@MichaelHardy I think you have received all the responses in meta that your missives deserve. If I were still a moderator, you would not be welcome on this site at all. The act of trying to ruin somebody's career by writing to their boss about a disagreement in Math.SE was so unspeakable that in my eyes you simply have lost all rights to complain about anything here.
@JyrkiLahtonen Try a bit of honesty instead. I did not try to ruin anyone's career, and I did not contemplate writing to the university with which he was affiliated until after the moderators made no reply after I contacted them on many occasions about the matter. Why will you not even admit that that happened?
@JyrkiLahtonen I agree; that was a travesty. What's worse is the offender denies wrong-doing, and continues to blame others for his wrongdoing. And he has nothing new to say; keeps repeating what is not true now. So sad.
@amWhy You are one of those who have habitually engaged in bullying on meta, and about whom the moderators have never replied to complaints nor acknowledged receiving them.
@JyrkiLahtonen Tell me what I should have done when several years of the moderators never replying to reports of bullying and dishonesty nor acknowledging that they had received them and the company also not acknowledging that I had written to them about it, the bullying and dishonesty persisted?
@amWhy The complaint is unclear. You are complaining that they are not handled fast? The difference between your message and the flag seems to be of a few hours. This is not unreasonable. Please have patience. (I have removed the message for the same reasons as before.)
@MichaelHardy There are a lot of problems with your messages. In no particular order of importance: it is factually incorrect that we do not deal with what you call "bullying", although I believe that word to be a misnomer. What happens is that we do not deal with them in your terms, by doing what you would want.
The last conversation you had (via mod messages) seems to me to have been very receptive and there were replies. Summing up, you were told to report cases which you deem problematic as they happen.
@AloizioMacedo There are certain patterns of habitual bullyling on meta that you do not deal with. Cliques of users forbid all discussion of certain topics and close postings on them on bogus pretexts. And even if what you say were true, why the years of never acknowledging receiving communications about this.
@MichaelHardy I can acknowledge that some users behave rudely in meta. I don't agree that constitutes as bullying. I am unhappy about that fact, but since meta is by nature contentious then moderation is more lenient there, otherwise most discussions would end up have glaring holes.
It would be nice for people to be reasonable, objective and to the point in discussions. This is not how a lot of people work when discussing matters that they care about.
Regarding the "cliques", the social dynamics of how people end up behaving in groups is considerably complex.
There were times when we (the moderators) recognized something similar to a group of people focusing on a single user. I will not enter more details for obvious reasons. But yes, we care about those and we want those cases reported when they happen. If you have explicit, concrete examples, please report them.
But, again, this is probably one of the most complex issues that we as moderators can handle.
Regarding the "never acknowledging receiving communications about this", I think I was not a member of the team when most of those communications happened. (IIRC, I think there was one when I was already here. Sorry if I am misremembering.) But as far as I am aware, you used channels of communication which were not proper to report things on-site. For example, SE frowns upon communication by email via users and moderators, particularly related to moderation, for several reasons.
@JyrkiLahtonen A former moderator did an analogous thing by violating the moderators agreement and revealing confidential information to help expose a user's identity - possibly ruining a students career. I don't recall you speaking out against that. Why? Because that former mod shares your political views? It is quite sad how politics too often obscures ethics here.
@AloizioMacedo You're getting into the specific nature of the sort of bullying that happens. Primarily I have in mind two things: (1) Those habitually engaged in deciding which questions to close forbid all discussion of their ways of doing things. They don't just stay out of such discussions; they close them on bogus pretexts and they post about how evil one must be to bring up such subjects.
(2) Every time someone objects to anything about the way things are conventionally done on s.e., comments are posted making wild guesses---just guesses based on nothing---about what offenses the poster has probably committed. If some particular way of doing things wrong on s.e. is commonplace, anyone who who objects to anything is at once accuses of it and within minutes between 5 and 20 upvotes to that comment appear. S.E. could at least stop enabling and
...encouraging this by abolishing voting on meta, so that it could become a discussion forum rather than a place in which playground bullies reign.
@MichaelHardy Regarding (1), I believe there is a misconception. Yes, I've seen questions closed for which the closure does not seem entirely justified as per the usual reasons. But instead of being to "forbid all discussion", it seems that people think it is a discussion which has already happened in some way or another and that the post does not add anything to that.
In particular, I am the original author of the recently implemented proposal to alter the menu of close reasons, but over several years when I suggested this on meta a dozen or so people instantly expressed seemingly unmotivated moral outrage over the idea, and closed the postings on dishonest pretexts, and you don't see them doing that now the the proposal is implemented. And that was not an isolated incident, but is how things are always done there.
"it is a discussion which has already happened" That is highly implausible when no discussion is allowed. And furthermore, these things get closed too fast for anyone to see where the idea is going, so they can't say it's already happened.
Any proposal the conventional practices should be altered incites expressions of outrage.
...and that regardless of whether those doing that really disagree with the proposal or even know what it is.
@MichaelHardy Regarding (2), as a matter of fact, comments making wild guesses and similar things is something that (unfortunately) happens whenever there is a contentious issue, by virtue of what I mentioned (how people behave with something they care about).
That is the nature of conflict and human behaviour.
If it had anything to do with the content of postings rather than simply a desire to forbid discussion of topics or proposals to change anything, then why is there this contrast between the extreme outrage incited by my proposal to alter the close reasons and the silence now that my proposal has been implemented?
It's not just when there's a contentious issue: It happens far too fast, before there is any time for it to become contentious. It's a knee-jerk thing.
@MichaelHardy "[W]hen no discussion is allowed". That seems a heavy exaggeration, which is somewhat necessary for your argument. For instance, there are examples right now of opinions and behaviours that are being discussed openly.
The pattern is: Poster A says "I don't like this particular thing that's been going one here.", then poster B says "Maybe you've committed this particular error or this other particular act of stupidity or this other particular offense etc. etc." and a dozen up-votes appear in two minutes. That is not a matter of cliques, but simply of the fact that the nature of venue's voting practice enables this behavior.
On the other hand the prohibitions against certain topics are a matter of cliques.
In particular, poster B, if pressed for specificity, will typically say "You can't expect that because I know nothing about the user I was addressing." But that is not seen as a reason not to posted such things.
@AloizioMacedo Closing, deletion, and expressions of outrage. Why did my now-implemented proposal to change the close reasons incite so much outrage from persons who, as we now see, never cared about the actual proposal?
@MichaelHardy Can you give recent examples then of problematic closing, deletion and expressions of outrage on posts on meta? The way you are talking, it seems like a recurring and current issue that is being left unaddressed.
@AloizioMacedo I have avoided meta in recent months because I have given up on all of this.
The one that is not a matter of cliques is currently prevalent, and for a long time past. In particular, CodyGray's behavior in which he made specific insinuations about my behavior and then when asked for specifics objected that he could not provide those because he knew nothing about me.
@MichaelHardy The most recent question you posted on meta and that is closed is from Aug '18. I don't see anything similar to what you mention. Please, if you can find it, flag the relevant comment.
And if/when you decide to follow meta or interact there, please flag if you see problematic behaviour. If you don't understand the response of some flag or disagree, we can discuss here.
@AloizioMacedo I'm talking about something within the past week. Not on meta.math.stackexchange.com, the cesspool that I've given up on, but on meta.stackexchange.com
@MichaelHardy That seems to be an argument pointing to the fact that, whatever this is, it is all more related to human nature than a local problem. But in any case, yes, the moderators in some sense have to put some consequences of human nature in check, so I repeat my advice to flag problematic situations and, in case of disagreement, discuss here.
It is best to discuss with concrete cases than in abstract, since there is something actionable (or not) that is under scrutiny.
@AloizioMacedo The company could help by getting rid of the system of voting on meta, where is it used to enable and encourage non-clique bullying. That might also help with clique-bullies.
@MichaelHardy Unfortunately many of us don't have enough rep on that site to see your deleted answer. Maybe you could post an imgur link here to work around that.
@MichaelHardy You continue to conflate site political disagreements with dishonesty and bullying. You continued (may be still do) to blame caretakers for the non-optimal messages the site software gave users. These things were explained to you in meta, but you wanted to continue to abuse that venue to try and keep your single note complain endlessly on the agenda, when the matter had been discussed thoroughly, and a conclusion had been eached.
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And, @Michal Hardy, yes, you at least threatened to write to a grad student's department head unless they change their mind about site policies and started agreeing with you. That is a fact. You were suspended for that. Man up and admit that it was wrong.
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What you should have done was to either abide by the commonly accepted policies or just leave.
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@BillDubuque I have no idea what incident you are referring to.
@MartinSleziak? That is something else entirely. Bill referred me to a case where a math moderator allegedly broke a moderator agreement. I have no recollection of such a case.
Sorry, I though you are talking about the most recent Bill Dubuque's message. (Which seemed like a reasonable assumption, as you did not reply to some specific message.)
@JyrkiLahtonen A formed mod (Q) revealed SE-confidential information on a user because someone though that user might be cheating. This violates the SE mod agreement.
I can imagine that it might be difficult to reply to a specific message if you're on a mobile device. Anyway, we should take discussion about using chat software elsewhere. (Feel free to us my chatroom. And there is also sandbox.)
@JyrkiLahtonen I don't know if any public record still exists (likely it was deleted and I don't have mod priv's now to search for it). But my point is that there is a long history of politics getting in the way of rational thought (not only on matters of ethics).
@JyrkiLahtonen There are far more (globally) damaging things that were done on this site than what you criticize above (which will likely have no effect whatsoever other than to generate a few chuckles in a math dep't). But the judgement of the damage done by such matters is highly clouded by politics. This is wrong.
@MichaelHardy Don't call it "outrage against your proposal to alter the close reasons". You have a very tinted view of what was happening. EVERYBODY AGREED THAT THE WORDING (of the close message) WAS NOT OPTIMAL. You failed to understand that there was nothing we could do about it. I even supported your such plea once, and the CM's replied "No can do". The outrage was completely about you wanting others to stop closing questions altogether because the system message was poor.
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And that was the political issue you wanted to endlessly reopen. You were simply a nuisance in meta, and that's why your repetitive posts were downvoted. See this
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@Bill That is pure speculation. Both in MH's case and in the other. I do agree that MH probably couldn't bring about any damage to anyone's career, but the mere idea of threatening with such makes me shudder.
Still, I have no recollection of something what you described happening, and I don't want to speculate. That would just become fodder for more needless arguments.
@JyrkiLahtonen It is not speculation than much more damaging things have occurred here. But I'm glad you agree that MH's action could bring about no damage. It's not that other incident that I refer to when I speak about more global damage to the site (rather, things like huge voting rings, etc)
@BillDubuque Don't warp Jyrki's comment for your own purposes. Why you continue to defend such outrageous behavior is beyond me. You know better than this.
@Moderators Sorry about letting myself get dragged into an exchange going in circles. Meta discussion should take place in meta, and this chatroom kept for its original purpose.
@JyrkiLahtonen To be sure, you didn't get "dragged into it". Rather, you started it with you ad hominem attacks on MH. This actually proves one of his points - that it is impossible to discuss many matters without being personally attacked, bullied, etc. Of all folks, you should know better...
Ditto for the facts I mentioned above. It is a sad day when site politics begins to mirror real-world politics. For when we have to start defending historical facts against claims of "fake facts" then it is time to throw in the towel.
I don't have much to add other than this: if you have a problem, please try to be specific. @MichaelHardy When you say "certain patterns of habitual bullying" and "cliques of users" and "certain topics", I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, what people, which comments, which closures? If you can't name specifics, what am I supposed to do about it? Maybe it's clear to you what the problem is but it's not clear to me.
@MichaelHardy I think the emphasis is misplaced. The problem was not with "it would be better not to call this off-topic but" yet with "as long as it is called 'off-topic' we must not use it as intended and can only use it for off-topic in a narrow sense"
The text in quotes are praphrases, not literal quotes.
