Above Political Correctness

[shiney]

Realistically the thread should be split, huh.

Nikose stop being rational, you're not being yourself. :/

[Thadius]

Personally, I've always felt that until I fuck up enough that I get an ACTUAL infraction/ban, I can toss political correctness out the window, say what's on my mind, and apologize if I offend anyone.

Clearly someone in these forums forgot that last part.

Oh wait.

That'd be EVERYONE.

Good gods guys. Did we really need TEN PAGES of this shit?! We're reasonable human beings, and the moderators are neither perfect humans who can predict when a shitstorm is about to happen, nor are they cold unfeeling robots who dispense justice without any care for people. We've got a rules system, and I've read it. Noncon got what he deserved. If the only qualm with what happened is that TDK was the person who held the sharp pointy 'provoke NonCon' stick and hasn't been slapped for it yet, then WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU YELLING AT SHINEY?!

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by shiney

I concede nothing, and I'm going to ask you to stop putting words into my mouth. Now you're just being disingenuous and purposefully obtuse. Of course we take post history into account. Would you prefer we let people break the same rules forever and never get an increasing level of punishment?

I'd prefer a system of concrete rules that Moderators typed, followed, and regularly and repeatedly enforced over a system of Moderator discretion that appears at first glance to appear inefficient, inconsistent and unpredictable insofar as I can say I have absolutely no clue whether or not a particular comment is going to result in a Warning, a Banning, or what have you.

If a cohesive system of rules were in place we'd actually know when we're able to / supposed to report posts as we'd have a halfway decent idea as to whether someone has committed an offense a Moderator will take seriously. I don't think I've ever reported a post to a Mod in my years of being here -- maybe once in the past however many years, if at all -- because honestly I have no fucking clue what a particular Moderator is going to deem an offense and each Moderator seems to have his or her own way of doing things anyway, and the problem with a discretionary system is that punishments doled out are unequal and unpredictable and...well I could keep going on but I'm not going to convince anyone at NPF that a different system would be any better or worse than what we have now.

You're better than this. You're in law school for god's sake.

Sure. My experiences in law school have taught me that:
A: FRE 404(a) deliberately prevents the exact "past acts" evidence you've mentioned from being introduced as evidence against a criminal defendant, precisely because a system of criminal law depends on determining present as opposed to past guilt or innocence;
B: A system based upon pure discretion by different administrators with different personal preferences and different policy interpretations inevitably is self-destructive, coercive, inefficient, ineffective and enables favoritism and petty patronage to trump actual determinations of offenses.

Just because you believe that it's perfectly okay to respond to injustices in a way that sidesteps the firmly established rules (that everyone is supposed to follow) due to a lack of the response you want to see, doesn't mean that's it actually is okay.

What "firmly established rules?" The same "firmly established rules" that prevented TDK from receiving a punishment despite the fact that you've conceded the fact that he broke a rule?

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Sure. My experiences in law school have taught me that:
A: FRE 404(a) deliberately prevents the exact "past acts" evidence you've mentioned from being introduced as evidence against a criminal defendant, precisely because a system of criminal law depends on determining present as opposed to past guilt or innocence;
B: A system based upon pure discretion by different administrators with different personal preferences and different policy interpretations inevitably is self-destructive, coercive, inefficient, ineffective and enables favoritism and petty patronage to trump actual determinations of offenses.

Wouldn't this be in relation to...well, guilt of a crime?
I find it really really hard to believe that a judge isn't allowed to look at somebody who has been demonstratively proven to be guilty and think "This is his first offense, the punishment should be light" or "This is the sixth offense, something harsher is necessary."

If that's so then can perhaps we consider that TDK doesn't have much recent history of faffing about in such a manner, but NonCon does?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I don't have a lot to say on this page after page of crazy but the last thing we need is a massively concrete system of rules that requires reading a million pages before we post and then every infraction turns into a massive courtroom. That is a terrible idea.

Also my amusement that the US justice system is apparnetley not a sytem of favouritism and petty patronage. Causes that is totally what it is.

As for the past offences, what about the three strikes rules in states? That seems exactly like what is going on here. As has been said they are not using past behaviour to decide guilt but to decide punishment and I find it hard to believe if I say kill someone, have some mitigating circumstances, go to jail, get out in a few years and kill again with mitigating circumstances that a judge wouldn't throw me in jail forever.

[Kerensky287]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Sure. My experiences in law school have taught me that:
A: FRE 404(a) deliberately prevents the exact "past acts" evidence you've mentioned from being introduced as evidence against a criminal defendant, precisely because a system of criminal law depends on determining present as opposed to past guilt or innocence;
B: A system based upon pure discretion by different administrators with different personal preferences and different policy interpretations inevitably is self-destructive, coercive, inefficient, ineffective and enables favoritism and petty patronage to trump actual determinations of offenses.

As Karesh so wonderfully said, you don't take past acts into account when determining guilt, but you DO take past acts into account when determining punishment. Which is why Noncon got a ban and not an infraction.

Noncon caused a shitstorm that did not need to happen. Can we agree on that?

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

What "firmly established rules?" The same "firmly established rules" that prevented TDK from receiving a punishment despite the fact that you've conceded the fact that he broke a rule?

I fully agree with this part though.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Karesh

Wouldn't this be in relation to...well, guilt of a crime?
I find it really really hard to believe that a judge isn't allowed to look at somebody who has been demonstratively proven to be guilty and think "This is his first offense, the punishment should be light" or "This is the sixth offense, something harsher is necessary."

Such evidence would be allowed to determine punishment once a jury sentenced someone as guilty for the present crime, yes. Theoretically speaking if a Moderator said "under the rules NonCon is guilty -- and determining his guilt was based on evidence of his present actions alone and not his past acts" -- then after determining that NonCon was guilty, the evidence would be introduced and NonCon would get a stricter penalty.

Problem was the wording of Shiney's previous posts suggested that he relied upon NonCon's past reputation in determining his propensity to act the same way this time around in order to prove he was overreacting and therefore breaking the rules. If Shiney had said "I analyzed the evidence of NonCon and TDK's respective actions impartially, concluded objectively that NonCon was the one predominantly responsible, and then took past evidence into account solely to determine what punishment to assign him," yeah, that's within the bounds of the American legal system.

Of course this is all totally irrelevant insofar as it's assuming that NPF forums would be moderated in a manner consistent with the American criminal justice system which I concede is a stupid argument because NPF clearly has its own way of going about things.

EDIT: Damn, Kerensky half-ninja'd my point there.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm totally for running NPF like the US justice system. Bags supreme court position.

[Fenris]

Snake are you seriously saying that you have an issue with the fact that NonCon got a punishment because he did a thing that he has been told several times in the past not to do?

Like, is this a thing that is happening? Because I was taking the most wonderful nap and I would really like to know if this is a thing that is happening.

[Gregness]

...I'm glad America's criminal justice system deliberately bans the introduction of "past crimes" or "character" evidence, except in extremely narrow circumstances, to prevent these exact kinds of propensity judgments from determining whether someone is "guilty" or "innocent."

So, uh, correct me if I'm wrong snake, but I thought it was pretty standard practice to punish repeat offenders more heavily than first time offenders. I mean, at least in California there's the three strikes rule for violent crime, but I was pretty sure that sort of thing was pretty commonplace.

EDIT: got massively ninja'd.