(Since I drafted the original message, and it was only reviewed and approved by other moderators, Iāll use āIā in some parts of this thread.)
I owe you an apology for a lack of clarity in this message, and for not discussing my concerns with you in private before posting it (given that weād already been discussing other aspects of the situation).
āWarningā was the wrong word to use. The thing we were trying to convey wasnāt āthis is the kind of content that could easily lead to a banā, but instead āthis goes against a norm we want to promote on the Forum, and we think this was avoidableā. There were much better ways to express the latter.
Youāve been an excellent contributor to this site (e.g. winning two Forum prizes). We didnāt intend the comment to feel like a punishment, but the end result clearly didnāt match our intentions. Itās understandable that you kept your comments brief and vague ā particularly the one addressed to Sean, who presumably had the necessary context to understand it.
I also should have said that I think the discussion resulting from your comment was really valuable, and Iām glad you wrote it ā I prefer the norm-skirting version of your comment to the comment not existing.
But I still think the norm is important, and I also think that comments like yours are more likely to have good consequences when they include more evidence.
*****
...which anyone familiar with Philās output would already know about, in any case.
While most voters obviously endorsed your statement, I got a concerned message from one user (good Forum contributor, fairly new to the community) who was confused about the situation and didnāt know what had happened. They didnāt understand why Phil was being attacked for using language similar to the people who were attacking him, or why his claim that you had lied was being downvoted with no responses to disprove it.
When I wrote the comment, I was trying to keep that person in mind, and others like them ā both by encouraging the use of evidence, and by clarifying from a neutral perspective that your claims actually had more backing than Philās.
*****
On your points 1-3:
Iām not sure which part of your comments this maps to, but I assume the Facebook messages in question were insults from Phil. I agree itās reasonable not to share those.
I understand your reluctance to link the piece, but in this case, itās public writing that has been widely shared (and heavily criticized as unfair and misleading). I think that sharing it would have made the conversation easier to follow and validated your claims against Phil ā in particular, by showing that his denial at the end of this comment was wrong.
That reasoning makes sense. There may have been a way to show what happened without compromising the people accused (e.g. sharing a screenshot with names blotted out), but the post being on someoneās Facebook wall (and presumably not publicly viewable) could still make that dicey.
I donāt mean to argue that every Forum comment needs to have as much evidence as possible. But when a personal accusation is at stake, and canāt easily be verified by an outside reader, I do think itās important to provide at least some backing ā at least if thereās a quick way to do so without violating someoneās privacy (e.g. linking to a public paper).
One complication in this situation is that Phil doesnāt have a good reputation among the Forumās users, some of whom have had unpleasant personal interactions with him (myself included, several times over). But I donāt want our norms about personal accusations to depend on how popular or pleasant the targets are. If you were accusing me of calling you a Nazi, Iād hope you would link to evidence, and I want the same standard to hold for Phil.
If you were going to offer any sanction for anyone, I would have thought it would be the people at CSER, such as Simon Beard and Luke Kemp, who have kept collaborating with him and endorsing his work for the last few years, despite knowing about the behaviour that you have just banned him for.
As we said in our ban announcement, Phil was banned for his behavior on the Forum. Itās not impossible that someoneās conduct outside the Forum might lead us to ban them, but that would require much more evidence. And I find it hard to imagine a realistic scenario wherein weād also sanction that personās academic collaborators just for working with them.
*****
To close off this reply, I want to reiterate that Iām sorry for the message. I could have handled this better, and I understand your frustration. But while I wish Iād expressed my concerns differently, I still think that the norm of making at least a small effort to back up personal accusations with evidence is an important one.
Hi Aaron, I appreciate this and understand the thought process behind the decision. I do generally agree that it is important to provide evidence for this kind of thing, but there were reasons not to do so in this case, which made it a bit unusual.
(Since I drafted the original message, and it was only reviewed and approved by other moderators, Iāll use āIā in some parts of this thread.)
I owe you an apology for a lack of clarity in this message, and for not discussing my concerns with you in private before posting it (given that weād already been discussing other aspects of the situation).
āWarningā was the wrong word to use. The thing we were trying to convey wasnāt āthis is the kind of content that could easily lead to a banā, but instead āthis goes against a norm we want to promote on the Forum, and we think this was avoidableā. There were much better ways to express the latter.
Youāve been an excellent contributor to this site (e.g. winning two Forum prizes). We didnāt intend the comment to feel like a punishment, but the end result clearly didnāt match our intentions. Itās understandable that you kept your comments brief and vague ā particularly the one addressed to Sean, who presumably had the necessary context to understand it.
I also should have said that I think the discussion resulting from your comment was really valuable, and Iām glad you wrote it ā I prefer the norm-skirting version of your comment to the comment not existing.
But I still think the norm is important, and I also think that comments like yours are more likely to have good consequences when they include more evidence.
*****
While most voters obviously endorsed your statement, I got a concerned message from one user (good Forum contributor, fairly new to the community) who was confused about the situation and didnāt know what had happened. They didnāt understand why Phil was being attacked for using language similar to the people who were attacking him, or why his claim that you had lied was being downvoted with no responses to disprove it.
When I wrote the comment, I was trying to keep that person in mind, and others like them ā both by encouraging the use of evidence, and by clarifying from a neutral perspective that your claims actually had more backing than Philās.
*****
On your points 1-3:
Iām not sure which part of your comments this maps to, but I assume the Facebook messages in question were insults from Phil. I agree itās reasonable not to share those.
I understand your reluctance to link the piece, but in this case, itās public writing that has been widely shared (and heavily criticized as unfair and misleading). I think that sharing it would have made the conversation easier to follow and validated your claims against Phil ā in particular, by showing that his denial at the end of this comment was wrong.
That reasoning makes sense. There may have been a way to show what happened without compromising the people accused (e.g. sharing a screenshot with names blotted out), but the post being on someoneās Facebook wall (and presumably not publicly viewable) could still make that dicey.
I donāt mean to argue that every Forum comment needs to have as much evidence as possible. But when a personal accusation is at stake, and canāt easily be verified by an outside reader, I do think itās important to provide at least some backing ā at least if thereās a quick way to do so without violating someoneās privacy (e.g. linking to a public paper).
One complication in this situation is that Phil doesnāt have a good reputation among the Forumās users, some of whom have had unpleasant personal interactions with him (myself included, several times over). But I donāt want our norms about personal accusations to depend on how popular or pleasant the targets are. If you were accusing me of calling you a Nazi, Iād hope you would link to evidence, and I want the same standard to hold for Phil.
As we said in our ban announcement, Phil was banned for his behavior on the Forum. Itās not impossible that someoneās conduct outside the Forum might lead us to ban them, but that would require much more evidence. And I find it hard to imagine a realistic scenario wherein weād also sanction that personās academic collaborators just for working with them.
*****
To close off this reply, I want to reiterate that Iām sorry for the message. I could have handled this better, and I understand your frustration. But while I wish Iād expressed my concerns differently, I still think that the norm of making at least a small effort to back up personal accusations with evidence is an important one.
Hi Aaron, I appreciate this and understand the thought process behind the decision. I do generally agree that it is important to provide evidence for this kind of thing, but there were reasons not to do so in this case, which made it a bit unusual.