Dear friends,
In a recent Facebook post Pepe Escobar wrote the following:
The low down – on the economic measures, on the Hong Kong question, and on The Big Picture. All in a 5-minute read that…
Posted by Pepe Escobar on Sunday, May 24, 2020
This is just the latest in a long series of compliments that I heard from many top commentators (most recently from Catherine Austin-Fitts)!
The credit for all these compliments goes entirely to my absolutely fantastic team of moderators without whom I frankly would have to shut down the comments section. Really, I physically would not have the time to carefully moderate the many comments we get every day, including many from paid or non-paid trolls, all sorts of simply not very intelligent people, and even a few bona fide nutcases!
Please keep in mind that all my moderators are non-paid volunteers who generously give their time and energy to keep this blog and its comments section going.
Herb, the head of moderation, and the moderators try as best they can to provide moderation as close as possible to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They all come from very different countries and continents, and they try as best they can to “fill” as many hours as possible and to make the turn-around for all comments as short as possible.
This is a very difficult task, to put it mildly.
Finally, every time something goes wrong, the moderators get flamed, even when it is not their “fault” at all. Yet they keep providing this vitally needed function to the Saker blog. Only in very rare cases have I seen somebody thank the moderators. Yet they do deserve our thanks!
This is all to say the following:
- Moderators are possibly the best feature of this blog (the whining of “censored crybabies” notwithstanding).
- We ALWAYS need more moderators (even if for just a few hours per week)!
- Right now, we have a specific need: the time-slot between 7am and 10am (US EDT) Monday through Thursday
If you can help, or if you at least want to try, please email Herb at herb@thesaker.is and let him know that you are willing to give it a shot.
Frankly, this is one of the most effective ways of helping this blog, and you can do that even under the strictest quarantine rules, since you can do that safely from the comfort of your home!
So, please, give it a try and email Herb.
Many thanks in advance!
The Saker
Well done to the moderators. It’s a credit to thesaker.is
I never comment but enjoy reading them.
And there’s a stark contrast between the intelligent comments and arguments on the Saker to the one’s on RT for example, who’s comment section has become a cesspool and a gathering of conspiracy crackpots, depressed individuals, alt-right geeks and primitive antisemites who seem to make the jews, the Rothschilds, Karl Marx and Soros or Bill Gates as the counterpoint of every world issue. It’s just absurd ad hominem insults and speculative nonsense.
Hey i’m all for criticising the Israeli government and big money ineterest groups but you need to be subtle and factual when you’re making a point and arguing otherwise it’s just nonsensical and hysterical drivel that can’t be taken seriously.
Kind Regards,
TA
“And it’s always very interesting to see how the quality of comments to my articles and essays at The Saker is so much higher than in other websites.”
I completely concur with Pepe Escobar. Moderating a blog like this must be demanding, especially when the prevailing zeitgeist in the MSM is one of censorship and promotion of official propaganda. It must be difficult to know where to draw the line on hate speech.
Philip Giraldi had something to say about this over on the Unz Review…
“Regular visitors to this site will be aware that I frequently write about the massive propaganda campaign being run by supporters of Israel to conceal the damage done by the Jewish state to actual United States’ interests. One of the more interesting aspects of that effort is the bowdlerization of language to extirpate some words that might have anti-Semitic overtones and to twist the meaning of others in such a fashion as to deprive them of any meaning.”
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/zionists-have-feelings-too/
Speaking just for myself, the difference between EDT and CET is four hours. One could get more aware of this while you have discussions on IRC with people from all over the globe, or -as I have too- done projects for companies in both China and California.
So for me this is from 11:00 to 14:00, and no, sorry, I’d like to help but I can’t. My client likes to see me working then on *his* stuff.
You only have to read a comment thread on ZH on a juicy subject to see what happens to a site with no moderation (which I suspect).
Here this doesn’t happen, and I’m glad for that. I had to laugh loudly about your ‘cry baby’ story, and I can assure you that I know from own experience that you’re definitely not the only site where this happens. A keyboard has a low treshold, and certain people sling some arguments, hit the ‘Enter’ key, and think something like ‘now deal with that, wrong world!’
So, let me take the occasion to say some words to the mod team.
You people are doing a great job, with long posts, hyperlinks, not the dumbest and unreaded people around, and sometimes repeated arguments to boringness.
Let me emphasize that I certainly know how difficult this sometimes can be, from own experience. I think most readers here recognize this, though they will not spell it out.
Together with other commentators and the host of this site we have deserved this remarkable words of Pepe Escobar, please feel and understand that this is also for you.
Keep up the good work, all the best, and stay healthy.
Cheers, Rob
(Apologies if it’s inappropriate to ask this question here)
Were comments moderated back when the site was on Blogspot?
Not really. I was minimally moderating myself, but I basically allowed everything. Which was fine when I had 3-5 readers. Now that there are millions each month, I cannot do that.
The Saker