The Present state of the EF and how it can be improved

[Jonathan Cohen]

James, forgive me if this information has been shared or is publicly available, but by what means were/are moderators chosen, and is there a time limit for their tenure? Do forum members have any say in this process? Thank you for taking decisive action.

[James R Gordon]

Jonathan,

It is my understanding that Moderators are chosen by moderators. I.e.a member is asked if they would like to be a moderator.

I do not believe there is a time limit.

I became a moderator because I was one of the group that created  this forum

Sandy was appointed from members of the admin group.

That said, Sandy has raised an issue. What do we do with a moderator who is not appropriate?

We are going to have to set up procedures for that.

James

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

I discussed the root of the current problem in the following post. This was back in January, when Sandy had barely begun dishing out punishments to members who disagreed with him:

Caesar's wife comes to mind. A moderator must not only act fairly; he or she must be seen to act fairly. A moderator who actively promotes far-fetched beliefs will inevitably generate suspicion whenever he uses his moderator's powers against those who disagree with him.

If people suspect, rightly or wrongly, that they won't get a fair deal on this forum, they are unlikely to hang around or even join in the first place. Hence the paucity here of lone-nutters and non-paranoid conspiracy theorists. I'm aware of several ex-members who questioned one or more far-fetched theories and were either banned or left of their own accord as a result. 

 It's good that Sandy devotes time to the administration of this forum. The Watercoolers feature, which I assume Sandy had a hand in creating, was an effective way of defusing partisan political disagreements that had nothing to do with the JFK assassination.

But the power to suspend or ban members should not be in the hands of people who actively promote far-fetched or otherwise divisive beliefs, because at some point those people will act against members who disagree with them, and suspicion will be generated. Personally, I think the panel of moderators should be entirely (or, at worst, largely) comprised of people who do not actively promote such beliefs. Whether enough suitable members can be found is another matter. 

(https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30072-theorist-shamers-should-be-ashamed-of-themselves/?do=findComment&comment=526851)

[Benjamin Cole]

3 hours ago, Charles Blackmon said:

That is not going to happen.

Well, maybe not. But anyone can turn over a new leaf....

[Denise Hazelwood]

2 hours ago, James R Gordon said:

I would be interested in how you feel the moderators should approach posts.What issues should moderators steer away from and what issues should they bring to situation.

Well, there’s a difference in how they should respond as “moderators” and how they should feel free to respond as forum participants. As participants, they can respond with whatever views and opinions they have as long as they maintain a civil tone, just like the rest of us. I would be okay with it if they have a “moderator” tag that shows when they post, to give them a bit of status when they post, since they are doing the moderating out of the goodness of their hearts (I don’t think they get paid, do they?). However, they need to wear a different hat when they’re working as moderators, to try to maintain neutrality and respond to flags to investigate whether the flag is earned and whatever else they do. But perhaps if a moderator wants to flag or penalize a member himself, maybe check with another moderator first to make sure they aren’t applying their own biases or whatever. I think it should maybe take two people (a member + moderator, or 2 moderators) to penalize a member. There should probably be a way to appeal and have all the moderators review a decision, if a member thinks they have been unfairly punished. If the moderators can’t agree at that point, put it out as a thread for the community to respond and give their input. During the appeal process the sanction stands until and unless it is overturned. Just spitballing, but those are the first thoughts that come to mind.

Oh, and a “Naughty List” (whatever you want to call it) thread at the top of the forum for the moderators to let the members know if someone has been banned, and for how long if it is temporary, and most importantly explaining why, so that others know not to repeat that mistake. I don’t think warnings need to be posted there, but a ban notice should probably include how many times the offender was warned, to clarify the egregious nature of the violation. (In lieu of multiple moderator agreement, that might be a way to ensure fairness.) Again, just spitballing.

[W. Niederhut]

3 hours ago, James R Gordon said:

Jonathan,

It is my understanding that Moderators are chosen by moderators. I.e.a member is asked if they would like to be a moderator.

I do not believe there is a time limit.

I became a moderator because I was one of the group that created  this forum

Sandy was appointed from members of the admin group.

That said, Sandy has raised an issue. What do we do with a moderator who is not appropriate?

We are going to have to set up procedures for that.

James

James Gordon,

     I have a question regarding Education Forum management, disinformation, and criticisms of Sandy Larsen by a few forum members who have been censured.  

      We have an admirable tradition of freedom of speech in the U.S., but we also pay a high price for it-- generally allowing propagandists and marketers to endlessly repeat disinformation.  This repetition of falsehoods is correlated with mass ignorance and delusions, and it has been exploited by Warren Commission propagandists, advertisers, and politicians to dupe the public.

      Under the circumstances, should there be a process for Education Forum moderators to set limits on forum members who repeatedly post clearly proven falsehoods, in the interest of limiting the posting of redundant disinformation?

       Put differently, if the mission of the Education Forum is education, should the forum permit the posting of redundant disinformation-- even when it has been definitively debunked?

      As an example, one of our Sandy Larsen critics on this thread, Benjamin Cole, has repeatedly posted falsehoods denying Donald Trump's role in orchestrating the historic January 6th mob attack on the U.S. Congress-- even after James DiEugenio and others explained the facts, and advised Mr. Cole to study the evidence produced by the Congressional J6 investigation.  He refused.

     Mr. Cole's response, then and now-- on this very thread-- is that the forum should respect all opinions, in a presumably "collegial" manner, even if those opinions have been clearly shown to be false-- inconsistent with the facts.

     I beg to differ.  As former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrich Moynihan famously said, "People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts."  And truth matters-- in the case of the JFK assassination, history, and contemporary events.

     Shouldn't we have some scholarly standards, and integrity, here on the Education Forum?

     

[Matt Allison]

2 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Well, maybe not. But anyone can turn over a new leaf....

Alas, I will not be morphing into a MAGA at any point in the future lol. Sorry.

I would be shocked if Mr. Gordon is unable to deduce from the back-and-forth here how quickly this place would turn into a zoo with an unnecessary change of moderators, and the resultant unleashing of purely political mud-slinging.

Seems like a good time to remind people that this is the "Education Forum", not the "Conspiracy Forum".

[Mark Knight]

The ownership of the Education Forum changed hands in 2014. Since then the COVID pandemic has changed a lot of the dynamics here. Some moderators became ill and were unable to participate. [While some contend that COVID was nothing worse than the average case of influenza, some of us had friends and family members who died from the effects of COVID.]

In the aftermath, the EF was down to one or two ACTIVE moderators for a brief time [although it seemed a lot longer]. And at that point, some members apparently decided to see how far they could push the limits of what the moderators would allow. Mods got into the "putting out fires" mode, rather than operating in "fire prevention" mode. I will admit that a couple of my own actions were probably overkill, based more upon cumulative actions than the immediate actions of some members. For that, I apologize. In retrospect, I should've remained detached and didn't.

When things started cooling off slightly, the Water Coolers and a couple of other sub-forums were created. I still contend that this was necessary in order to keep the JFK assassination topic separate from unrelated issues, especially those related to Trump, Biden, Putin, Netanyahu, and other persons and situations not directly connected to the JFK assassination.

There was a point at which I was considering stepping down as a moderator. But at that point, one of the original 4 had stepped aside as an administrator; James was dealing with a health problem, I was told; and another administrator became upset enough to resign. I couldn't in good conscience just abandon Sandy to deal with everything on his own. With just the two of us active, it was about all we could do just to keep up with the "fire-starters." So I stayed.

At this point, I think that it's time to reexamine the moderator role. In the past, under John Simkin and Andy Walker, the administrators and the moderators were not one and the same. I think it might be wise to once again revert to that setup. I would propose that the administrators meet privately and nominate at least four [and preferably five] moderators, providing the nominees are willing to do the job as fairly and impartially as possible.

Once we have a team of moderators in place, I propose that any disciplinary action against any member be discussed, and then only undertaken as the result of a majority of the moderator team. Then, if the moderator team cannot reach a consensus, and ONLY then, the mods can alert the administrative team to settle the matter. At first, IMHO, the mod team should be overseen by the administrators to make sure the admins concur with the mods. But after a successful "probationary" period, the admins can allow the mods to operate as the EF rules allow and the admins can concern themselves with the other matters of operating the EF (such as raising funds and paying the web hosting bills).

These are just suggestions. But at this point, I cannot allow the EF to take up huge portions of my time every day. I'm nearly 70 years old, I'm getting married on Saturday, and I have a life outside the EF...as most of the admins and mods do. People age. Priorities change. 

Part of the recent problems I blame on myself. I let life interfere with overseeing the EF. Mea culpa. Recently I was letting others handle most of the EF problems, forgetting what a mentor once told me: "You must INspect what you EXpect." I wasn't checking in to see if things were running smoothly. Until a member alerted me to the Pat Speer threads. When I did check in, I saw posts being made that would not have normally been allowed to have been made with the tenor used in them. I reacted. I didn't issue any penalties, but I let my displeasure be known...and I was basically told to "sit down and shut up." And as an administrator, I didn't respond well to that.

And so here we are today. James is back, other admins have responded to the situation, and I'm glad to see James asking what we need to do to repair the situation. IMHO, that's the best approach, to solicit ideas, suggestions, and comments from the EF members. Many of the responses I've seen are helpful and thoughtful, and speaking for myself, I must say they're quite welcome. The EF has never been perfect, but the EF administrators haven't always solicited member input on how to improve the place. Now is a great opportunity to be heard. 

I don't believe the admin team has any intention of shutting it all down and starting over. We'd lose too many great threads in our vast archives. But don't kid yourself into thinking that the matter hasn't come up in conversations among the admin team. I think the EF is too valuable a source of information and mostly healthy discussion to have it fall into the great abyss of history. So bring on those ideas and suggestions on improving what we have.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Matt Allison said:

Alas, I will not be morphing into a MAGA at any point in the future lol. Sorry.

I would be shocked if Mr. Gordon is unable to deduce from the back-and-forth here how quickly this place would turn into a zoo with an unnecessary change of moderators, and the resultant unleashing of purely political mud-slinging.

Seems like a good time to remind people that this is the "Education Forum", not the "Conspiracy Forum".

Matt,

    Perhaps we all need to be more "collegial" about accepting the posting of repetitious falsehoods.

    After all, some of our colleagues, including Ben, supported a POTUS who repeated over 30,000 well-documented lies from 2017-21.  And he's still going strong!

    If a POTUS can lie 30,000 times in four years, it must be, in a sense, normative.

    War is Peace.  Freedom is Slavery.  J6 was a "Patriot Purge."

[Mark Knight]

20 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Matt,

    Perhaps we all need to be more "collegial" about accepting the posting of repetitious falsehoods.

    After all, some of our colleagues, including Ben, supported a POTUS who repeated over 30,000 well-documented lies from 2017-21.  And he's still going strong!

    If a POTUS can lie 30,000 times in four years, it must be, in a sense, normative.

    War is Peace.  Freedom is Slavery.  J6 was a "Patriot Purge."

Perhaps we can take this to an appropriate place on the forum, because we're crerping into politics here rather than focusing on forum improvements.

[W. Niederhut]

3 minutes ago, Mark Knight said:

Perhaps we can take this to an appropriate place on the forum, because we're crerping into politics here rather than focusing on forum improvements.

Actually, Mark, my last two posts are directly relevant to the subject of forum management/improvements.

And I would appreciate a response to my (above) question:

Under the circumstances, should there be a process for Education Forum moderators to set limits on forum members who repeatedly post clearly proven falsehoods, in the interest of limiting the posting of redundant disinformation?

[Sandy Larsen]

7 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

I discussed the root of the current problem in the following post. This was back in January, when Sandy had barely begun dishing out punishments to members who disagreed with him:

 

I have never punished a person for disagreeing with me. Never!

What I began doing in January was penalizing members when they mocked other members for their beliefs. Something that Jeremy Bojczuk was in the habit of doing. Mocking other members is against forum rules.

Forum decorum has greatly improved since I began cracking down on egregious rules violators. Unfortunately for me, the rules violators are now coming back and exacting their revenge on me.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

18 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Matt [Allison] would be a good candidate [for moderator] imho.

 

I think that Matt would make a great addition to the admin team!

As Mark Knight said above, he was inclined to retire when I came on as admin. But he promised to stay on as long as I needed him, for which I will be eternally grateful.

Well, I am to the point where I can run things without Mark's mentoring (though I don't know if James Gordon will allow me to continue). If we were to bring Matt or somebody else on, Mark could get his wish and retire.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

I hope an effort is made to diversify the moderator team, so that the full range of the political spectrum is represented, barring overt hate groups (unfortunately now embedded into the fringes of both major political parties).  

You can see from comments made on this thread that staunch partisanship, and related rank biases and petty rancor, are alive and well. 

Good luck to what I hope is a totally new, refreshed and relative unbiased moderator team. No one is perfect, but we can do better. 

 

 

[Tom Gram]

On 6/5/2024 at 11:17 AM, Denny Zartman said:

When did I mention photographs? We're not talking about photographs. We're talking about multiple statements. Pat said Jenkins made multiple statements that the wound he saw was in the top of the head.

Prove it. Show us two statements and then we can all agree that Pat was right. Pat couldn't provide the proof. I'm sure you can.

Read and listen to the statements Jim Jenkins has given over the years. I think you will find no statements where he says in the in the top of the head. That's the claim Pat made and it sure looks like it's completely false.

This is supposedly a Jenkins quote from High Treason 2. I do not have the book: 

Everything from just above the right ear back was fragmented…there was (an absence of scalp and bone) along the midline just above the occipital area…this (wound) would not have been low enough to have gotten into the cerebellum.”

The definition of “occipital” is:

“of or relating to the back part of the head or skull or to the occipital bone.” 

So a literal reading of Jenkins’ statement places the absence and scalp and bone “above the back of the head”. 

Where exactly in your interpretation of anatomy does the back of the head end and the top of the head begin? Mark Knight was right. This ludicrous “argument” over back vs. top is just semantics. 

Pat’s website also has a screencap of a 1991 interview with Livingstone showing Jenkins with his hand on his head entirely above the right ear, on the back part of the TOP of the head.

I do not have this interview, but Pat’s website says this: 

While speaking at a 1991 video-taped conference in Dallas, Harrison Livingstone handed Jenkins a mannequin head marked on the low back of the head and said "This area, when the head came in, you said was opened up." Jenkins responded "Yes, the tissue was attached and the scalp was attached to bone fragments in all of this area." Note that Jenkins insisted that scalp was attached to the bone in "this area," and that there was thereby no blow-out wound in "this area." "This area," as claimed by Jenkins, moreover, is shown below. It is the back of the head, precisely where most conspiracy theorists assume there was a blow-out wound.

Pat has a screen cap of Jenkins pointing to the back of a rubber skull. He continues: 

Jenkins was then asked to show where the wound was when he first saw the body. He put his hand on the top right side of his head, above his ear, and said "If I place the palm of my hand a little superior and anterior to the ear, it would encompass the circle of fingers." (This is shown at left below.) He then moved his hand back three inches or so and curled up his fingers to approximate the size of the "silver dollar or half-dollar" sized wound he said remained after reconstruction, and said "It was in approximately in this area, is where the final hole was--after everything had been drawn back and the body had been prepared for burial."  (This is shown at right below.)

Now, should that be too hard to make out, a GIF of this sequence of the interview was put online by a daft person, who insisted I was somehow misrepresenting what Jenkins had told Livingstone. So here it is... Note how Jenkins' hand drops dramatically at the end when showing where the hole was at the end of the autopsy. It is inches below where he first places it, exactly as I've claimed.

The first (left) image is of Jenkins holding his hand entirely above the right ear, with the circle of fingers right behind it i.e. on the back part of the TOP of the head. 

Is there some ambiguity? Sure, but that’s multiple statements from Jenkins that a reasonable person might interpret as him placing the wound on the back part of the TOP of the head. 

Are you saying that unless someone literally says the word “top”, it doesn’t matter that their statements and gestures suggest a wound ABOVE the occipital area of the head? Even Kevin Hofeling admitted this: 

It's true that James Jenkins places the blow out wound slightly higher than the occiput on the back of the head, but in recent years this has evolved into Speer saying that the large gaping head wound was on the top and not the back of JFK's head.

The literal definition of occiput is: 

The back of the head or skull.

So according to Kevin, Jenkins placed the wound slightly “higher” than the back of the head, but still entirely on the back of the head… 

Give me a effing break. This nonsense has led to how many people getting censored…cough… I mean suspended? I’m glad James is intervening. Kevin egregiously broke forum rules over and over in his crusade to censor Pat yet Sandy justified it by breaking the rules himself and openly calling Pat a liar (and others “bootlickers”) for having a different interpretation of a confused old man making ambiguous statements and pointing to his freaking head. 

Incoming 75 pages of repetitive nonsense and images of Parkland doctors touching their heads. Brace yourselves. 

Edited June 6 by Tom Gram