@Sarah ask Jack or @Jon to explain it to you. I will be curious to see if either is willing to step out of his believed "truth" to do so.
@Sarah it did come across as a soapbox or pulpit, just like many of his answers. I see no desire to seek truth there; rather, he already "knows" the truth. Read more of his posts..
@Sarah I realize you were trying to help. You removed a portion of the problem but, alas, left quite a bit in place too. And look at his comments there now -- this is typical of him, go on at length to evangelize even beyond his lengthy posts. If you want to rein him in then in addition to edits you need to confront him and/or flag his inappropriate comments. (Not just him, but he's the problem de juer.)
@Sarah I'm serious when I said ask Jack or Jon. It will be an interesting test. Anybody who cannot understand and express what could be offensive about fulfillment/suprcession claims is probably not qualified to administer a site that claims to be pluralistic (or insert other "open to all" adjective of your choice).
@Sarah I am not going to waste my time building up a Christian site. I know the claims are false, I don't need to be right on the internet, but so long as I'm trapped here I'm darn well going to oppose offensive content.
@Sarah but that's not the title of the question -- the text that's on the front page, in tweets, in the weekly newsletter if we're not careful, in Google...
@MonicaCellio Do you see that the best way to do that from where you are is to counter the claims with well supported logical answers from your perspective, not by reacting.
@MonicaCellio IF the conversation moves beyond a statement at a time and response I get lost in the conversation as we end up having multiple conversations going on.
@MonicaCellio I understand how very frustrating that must be and I do pray that for you.
@MonicaCellio I still get lost
@MonicaCellio Until, or unless that happens can you be like Joseph. Can you rise to the top even as you have with well thought out responses,not reactions. Do you see flaws in the logic--call them out!
But I think I'm done trying to explain anyway. Until y'all do something about the obnoxious evangelism on this site -- or just admit it and declare it a Christian site -- I'm not going to contribute content, giving a gift to your online church. There are plenty of places where my contributions will actually do some good. Here they are doing harm -- the last thing I'm going to do is give more of them.
I'll call out flaws in comments as I feel inclined. I know rhet won't take them to heart (just like Mike Bull in that regard); if I comment it's for the Google audience.
But mostly I'll downvote/vote to delete the crap, vote to close what doesn't fit, edit offense when I can, look at things that certain other top users point out, and that's pretty much it as far as main is concerned until something changes.
Jack wanted "all of me or none of me", but he'll just have to live with disappointment.
And if that disappoints you too @Sarah, sorry about that. You're a good person trying to do the right thing and I wish you much luck.
@MonicaCellio My husband just returned so I have to go. But, I leave you with this. Comments are cheap (do not require strong support). Thus they are a shallow venue for countering the things that are disturbing you here. Get in there tight with your God,--He who aided your ancestors and ask him for help.Then get in there and honestly reflect what specific flaws you see in logic.Anything else makes it appear that you are not able to do so.Think about it. ( Treat others as you want to be treated. )
@MonicaCellio At least two mods have agreed that your current edit pattern is more disruptive than it needs to be. 10 a day not only dominates the home page but it drags it out so it dominates every day. We would like to see them happen either as a much slower trickle that gets lost in the noise or just do them all at once already and be done with it. One flood and not having to keep working around them would be less disruptive than the current state.
If that goes contrary to any specific instructions from SE I'd be happy to make this case to whoever it was for you.
@Caleb ok. Robert said not to do them all at once but I presume that was because of the disruption factor, so if you say otherwise I'll do that. 10/day is a pattern I've seen on other sites (and, for that matter, on this one) for systematic edits like tag cleanups, which is why I did that. I'm not interested in dragging this out by going the "trickle" route, so please confirm that you're asking me to do the remainder all at once.
@Monica I've removed those comments as I don't think that's a helpful discussion to have in here right now. Perhaps ask the person to speak with you one-to-one if you think that might be helpful instead.
As a young lad, I studied the Bible and used to drive my parents, grandparents, pastors, priests and strangers on the train mad with my questions about what I read
@JackDouglas neither - that's when I set that as no. 7 dream
@JackDouglas yup, young child ran into the road, a 4 wheel drive was braking hard to stop but was not going to make it, ol' Scrooge, pushed the id out of harms way and got clobbered
@MonicaCellio Well, I just got here, so I don't know if I can answer. It seems like the question has gone through a number of iterations already. But if I had to guess, its because the question is less about the text and more about a particular theology. (I also wonder if the issue is that it attempts to lay the groundwork for a christological hermeneutic.)
@JackDouglas yeah actually not sure why I killed that one TBH. It can stay. I was on a roll killing a bunch of tags left and right that had only one question tagged with it (and thus would have gone away anyways), and tags that had no wiki/description (I added a bunch)
For some reason I thought it was something about henotheism, not monotheism
One of my older questions was edited and I think their was one thing that as missed in the second paragraph. One "there" which should be a "their" or? My english is a bit flaky. If someone care they can fix it if I am right :-p
In the gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus we learn that the Jewish authorities could not sentence anyone to death:
Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” “But
we have no right to execute anyone,” they objected. (John 18:31 NIV)
But it's easy to get confused, ...
@MonicaCellio I have reviewed the sequence. Two things ① I don't think that's the way I would have handled it myself but ② I don't think harm was done on the scale you are representing here (and it the other room).
Quite honestly it appears that you have missed the 'point' of his action even after he said it a second time. You accuse him of censorship — except according to what he told you he isn't saying you can't say something, just that you should be saying it in a different room.
By your own admission Sarah probably didn't mean to offend — by my reading she was honestly trying to help you see thing from another perspective — and intead of calling her to the floor and publically shaming her Jack suggested you start a private room and explain how you were offended and offer her a chance to make peace. Sounds like a good sugestion to me.
As far as deleting one side of the convo, again I don't see that is what happened. There was no convo at all and the suggestion was to start a convo in another room. What Sarah had said was not a public insult or slanderous that it should have also been deleted. There was no need to let pings or anything further stand as you could ping and start fresh from a new room.
I don't agree with the last point in Sarah's post (the rest is salient I think) but neither does it seem like something to get offended by. She was just suggesting how it might look to some. Right or wrong, clearly there is no intent to harm. If she's wrong take her advice and explain the flaw in her logic. If she caused personal offence go to her (semi) privately first and see what can be done.
@Caleb and there was no intent to harm from me, either. But that wasn't good enough for Jack. As for private rooms, Jack himself eschews private conversations (I requested once once and Jon requested a three-way once; he declined both), so why is it an appropriate suggestion for me if he won't do it himself? The conversation started here and it should have been allowed to continue here. If it had been somebody other than me I believe the outcome would have been different.
And the last part of her comment, which you also disagree with, was a large part of why I responded at all.
If Sarah is allowed to suggest how something I say looks to others, then I should be allowed to say how something she says looks to me. I was not rude. I like Sarah and was trying to enlighten her.
@Caleb what I said was not "a public insult or slanderous" either. I'm asking for the same criteria to be applied to everybody regardless of a mod's personal feelings about the people involved.
@MonicaCellio My guess is the thing that was refused was full on secret rooms that can't be audited and that the thing he suggested in this case was just a corner to recede into for a one-on-one conversation (even if it would later stay public record). In any case using "Jack is against X" as a reason not to take Jack's specific advice seems kind of strange to me. At the least you could have asked for clarification on what he suggested you do instead of crying censorship.
@Caleb I asked him what was wrong with my second attempt and all he did was link to his comment rejecting the first.
I made a second attempt and it was brushed off.
And I said censorship because it is, and because that charge has been leveled against me in this room (including, I think, by Jack), so it seemed in-play.
@MonicaCellio I didn't say it was. I tried to explain how an outside review (I haven't talked to Jack yet) makes me think those are not necessarily inconsistent.
@Caleb you think the situations might be different, or that it's ok to apply different criteria to different people? I'm trying to understand you, not fight you, just in case that's not clear.
@MonicaCellio There is a second chat message besides that one where he reiterates the advice. It is concerning to me that nowhere in you description of the event in the other room did you bring up the fact that when deleting, Jack also suggested that you DO talk to Sarah, not that you shouldn't be saying anything. Why is that?
@MonicaCellio I think the situations are different.
@Caleb I didn't reproduce the entire conversation, only salient points. I also provided links with multiple entry points into the longer discussion in here.
@Caleb so what do you consider objectionable about my second try?
To be clear Jack might have had other differences in mind (and I would have handled this one differently) but I don't think the equivalence you are trying to apply works because it's not apples and apples.
@Caleb and if Sarah can talk to me here, then it's reasonable for me to talk to her here. I rejected Jack's suggestion as inappropriate.
@Caleb I'm obviously not asking you to read Jack's mind. :-) I am asking you as a mod to "be your brother's keeper" and review/correct his actions as appropriate. Especially because it's him, targeting me.
@MonicaCellio Your second try was (even if I disagree with the premise) just fine except that you had by that time violated Jacks request that you handle the matter one-on-one first.
@Caleb then please restore my second try. You're a mod too and your voice is equal to his. Jack's "request" began with a "perhaps" so it sounded more like a suggestion, not a directive.
Or give me permission and I'll paste it in, since I don't think you can undelete chat comments and anyway it'll probably confuse Sarah to insert it where it was.
@MonicaCellio You were offered a venue to appeal that. Rejecting a mods 'suggestion' and blatantly trying to go on doing the opposite is no way to win friends. At that point you could have taken Jack's suggestion to task but just ignoring it wasn't very wise.
@Caleb you know full well that bringing that to meta would be seen as making a mountain out of a molehill. Meta isn't for small things, at least here. It was a safe suggestion because it could only make me look bad.
Also, that you, Jack, and Jon would likely cast the first 3 DVs, setting the stage for anybody else.
And I explained to Jack why meta was problematic, but he didn't respond to that.
We should be able to deal with problems in the places where they occur.
@MonicaCellio You were the only one present, and you weren't being kicked out you were being told that topic X should be dealt with one-on-one. You were back bringing up a new issue 12 hours after the initial conversation had ended and the other user wasn't around to send off to a room with you.
@Caleb I came back later so I could think about what I wanted to say instead of reacting immediately. Chat is often asynchronous; if he wanted to send us both to another room he could have suggested that, removing her comment along with mine. But he didn't.
@MonicaCellio Why not take the suggestion and ping her about it in a (semi) private room. I think you'll find she's agreeable to talking and willing to come back in here and say whatever she's learned if her message here still bothers you after talking it over.
@Caleb I just don't feel that a private conversation is appropriate for that in particular. But even if I were to take that suggestion, deleting only my comments was one-sided. Better would have been to leave them in place and say to both of us "please get a room". That would have been fair; this was not.
@MonicaCellio Do you think it is inappropriate to have a one-on-one (but public record) conversation with somebody that you think has said something offensive to you?
I'm not asking if you think it is necessary or the best approach, only if you think it would be actually inappropriate.
@Caleb not inappropriate (I've had 'em with others, as I presume you know), but I feel there's a threshold for such things that wasn't met here. Not a severity threshold, but a "willingness/ability to talk" threshold. I've seen nothing to suggest that Sarah would have any problem with having that conversation here, and it's really for her to decide, not someone else.
It's appropriate for me to offer or her to request, but given that it wasn't a big hot thing taking over the room, it shouldn't have been imposed.
@MonicaCellio So what we have is a matter of a judgment call: Jack thinks a separate room would have been more constructive and you think the issue wasn't quite serious enough to warrant the trouble. A meta post about that would be a mountain out of a molehill. But so is crying censorship and making giant issue about it. Just make a room already.
@MonicaCellio Any of you, her, or a site moderator could have made the judgement call that it was time for a change of venue. In this case the mod made it. That isn't the same as censorship.
@Caleb the issue that would be brought to meta is selective deletion of comments. A separate room is a distraction. The point is that either all or none of the comments should have been removed, but mine alone should not have been targeted.
And at this point, frankly, I'm not highly motivated to have a private conversation with her; if she wants to talk here we can, but being shoved off in a corner while the mod gets to keep the part he likes (with stars, even) and delete the rest leaves too bad a taste.
@Caleb the deletions were censorship. I'm not talking about the private conversation.
Am I not being clear enough that the problen is with what happened in this room with respect to the posts in question?
@MonicaCellio That was your take. As I read Jack's note to you he thought it was not constructive to be dealing with that in here at the time. That was his take and he had the responsibility at the time to make that call. You can contest it but as you said why make a mountain out of a mole hill, just switch rooms and be done with it.
@Caleb and I'm asking you as a mod with equal powers to review that. You disagree with what he did; I hope you'll discuss that so maybe he'll be less likely to repeat the bad behavior. You can still correct it. The way to redirect a conversation is to say "enough" and leave it in place or to delete all of it; he cherry-picked and then said "go somewhere else".
My problem is with the behavior, with the cherry-picking, and with it being part of a long pattern of behavior, but I know I will not get a fair hearing if I raise concerns about Jack on meta or with the com team and I'm not going to sign up for that. I want you, as another mod, or the users who are here, to speak up.
(You were here at the time too, BTW, or at least your gravatar was.)
I can only bring a specific incident to meta (which will be shot down as trivial), but what I want to correct is the pattern of behavior (many many individually-"trivial" incidents). But I have no power to do that.
@MonicaCellio You keep using terms that I think are not necessarily warranted and might just be perpetuating your image of the situation. For example why use "cherry pick"? The other way to describe the same sequence is that he drew a line in the sand between a day old convo and a new one and that he shut down 100% of the messages in the new one.
Cherry picking would be removing messages from between others leaving half a conversation. The way he did it had one full conversation (in which you even have basically the last word) and then none of the next. Looks fair enough to me even if I might have left both. No blood no foul.
@Caleb conversations aren't bounded by mere elapsed time in a setting where people come and go. Sarah had not been back to the room since her last post and the conversation had not gone off in some other direction. My posts (hours later) were a natural continuation. If Jack had left those in place and said "please don't continue this" we would not be having this conversation. That would have been a reasonable response if that's how he felt.
He removed only my messages, ones he disagrees with, from somebody he doesn't like. Does that not seem the slightest bit problematic?
@MonicaCellio I'll talk to Jack when I see him about the situation, esp about the slim explanation of what he thought a proper course should have been. I suspect some ongoing frustration with your negative outlook on everything here left him being more curt than he could have been. By the same token I think your predisposition to see everything he does as somehow targeted at you seems to have made this a much bigger deal than need be.
@MonicaCellio That's kind of poisoning the well. You are the only one I know of that is convinced Jack doesn't like you and I just explained how he didn't remove "just your messages" he removed ALL messages past a certain point where it seemed to escalate and agreement or disagreement (at least for me who disagrees with some of what came before) isn't even a factor.
@Caleb it's hard not to feel targeted by him given the pattern of behavior. He thinks I don't want what's best for the site (he asserted that on meta multiple times) and therefore he can brush me off. As a mod he has an extrra responsibility to treat all users fairly. It would help if he could step out of his dislike and look at what I actually do, and if he did so it would be easier for me to look for the positive in him. I do try to look, BTW; it's just hard to find when he attacks.
@Caleb I'm not poisoning the well and I already explained why the line you're drawing doesn't make sense to me. And I'm not the only one who thinks his behavior toward me is inappropriate.
@MonicaCellio You seem to want somebody to agree with you. What if we don't see things exactly your way? Are you trying to see them from ours any more?
@Caleb no two people see things (any things) exactly the same way, but I want the mods to carry out their responsibility, which includes correcting each other when necessary (I'm a mod too; I know this happens). And I'd love it if more of our users were engaged, but neither of us can control that. I don't know who the lurkers support but if they don't speak up it doesn't matter.
@MonicaCellio Then send them in here, have them review my chat to this point with you, then let me hear there reasoning. Maybe I'm missing the boat too.
@Caleb fine. I can't read his mind so I can't say he dislikes me. I can say that he has acted with more hostility to me than he has to others on this site.
I don't agree with Jack's deletion of your comment, and I think he may have treated it a little differently had it been another user. At the same time, that's how it goes. I think you (Monica) also read too much into Jack's actions - interpersonal conflict will taint how you perceive things - both ways
He and I have had many conversations about the way he goes about things, but it doesn't seem to help. There is only so much "you have to accept that I'm blunt" that I can, in fact, accept.
@MonicaCellio If memory serves me that was in the context of "wanting all your content ripped out of the site is contrary to wanting what is in the best interest of the site". No?
@Caleb that's one of the places he claimed that. By the way, if I can't say how he feels about me then he can't very well say what my intentions are, now can he? I responded to that charge, not that he edited his post or acknowledged that or anything.
@Dan if it were an isolated incident it would be a tree, but there have been an awful lot of trees and this is the one that fell down in the road in front of us today.
@Dan, thank you for coming in and speaking up.
@Caleb another place he claimed it is in a comment on my now-deleted post on the meta disclaimer question. Go take a look.
@MonicaCellio I agree with that, as I've previously stated, but I also think the best solution at this point is to drop this particular issue
is it a pattern? yes, to some extent - but not quite as bad as you've made it out (in my opinion). I agree that he is a little harsher with you then with others, but you guys have conflict, that's to be expected
I don't expect people who dislike me to be perfectly objective about me
I also don't think Jack is doing such a horrible job or treating you so poorly that he needs to step down or anything either
The particular issue probably won't go anywhere (and I am not going to start a private room with @Sarah). I hope that Caleb will effect some change in how Jack treats me; it's a tall order I know. I wish that Jack would voluntarily refrain from acting on my posts/comments/flags/etc now that there is another active mod; a wise administrator withdraws from perceived conflict of interest even if he's convinced there's no actual conflict.
@MonicaCellio I noticed today that you have half an order of magnitude more edits than the rest of us, and you have a very unique agenda and different sensitivities than many of us. You're also prolific on comments and chat. It should come as no surprise that being so opinionated brings you more attention and on cases that aren't settled norms more resistance than most users encounter. Calling that "hostility" doesn't seem fair to me. I'm pretty sure that is mostly your preconceived ideas speaking.
Interesting factoid: I received private mail from a member of the com team a couple months back telling me that I was being too deferential to Jack & I needed to stand up for what I believe because people who were watching saw me as weak. Yes, too deferential. I was being way more deferential than I thought appropriate but I was trying to smooth his ruffled feathers; not only did it make no difference with him, but apparently it made things worse with others. Just throwing that out there.
@Caleb I'm more of a target, yes. But the way he has responded to me sure feels hostile.
@MonicaCellio There are times when I've been far more blunt than he has and you seem to hear it fine from me and take it as an attack from him. That doesn't seem fair even if I'm on the long end of the stick.
@Caleb your bluntness doesn't tend to take the form of saying things that are false, rude, or unfair. I don't need things to be sugar-coated (I tend to be blunt too, though not as much as Jack). Even bluntness needs to be accompanied by sensitivity to the other person; even when we disagree I get the feeling that you're trying to hear me and respect me. I do not get that from Jack. And it's my perception, not what he thinks, that matters for that.
I spent most of a year trying to build mutual trust and respect with Jack. It never seemed to happen. Or rather, the apparent effort was way disproportional.
@Dan sure, but "flack" can be delivered either respectfully, to a peer, or hostilly.
If we aren't collectively interested in mutual respect, if we can't remember that there are human beings on the other side of the screen and that we all have different perspectives, then we're doomed.
Folks I'm out of time for the moment, this has already taken a lot of my day. Feel free to leave pings if something comes up that needs review but I'm bowing out of this discussion for now.
@Caleb understood. It's taken a fair bit of mine too. I hope you will talk with Jack about his methods, about fairness, about how perception matters, about giving me the benefit of the doubt and not just asserting tropes I've denied over and over again (like that "best for the site" one), and about his extra responsibility as a mod. Or, well, any non-zero subset of that.
Aside: "half an order of magnitude more edits" didn't sound right so I checked. Me 458, Jon 339, Kazark 179, Dan 129, Sol 120. Presumably you meant "half again" (approx), but a clarification for any folks who were boggling at it like I was.
@MonicaCellio No I meant order of magnitude but I was thinking of a completely different set of numbers. I remembered it as edits but I see now it was something else I was looking at. My mistake, sorry. The point about prolifity (prolificness?) still stands.
I hate not being able to make up words. Back to Turkish for me, see ya'll later...
@MonicaCellio yeah, but with emotion involved, what is 'respectful' is very subjective - and you're likely to see an action by Jack as rude that may be indifferent
In the gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus we learn that the Jewish authorities could not sentence anyone to death:
Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” “But
we have no right to execute anyone,” they objected. (John 18:31 NIV)
But it's easy to get confused, ...
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