So, would I be modded if I posted a comment saying, 'Montana of vy. Pyu os ta?' I mean, I could understand that, if I posted 'Kernow kensa' or 'Onen hag oll', they might think I was trying to start something, but I would never do that.Now, the Cornish in this translates to 'I'm Montana. Who are you?' 'Cornwall first' and 'One and all' Apparently any Cornish at all in a thread about Cornish being a living language is just not on.
25 February 2009
The Mods Must Be Crazy
Dunno how many of you have noticed the Jenefer Lowe thread about Cornish being a living language. It has produced some richly ironic modding. Olching posted a comment in Cornish which was modded. I then posted a comment that was 90% English but contained the following:
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Does sound ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteThere is some kind of modding policy on posts in foreign languages (problematic use of "foreign" in relation to Cornish!), which I can't recall but AllyF may be familiar with as a contributor?
The Christmas before last I sent a friendly greeting to a CIFer called emillee in which I called her "child of my heart" in Irish. She replied in similar friendly vein and added a Happy Christmas also in Irish.
Both posts promptly got deleted. Vaporised in fact. It seemed a bit extreme.
Now I could be wrong but it seems to me that French phrases get an easier ride?
Day 3 in pre-mod.
ReplyDeleteI'm holding up pretty well, but some of the other chaps are starting to find it tough. Poor Carruthers has been here for two weeks and his screaming fits are a bit unsettling - I don't think he'll make it out. I tell him to keep his chin up, but he just smiles sadly and calls again for his keyboard.
A group of fellows have started whispering together in the corner, and as far as I can gather, they're planning an escape. There is wild unrealistic talk of forging new usernames and continuing the struggle outside with some resistance johnnies. I wish I could believe that this would work, but I'm sceptical.
Others talk of collaboration - they think that apologetic Emails to the mods and promises that they will faithfully toe the Guardian editorial line in the future will secure an early release. When the CO found out he was furious, so we're all under strict instruction to send the cads to Coventry. I'm no hero, but that sort of talk disgusts me.
The mods came for Bullthorpe-Canning yesterday. We huddled around him but they said that they only wanted to check his opinions and that he would be treated fairly, so we let him go. We haven't seen him since.
I don't know if I'll be able to post tomorrow as there are rumours of a new CifEditor being brought in from some other blog. Apparently, he has a reputation for brutality and has already closed down more threads than Bindel. Still, we know that we are in your thoughts, and that keeps us strong.
Vive la liberté!
Scherfig
ReplyDeleteWhat was the offending comment?
PS
You know that vaulting horse around the back of Jerry's canteen....
Buck up, Scherfig, the girls and I will make sure you get a special welcome back when all is over.
ReplyDeleteWell Nev has changed names so many times it's untrue! The Mods gave up trying to ban him in the end....
ReplyDeletescherfig, chin chin old chap.
ReplyDeleteGiving the ballies back in blighty a damned good chuckle.
Oh, and I did hear say, long, long ago, that there is a strict ban on posting in foreign languages.
ReplyDeletePresumably it is because they cannot tell whether someone is making a filthy libel about Viscount Linley or someone, so they can't moderate it.
They make the occasional exception for threads about the French language for example, when there are fluent French speakers to hand. But I doubt there are many fluent Cornish speakers in Guardian HQ.
"Foreign"
ReplyDeleteOh shit, I'm gonna get firebombed by the Cornish separatists now, aren't I?
'Non-English' speakers, how about that? Although some of them probably think they're English AND Cornish.
Bugger, this political correctness stuff is sticky, innit?
Ally,
ReplyDeleteDon't you think they should've FOUND a fluent Cornish speaker to moderate a thread on Cornish!?!?!?
Guidelines:
ReplyDelete4. We appreciate that we have an international audience, but since we publish content in English, the language of conversation on the site should also be English. As such, contributions that cannot be understood by the majority of participants may be removed.
I have a problem understanding many commenters'
contributions, but it's rarely to do with their language.
BTW my offence was being rude to millytante. Interestingly enough, all her many comments (except one) have been disappeared from the thread. I wonder if she's in pre-mod too? I haven't seen her around the camp.
Dotterel:
ReplyDeleteIt would have been lovely had they done so. But I strongly suspect Cornish speakers aren't ten a penny in London, so they'd have had to brought someone in from the West Country, trained them in the Graun moderation policies and then employed them on a freelance basis for 72 hours. I suspect they reckoned the total costs weren't worth it, and in all honesty I couldn't really argue with that. I suspect the options in practice were either run the blog and remove comments in Cornish, or not run it at all. That would have been a shame, I think.
The following Cornish phrase can be quite handy for commenting on some of the more, shall we say, "fanciful" CiF articles.
ReplyDelete"Tis laakin like a baasket"
Translated:
"The article concerned desperately needs fixing and is full of holes"
Hope this helps.
Bitterweed
Emeritous Professor of Etymology, Lingustics and Cider, University of Hayle.
Scherfig
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Also - you can request your own comments be deleted. I have done so, once, when I actually posted something completely slanderous about someone, and very actionable.
I instantly regretted it, and fortunately the mods instantly obliged.
Also, I have only had email conversation with one mod - last summer, after a flame war with an SWP-er after Martin Jacques had bigged up the Burmese junta I just went insane with anger for a bit)
I get the impression that as on might expect, mods are different people, and they have different tolerances, like refs in any given football season. Sometimes you're just unlucky and get the humerless bastard who can't even see what an idiot the author's been, and you just have to play it very straight. Assuming the thread warrants persevering at all.
If I get deleted I try to work out if it was because the mods were overprotective of the dullwitted oor more often, plain arrogant, author - this really gets me rattling them out. Or I have to figure out if if I was too off topic, or even rude (can happen ha ha ha, roflmao!), or if I was just mentally drunk after a shed load of vodka with my mates (yes, this too... has happened... je ne regrette rien)
Sometimes I resalise I'm pissing in the wind because the quality of the article's so weak in the first place, so I bugger off. Other times there can be loads of callously stupid reposnes to thoughtful articles. I persevere with them more. And that's another issue. I can be very flippant on some threads because of the article's weaknesses, yet ever so "earnest" on another article of merit, simultaneously... I wonder if that pisses mods off too ?? so much variance... it's all part of the fun really !
x
Regards
Mr Angry Fingers
PS I'm off down the pub now. Have a good Friday night !
Well, I'm just livid right now and you'll forgive me for using some foul language here, please. The jerkwads at Cif have gone and given that evil piece of shit Richard Perle space to claim that Obama is doing exactly what effing Bush would've been doing right now and then they have the temerity to have Matt Seaton come on and drip condescension all over the place about how we can't be too rude to Mr. Perle. Fuck off, Matt Seaton. Richard Perle is an evil piece of shit. If there were any justice in the world, he, Shrub, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft and a few others would get locked up in Abu Ghraib and ordinary Iraqis would be allowed to "express their thanks" for their "liberation" from Saddam.
ReplyDeleteMy first post has already been modded. I'm sure the 2nd one will be soon.
Well, I've never seen this before (from the Perle thread):
ReplyDeleteCommunityMod
27 Feb 09, 8:00pm (14 minutes ago)
This thread will shortly be closing for the night.
Apparently they've already decided the thread is too hot to handle. Serves 'em right.
If they think a thread is going to go ballistic on them they often close it down... sometimes this can be temporary (not enough mods on the late shift to gatekeep us all) or occasionally, it can be permanent... as in Bindels Barry George piece that only lasted a couple of hours befor the mods went into siege mode... And the Eds really really don't like it if you 'attack' writers... that's how I ended up in pre-mod
ReplyDeleteBut how on Earth could they have put up a piece like this and not known beforehand that it would go ballistic? An hour - that's all it took for them to close the thing down and, even then, they modded some really good BTL posts which weren't really abusive at all. HankScorpio, raymonddelaunay, and princesschipchops all had excellent non-abusive posts that I was able to see before they were modded. My first post wasn't abusive in any way and it got modded. As HankScorpio pointed out, it's pretty ironic that an allegedly left-leaning paper like the Guardian would protect the right to free speech of someone in a position of power, like Perle, while denying it to us.
ReplyDeleteI am in total agreement, Montana. I was dumbfounded to see that they had let that piece of human excrement write a piece on our Graun. But I was even more astounded by Matt Seaton wading in like a schoolmarm before the thread even got going and giving us a written warning about "Friday bad feeling" or some such complete nonsense.
ReplyDeleteWTF did he expect right-minded, intelligent posters to do? Respond politely to this monster? I don't get it sometimes, I really don't...
The Guardian has a long tradition of inviting very conservative people to write for them...They are often (as Harry Phibbs is) treated by guardianistas with a fair amount of tolerance... mainly because right wing nut jobs can be good for a laugh... I should think they misjudged what the reaction would be to Perle.... But I agree entirely that it is ironic the Graun would give him a platform but silence their own readership...
ReplyDeleteBut they probably just panicked... as in running around the eds office, beating breasts, tearing hair and wailing "What To Do!'
So they just pulled the plug and are now down the pub... mightily relieved
Dreadful piece of wankery from Seaton. And only about 20 comments in as well. Kizbot maybe has it right, they just panicked.
ReplyDeleteThere was an interesting post on the first page from the Shermanator, one of the more thoughtful American Cifers IMO.
Play the ball. Not the man. The mod is sometimes very very brittle. Bless.
ReplyDeleteNormal service will be resumed shorty after this...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHRY6JnkIm4
If you don't like it, you are frankly, free to post otherwise.
Also this... in case...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=93jQI_6G5Cw
Sorry Montana, but I'd expected a few more atendees in thet middle of the night, heh heh ;-)
ReplyDeleteDidn't know that theShermanator is American. Yes, his was a good post. Oddly, my second comment seems to have stayed, even though it was closer to being a personal attack of Matt Seaton than my original was of Richard Perle.
ReplyDeleteBitterweed, how is Mom supposed to explain to the little Wildhack why she's laughing so hard at the man in the green suit who's saying the eff word so much?
Ha ha, because it's how adults cope with not being little Wildhacks anymore ?
ReplyDelete"Day 3 in pre-mod."
ReplyDeleteHeh heh! Like it scherfig. Maybe I should give you my poster details so that you can disguise yourself and sneak out. I'm in semi retirement due to a horribly huge project with a scarily close deadline.
That Matt Seaton eh? He's always flouncing off with his ball if he doesn't like the way the game's being played.
kizbot
ReplyDeleteLast time Phibbs posted there he somewhat severely reprimanded threatened someone with legal action after allegations about his involvement in promoting 80s young conservative "hang Mandella" merchandise. His own article contained a considerable factual innaccuracy about student loans, debt and bankrupcy, about which he showed no desire to correct, despiute several posters pointing it out. My patience with him ran out - he showed his true colours and proved himself to be another swaggering public-school bully.
Can I get being modded off my chest? On the Alderman thread.
ReplyDeleteWas replying to Jennyanydots about a silly, joking post on vatican. I basically said:
- you think vat city's bad, dont get me started on the disappointment that was Chessington world of adventures (a little theme park outside london)
- I provided a wikipedia link to, you know, substantiate my knowledge
- and speculated that things went downhill ever since the magic carpet ride was taken down in 1998.
Damn the mordorators! They've made me put it like this, and put like this, it isnt half as - dare I say it? - chucklesome and ribald as in its glorious original form.
That got mordorated. Now call me a papist but it's uncanny that I could use the words paedophile and nazi with wanton abandon when discussing certain matters - I mean, with seriously wanton, ludicrous abandon (to the extent that not just popes but even pipes are said to be nazi) - and remain immaculate, but a rather disappointing theme park in surrey is a step too far.
Free Nelson Mandela!
choochoo said
ReplyDeletebut a rather disappointing theme park in surrey is a step too far.
Indeed it is! How dare you? See you in Hut 4 - ask for Ginger, and bring some tobacco if you can.
How have I managed to be on this Earth as long as I have and never thought of "magic carpet ride" as a double entendre until now???
ReplyDelete