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by posterboy 2222 days ago
Stop making this personal.

> so you are excluded

from what, playing the piano? Do you maybe see a connection here to why somebody might not know "how to play the piano"?

Or in other words: A garden without "you" is not really a garden, except in theory, if the proverbial tree makes a sound when nobody can hear it fall. That's a slippery slope argument.

Many people may lack impulse control, but preemptive judgement can't weed them all out. That's one reason why it's "not fair". It's fair to those that have "impulse control", maybe, but it is perhaps unfair that they get to decide what that is, when a moderator might act out of impulse, or experience, all the same. It is however futile to assume that life were just not fair, because then "you" have already lost.

If entry is taken to afford the gate keeper, it is not an open garden anymore, open to the public. At least not if the submission requirements are arbitrary to an uncertain degree. Maybe it's the wrong approach to take that internet discussion is not important and impulse control therefore let down too easily. But then again, the impulse to post or visit at all might be the problem to begin with, as in this post.

Really, who's aspiring to become a concert pianist in this day and age? That's a weak rhyme, unless you meant to imply that the reddit moderator cabal were playing the readers like an instrument.

1 comments

> Stop making this personal.

I didn't; the person I responded to did, by using the word "I". They were specifically talking about themselves.

> from what, playing the piano?

From being a concert pianist. Read what I actually wrote.

> It's fair to those that have "impulse control", maybe, but it is perhaps unfair that they get to decide what that is, when a moderator might act out of impulse, or experience, all the same.

My statement that impulse control is a basic requirement for participation applies just as much to moderators as to any other participants.

Who gets to decide what the forum rules and norms are is whoever owns the forum. That's as fair as it gets.

There are some forums where lack of impulse control isn't much of a problem, because nobody else on that forum has it either. So strictly speaking, I should have restricted my comments to forums where that is not the case. I don't think that makes much difference in practice for this discussion, since as far as I can tell the forums where lack of impulse control is the norm don't have moderation problems since they don't have moderation at all.

> who's aspiring to become a concert pianist in this day and age?

Googling "how to become a concert pianist" gets plenty of hits, so it looks like plenty of people are trying to help aspiring concert pianists. Perhaps they're all speaking to an audience of zero, but I doubt it.

> unless you meant to imply that the reddit moderator cabal were playing the readers like an instrument

You're going way off into left field here.