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Meta: Loser Noobs and Their Contributions to the Site

posted by on Thursday September 03 2020, @08:00PM   
from the silver-linings dept.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Congrats to the wannabe APK noobtard for advancing the site's codebase despite me having extremely limited time to play. I added three lines of code and now Spam modded comments (and comment trees) auto-collapse and you can still moderate a comment as Spam even if it's already at the minimum score. Honestly, the folks using any other downmod on obvious Spam annoy me more than the noobtard does but that annoyance at least is now history. Changes are to hot code only, I'll put them in the repo as part of my next pull request.

Suck it, noob. --TMB

• Re:So if I understand this right... Re:So if I understand this right... (Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday September 05 2020, @05:42PM (2 children)

  by RandomFactor (3682) on Saturday September 05 2020, @05:42PM (#1046856) Journal

  The university had an issue with TPUSA in the not too distant past. TPUSA maintains a professor watchlist [professorwatchlist.org] that's supposed to expose faculty pushing left wing political agendas in the classroom. In fairness, academic freedom [insidehighered.com] does not mean that faculty can impose their political views on students.

  That's the rub. This is where academia is seen by many to have failed to serve well for generations, and for good or ill, why things like TPUSA now exist. I personally remember a psychology prof telling his class (attempting to quote by memory from 40 odd years ago..) "if you look at every bad thing the government has ever done, it was done by republicans", and don't even get me started on my macro-economics prof. :-)
   
  Academic freedom [natlawreview.com] requires balancing the rights of the university, the professors, and the students themselves. I don't know the perfect answer any more than anyone else, but I suspect like a lot of things it involves more sunlight to make reality match philosophy. Sunlight invariably is disliked for various reasons - Some are just used to the dark, some are doing things they shouldn't under its cover, and some are opposed for perfectly valid privacy/surveillance state concerns. That last is weakened by being invoked to protect instruction [themix.net] that parents feel is inappropriate in school. Sticky wicket and I'm mixing higher ed with K-12 anyway.

  I suppose the first question, though, is why TPUSA only objects to faculty pushing left wing views in the classroom. Does that mean they would be okay with faculty pushing right wing views on students? But you're right, there just aren't many right wingers who are university faculty members. The bigger issue is why a group that says they promote free speech is maintaining a watchlist. That has a chilling effect on free speech.

  Ok, also for free-speech concerns :-p
   
  I'm no expert on TPUSA, but it has an explicit viewpoint. Why would they track those that agree with it? From their mission statement page:

  "Turning Point USA’s mission is to educate students about the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government. TPUSA activists are the community organizers of the right."

  If there is an expectation for TPUSA to call out the small population (possibly hidden in business schools) that are actually aligned with their views I didn't see it in my quick perusal. That expectation may need adjustment?

  As for moderation, I suppose I just spent too much time on Slashdot, where M2 is supposed to remove bad moderators and there's a considerably smaller amount of mod points in circulation.

  Fair enough, I just don't think SN has the user population to make it work and that it would lead to issues that /. was able to avoid through sheer size of its user population smoothing things out.

  I could also do without triggered right wing snowflakes occasionally modding my comments to -1 before others have a chance to mod them up. And yes, I only post AC.

  A lot of folks read at -1 just because of this (I do). Reasoned/valid comments at -1 that don't belong there vex me and I'll drop an upmod on them that I might not have otherwise for that reason alone. As is so often the case - that's not a right or left wing snowflake specific issue.
   
  I also think we have categorically rebuked that you are a RWNJ.

  --
  В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды

  Parent

• Re:So if I understand this right... Re:So if I understand this right... (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @03:18AM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @03:18AM (#1047405)

  I personally remember a psychology prof telling his class (attempting to quote by memory from 40 odd years ago..) "if you look at every bad thing the government has ever done, it was done by republicans"

  You object to professors relaying truth in their classrooms? Oh, you were one of Those students! Smarter than your profs! OK, Welcome to the desert of the real.

  Parent

  • Re:So if I understand this right... (Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 07 2020, @12:34PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday September 07 2020, @12:34PM (#1047541) Homepage Journal

    Well, it's astoundingly untrue and verifiably so, so your objection is not really relevant. The Dems were the worst enemies minorities had historically. Pro-slavery, pro-Jim-Crow, anti-civil-rights bills, yadda yadda yadda. Some idiots think that changed around the late 60s but it didn't; they only switched whose votes they were trading manufactured racial hatred for.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.

    Parent