A Question About One-track Posters Impervious to Discussion

I guess I’m being dense. How is the fact that someone can come into our little version of Paradise and post a thread offering a conspiracy theory “weaponized attack content”? Further, how does it affect “us” in any particular way?

I agree completely.

Why do you feel you are justified to silence the opinions of others? He isn’t baiting people and its like 25 on 1.

I understand the position that both those comments reflect, and it’s similar to what I said in the other referenced thread about the fact that mods don’t see themselves as adjudicators of the merits of content. And in fact one might rightfully argue that this endorses a democratic view of this community whereby it’s the community itself that judges the merits and course of a discussion.

I get that, but I also totally get the OP’s point. I think it’s incorrect to gauge the participation in that CT thread or most others as legitimate “interest”. For the most part, it’s more like a sort of social-media version of civic duty – if someone posts something that is just grotesquely wrong and stupid, letting it stand seems to imply a sort of tacit acceptance, like “it might be true, and I don’t really have anything to say about it”. And some just find that unconscionable.

Nor is it possible to just write it off with a one-liner, because then the conspirator claims that his opponents have no real facts. So a bunch of people have to really work at refuting an argument that is so ridiculous that it’s a complete waste of time. You either let it stand, or you waste time refuting it, which never has any impact on the poster because typically they are not here to debate or to learn, but to proselytize. As LSLGuy says in #19, it’s a case of “heads they win; tails we lose”. This is why I would have to agree with him that such threads are disruptive to the community. They’re the kinds of threads that often generate mod notes and warnings as people get frustrated and frequently end up getting closed.

I don’t really know what solution to propose as a general rule change other than “stupid topics not allowed” (is that really such a bad rule?) but I find it difficult to accept the argument that “you don’t have to open the thread”. It’s true, no one has to, but it’s not a matter of personal taste if the thing is obvious blatant garbage. At that point the garbage becomes pollution on the board and a distraction to thoughtful posters with better things to give their thoughts to.

Telling people not to respond and letting him blather without opposition would be more in line with “silencing the opinions of others”, I would think. By the way, when one person is extremely wrong to the point of ridiculousness and the other 25 keep having to point this out, odds of “25-1” aren’t really unfair.

It’s one thread and participation is voluntary.

Agreed.
And?

Yep. This is, IMO, all that needs to be said on the subject.

It may be that there are people who want to genuinely have a discussion about these sorts of controversial topics, and who want to try and actually understand how/whether the conspiracy theories are plausible, and how/whether they are contradicted by proper evidence.

But those people don’t generally start threads like this:

That’s not an opening to a debate or a rational discussion. It doesn’t even conform to the norms of spelling and grammar and sentence structure, let along making an informed argument about the laws of physics. It’s nothing more than bait, and anyone in that thread who contributed more than one smart-ass post before walking away is, as DSYoungEsq notes, getting exactly what they deserve.

[Maxwell Smart voice]And loving it.[/MSV]

Seriously, yes I am getting what I want out of the thread. What’s the harm? We all smack his arguments around and razz him generally until he goes away. Of course he isn’t going to admit defeat - who ever does? “'Tis only a flesh wound” doesn’t convince anyone.

Regards,
Shodan

The ‘someone stop the other guy because I can’t stop myself’ rationale isn’t very compelling. People will always be wrong on the internet an no amount of moderation will change that. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur - What can be gratuitously asserted may be gratuitously denied.

This is especially relevant if some argument takes the form of ‘XYZ seems strange, the widely accepted story must not be true’. Where a knowledgeable person may expend great effort detailing the underlying support of the prevailing wisdom, the initiator simply replies, nu uh! And then the rhetor has swapped the burden and those offering evidence are tasked with providing deeper, wider, more iron clad offerings to the response of, nu uh!

If people want to engage that’s their prerogative but it’s easy enough not to. Or satisfy the itch that some wrongness cannot be left unchallenged and raise the top level objection with gratuitous denial and leave it at that.

I strongly disagree that this board (either TPTB or the general posters) have this responsibility. This board (in spite of the often-mocked motto) is not required to serve as some sort of arbiter of truth for random passing posters like Kay Kay. If some posters want to take this on, that’s fine; I don’t think that the mere existence of threads like the one cited has any serious implications for the value of the board or of the other activities that take place on it.

As for “weaponized attack content.” I’ve never heard such drivel in my life.

I gather you don’t hang out in MPSIMS much. :smiley:

But how much evidence does Kay Kay need? That thread is now at 835 posts (almost a quarter of them by Jay Jay). If Kay Kay isn’t convinced by now they’re never going to be. (And Kay Kay might just have well have stumbled upon the other dozens of threads on the subject here.)

So what’s the problem?

Somebody writing in free verse or whatever is wrong? Who cares? In a few days that thread will be on page 2 and forgotten.

He currently holds the record for posts per day, at almost 100. [Up 13/day from yesterday. Yes, destined to drop, but that just gives you the idea…]

Just to be clear, that wasn’t really my argument – I just mentioned in passing that these sorts of low-quality threads tend not to end well. My main point is that nonsense threads like these are a waste of time and space, and are a disservice to the board by cluttering it with garbage and taking up posters’ time. I realize that individual mods don’t determine board policy but since we use ATMB to make our views known, I’m just indicating my agreement with some of the views here.

Fair enough, but I think it’s also fair to say that the number of times that a ridiculous nonsense post in GD has been totally ignored and not extensively refuted is “never”. Same answer for any chance that this will ever happen in the future.

Yep – currently almost exactly 100 posts per day. Assuming he averages an 8-hour day on this daily, that’s 12.5 posts per hour. That’s more than a post every five minutes over an 8-hour day. Referring back to my earlier comment about “waste of time and space”, I rest my case.

Here’s an insightful comment about how to make bad threads: the Bad Thread Starter Pack. This garbage thread meets all criteria except the last one (the poster wandering off and never being heard from again). Moreover, we’ve had a number of threads closed on the basis that they didn’t present a legitimate or substantive debate, whereas this one was started with basically a one-sentence bit of illiterate free verse with a barely coherent question appended.

I seem to recall a post by some moderator, I forget who, which would seem to be pertinent to this situation.

Yes, that was in GQ. Everything else seems to be identical.

GQ? As often noted, here, context is always important. The GQ thread, in this instance, has been closed.

Leave the guy alone. He’s providing some low-level amusement.

:dubious:You have a very strange definition of “identical.” Jay Jay made 11 posts in the GQ thread vs (currently) 224 in GD. MANTRAPHILTER had 24 or so posts in that thread when I closed it.