Last night I went on Ancestry.com and was running name after name through the system — older cases of people who disappeared in their teenage years. Found a bunch of high school yearbook photos I didn’t previously have. And I’m not done yet. Here’s the list thus far of cases with photos added:
- Marie Ann Blee
- Kellie Marie Brownlee
- Josephine Yvette Cogburn
- Joyce Irene Cogburn
- Phyllis Marie Corbin
- Perry Otto Corlew
- William Henry Forshee Jr.
- Dermot Faulkner Kelly
- Jeannette Rose Miller
- Sophia Felecita Moreno
- Cathy Marie Moulton
- Sherry Jean Pickle
- Marcia Estelle Remick
- Diane Marie Webb
- Mitchel Fred Weiser
I have to give credit where it’s due: I got the idea of fishing for photos on Ancestry from Carl Koppelman. He would often dig up a yearbook photo when there was a NamUs case of a missing adult that had no photo available. Even a pic of the person in their high school or college days, years before they went missing, is better than none at all.
I also happened to find some pictures of my great-grandparents and added them to Reddit.
Yesterday I got my first subreddit ban, for “using dehumanizing language.” The “dehumanizing language” was me referring to the 1920s-1930s era actor and comedian Roscoe Arbuckle by his stage name. It was supposed to be a seven-day ban but only lasted like five minutes because I messaged the moderators and pointed out the context and defended myself: I had said the word “Fatty” as an identifier and not a slur, and I didn’t think it was fair that I should get banned for this seeing as how Roscoe called himself that. The moderators saw it my way, rescinded the ban and apologized for the misunderstanding.
Now, if only Facebook mods were like that. But they can’t be, because they’re robots and not human beings. It was a Reddit modbot that automatically banned me for using Roscoe Arbuckle’s stage name, but there were humans operating that bot, humans who could be reasoned with. Facebook will remain broken for as long as robot moderators outnumber human moderators like a thousand to one. I posted on my Facebook about my Reddit ban and was afraid to even type Roscoe Arbuckle’s stage name, I was like “Look it up if you don’t know it, I don’t want to get Zucked for the zillionth time.”
The Charley Project Blog 
The whole thing about being banned for writing Fatty Arbuckle’s name is stupid. It was not seen as offensive in the past. How would moderators feel if someone from 500 years’ time appeared in front of them and started screaming at them for something that we find perfectly normal?
Well, it was a subreddit about obesity and they wanted to discourage cruel talk about fat people. 99% of the time today, “Fatty” is a cruel bullying word. My use of it happened to be in the 1% that wasn’t cruel.
Reddit is ridiculous. Wouldn’t a Google search have revealed to the Reddit moderator exactly who that was? It’s censorship based on willful ignorance and it sounds as if you were the one who was actually bullied by Reddit
I could see the reasoning of what was going on. The sub was about obesity and some of the misinformation that’s been spread around about the effects of obesity on health, and how to lose weight etc. It was not designed as a “hate on fat people” sub and they wanted to avoid it becoming so.
The modrobot was likely designed to send all comments for moderation review that used certain words that are slurs against fat people. My comment, referring to Mr. Arbuckle, just called him “Fatty” without saying his surname, and it tripped the robot. If the robot (and moderator) had read the previous comments in the discussion it would have been clear I was talking about Fatty Arbuckle, but all they saw was a comment saying “Fatty” and they didn’t understand the context.
Mistakes happen sometimes and Reddit has human moderators to correct them when they’re pointed out. That’s what happened here: I pointed out the mistake and it was fixed.