You cite a couple of dozen of my posts in the now-closed JFK-Lee Harvey Oswald thread in Great Debates, https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-against-lee-h-oswald/993643/269 at least 16 of which are totally harmless, a bit exasperated maybe (maybe) which I think is understandable since I’m being asked a dozen different questions at once, and none of the evidence I cite (from the Stone film, and the critique MORTAL ERROR) is shown the slightest respect from anyone else in the thread. There are maybe a few posts you cite that edge close to the line of excessively sarcastic (and about as many that I think are actually friendly, and jocular in nature, more than hostile), and for these, I think I’d say that a mod note, or maybe (maybe) a thread banning, would be appropriate, so I hope someone in your mod discussions will suggest that quoting my posts wholesale is a pile-on and few of the posts you quote really amount to much of anything. If a mod had come into the thread and told me to “Cut it out” I would have toned it down at that point. I thought we were having a spirited discussion, and I was taking more disparaging remarks than I was giving.
Is there much of a debate going on there, anyway? Anyone who disagrees with the thesis in the OP, if there is one, gets lambasted as a conspiracy-minded nutball, both of which (conspiracist and nutball) I have tried to defend my position against. I can see another remedy being simply to send the debate to IMHO, since no one on either side is putting forth much solid evidence–we’re just arguing based on our opinions of the WC Report for the most part, and I’m not any less factual than anyone else there, just defending a contrary position. I get criticized for referring to the 2021 Stone documentary as a documentary, when it clearly belongs to that genre, whatever one makes of its quality or of Stone, and people are making all sorts of misstatements and mischaracterizations, so if you felt it wasn’t really a debate to begin with, I can understand that. If it is a debate, though, I’d sure like to know what the question being debated is.
It’s not understandable. It’s also not acceptable. If you think someone is out of line, your remedy is to flag their post, not one-up them with sarcasm.
They don’t edge close. They cross the line. It’s not your opinion that counts here. It’s also the fact that you continue to engage in this course of conduct, which has now gone on for a very long time. It generates a lot of flags and requires an excessive amount of moderator time and intervention. May I suggest that perhaps your gauge for “friendly and jocular” are not finely tuned, because that’s not how your posts are coming across to other posters.
All posters here are expected to self-police, and those like yourself who have been repeatedly warned for engaging in a particular sort of conduct have a shorter leash than others.
I agree! The remedy to that is to stop posting to a thread that has devolved into nothing but Pit-like snark exchanges. Further, I don’t think the OP should be punished by having his thread moved to IMHO because posters are unable to stick with the discussion as framed.
Maybe you should have respectfully asked that question in the thread to help guide you, instead of making 53 posts in a thread you now claim had no clear framed debate.
But this shit has got to go, man. First of all, indicating there was no thesis in the op sounds like some weird flex. Obviously, my OP was arguing that Oswald acted alone.
More pointedly, I defy you to site any comment in that thread where a critic was so maligned. Asking you to back up your statements with logic, reason, or facts is not oppression.
What makes a person a bad participant in great debates is when they don’t engage. Yet you have steadfastly refused to follow through on the simple logic of your statements. It would seem that you are tacitly conceding that they are indefensible, suggesting a debater who is not debating in good faith.
And You have frequently claimed, multitude of sources, but you haven’t cited anything but a movie the rest of us can’t or won’t watch.
I don’t think the thread should be locked, and I don’t think you should be sanctioned, because I don’t think either of those things should really ever happen. But I’m in the minority on that opinion.
Regardless, I find your debating style worthy of mod intervention.
I don’t think this is the place to continue the discussion, but I will point out that the movie that you can’t or won’t watch refers to much evidence that I kept referring to, so even without the ability or the willingness to watch the movie, I was supplying plenty of documents taken from that movie. I don’t find it fair to argue that I kept saying “See the Stone movie” as my only evidence. I also (as noted above) cited the book MORTAL ERROR as a counter-argument that impressed me. These two sources obviously didn’t impress you, but please don’t pretend that I relied on my unsupported opinions alone.
I’m also not disagreeing with Aspenglow’s objections or characterizations of my argument (mainly because I think arguing with mods is a fool’s errand) but simply questioning why the thread was locked. If I were banned from the thread, that seems effective enough, if a bit harsh, and I maintain that a nice friendly “Cut it out” from a mod would have gotten the tone closer to the decorum that is required. Shutting down the thread, and considering harsher measures against me, seems a bit over the top, but then I’m not in charge of determining what “the top” is around here.
I don’t understand where the debate is, though. If I can’t argue that the WC’s thesis is so sloppy and flawed that it leaves open the alternative–that Oswald didn’t act alone–then what are we debating? My testiness derived from demands that I present a fully thought-out alternate theory, which I don’t think is required from someone criticizing a theory for its flaws.
If this were your first or only a rare instance of your transgressions, I agree, that would be appropriate. It’s not, and you seem to want to minimize that.
You engage in a course of unacceptable insulting conduct across a scope of threads that exceeds the Lee Harvey Oswald thread, and that’s the reason for the escalating corrections. This behavior has caused you to consistently receive mod notes, a warning and suspensions for personal attacks. Not your first rodeo, at all. Please take this onboard.
I actually asked that in Post 233. I didn’t see you hurrying in to answer my question.
Frankly, by the time we got to Post 262 it had become pretty clear to me that you were Just Asking Questions.
Did I say I believed in a conspiracy, or any particular conspiracy? No, I maintain that there are enough errors in the WC Report, or the one lone nut theory, to make me doubt the integrity and the thoroughness of the Report and the theory. I want these discrepancies clarified, worked out, explained, and nailed down, as opposed to hand-waved away.
People are demanding that I produce an alternate (and completely satisfactory) version of the WC Report, and then boasting that since I haven’t done that, and refuse to try, I should shut up and go away, which is declaring victory in a war that was never fought.
I want to apologize to slicedalone and to the mods. I just remembered that “Just Asking Questions” is tantamount to accusing a poster of being a troll, and that wasn’t my intent.
Is there a record of the last mod note I received? Maybe my memory is going but I think it’s been quite a while and quite a few posts since then. The last time I got into any trouble, I think that was the time when it was prominently mentioned that I was committing some sort of insult by spelling your user name wrong (I have a friend whose last name is “Asper”), though no one could cite exactly what was malicious, or implied, by my misspelling. Quite a flurry about the innocent misspelling, though.
I didn’t hurry in, though I agreed with you. I’m still confused by what debate the OP was posing, and how someone who disagreed with the “one lone nut” thesis could voice a counter-argument that didn’t propose a completely satisfactory alternative thesis.
And you’re right too, that I was questioning the WC Report rather than proposing a thesis of my own, though I did note that I found the MORTAL ERROR thesis impressive. I’m not sure what you’d like to see (other than a kinder gentler tone) that took a decided exception to the OP’s position that Oswald done it.