this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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The Agora

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In the spirit of the Ancient Greek Agora, we invite you to join our vibrant community - a contemporary meeting place for the exchange of ideas, inspired by the practices of old. Just as the Agora served as the heart of public life in Ancient Athens, our platform is designed to be the epicenter of meaningful discussion and thought-provoking dialogue.

Here, you are encouraged to speak your mind, share your insights, and engage in stimulating discussions. This is your opportunity to shape and influence our collective journey, just like the free citizens of Athens who gathered at the Agora to make significant decisions that impacted their society.

You're not alone in your quest for knowledge and understanding. In this community, you'll find support from like-minded individuals who, like you, are eager to explore new perspectives, challenge their preconceptions, and grow intellectually.

Remember, every voice matters and your contribution can make a difference. We believe that through open dialogue, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to discovery, we can foster a community that embodies the democratic spirit of the Agora in our modern world.

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Hey all,

As discussed here, I am looking for 3 new moderators to help with this community.

Please review this post and vote for the candidate you would like to see help on this community.

In no particular order, the candidates are:

I invite you to review users post history when deciding on voting.

This thread will be open for 72 hours (until Friday June 23rd, 8PM ET) at which point voting will stop. Any votes after this time will not be counted. I will try to lock this thread after that time so people do not accidentally continue voting.

Everyone gets 1 vote, including the users being considered. The top 3 will be given mod powers of this community to help with organization of discussions and votes.

Please vote by calling the persons name. For example, if I you wanted to vote for TheDude you would reply with: TheDude

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[–] WillOfTheWest 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Yea @imaqtpie, Yea @annegreen, Yea @Seraph089.

From account history they have good engagement.

Nay @Apytele, Nay @sweetholymosiah.

Limited engagement. Can't really comment on them yet.

Nay @goat, Nay @difficult_bit_1339.

Actively enshittening Agora and flame warring since its inception. @goat is evidently some manner of troll and "controversy" isn't a selling point for moderation. This is an alt for his burggit account; he's butted heads with admins over there because not allowing gore isn't "free".

[–] goat 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That wasn't my argument at all.

My entire argument on burggit was that I found it hypocritical for the admins there to be banning gore-related content because they personally found it unsavory, while still allowing Loli-content which many others find equally unsavory and many who have asked them to tone it down.

Your link is broken, this is the link to my Burggit account (Be warned, Burggit has Loli porn and content similar to it)

Controversy isn't a selling point of moderation in most cases, true. However, the prime function of Agora is to encourage diverse debate, even when that means challenging views you disagree with. Having a bias in moderation will cause nothing but a multitude of issues down the line.

As for "flamewarring" -- I don't insult other members or tell them they're wrong, despite often being the crux of insults and ridicule myself. I believe I've proven that I can handle being challenged, something that most other candidates have not shown yet (with the exception of Imaq and Bit, of course)

You can also only vote once.


Your vote will be thrown out if you don't narrow it down, I recommend @[email protected]

[–] WillOfTheWest 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My entire argument on burggit...

Your argument was that an unsavoury instance was against hosting your personal flavour of unsavoury content; hence you felt the need to browbeat instead of simply finding a better instance.

This appears to be your main method of "engagement" in discussion: incessantly hammer on your point, making persistent bad-faith invitations to "debate," then when you rile up the user to the point of them flaming you, you claim that you're remaining civil. It's called sealioning, it's a common enough trolling phenomenon that there exists an often cited web-comic about it..

Co-existing in a space isn't an open invitation for you to repeatedly argue the same point past a persons point of comfort, for the sake of your personal definition of "debate". When it's clear the debate has run its course and the person is clearly being emotionally effected, if you persist then you're acting in bad faith.

[–] goat -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your argument was that an unsavoury instance was against hosting your personal flavour of unsavoury content; hence you felt the need to browbeat instead of simply finding a better instance.

Your interpretation falls apart when I have found a better instance; sh.itjust.works

Nor am I sealioning, that isn't even what sealioning is. Sealioning constantly asks for sources, feigning ignorance when produced with a counterpoint and dismissing a user's points.

I make a deliberate attempt to not sealion, by often asking the other user if they'd like to continue the discussion, if they're comfortable, asking about common interests or things we can agree upon and conceding and agreeing with their points without questioning them as a person -- All of this is public information you can check.

I have been proven wrong many times, and I admit when I am. Most who I have a lengthy discussion with tend to come to a certain agreement or mutual understanding.

[–] WillOfTheWest 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I make a deliberate attempt to not sealion,

spoiler"Where is the evidence for that opinion?"

"But doesn’t [x] really mean [y]?"

"What about [other issue]—how do you explain that?"

"What’s wrong with a polite question?"

"I’m just trying to engage in civil debate."

This series of questions may seem like a well-intentioned search for answers. It’s not—it’s a simplified example of a rhetorical strategy called sealioning. Sealioning is an intentional, combative performance of cluelessness. Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.

Amy Johnson, The Multiple Harms of Sea Lions :::

You're sealioning in this very thread; you're just feigning ignorance and exploiting the fact that a term originating from a webcomic isn't well defined. Here you are incessantly replying in multiple comment chains, asking asinine rhetorical questions, insisting you just want an open discussion, and making sure to explicitly mention how civil you have remained. The only point of contention is that you're asking rhetorical questions instead of asking for evidence.

It's abundantly clear what you're doing. I've given my points, you've countered. It's in a public forum that others can access and make their own judgment. My standard for engaging discussion doesn't include chasing comment chains and rebutting throwaway remarks only to have them slightly rephrased or framed in a flimsy example. I will not engage with you after this comment.

[–] goat -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Asinine rhetorical questions? bruh, I'm defending myself from your insults and falsehoods. And yeah, I'm responding to comment chains, so what? I want to hear what people say; I'm a candidate. I'm already learning a lot.

Truthfully, I think you're sealioning, at least according to your moving definitions, which you've already changed.

You only have 6 comments on Agora in the past day, all of which contain you attacking others.

And you've also listed your information incorrectly twice, both my burggit account and Bit's comment chain. I like the Bit thread a lot since you make claims about Bit despite not knowing what the deleted comments contained.


But hey, let's read through this paper anywho!

Sealioning, which can be performed by a single user or as a tag-team effort, may feel familiar: it evokes the toddler who incessantly asks why, the adolescent who has just discovered philosophy, the condescending family member who disapproves of your life choices.

Questions—shaped by explicit or implicit expectations about who has the right to question and who can be questioned about what—impose labor by demanding the questioned party either answer or appear indifferent; providing explanations and maintaining patience takes time and effort

What a nice broad definition, this can include everything -- convenient! But condescending and denying people the ability to question you? Sounds familiar, perhaps the very same that calls others trolls, bad-faith actors and sealions whenever they disagreed with you.

Oh, and uhhhh... This is really embarrassing, but you're also sealioning by your very own paper, oops.

On the other, sealioning exploits threading capabilities and often launches through search. A social media platform with comprehensive search functions is a database in which every word is indexed, and every public word retrievable. Keyword searches thus become scouting tools for attacks.

Like you listing my burggit account (having to find my separate account that I've never linked before), you listing deleted comments from a large comment chain.

(Honestly this is a stupid definition. Using the search function is sealioning? Fuck off with that, Amy Johnson.)

my take? Sealioning is just a narcissist person's argument to get out of one or deny anyone shooting them down. As you said yourself:

Co-existing in a space isn’t an open invitation for you to repeatedly argue the same point past a persons point of comfort, for the sake of your personal definition of “debate”. When it’s clear the debate has run its course and the person is clearly being emotionally effected, if you persist then you’re acting in bad faith.

Ah, the irony~

[–] Cannacheques 1 points 1 year ago

I'm actually going to have to agree with you there as I've personally flip flopped on this issue a few times, but I look at it like some gore is acceptable, whereas a lot more Japanese anime porn tends to hit the creepy-crawlies mark

[–] god 0 points 1 year ago

admins on burggit actually allow "guro" which is kinda gore but anime version

your link to goat's profile is wrong, here's a second try

[–] god 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

clarify on difficult bit pl0x

[–] WillOfTheWest 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here he is actively flaming/trolling in Main Community and Agora. He even states he's willingly losing sleep because he likes arguing so much. Just because the person you're disagreeing with is being salty doesn't mean you have a free ticket to stoop to that level. It's not moderator-worthy conduct.

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/282908

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/291136

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/291609

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/303830

[–] god 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I checked. Maybe you can enlighten me because apart from being against the idea of willfully defederating instances & making note of OPs conflictive way of talking, I don't see what you see. Maybe you're conflating the fact that you disagree with his words with your idea of "flaming & trolling".

[–] WillOfTheWest 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a bad faith interpretation of my comment. Note that I did not link to every single instance of him being against defederation, as the issue isn't him stating an opinion. The problem is the sarcastic and aggressive way in which he chooses to interact with other users; sarcastically calling for defederation from lemmy.world because he saw a racist meme, and stating that he's up at 3am losing sleep because he loves arguing with idiots.

If you are being flamed, you report. Stooping to their level makes you no better.

[–] god 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

More than responding to your comment, I'm also reading his profile. You mention that the problems are sarcasm and aggressiveness. I don't have anything at all against sarcasm. And the aggressiveness I see is against someone who was being very aggressive, and even then it was measured, in what seems to be an amused reaction to someone being unreasonably triggered.

Anyway, I read until page 4 and I'm not going to spend more time on this. I won't go too deep into this, but 20 minutes of research was enough to tell me I disagree with you. I spent like 3 minutes trying to write some way to "justify my position", but I don't really feel like doing that. Let's call it a day, too much time spent on this for me at least.

[–] WillOfTheWest 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's fine. I stick by my philosophy that stooping to someone else's level makes you no better. I'm not in this to change minds; this isn't some /r/changemyview substitute. I'm offering examples which I find make him a bad choice for mod, and it's up to individuals to assess whether those posted examples are acceptable conduct for a moderator.

Have a good I agree it's too much time; I'm also getting too many notifications while overleaf is open. Have a good one.

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

stooping to someone else’s level makes you no better

tbh i read his msgs and i didn't see him "stoop" to chalkman's level, chalkman was insulting ppl and being unreasonably mad @ everyone who disagreed w him & DB seemed to simply be trying to counter chalkman's points while also showing that chalkman was not being reasonable.

in his profile DB seems to like free speech while he also shows that he understands that there are limits to free speech. I think the defed-EH thread was just him trying to stand his ground against what he saw was a breach.

[–] goat -2 points 1 year ago

I haven't stooped to the levels of some people calling me names, yet you still don't like my speech. Doesn't seem too fair, no?

[–] goat -2 points 1 year ago

Your comments are missing a lot of context.

I happened to interact with Chalkman (I believe they may have been banned from the community), and every single response of theirs was nothing but insults. If you want to defend a banned user whose content you can't even see, I guess that's your right.

Do find it strange though how you hold me accountable for trolling as well when during my interactions, I haven't stooped to the same level of insults. I've been called worse than shit on a boot, a troll by many, a fascist, etc, etc~

What level of discussion are you even searching for? I know that your top pick, imaq, has even had negative experiences and even hostility towards certain users.