Moderation rules question

ما الذي تعنيه كلمة الجهاد؟
I don't think my personal and/or religious beliefs should play a role in why I found the word "Jihad" offensive in these forums. With that said here is a good explaination


What does Jihad mean?

Jihad is "holy war." Or, more precisely: It means the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims.

The purpose of jihad, in other words, is not directly to spread the Islamic faith but to extend sovereign Muslim power (faith, of course, often follows the flag). Jihad is thus unabashedly offensive in nature, with the eventual goal of achieving Muslim dominion over the entire globe.

Jihad did have two variant meanings through the centuries, one more radical, one less so. The first holds that Muslims who interpret their faith differently are infidels and therefore legitimate targets of jihad. (This is why Algerians, Egyptians and Afghans have found themselves, like Americans and Israelis, so often the victims of jihadist aggression.) The second meaning, associated with mystics, rejects the legal definition of jihad as armed conflict and tells Muslims to withdraw from the worldly concerns to achieve spiritual depth.

Jihad in the sense of territorial expansion has always been a central aspect of Muslim life. That's how Muslims came to rule much of the Arabian Peninsula by the time of the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. It's how, a century later, Muslims had conquered a region from Afghanistan to Spain. Subsequently, jihad spurred and justified Muslim conquests of such territories as India, Sudan, Anatolia, and the Balkans.

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I still think it was wrong to use against another poster.

Cat

Your wrong.

Some ppl post just to piss off other ppl.
Some ppl post to start dhrama.
Some ppl post to state their opinions.
Some ppl post pictures of pie and kittens.
Some ppl post to be the change.
Some ppl have never had any hope for the forums.

The LLMods have had to sift threw the forums and make snap decisions on what needed to be done. I wasn’t always comfortable with their decisions. In the end however it was their job and I had to yield to their decisions.

The res mods came along, and it has been stated over and over again that some had no business being on the list to begin with.
Some res mods were angry that they were thrown into a position they never asked nor agreed to.

There have been some sketchy situations that were questionable. Some were resolved some were not.
Yes the resmods have some power, of course they do. They were put in a position of power by LL. If nothing else is a symbolic position of power.

Many res mods have already quit. But not before injecting their personal feeling on these forums. That interjection undermined the resmod program as a whole unit.

I don’t envy the LLMods or the resmods positions. Only because I have been here so long do I know the true intent of some posters posts. That takes a great amount of effort to be able to decipher;the thinly veiled attacks, long term vendettas, and the shit stirrers. Gawd knows that has got to be difficult.

What it comes down to is trust. If we can not trust those who stand in judgement of our posts then the system has failed.

How do trust -when the selection process is flawed.

I think if LL really wants to put the forums in the hands of the residents then it’s the residents who should decide by simple majority vote who the res mods should be.

My 2L$
Cat

Excellent post, Cat.

the ability to say what is or isn't important is a significant power.

especially when it can get results.

It's bad form to directly quote other sources without attribution, AND I think we are all quite aware of what Jihad means Catherine.

You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

i have. de gustibus non disputatum est.

the point being what is or isn't offensive isn't a simple matter.

you may not care. does that make it unimportant?
and does it make it inoffensive?

Its the power that the TOS has. If they're deciding what needs to get seen by virtue of the fact that the post in question is violating the TOS, then I still don't see what the problem is.

Why doesn't anyone look at it this way - before, your AR had to have enough merit as decided by Jeska herself before it would be acted on, and chances are she probably missed a bunch of ARs when she was running the show herself. Now, you get 5 seperate individuals taking a look at your ARs, and you only have to convince one of them that its worthy to send along for Jeska's direct review. Sounds like a much better chance to get your AR acted on quickly, as long as it has enough merit to convince one out of five people that its a report of a legitimate problem.


Back atcha. In your opinion, there's been discrepancies. In my opinion, there hasn't been - or at least that many to cause such a wave of abject horror and disgust.




C'mon, if we all decided it was our Manifest Destiny to Cruisade against every single word in any language that had any sort of power to offend someone, used in any allegorical or rhetorical context, it would be like declaring a Jihad on any sort of expression or communication.

The thread which I referenced in orginally making this thread is the shining example of not following the TOS, being confused about the TOS, and also enforcing it on a whim. The following quote from Jeska highlights this perfectly.





So if something doesn't break the TOS but is closed anyway, what are they using to make the decision? Whim.


Come on Cory you know the TOS is not applied properly or fairly if it was you and I both would be banned by now.

It's not anymore offensive than crusade.

In fact, in several dictionaries I own, "holy war" is given as a synonym for both "jihad" and "crusade".

I also found an excerpt from Fortune Magazine - "The war against smoking is turning into a jihad against people who smoke” (Fortune).

OMG!

She has a right to be offended, that's for sure, and I am not trying to take that right away from her - UNLIKE what she is trying to do with respect to the word "jihad". I am not upset at her taking offense Stone, you're reading me wrong (forgive me if my previous post caused that). I am upset at an attempt to censor people.

If I go live in southern Europe for a while, do I then get to be offended by the word "Crusade" too? Because that's what this is really all about in my eyes. Catherine lived in the mid-east for a time, and now wants to be the resident expert on it, and control other people's speech based upon that fact.

From the way I interpreted it, it was closed for review by Jeska - the resmod was doing their job, albeit erring on the side of caution. No one's perfect, people are going to make mistakes. The thread was reopened, no harm, no foul.



You've been harsh on people, I've been harsh on people, but that's not the ultimate reason for our posts, and being harsh on people isn't the sole reason we post. I've never seen you post anything that is TOS-violation worthy. You speak your mind just like anyone else, mayhaps with less sugar sprinkled on it, but you don't call everyone that disagrees with you a fuckwit or a der hippy or whatever. Having your feelings hurt isn't a TOS violation.

It seems from this thread and the other thread that it may be, due to moderator whim.

Why do you do that Nolan? I'm not making myself out to be anything that what I am. "A person with an opinion" I didn't claim to be an expert nor did I demand that you see things my way, or no way. How am I controlling your speech based on the fact that I lived in place X, Y or Z. I have lived in many places around the world.

If anything I would hope, that I could give some insight by having that knowledge. Not rule of law as you make it out to be. I made my point about the Jihad. That's all.

Please stop trying to catagorize who or what I stand for, especialy given the fact that you accuse before you take the time to ask. I'm a pretty open person.

"Catherine lived in the mid-east for a time, and now wants to be the resident expert on it, and control other people's speech based upon that fact"

It's your opinion that I have a hidden personal agenda with reguard to ppl's speech, not mine. I simply found the word in the context in which it was used to be offensive. I also found that it was the intention of the poster to incite anger by doing so.

Cat

thanks I like your posts too.

Yes, but you've specifically stated mid-east on several occasions. You are complaining that he used that word, hence I assume you don't want him using it, and your claim about context is bunk. The context he used it in was to illustrate what he believed to be hyperbole in another poster's post. It was not, as you are trying to construe it, as some sort of inappropriate use of a religious word to directly attack someone.

You tell me Cat, why do you do that?

Not in my experience you're not, and this dragging out of supposed offense taken at a word, just illustrates that even more clearly.

The above paragraph is so ironic, I won't even bother.

OK Nolan.

Perhaps. But at least, after 478 failed attempts, "incite" is properly spelled. If nothing else, that's an improvement, neh?

I think we need to celebrate our progress wherever we can find it, Nolan.

Does anyone know where I can get a computer, made from spare parts found in a dumpster?

In other news, this thread violates the terms of sanity and should be closed.

In even more news, people aren't perfect.

This is definitely a Vanity Thread and I am adding my name to the list.

Yes, but you probably aren't local to Ottawa, Ontario, right? Then that would include shipping which I'm not able to pay, and would therefore not be free.

I will fly to Ottawa in my jet.

it's not clear what is offensive...

however, people will go to great lengths to say something is or isn't offensive.
or fair. or not fair.
people spiral down the specifics of jihad, crusade, tos...

which is a great distraction...

but...

moderation is, in the end, about controlling speech. saying otherwise doesn't help the moderators (ll or res) and their supporters, it just makes them look intellectually dishonest.

and that intellectual dishonesty is indicative of what's really wrong with the forums.

there is no clarity about what ll wants from the forums. and ll doesn't have the courage of it's convictions (about what should be on the forums) to make a simple and clear statement about the forums.

* * *

the lack of leadship from ll is appalling.

somehow ll has mistaken "least restrictive" for "hands-off", "inept", and "clumsy".

it's true that good leadership is often invisible. but invisible is not the same non-existent.

How childish can you get.

Very well said.

Cat

can't you just say "Closed for Review"? Then let the Lindens explain why it's closed.