“Citation needed” is exactly sealioning; it is an attempt to burden people with whom you disagree with unceasing demands for proof, which proof will be dismissed as soon as it is provided.

That’s not what “sealioning” is. Sealioning is pretending to be polite when you’re actually trolling, like in “JAQing off”. Most of the people just posting “citation needed” aren’t even trying to appear polite.

Additionally, people who sealion are disrupting a conversation between people who are in agreement in order to cause disagreement where there was none. In this case, you’re not presenting something that was agreed on by most people here.

Putting the burden of proof on the claimant (where it belongs, btw), particularly on something over which there is already disagreement present in the discussion and which has not been agreed upon by a majority of those previously involved in the discussion, and in a way that, even if not necessarily rude, isn’t feigning politeness either, is not even remotely sealioning. Not all trolling is sealioning.

Plus, I don’t think this is even trolling. You assume without even trying that any evidence presented will be summarily dismissed without viewing it, but that hasn’t been the case previously. In the past, such evidence has been viewed and, if dismissed, it’s only after saying that the evidence comes from an incredibly unreliable source (like Project Veritas) or after pointing out why the evidence doesn’t support the claim being made even if the information in the source is accurate. Other times, if they don’t change their mind, they don’t dismiss the evidence per se but rather concede that it supports the claim but come to a different conclusion, essentially conceding that point but making a different argument. And still other times, they do change their minds. None of that is ignoring the evidence presented. If you present good evidence from a reliable source that supports your point, it won’t be dismissed.

Not to mention that most of the idiotic square bracket stuff directed at me is about claims that I’ve said things that I never have.

Not as far as I can tell. It’s all either “citation needed”, “projects facts not in evidence”, and other things like that, either with nothing else in the comment or with a quote from the part of the post being referenced, which is almost always the previous comment. To the extent it’s “about claims that [you]’ve said things that [you] never have,” it wouldn’t be directed at you or else it would, by necessity, be directed at something you actually said since, again, the only things included would be the bracketed material (which doesn’t explicitly state what is being referenced) and possibly a quote from or clear reference to something in the previous comment, meaning it’s either referring to something you did say or not directed at you to begin with.

(Which could be searched for, if those same idiots weren’t the ones flagging the posts that would demonstrate the case.)

You can still search hidden posts. It’s a little trickier as it requires unhiding those posts manually, but it’s not at all impossible.

I also fail to see how that would be a problem for you. If it’s not something you said, then the burden of proof would be on the one claiming you did say it, so just ask them to prove that you said it. Though, again, usually the bracketed stuff is in reference to the post being replied to in the first place, so I fail to see how it would be difficult to show one way or the other if the referenced claim was actually made.

Plus, I said that this is what I would do if I were moderating. As you helpful folks like to point out, people who run sites get to moderate as they wish.

Yes, but you have previously been against such moderation (though you called it “censorship”), so it does seem odd that this is the sort of moderation you would go for.

For the record, you absolutely do get to moderate that way on a site that you control. No one has said otherwise. It seems kinda dumb, we probably would not moderate the same way, and we might say that we don’t like you moderating that way, but none of us are saying that you can’t or shouldn’t be able to do so. Additionally, our disagreement with such moderation would not be based on free-speech principles (though they would remain consistent with them); rather, they would be based upon other opinions and principles, like how a debate works.

In other words, I don’t know why you would moderate that way based on your previous comments, and I will criticize and/or question your decision, but I won’t assert that you must moderate differently if that’s really what you want to do. It just seems dumb and a turnaround from your previous stance.