Clearance Items

Reading through this it is clearly an attack on Eric by Sifferkoll and Zephir.

Eric has explained his position and clarified matters but the attack is sustained.

My take aways from this;

Sifferkoll and Zephir are not interested in Eric’s explanations, we have gone past that, yet the attack is sustained. Maybe they are trying to put pressure on Eric. We know Alan is going on holiday so maybe now is a good time. Maybe they want to be banned to prove Eric is “unreasonable”. Sifferkoll is clever, but is he as clever as he thinks he is?

Sifferkol as a moderator would be a disaster, he always brings anarchy and chaos (see “debate” over last 3 pages).

Zephir to use his own words sees the world in terms of “patoskeptics” and “haters” and “twaddlers”.

Again not a great start for someone to proclaim about how to moderate a site.

Sifferkol and Zephir clearly have a hit list of Mary, Dewey and anyone else they don’t like the look of.

In fact any time Mary posts anything Zephir pops up with a ripost, usually without content but surely insulting and sometimes personal. This is something I referred to earlier where trolling turns into bullying. It’s a personal thing of mine that I don’t like bullies.

Sifferkol has been quoting from Animal Farm lately which is ironic given what they are trying to do to this forum.

Most discussion boards have an "argue in public with a moderator on moderation matters and you'll get suspended/banned"-kind of policy for a reason, so I'm sort of surprised that this meta-discussion is still going on.

Quote from Eric Walker

Zephir_AWT : I encourage you to seek out another forum. Please go.

The difference between Eric and Zephir is that I'll not miss Eric.

The problem with pathoskeptics like yugo isn't their skepticism as such. Me, Jed and many others have plenty arguments how to prove our stance. But I'm not engaged in discussion with these accounts intentionally from good reason.

This reason is the fact, the (discussions with these) LENR opponents attract gray zone of another unqualified but bored people, who are interested just about social aspect of trolling and frog&mice battles - no matter of actual subject. We can recognize these people by their comment history, as they don't post links to scientific articles and they're avoiding all just a bit more specialized topics, until yugo or another diligent pathoskeptic hadn't visited them. Such an users also often create multiple dummy sockpuppets for to influence the discussion with karma - so you can spot them by their voting habits. The problem of flooding of forum with frog&mice battles could be partially solved by dedication of few threads for these flamewars and by consequential transferring all off-topic posts into them in similar way, like Walker is still doing. But it's work-consuming, it breaks the logics of discussion in threads and finally the problem with global decrease of the membership level will persist anyway.

The problem with influx of the LENR-hostile people to the LENR-friendly forum is similar to influx of Islamists into an Europe and it should be handled similarly: simply banning them, their ideological leaders at the first line.

These people will not get convinced about opposite stance here and the principles of naive democracy will not work here.

Just my POV on this useful (though at times repetitive) debate.

Eric's openness to state and justify moderation principles is welcomed by me because I am in favour of transparency. There are reasons for secrecy - but fear of confrontation is IMHO never a good one amongst civilised people. Where participants here are not civilised there are the means to remove them. Unlike Alan, I don't see this as rising to the bait - although there is moderation in all things and no doubt Eric may on occasion add to a repetitive debate when it would be wiser to leave it be. We are all imperfect.

Different people have very different views as to what is useful in (any) form on this topic. It is quite clear that Sifferkoll and Zephir have a different idea about this from the LF mods. I would agree with the LF mods in this. I also applaud their efforts doing a difficult and thankless job. One difference relates to character. Personally I have a very thick skin. People can (and do) insult me as much as they like and it will not deter me. I do eventually stop if my only interlocutor is unable or uninterested in listening to what I have to say, but my tolerance for presenting my views when I feel they are clearly deducible from public evidence, and giving the reasons for this is high. I guess that is because I tend to assume (often incorrectly) that given such such a logical argument others will either identify assumptions etc not shared, and we can agree to disagree, or end up agreeing. This is not how it works with some, because they tend to assume that anyone disagreeing with them must have bad motives. I see that as their problem, because in dismissing those with different views they lose information, and in spending effort working out weird conspiracies they waste time.

Re the (not double standard) priviledges for principal actors. This is pretty obviously sensible and is pragmatic, not ideological. Who here would want to stop Rossi or Darden from making authenticated comments here no matter how impolite they were? Dewey is close to Darden (though not identical) and thus deserves some tolerance. I agree that he very seldom says things that are useful, and that he often uses gratuitous insult. In fact his use of insult is counterproductive as PR. But, he is who he is, his motives FWIW are transparent, and he discloses useful information we otherwise would not have.

Re the (graduated standard) greater priviledges for those who are useful. I'm less comfortable with this. Personally I'd reckon the people I don't think are useful here do improper things more often than those I do think are useful, so the same standard applied everywhere is fine. Perhaps it is more a question of taking the average badness so as not to overreact by banning a person normally useful who has an atypical and short regression to non-useful behaviour?

Re pathoskeptics. It is not a useful word. I judge Mary by the expertise and facts she brings to matters, and by how she argues. She has a limited area in which she brings expertise, but it is useful because otherwise unrepresented. Her views are highly predictable, but that does not matter. her arguments are clear and where you disagree with her assumptions you know the conclusions don't follow. She is deemed a pathoskeptic because of here willingness to be very definite about certain things most would not be so definite about. That is identical to Jed, who similar shows great certainty in ways that others would not. I'm not willing to call Jed a patho-believer, though I have learnt not to accept his views at face value, and similarly Mary. Of the two, Mary brings less knowledge to the table than Jed but also she is more transparent in her arguments, so it is easier to interpret her statements and get whatever relevance they have.

Those who get inflamed about loud skeptics (e.g. me) are I think just thin-skinned. In personal relationships tact is important. In any discourse to find the external truth tact is generally not helpful - freedom of speech does a much better job of finding what is real.