Nate Silver’s polling tracker now has Trump slightly favored to win (50.2%) the election. While this shift appears small, it has drawn attention because it pushes Trump just past the halfway mark in forecasts for winning the Electoral College.
Silver explains that while Trump’s rise over recent weeks is significant, and his polling model, is designed to minimize overreactions to new data to provide more accurate long-term predictions (i.e., it’s likely a “real” effect), this doesn’t in any way mean Trump “will” win, and the race remains highly competitive, especially in key states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which are critical to determining the outcome.
Another interpretation of the situation is that through the suppression of a point of view, that while unpopular, was objectively true; ultimately does have an editorial impact on what conversations do or do not happen. So when it comes to “the hive mind, mass downvotes and reports”, you quite literally made an editorial decision to suppress a particular point of view. Nothing Ozma was posting was out of line, but you took editorial issue with his posts and banned him.
That editorial moderation literally curated a culture of “the hive mind, mass downvotes and reports”, that poisons this forum to today, and has furthered a discussion culture which is dismissive/ in-denial of objective reality when it disagrees with their personal sentiment.
For better or for worse, you are the leader of this space. And I do see your logic in why you thought what you were doing was appropriate. However, a leader is ultimately responsible for outcomes.
You can say what you want about @[email protected], and you’ll have no concerns about doing so, but I consider him to be a very careful and judicious moderator. I don’t always agree with him, but he would be very, very low on my list of troubling moderators. I would even say that he’s a moderator that honestly tries to hold himself to a fairly consistent standard. He also explains himself readily if asked. You might disagree with his decisions or opinions, but I generally take him in good faith because he’s also very consistent in his moderation.
This comment is taking a very simplistic and, frankly, cheap shot at blaming one moderator for the collective behavior of an entire community. Moderation isn’t some magical lever that controls the thoughts and actions of thousands of people, yet the you try to pin the rise of “the hive mind, mass downvotes, and reports” squarely on one person’s decision – as though this behavior isn’t broadly distributed in society as a whole. It completely overlooks the natural evolution of any online forum, where people tend to form echo chambers, not because a moderator is pushing buttons behind the scenes, but because that’s just how group dynamics tend to work over time. Blaming it on a single moderater is an easy, surface-level explanation that ignores that fact.
A moderator’s role is to ensure conversations follow the rules and don’t spiral out of control, not to curate the perfect philosophical debate. Forums are shaped by their users as much as, if not more than, by their moderators. People downvote what they disagree with, reports happen because of collective sentiment, not because one person is playing puppet master behind the scenes. The real issue isn’t a ban or a moderator’s leadership—it’s the way communities tend to self-regulate and often become more insular on their own.
I think every thing you said is very fair and generally accurate.
I disagree specifically with what I consider a major moderation decision.
A decision from which you’ve concluded that it “literally curated a culture of ‘the hive mind, mass downvotes and reports’, that poisons this forum to today, and has furthered a discussion culture which is dismissive/ in-denial of objective reality when it disagrees with their personal sentiment.”
That seems pretty unlikely, don’t you think?