harrassed because an administrator applied his authority carelessly. Ironically, my sarcastic comment involved a question asking him to identify the hermeneutical skills he employed to arrive at such a censorius conclusion regarding my "4 hour" comment to Ashvin. As a result, as many of you know, he then, ironically, censored/banned me for 24 hours, revealing he never even tried to parse the broader argument that acompanied my sarcasm in the first place, as he never analyzed with any care any of my previous posts before intervening between Ashvin and I, much as a metaphorical bull in a China shop might intervene. And here I do not mean to hurt feelings---I am merely expressing the shock I felt when he interpreted my innocent comment to Ashvin in this rash way, for he never understood that Ashvin and I had discussed my loooking in on his site only an hour later, but I had waited even longer than Ashvin had himself suggested, a full 4 hours. So, I think I can show, in another post perhaps, but only if others are interested and only because it can add the lamp of history to illuminate this larger issue of how to guard our guardians, that his was an imperious use of his authority which should not be allowed to become a common occurrence, for in the final analysis, the answer to the question " Who shall guard the guardians"? also has a classic answer, and it is this: We citizens and constituent members of said Republic ultimately must, else we shall lose it, and deservedly so. Any thoughts, anyone?

[Edward Powers]

I agree . Your silence speaks volumes. The above is unworthy of response. It is simply "over the top". If I could delete it, I would. In reality, it is much ado about nothing, certainly unworthy of your time, and definitely unworthy of mine. I apologize to all for having posted all that "blah, blah, blah". My only excuse, I suppose, is that in a moment of weakness I might have allowed myself to become foolishly intoxicated by the idea of a "Republic of Learning". But your silence has properly engendered a return to sobriety. So again, please accept my deepest apology for verbalizing such nonsense.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Ed, you post a lot of weird stuff. I may be speaking for quite a few people when i say this: i can't tell when you're joking on multiple occasions, including now.

To address why no one responded (yet) to your long post above, it's really just because it's very long. There's a lot to respond to and i think posters may not know where to start. I am in this group.

[BGSO]

Ed, you post a lot of weird stuff. I may be speaking for quite a few people when i say this: i can't tell when you're joking on multiple occasions, including now.

To address why no one responded (yet) to your long post above, it's really just because it's very long. There's a lot to respond to and i think posters may not know where to start. I am in this group.

To add to this statement, most of us have no clue what you just said.

[Edward Powers]

Ed, you post a lot of weird stuff. I may be speaking for quite a few people when i say this: i can't tell when you're joking on multiple occasions, including now.

To address why no one responded (yet) to your long post above, it's really just because it's very long. There's a lot to respond to and i think posters may not know where to start. I am in this group.

If you allow me to change your description of my posts from sometimes being "weird" to sometimes being "eccentric", I will agree with you, for in the past I have sometimes come on these boards and playfully bantered in ironic ways, which many do seem to find abnormal, and they often were "away from the norms or the center of discussions", hence "eccentric", and they were so by design. But they were almost always designed eccentrically to elicit smiles in the hope that these in turn could help us laugh at ourselves when we get too serious. In short, they were never intended to annoy; in almost every case they were intended to be affiliative & friendly. Ironically, in the case of the long post above, my efforts were intended to seriously join the discussion about rules that attracted many interlocuters over the previous several days, but none after I posted, and in many posts I had been the topic of many of the posters concerns because, rightly or wrongly, I had been banned for 24 hours. Hence my conclusion that my post was met by silence because it was somehow over the top "blah, blah, blah", a semi-serious conclusion, to be sure, as you apparently sensed, but one due to the ironic suspicion that long posts are generally held in contempt----one liners seemingly tend to be preferred. And this is ironic because in quizbowl there is a virtual universal consensus that one-line speed check type toss-ups are contemptible, while beautifully crafted 6-7-8 line pyramidal toss-ups, requiring close and quite focused attention, are the preferred and valued model. But when we communicate here, speed-check type one-line posts seem to be preferred, while elaboration seems to be frowned upon. And I agree, my post was very much longer than the norm; it was five paragraphs, to be precise, but it was so because i thought the topics discussed were worthy of such elaboration. And should I really be convinced that it was too long for the intelligent people on this site to digest? Five paragraphs, when those who excel at quizbowl are expected to be conversant with a canon of knowledge, as either writers or as contestants, which is encyclopedic in scope and when mastered in depth, respondents are rewarded with powers? This is surely anomalous---expecting members of this community to write long and beautifully crafted toss-ups, across the breadth of an extraordinary constellation of disciplines, so that others who have devoted themselves to the study of that universe of knowledge could be rewarded for their proven mastery therein, so, I assumed that members of such a community could digest my admittedly longer than usual post, but extraordinarily brief when contrasted with the challenging canon they are presumably endeavoring to master and even expand.

Of course, your additional comment is quite fair: Perhaps those who had not responded yet had not yet decided where to begin. I can understand that. And, I can think of other valid reasons why there was no response, despite the litany of responses hour after hour over the previous few days to the very same questions concerning the rules of this site, and one of these reasons might have been that my analysis was, upon reflection by those who did read it, unworthy of any response, and if that was their conclusion, that was and is fair too. And this post is getting long as well, so I will end it here, but not before thanking you for letting me know your reasons for not responding.

[Edward Powers]

To add to this statement, most of us have no clue what you just said.

I am sorry this is the case, so here is a 5 part effort to be clearer, based on the 5 paragraphs:

1. I agreed that our rules should protect good quizbowl, but I did not think we unassailably always knew what that entailed, hence the periodic and passionate debates on this site conducted by good and well-meaning members of this community. So I argued that a second core goal of the rules of this site should be to protect the creative and sometimes passionate give and take of ideas which emerge on this site, without an intrusive censorship of such debates or interchanges, unless we had profoudly good reasons for doing so. I called this second root idea the protection of a creative and dynamic "Republic of Learning" that all members of the board shared in on a regualr basis;
2. However, I conceded that there were "rascals" out there who would inevitbly try to undermine the noble purposes of this site and therefore intelligent rules were fundamental to achieving the two lage purposes of this site in order to control such "rascalians";;
3. By way of analogy, I brought the ideas of James Madison into the discussion, to affirm that we all must submit to the government of this site in intelligent ways while enlarging the discussion to make explicit the fact that the very Guardians designated to perform this task could---in addition to inevitable rascalians we all agree could--- themselves act in ways to subvert the larger goals of this site;
4. Using this idea, I suggested that because we all agree that the rascalians need to be controlled, the greater danger that could emerge without our realizing it might be a blindness to the warning Madison warned about in his classic Federalist # 51---that the Guardians themselves can be tempted to violate the spirit and the rules of the Republic they were sworn to defend, so I suggested that a core question about rules, perhaps THE core question, could be formulated in this classical way: WHO WILL GUARD THE GUARDIANS?
5. Once formulated in this way, I used the concrete conflict that had occurred only days before between Matt and myself to formulate a different interpretation from Matt's, which he had had the opportunity to repeat often to all who inquired about what had occurred, while my ban had prevented me from having a chance to offer to the larger community my very different view of what had happened. Of course, if Matt's analysis and judgment of my actions were in harmony with the rules, he acted properly if he accurately judged that I had in fact been acting as a subverter of the rules we all should honor. However, I obviously disagreed with this interpretation, and I suggested I could prove it if asked, but did not try to prove it then in order to stick to the core point, for in the final analysis what I was arguing for went beyond personalities, for it was not ultimately really about Matt or me but a principle of RULE, which is this: What if the Guardian violates his duty and acts imperiously? WHO WILL GUARD THE GUARDIAN(S)? My answer was that the 2nd co-equal goal of this site should provide the authority for any member of this site to do this, that is, spirited and creative debate initiated by "citizens" of this board should challenge such administrative errors, so that any abuses by Guardians, whether intended or unintended, must be swiftly curtailed, through reasoned and respectful debate about the specifics in any case. And that was the proposition or set of propositions I had asked others to comment upon.

I hope this condensed version helps, and I apologize for not being clearer in the first place.

[Black-throated Antshrike]

Ok so I will preface this by saying that I didn't really read the other really long posts because honestly they're just too long right now so I do apologize if I am saying something that someone else has already said or made points for or against.

Matt, I am very happy that you made that post. It is brutally honest, and I admire honesty a great deal.

If those are your principles and motivations, why not just straight up ban advocacy of bad quizbowl? It would be a lot better than the current approach of "here are some rhetorical strategies that we ban [because in the past some bad quizbowl advocate used them] [and also we don't enforce them except against bad quizbowl advocates]".

This approach is confusing, especially to those who aren't up on board history, and it is intellectually dishonest. It makes the board staff and rules seem more arbitrary than they really are. And worst of all from your perspective, by being reactive and ad-hoc, it allows bad quizbowl advocates to always stay one step ahead of you

I think that doing this would be really really bad. As it stands now we have a current idea of what good quizbowl is but how do we know that won't change in 2 years or 5 years. Quizbowl has been changing so much and it will keep evolving. How do we know that some of the new practices in good quizbowl now won't go out of fashion or that some practices of "bad" quizbowl won't take hold? If anyone thinks that some aspects of "bad" quizbowl won't ever evolve and become accepted, then you really don't know how much quizbowl has changed.

[Cheynem]

What are some examples of "bad quizbowl" practices turning into established, good practices? The only thing I can think of offhand is the more widespread use of the powermark, which is not really the same thing.

I can think of practices not used that have become established or formerly "good" practices being less used or rejected.

[Black-throated Antshrike]

What are some examples of "bad quizbowl" practices turning into established, good practices? The only thing I can think of offhand is the more widespread use of the powermark, which is not really the same thing.

I can think of practices not used that have become established or formerly "good" practices being less used or rejected.

Basically what I'm saying is please don't label something as bad quizbowl and then banish all discussion about it. I have no specific examples but I think it is counter productive to label something as bad and then say that's how it is and never discuss it again.

EDIT: maybe the distributions would be an example? That's always changing

[nadph]

There was a recent discussion (prompted by LIST) about reevaluating the acceptability of biography clues (formerly unilaterally shunned by good quizbowl) - maybe that would count?

[Black-throated Antshrike]

There was a recent discussion (prompted by LIST) about reevaluating the acceptability of biography clues (formerly unilaterally shunned by good quizbowl) - maybe that would count?

yeah basically I just think you can't label something as bad, then banish all discussion of it, then never have it appear again. I think that we will get better quizbowl out of even talking about what is considered "bad" quizbowl.

[Edward Powers]

I am curious here: Is the argument that Administrators should be challenged if and when they abuse their authority an argument unworthy of a serious response from this community, on a forum such as this, which is dedicated to the rules of this site, or is the community content to allow abuse provided it is a powerful person who commits it? I ask because that is precisely the argument I made upthread, both in its elaborate formulation and in my 5 part condensation of that more capacious argument. And yet no one has responded to the substance of that argument. The only responses so far suggest either that more time was needed to digest the argument, a response which I conceded was fair at the time, but after 72 more hours not very convincing, and the other response suggested an inability to understand the formulation of the extended argument in the first place, hence the 5 part condensation to aid in such an understanding. But, as of yet, there has been no substantive comment on a website that expresses hundreds of opinions daily and on a forum which expressed many opinions, hour after hour, even about Matt's actions toward me, prior to my own characterization of them as one of the interested parties involved in the conflict in the first place. But since I posted my very different and contested view of Matt's actions, no comments whatsoever of a substantive nature have been added, which is quite strange to me, given the range of curiosity evident prior to my post ( and my post was inevitably delayed because of Matt's ban).

So, I gather from this strange silence, that it's OK for such abuse to take place? Interesting and saddening to know & to discover, if in fact this conclusion has merit. But in the meantime, perhaps the Administrator himself can step up and offer the apology he owes me, for I do not take kindly to being made the object of ridicule simply because someone in power has read carelessly, and if called upon to do so, I can prove this to you if you wish and if you remain open-minded, which I trust that you can. Further, I am willing to concede that your abuse was simply an error rooted in an overly zealous if misguided effort to protect this site from what you thought was less than worthy behavior on my part. In short, I do not ultimately see this as a personal issue, but I still see it as a misuse of your authority, hence this typically long "Ed Powers" post (perhaps one day someone will be kind enough to explain such a description of my posts?). In the meantime, I do confess that although I do hope that such an apology is forthcoming, yet of greater concern to me is the willingness of the community to be silent in the face of such a poor use of an an Administrator's authority and energy. So, could anyone explain this silence, or is my curiosity about this strange silence in the face of my charge of Administrative rashness merely just another sometimes "weird" thing about me and some of my posts, as Coach Chrz suggested upthread? And, perhaps I am weird or eccentric, but how a post about the possible misuse of authority on a forum about the very rules of this site can be construed as weird or eccentric is beyond my ken, so, I would love to be enlightened by reading an explanation of how this particular conclusion could possibly have merit.

One final thing: I promise I will shut up about this issue myself forevermore, for I have already said enough and I do not want to take advantage of your good will about all of this, but I make this promise stipulating that there is one exception to this promise:If Matt himself requests that I persuasively demonstrate to him how he actually did misread my post to Ashvin and then used that misreading to hold that very post up to ridicule as an example of what not to do, I will honor his request and speak of it one last time, otherwise, I am done with this.

So, I promise this, but I did have to get this off my chest as well, for it is angering to be held up to ridicule for any reason; it is doubly angering when an effort like mine to help a benefactor like Ashvin was completely mischaracterized and held up to ridicule. As you can see, I have sublimated this anger, but to suggest that his actions were not worthy of such anger suggests a naivete about life that I do not care to comment upon. Suffice it to say that I insist that he owes me an apology. Whether he will offer it or not is his choice, not mine. Now, I will go back to the real world, for my wife has major surgery tomorrow and I have already expended too much time here. But I did so as an act of friendship because this site does terrific things for virtually all involved I am sure, which is why I honored it upthread with the dynamic title of a "Republic of Learning". But it cannot remain dynamic and vital if members who are involved in innocent interactions with other members are suddenly accosted and abused, whether intentionally or unintentionally, by people who are supposed to know better, and if you allow this to occur, this site will be of little real worth in the final analysis. There, I am done, and I will speak no more of this forever, with one exception of course: If Matt asks me to. Otherwise, I leave this ongoing debate, assuming you wish to have one, to the rest of you. And, since this issue is finally not about personalities at all,but about wise rules, I have no hard feelings towards Matt, whatever he decides, for I imagine he has pride too, and he may conclude that no proof could convince him that he erred. If so, I obviously disagree, but I also think if this is the case, then this part of the conflict is done with and we will be compelled to simply agree to disagree. I can live with that. Now I am definitely finished. Enjoy your debate or your silence. Your choices.

[Matt Weiner]

Obviously, the whole "discussion of moderating decisions" rule is suspended in this thread for the purpose of this discussion. That said, I'd rather see this thread not get turned into a fight about "was moderating decision X fair?" as much as a "was rule X used properly?" angle, if that makes any sense at all.

So, stop coming to this thread because a popular Internet person got banned. That's the elephant in the room here. Nobody would have made a peep if this was Generic Indiana High Schooler #292 getting banned for twenty-four hours for the exact same thing. You're trading on your insider cred to drum up outrage from people with ulterior motives, and it's precisely that sort of clique-forming and double standards that I'm trying to hold the line against.

Furthermore, don't demand that the staff apologize for enforcing the rules, and don't claim that your posts are intended as satire or jokes and then claim offense at people laughing at them, etc.

If people want to have a serious discussion of the rules and aims of this site, we're still here in this thread. Discussion of the specifics of one particular ban is, as Fred stated in opening this thread, over.

[Cheynem]

I'm not really sure what you're looking for, Coach Powers. I thought your banning (for a day!) was appropriate because you were being unnecessarily combative with a moderator. Can you succinctly sum up a rule change or a proposed rule that you would like to see?

[Edward Powers]

My so called combativeness was an effort at a reasoned response to Matt's prior ridicule of an innocent response of mine to Ashvin, which he completely misunderstood and then announced to the national community here how ridiculous and unreasonable i had been---and you say I was combative?

So, to be succinct, Administrators should always rise above the temptation to ridicule, a form of serious combativeness unworthy of an administrator, I think, and if they cannot, they should at least have the intellectual courage to engage in a rigorous and respectful discussion with those they have so characterized, otherwise their provocations then turn into Catch 22's, for to assume that posters on this site should simply slither away because a person with great power has made a request that amounts to an unwarranted threat is to expect people here to lack self-respect, a highly tenuous proposition.

Brief commentary on this succinct statement: Only a bureaucrat would argue that rules exist for the sake of rules; thinking people understand that rules exist to serve the ultimate purposes of the community they serve, and if rules are deployed to simply exercise arbitrary power and silence those who disagree with such arbitrariness, then everyone on this site who has any degree of self-respect is put into the Catch 22 mentioned---either accept the arbitrary use of power and be silent, or, challenge it respectfully and be banned then ridiculed further without having the power to respond. Since i have self-respect, as I assume you do, I responded, first with an apology, then an analysis of where I thought Matt erred.

But I have explained all of this already and I only responded because you addressed me directly.

[Matt Weiner]

You were told to stop posting about this. No more warnings if you don't comply.

[Edward Powers]

Matt,

I honestly could care less about your ban---I was upset by the prior undeserved ridicule---yet I just admitted you might have honestly thought you were doing your job, hence my effort to understand that you have pride as do I and that we could agree to disagree and leave the specific details alone forevermore, so I too understand why Fred suggested we focus on rules and not a specific rehashing of a specific decision. But now you suggest that I am involved with some clique and I am trying to provoke rage? Are you that sensitive that you believe that any intellectual challenge to you is a sign of conspiracy to aid some clique, and not, instead, a respectuful effort to engage you? And then you tell me a myriad of ways in which I should not post? You might intimidate others in this way, but you have failed with me because you are sooooo off target.

And I am sorry you took the discussion in this direction, for it is completely unfounded. I posted as I did for 2 reasons: to question the silence of the community on an issue I thought was worthy of the community, and then left it up to others to do so---I said I would stay out of it. And my second reason was to seek from you, man to man, an apology because i thought you were capable of assessing when you might have erred and if you had, I thought you might be man enough to do so. We all can make mistakes; I got extremely angry last year at ACF Fall at Brandeis and said things later that I regretted. Many others did as well, and some went onlne and were very angry indeed. That anger made me realize that it surely was counterproductive and I thought instead of anger, apologies were both wiser and were intrinsically the right thing to do, so I apologized, for I was indeed wrong. And others did as well, for in the long run, most if not all involved in that admitted fiasco realized that it was the interests of the larger community that really mattered, and guess what? The apologies had a healing effect and the controversy simply went away. And this is all in the archives if you care to investigate it. So, to continue, I thought an apology might heal things, and if you read my first long post above, you will see that I apologized to you for my sarcastic comment about your hermeneutical skills, while explaining the natural anger which led to that bit of sarcasm---your previous angry sarcasm that led to your nationwide use of me as a bad example and thus an object of ridicule. But the point is that I did apologize for that sarcasm, because I understand that 2 wrongs do not make a right. So, I thought you too could apologize. but in the end I did not insist upon it precisely because such things must always be voluntary. Thus my final idea was that we both have pride and if necessary we could agree to disagree, live and let live.

So, this will be my last word on this specific subject, and I have only elaborated because I do respect your role as Administrator and I wanted you to know that I said what I said for the specific reasons I said that I said them, and not because I have any ulterior motive or agenda. So please, rest assured there was nothing personal in what I wrote. and despite your obvious anger at me at this moment, I trust upon reflection you will see that I meant no harm to you, and if you think I did, I truly do apologize for that. I trust that in time you will understand this. In the meantime, I am done with this issue---I must be up in several hours to deal with the world outside this site. In the meantime, have a good year, especially with the NSC, and please re-examine the notion that I would ever be involved in any clique; I am fortunate if I can get 3 or 4 NJ Coaches to converse and organize anything simultaneously, so the notion that I might be in the middle of some nationwide clique to somehow do some kind of harm is an idea without any merit whatsoever.

Good night.

User was banned for a week for continuing to post about previous ban after several warnings not to. --mgmt

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

Since we're no longer discussing a certain incident, and it's also been made clear this thread is not meant to be used to discuss particular incidents (which is what it's mostly been used for anyway), I do wonder if maybe a feature like that could indeed exist on HSQB. In case it's not clear, what I'm proposing is a public discussion subforum that is used not only to discuss rules in general, but incidents in which those rules are enforced. I guess that forum could also include discussion of site features (like the very quiet blog on the front page of the site...) and other things pertaining to the way the site is run as well.

I think for one thing that would allow the discussions in this thread to be properly continued (and maybe more active considering there are probably some people who don't read this part of the board) and also hopefully keep people from sniping at board staff in the middle of other threads or maybe even preventing displeasure with a certain member of the board staff in general from interferring with discussions in unrelated threads. I originally thought about posting this after the unfortunate ending to a thread in the Politics forum last week, but I decided against it, but after reading this discussion I figure it can't hurt to at least throw the idea out there.

[theMoMA]

Admins, can we get some kind of tl;dr emoticon? In all seriousness, I'm as interested as anyone else in following this discussion, but the cost of keeping up with the conversation is quickly outstripping all interest. A little succinctness would be welcome.

[jonpin]

Since we're no longer discussing a certain incident, and it's also been made clear this thread is not meant to be used to discuss particular incidents (which is what it's mostly been used for anyway), I do wonder if maybe a feature like that could indeed exist on HSQB. In case it's not clear, what I'm proposing is a public discussion subforum that is used not only to discuss rules in general, but incidents in which those rules are enforced. I guess that forum could also include discussion of site features (like the very quiet blog on the front page of the site...) and other things pertaining to the way the site is run as well.

I think for one thing that would allow the discussions in this thread to be properly continued (and maybe more active considering there are probably some people who don't read this part of the board) and also hopefully keep people from sniping at board staff in the middle of other threads or maybe even preventing displeasure with a certain member of the board staff in general from interferring with discussions in unrelated threads. I originally thought about posting this after the unfortunate ending to a thread in the Politics forum last week, but I decided against it, but after reading this discussion I figure it can't hurt to at least throw the idea out there.

I can't think of a good thing that will result from this. Such forum will consist of 60% drama and martyrdom, 25% reasoned explanation of obvious bans, and 15% insanity. It will also not at all stop people from sniping at board staff in the middle of other threads.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I'd like to make a post identifying several things that have annoyed me about recent discussions on HSQB. Among other things, I plan to condemn posts where people complain about clues being "too hard" just because they happen to know that clue, condemn several common logical fallacies that I see over and over, and then exhort people about not making those kinds of posts. I also want to make a thread in College Discussions about common flaws in communications I see in the quizbowl community (mostly in tournament announcements and emails sent out over team listhosts) and provide advice on how to write more clearly.

Will I be banned for "telling people how to post?"

[Matt Weiner]

To reiterate a fine line that we've dealt with before, discussing communication in the abstract is fine, specifying the tone of message board posts or particular posts is not. After all, it's equally unproductive to complain about power placement in a face-to-face context. So, if your post conforms to your plan here, I don't anticipate any problems.

[Cheynem]

Your latter point about communication in announcements and team list-servs is really interesting to me, as this is something I would like to see some discussion over. I have never held an official post on my team but have sent out a number of administrative e-mails and occasionally worry about my wording.

[Black-throated Antshrike]

To reiterate a fine line that we've dealt with before, discussing communication in the abstract is fine, specifying the tone of message board posts or particular posts is not. After all, it's equally unproductive to complain about power placement in a face-to-face context. So, if your post conforms to your plan here, I don't anticipate any problems.

Hypothetically, if were to post in a discussion thread, let's say pseudonyms or powers or whatever, would it be over the line to say something along the lines of "... and don't just post saying 'no' without giving any reasons to why you hate whatever is being discussed"

[Matt Weiner]

Yes; that's exactly the co-opting of moderator privileges that the rule is intended to bar.

I will admit that the whole issue of metaposting has become confused to some extent. It's never a good thing when people acting in good faith are not sure what is and is not prohibited, so I will ask the staff to try to come up with something a little more concrete (which will likely mean less restrictive).

[Howard]

The rules about post content do not apply, and never have applied, to board staff.

What exactly does this mean? That staff can say whatever they want and get away with it or something more specific like "staff can tell users how to post, non-staff can't".

This is certainly an interesting question, and I'd like clarification on this as well. And I find no reference to this idea in the forum rules. Does this mean it's a-ok for board staff to initiate ad hominem attacks and stifle actual tournament discussion? If not, an explanation about what specifics do not apply to board staff or subsets of board staff would certainly help the understanding of the board populace.

In the staff forum we're currently discussing (well, so far "we" is me and Jeff Hoppes) to what extent what Matt said is what any of us wants (and to what extent what Matt said could possibly be what Matt meant).

In my opinion, this is the issue that has resulted in the most recent blow-up in the first place. The specifics of the this issue aside, has there been any consensus on the above?

[Cheynem]

Hey Bruce, whatever happened to either of those threads you said you were going to make?

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Hey Bruce, whatever happened to either of those threads you said you were going to make?

One of them has been incorporated into arguments I've made in several tournament discussion threads. Basically look for any recent post in which I accuse people of playing "shout out every possible argument for my position", which is the "catchy" name I've assigned to one of the HSQB habits that annoy me most.