We’ve had to create a new sidebar rule, we won’t be enacting it retroactively because that just doesn’t seem fair, but going forward:
- Rule 7: We didn’t USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you’re posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
They were banned because after they were banned for abusing the report feature, they continued arguing with me through a series of PMs when they were told to stop arguing with a mod, repeatedly.
The ban increased from 3 days for abusing reports, to 7 days for arguing, then 30 for not stopping, then finally a permaban.
They were warned and given every opportunity to stop.
They’re telling me they were reporting articles which didn’t match the community’s policy on reliability according to MBFC credibility crating and that the moderator in question refused to respond constructively.
Edit: I don’t have the DMs from either side, which might help tell the story lol
They were reporting sites like the Washington Post which is a newspaper of record with a high credibility rating.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-post/
When the links they posted which were removed were from the South China Morning Post.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/south-china-morning-post/
Basically they wanted to post Chinese propaganda and got butthurt that they weren’t allowed to.
SCMP is considered pretty reliable by most Western media outlets. It’s still used as a source for Reuters news wires and Associated Press articles. It’s still banned in mainland China for being too “edgy” or whatever, and the Hong Kong government still bars them from many events for “security reasons.” It’s still used by the Canadian Armed Forces College in their news feed SOMNIA. It’s used by Bloomberg, which many financial folks over on State Street use as a source to trade billions of dollars on.
Their op-eds are more, well, opinionated and editorialized than in the past, but anybody submitting op-eds to a news community needs to reconsider doing so in the first place. If you evaluated WaPo or the NYT solely off of their op-eds, you’d think you were reading a rag like the Daily Mail.
If Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg, and the Canadian Armed Forces rely on SCMP, what makes the moderators of this community think they know better?
Edit: FWIW, Reuters also uses WaPo as a source.
Because a) it was reported as a suspicious source and b) upon examination was found to be “Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing”.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/south-china-morning-post/
That is not an issue other sites that we do allow have. The decision has been made. It’s not up for debate.
When the links were removed, the user was not banned and simply told to choose better sources. They went on a rampage reporting posts from known reliable sources resulting in a 3 day ban from a separate mod for abusing the report feature.
All of this was explained to the banned user who kept arguing and arguing in PMs and was told to stop, which resulted in increasing their bans over and over as they persisted until they were finally permanently banned.
In the end, their behavior in PMs showed the banning was appropriate. You don’t get anywhere arguing with mods.
Removed by mod