An Un-Pit of Czarcasm, re: IMHO v GD

I really don’t want to make a big deal about this, but I thought it would be less hijacky to bring it over here to get further clarification. Since I’m not clear if it’s me alone (or not me at all) or other posters who are kinda sorta being chastised (but not officially Warned), I thought I’d start this here instead of going to email so everyone who cares can be on the same page.

Note: Sarcasm mode is off. All questions are sincere, not insolent challenges.

So…uh… what’s up, 'casm?

I really do want some sort of elucidation here, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass. Are we not supposed to post more than once to an IMHO thread? Are we not supposed to reply to other posters or their points? Is that in the rules, or part of “Don’t be a jerk”? Has this come up before and I missed it?

If all you want is a single reply to the OP, then why not simply enable Polls like the vBulletin software allows?

Alternatively, if you feel the thread is becoming Debate-y, why not just move it to Great Debates? Wouldn’t that be easier, and less work on your part? Wouldn’t that be less stress on the hamsters than two threads on essentially the same topic?

And finally and again, who exactly do you feel is crossing the line into debate? Me, because of the FAS information? (I assumed so, since your post came after mine with no quote.) That seemed rather relevant to a thread asking about the choice to drink during pregnancy and everyone else’s uncertainty of whether or not FAS affects a fetus. Or was it the whole “pro-life/pro-choice” divide on whether this was a question of “women’s health”, which I wasn’t actually getting involved in?

Basically: Wah! Was it me? I’m feeling like I *might *have done something wrong in your eyes, but I don’t understand exactly what or how to not do it again. Help me, please!

The thing.

OK, i get the picture. In IMHO, the idea is that you’re supposed to give your opinion on the topic in question without debating whether or not other people’s opinions are correct or appropriate. The problem is that this just doesn’t work for some topics, and rather than stamping your foot and bitching about it, why don’t you just acknowledge that and move the fucking thread to GD?

Sure, some topics are amenable to the avoidance of debates, particularly topics that are purely subjective in nature. “What’s your favorite candy?” does not have an incorrect answer, or better and worse answers based on scientific research, or even moral and ethical implications. It is a personal preference, pure and simple. Or, to take a few examples currently on the front page of IMHO, “Could you live happily without recorded music?”, “Ever work with someone like this?” and “Iowa Caucusers: Share your experiences and results.”

But with some topics, when you have different people offering different opinions, it’s almost impossible to avoid disagreement and debate. Really, the only way you could avoid IMHO turning into debates for such topics is to impose a limit of one post per person per thread. That way, you could come in, give your opinion on the OP, and leave.

This is especially the case when the OP asks for an opinion on a moral or ethical issue. In such cases, you nearly always get not only differing opinions, but people attempting to support their position with argument and evidence. The thread i linked to is an example. There is also currently some debate going on in the thread “Those with roommates - utility bills during an absence,” and in the thread “Why would a guy treat my friend this way?”

Some topics are rarely going to be amenable to a mere giving of an opinion and then walking away and not caring what other people post. And any thread on abortion will probably qualify. Rather than complain that people in the thread aren’t following the rules, why not recognize that the OP probably should have put the thing in GD in the first place?

Look at the title of the thread in question: “Okay to drink/abuse your body if you’re pregnant but intending to abort?”

Does that sound like anything BUT an invitation to a debate?

Now, its possible the OP could have salvaged the topic for IMHO, but look at the last line of the OP:

Those last 8 words make it inevitable that this topic will become a debate. Because if Person A answers “Yes” to the first part of the question, then Person B answers “Yes” to the second part, then Person A is (perfectly naturally) going to want to defend herself against the accusation that she is a bad person.

Also, if we’re going to insist that topics like this be limited to strict answers to the original question ONLY, then the thread should probably be restricted to women. After all, no guy is going to get pregnant, and so will never be faced with this choice.

In short, stick your dummy back in your mouth, and move the thread to GD.

Shit, you beat me to it. But mine has more vitriol.

Well, shit, WhyNot started a thread on the same topic here, and beat me to the punch.

Could someone report my OP?

Mods, could you maybe merge the threads and/or add my OP to WhyNot’s thread?

I’ll try merging the two threads, so mhendo’s angry screed can be included. Hold on a sec.

Edit: looks like it worked. Neat.

Thanks Giraffe.

<Momentary Hijack>
You can report your own post.
boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/report.php?p=InsertPostNumberHere
</MH>

Where do you find the post number?

Hover your mouse over the reply button and look at the status bar on the bottom of the screen. It’s the number after “p=”. For example, your post is #9333409.

In this case, reporting any post in either thread would have been fine – as long as you explain things in the main body of the report, we’ll figure it out.

Grazie.

(And it’s also my cite, by the way.)

Oi, you lot, piss off with your hijacks.

I want some responses to WhyNot’s reasonable question and/or to my screed.

I was rather hoping **Czarcasm **would weigh in. He seems to be a reasonable fellow in almost every case, but I do think that plenty of IMHO threads have been just as debatish without censure. Or, at the very least, moved to GD.

There is a difference between seeing that a thread is more suited for Great Debates and asking a Moderator to move it, and just ignoring where the thread currently resides and posting as if it had already been moved. Besides, I’m not too keen on “If Poster A says one thing, I am totally incapable of not arguing with that point of view, no matter what forum the thread resides in, so you better move this thread to a forum that allows me to respond the way I want now!”
I believe our members are made of better stuff than this.

As for the immediate need for the thread to be moved to Great Debates-I did so, at the request of the OP, four and a half hours ago.

And no one has posted in it since.

He’s a reasonable mod in almost every case. He’s one of the board’s very best. He’ll get down in the trenches as a poster, but he retreats to his thinking tower as a mod and almost always emerges the wiser. He and I fight constantly over issues, but I’ve never seen a better or more fair mod at any board. When he breaks out his mod stick on me, my default position is that I fucked up. I think the reason I have this perception of him is that he is a virulent, hard, almost violent anti-theist, and he loathes my worldview through and through. And yet despite that, he has never been anything but fair with respect to board policy concerning me — both giving me clearance and giving me cautions when I deserved them. You just can’t ask for better than that.

Holy crap. In some forums, we’re required to reply to our own threads (see VCO3), and in others we’re not supposed to?

This place is getting way too hard.

But we DO discuss in IMHO and have as long as it’s been around. It’s not the “what I think” forum, but the “what I think, and why” forum, and it often takes some clarifying to get to that. The things discussed tend to be more subjective, and the standards for evidence looser–start with the premise that all life is sacred in GD, you’d best have cites in three languages and four different ethical systems to verify, and even then you’ll be forced to back down from the “all”. IMHO is not as cutthroat, and you can retreat to “hey, that’s just what I believe”, but it is a discussion forum.

But…but…YOU were there. You saw it, and noted that it was in debate mode. Why didn’t you report it to yourself and move it then? ETA: I understand that users reporting posts helps the mods to notice threads they might not otherwise check in on, but since you were there, it was obvious the thread already caught your notice.

I’m afraid I don’t agree, in general. He’s one of the most capricious and arbitrary mods. But in this case, it’s not the capriciousness that concerns me, but getting some simple clarification on who was in violation of the spirit or the letter of the rules and in what post(s) that happened. Still haven’t gotten that.

And i hoped the mods were better than this. Excellent non-answer, brilliantly failing to respond to the actual points raised in both WhyNot’s post, and mine.

Why not activate polls?

Is there a one-post limit?

Is any back-and-forth allowed? After all, plenty of IMHO threads have a fair amount of debate with no censure (i gave examples in my post).

Why not exercise your mod discretion when reading the actual OP, in order to determine whether it might better reside in GD, rather than just assuming that everyone who offers more than a single opinion is setting out to break the rules? If whole bunch of people begin to debate the issue, maybe you could treat that as a clue about the nature of the OP itself.

It’s not like IMHO is over-run by threads that are likely to descend into debates. On the front page right now, virtually every thread is very well suited to a simple offering of an opinion or relating of an experience. But a question like the OP of the thread in question simply isn’t. If you don’t recognize that, maybe you’re not cut out for the job.