Thursday, March 16, 2023

Banned from r/AcademicBiblical AND r/AskBibleScholars

 Not quite "banned in Boston," unless "Naugrith the Nazi" is from Boston, England.

Anyway, one of my friends on Goodreads had suggested the former of the two about six months ago. And, it was fun dusting off my undergraduate classical languages degree, plus my divinity degree.

Then, said person above came along as a new moderator.

And, we had a couple of dustups, and a final one two weeks ago. Quoting from where I posted on a subreddit of my own, which is deliberately restricted.

So I was threatened a couple of weeks ago, by "old friend" Naugrith the Nazi.

As posted on my own Reddit home page, copied and pasted: 

===

Removing two posts of mine at r/AcademicBiblical because they allegedly don't have academic citations.

Claims should be supported through citation of appropriate academic sources.

Posting links to your own uncited opinions on your blog are inappropriate as an academic source. You have had comments removed for this before. Consider this a warning. If you do this again you may receive a ban.

If you are unsure what constitutes an appropriate academic source please familiarize yourself with the guidance in our Rules post here.

If you have any questions about the rules or mod policy please message the mods using modmail or post in the Weekly Open Discussion thread.

===

My response?

This isn't a first- or even a second-level comment, first of all, and I link to a discussion with a classicist, at one link, on Christian population, and to discussion by Biblical scholars on another link within it.

I was advised at Goodreads when this sub was suggested ...

And, I started my own sub, too ...

And, of course, I've also blogged about him being a Nazi. And, that's why I started this sub.

And his response, to which I shall not counter-respond. First, he makes assumptions about "our readership." Second, maybe I have personalized this, but so has he, and had he, from his previous response. We've been through this before. Also, other sites that are technically blogs and by people who aren't currently in academia have been allowed on the site, even as first-level comments. (They're good, but they're "individual scholar" level if the have graduate theological degrees, which many do not.)  And so, Naugi's claim all comments are moderated the same? BS.

I also posted in the subreddit "Biblical Critics" that I started as well as my Reddit homepage.

A few hours later, I found out I had been banned! And, Naugrith or one of the other mods, also perhaps a mod there, got me banned from AskBibleScholars as well.

I can supposedly still read, but can't post or comment.

Later, one of the other mods, an older-in-experience mod, claimed I was "way messed up."

Wrong. Dude was snide from the start, as I have evidence of in my original post. The one mistake I made, "Rye," was not reporting him to you and other moderators at the time. Let me also add that I was not alone in objecting to his heavy-handedness. You and others surely saw that and ... said and did nothing. (Rye's also been blocked.)

Otherwise?  I linked to a Quora piece about toxic moderators. I chose "Nazi," and "on the spectrum" (that was actually first) as specific sarcastic descriptors. Just for Rye, I'll now add "anal-retentive." Beyond it, you can find PLENTY of other discussions on the web, even within Reddit, of suck-ass moderators. (Although a member for five-plus years, I've only been active the past six months, so I'm still learning. For others, here's what mods can and can't do.)

Otherwise, re the Nazi saying, in essence, it's just a blog? "Is That in the Bible" is just a blog, and it has pieces from it regularly posted, not just as second- or third-level comments, but first-level ones. Also re You Know Who, you have to read well into one of its pieces to see a link to someone else. Paul Davidson is good, but it's just a blog, and he doesn't even have a professional background.

One part of me says, hey, go there still and write screeds about them. 

Well, a year or so ago, I thought about doing that with Open Sky after Patheos had shut its atheism vertical and it was formed in response.

But, after doing that for a month?

  • I decided to stop wasting my time
  • I realized I'm not that good a hater.

That said, on Reddit, I have blocked Naugrith already. And some others.

(Phew; Blogger's screw-ups almost trashed this piece as I was going to do a brief update. And ...)

I do find it interesting that, after I posted about starting my own sub, I was "pursued." I also find it interesting that, whether or not he was a mod  there, this spilled over to r/AskBibleScholars, or rather "was spilled over" by people not named me. 

==

Other sidebars?

1. Long before the banhammer, I noticed that mods at both sites said the sites weren't about theology. Technically, there are four branches of theology and exegesis is one of them, so this was bad terminology use on their part.

2. That said, they regularly let posts about "theology" stand.

==

Update, April 28: One of the new mods (before or after I was banned I'm not sure) claims that the rule on "cite your academic sources" was made applicable to lower-level comments more than a year ago. News to me. The poster says, "delete it then," and BobbyBobbie the mod says: "That's the neat part; I already did." A junior Naugrith and another Nazi.

And, on AskAChristian, about justifying her morals, after accusing an agnostic or atheist of circular reasoning, this circular reasoning of hers: 

How do I justify their existence? I thought it would have been pretty obvious: they are expressions of God's will and binding upon all moral creatures as the inheritors of a system, not the creator of it. 
Whether or not this creates any supposed dilemma is besides the point. The mere existence of them is supported by theism, and imo unable to be grounded under atheism.

got a rebuke and a block (along with an accusation of being more a Nazi than Naugrith, calling her a 1930s partisan of a Central European state). It's also "interesting" that the atheist to whom she was responding, their comment is now deleted. Such TOLERANCE!

==

Update, Aug. 21: To the degree I still look at posts there with extended comments, Naugrith the Nazi doesn't seem very active among mods. Shock me, by how many groups he was a moderator in at the time he joined r/AcademicBiblical. I suspect he has told himself, "my work is done here," and asked to, and become, a mod for at least three more groups.

==

Update, Oct. 17: Melophage, one of the moderators at the time, and one who pushed for me to be banned from both sites, and then even chased me over to my then just-created restricted site, is now a high-faluting "moderator emeritus" just seven months later, like AcademicBiblical has some sort of apostolic succession even as it burns through moderators. Go fundamentalize yourself on both counts.

No comments: