[Yaakov ben Avraham]

Well, its quite obvious Blanko is an anti-Semite. In Germany or Austria, he would probably get arrested. I can't even report blatant insults without being threatened with a ban. I have avoided insults of my own, and have used the report feature, only to be told not to. But if I insult, I get banned. You people are a sorry excuse for a moderation team, or even for human beings.

[Blanko]

You people are a sorry excuse [...] for human beings.

Good enough for me. I literally just warned you too. Don't worry, there's always Daniel's FES. Here's to hoping we won't reunify any time soon :^)

[Yaakov ben Avraham]

See, that is what I'm getting at. You hate Jews. Don't bother to lie and say you don't.

[Tau]

See, that is what I'm getting at. You hate Jews. Don't bother to lie and say you don't.

No. I'm willing to believe they hate you, but they don't hate jews. There's a difference. You constantly break the rules, vocally advocate genocide, and are just generally the digital embodiment of Poe's Law. You really shouldn't be surprised if the mods keep a close eye on you.

As for

I can't even report blatant insults without being threatened with a ban. I have avoided insults of my own, and have used the report feature, only to be told not to

Using the report feature and abusing the report feature are two very different things. You can't just report everything someone posts five times. That's not the point. When you report someone, assuming the mods feel you have a valid point, the person you reported gets a warning and gets watched. Spamming the report button just makes it impossible for the mods to do their job.

[Blanko]

See, that is what I'm getting at. You hate Jews. Don't bother to lie and say you don't.

I don't have anything against Jews in general, but believe what you want. See you in two months.

Also, fyi: mister bickles did get warned for personal insults, and his behaviour improved immediately afterwards. I'm sorry the same cannot be said of you, which is why we have to keep banning you.

[Pete Svarrior]

First things first: I'm going to step in and say I find 2 months unreasonable. Yes, he is a repeat offender, and he doesn't even try to change, but we can't just keep extending the bans in length in an attempt to force him out of the forum. That's not what we're about. Bans should primarily serve as a means of rehabilitation. For starters, I'm going to scale it down quite severely (down to 2 weeks), and I'm going to start a discussion in the mod forum to see if we can agree on reasonable future action.

Now, to address some of the things said by Yaakov. I'm largely in agreement with Blanko and Tausami. First things first, anti-Semitism is not against the rules of this forum. Neither are your blatantly Islamophobic remarks. We embrace the principle of freedom of speech to an extent that some may consider extreme. The purpose of this forum is to allow discussion as close to unrestricted as possible, and we're going to do it both in cases you like (talking about how Carthage must fall, and how all Muslims should die or leave land you think belongs to you, or whatever) and those you dislike (when others treat your own ethnicity with the exact same contempt you demonstrate to others). If you don't like the way someone talks about Jews here, I have 3 recommendations for you:

• Avoid the poster. You may want to consider putting them on your ignore list.
• Grow a thicker spine.
• Stop spamming the mod report function. Receiving 9 e-mails from you on the same day on the same subject is not helpful. Especially so when you report someone for "ethno-religious hatred" or "comparing you to the Christian devil which you don't believe in". Dude, I don't care what you do or don't believe in, calling you the devil is hardly an offence.

As Blanko pointed out, mister bickles has been warned, and his response was quite promising - he edited the offending post and refrained from further personal attacks. Again, this is bearing in mind that speaking lowly of an ethnicity is not an offence under current rules. If it were, you would have been permabanned months ago. No, I don't care if you think Jews are great and Muslims are wicked - we're going to treat you equally to everyone else here.

What's particularly funny is that while looking through the post you reported (and the context surrounding them), I found many more problems with your own posts than those of bickles. For one, your open accusation of paedophilia is ban-worthy by itself. The problem you're facing here is not anti-Semitism, but cognitive dissonance. You expect us to reduce the others' rights to unrestricted expression while expanding your own.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Remember when FES would just keep banning shitposters until they gave up on shitposting? Benjamin Franklin remembers.

[Ghost of V]

Personally, I think the mod team is a bit hard on Yaakov, and I wouldn't go as far to call him a shit poster.... bickles,  on the other hand..

[Pete Svarrior]

Personally, I think the mod team is a bit hard on Yaakov

I do hope to find a good alternative to banning him over and over again, one that would be more with lines of the actual goals of moderation. I just made a thread about it in our top secret forum.

However, it's really hard to argue with the fact that he completely ignores any and all warnings. We can't relax the rules on him just because he breaks them more than everyone else combined. I'd sooner believe that we are (or at least I am) unfair on Thork than that we're unfair on Yaakov.

[Blanko]

Personally, I think the mod team is a bit hard on Yaakov, and I wouldn't go as far to call him a shit poster.... bickles,  on the other hand..

Influenced by Daniel's forum a bit too much, perhaps? It really doesn't matter which poster is more shit, what matters is that Yaakov breaks the rules and bickles doesn't.

[Thork]

I'd sooner believe that we are (or at least I am) unfair on Thork than that we're unfair on Yaakov.

[Ghost of V]

Personally, I think the mod team is a bit hard on Yaakov, and I wouldn't go as far to call him a shit poster.... bickles,  on the other hand..

Influenced by Daniel's forum a bit too much, perhaps? It really doesn't matter which poster is more shit, what matters is that Yaakov breaks the rules and bickles doesn't.

This has nothing to do with Daniel's forum.

Yaakov encourages intelligent discussion, while bickles is just a reactionary shock troll. One has far more quality than the other.

What rules does Yaakov break specifically? The main one I notice is excessive personal insults after a certain turning point in some of his discussions.

[Blanko]

What rules does Yaakov break specifically? The main one I notice is excessive personal insults after a certain turning point in some of his discussions.

Yes, that one.

[Blanko]

First things first: I'm going to step in and say I find 2 months unreasonable.

I thought I'd remembered that we had settled on a policy of escalating ban lengths previously, and it looks like there was in fact a general consensus for it in the EJ thread in the staff forum. You were also in favour of it at the time, have you changed your mind about that since then?

[Pete Svarrior]

I thought I'd remembered that we had settled on a policy of escalating ban lengths previously, and it looks like there was in fact a general consensus for it in the EJ thread in the staff forum. You were also in favour of it at the time, have you changed your mind about that since then?

Yes. With EJ, my thought was that it would eventually work and he'd turn into a poster that doesn't constantly break rules. It kind of worked, but it kind of didn't. Now we're seeing it not work again, so I'm of the view that I was previously wrong.

[Lord Dave]

I find myself with a bit of seemingly circular reasoning about this.

Personal insults are not ok. 
Anti-jew is ok. (I hate the word anti-semite when referring only to Jews)
But if you're talking to a Jew, isn't it the same thing?

Example:
All Jews are greedy and arrogant.
Yakkov is a Jew
Therefore, Yakkov is greedy and arrogant.

The first statement is anti-jew and not against the rules.
The second statement is a fact (as far as we know).
So by calling him a Jew or just knowing he's a Jew, I'm making a personal attack, albeit not directly. 

But this can apply to any anti-(whatever) talk.  So where is the line?  How do I differentiate a personal attack from anti-(whatever)?

[Pete Svarrior]

I feel that the answer, at least in this particular case, is already covered by the rule.

Keep your posts civil and to the point, and don't insult others. If you have run out of valid contributions, simply do not post.

When the point of a thread is to discuss an ethnicity, it's understandable that there will be posts there discussing said ethnicity, both in positive and negative terms. It would not be to the point to start spamming that thread with "ur a dum-dum" or calling someone a paedophile (as Yaakov did). If you choose to actively discuss your own ethnicity, we can't ban people from criticising it on the off-chance that you might get offended. If we did, that would give Yaakov the right to put a blanket ban on any and all criticisms of Israel purely because he'd post in them.

[xasop]

I started writing this before pizaaplanet replied, but I feel it fleshes out the answer a little more, so I'm going to post it anyway.

But this can apply to any anti-(whatever) talk.  So where is the line?  How do I differentiate a personal attack from anti-(whatever)?

This may not be a complete answer, but my approach is to consider whether the post is contributing to or detrimenting from the discussion. For example, when debating the shape of the Earth with Yaakov, making anti-Jewish remarks is completely irrelevant to the subject at hand and only serves as a thinly-veiled personal attack, so that would be against the rules. However, in a thread specifically discussing Jews, making anti-Jewish remarks would be entirely reasonable and on-topic, provided they are directed at Yaakov's arguments rather than at Yaakov himself.

Now, if someone is incapable of making that distinction and takes any derogatory comments towards their race or religion as personal attacks, they should probably avoid creating or participating in threads discussing those issues. We will create and enforce rules to keep discussions on topic; we will not create and enforce rules to compensate for a thin skin.

[Lord Dave]

provided they are directed at Yaakov's arguments rather than at Yaakov himself.

This is the best and clearest distinction of the rule, in my opinion.  Thanks.

[mister bickles]

When the point of a thread is to discuss an ethnicity, it's understandable that there will be posts there discussing said ethnicity, both in positive and negative terms. It would not be to the point to start spamming that thread with "ur a dum-dum" or calling someone a paedophile (as Yaakov did). If you choose to actively discuss your own ethnicity, we can't ban people from criticising it on the off-chance that you might get offended. If we did, that would give Yaakov the right to put a blanket ban on any and all criticisms of Israel purely because he'd post in them.

This may not be a complete answer, but my approach is to consider whether the post is contributing to or detrimenting from the discussion. For example, when debating the shape of the Earth with Yaakov, making anti-Jewish remarks is completely irrelevant to the subject at hand and only serves as a thinly-veiled personal attack, so that would be against the rules. However, in a thread specifically discussing Jews, making anti-Jewish remarks would be entirely reasonable and on-topic, provided they are directed at Yaakov's arguments rather than at Yaakov himself.

Now, if someone is incapable of making that distinction and takes any derogatory comments towards their race or religion as personal attacks, they should probably avoid creating or participating in threads discussing those issues. We will create and enforce rules to keep discussions on topic; we will not create and enforce rules to compensate for a thin skin

let's not "beat about the bush" here, shall we? 

jews like "dishing it out" but they don't like "returning fire";

that's why certain countries have laws against "Holocaust denial" and why the great bulk of racial/religious vilification and anti-discrimination laws were concocted by and largely concern jews exclusively....

IOW: they're, mostly, a sham! 

because you can, pretty much, get away with "hate speech" (a jew-invented non-term) against many different 'minorities' but not against jews.....that is, usually, when the full weight of the "law" comes crashing down on you...

and...indeed...this is no new thing....even going as far back as Medieval times.....

these children of the Devil try to make every-one think that they are a poor, oppressed minority......
(when, in fact, they are a super-rich, super-privileged minority....for instance, the average deceased estate of a gentile/white European American-Australian-Brit'-Canadian-New Zealander is, usually, some-thing less than $50K......not including the family home [the value of which may vary depending on the real estate market].....OTOH......the average, deceased estate of a jew is some-thing in the vicinity of $¾ million....and....that is a conservative estimate)

mean-while they continue playing their "Holocaust" violins for all and sundry.....
(whilst extorting and blackmailing gentile nations like Switzerland, Germany and the US for $gazillions$ )

but.....what "anti-semitism" really is is a "get out of gaol free card" which gives jews carte blanche to commit any atrocious crime or treasonable act they like and, then, get off 'scot free' !

as the old saying goes: the jew cries out in pain as he strikes you   

oy vey!

votz not tuh likke, eh?


to find out who rules over you, discover who you can't criticise
(Voltaire)