lucwarm: I now fully understand why Collounsbury has been less than kind to you. Rest assured, I will now smile just a tiny bit every time your paths cross in the future.
I’d really appreciate some guidance on this point. Will you concede that Collounsbury was making a general statement about me?
Can I make general, negative statements about peoples’ analytical skills? Their debating tactics? Their positions?
If not, then what is special about taking a shot at someone’s debating skills that makes it acceptable?
lucwarm - I will not concede that Collounsbury was making a general statement about you. His post could have been referring to the way you were presenting your arguments in that thread, or it could have been a Monty Python reference as a joke.
If you think you understand the Great Debates “attack the post, not the poster” rule, then have at it, if that will make you any happier.
lucwarm, I understand you’re frustration man, but give it up now. We’ve had plenty of opportunity to get our points off with regard to Collounsbury, and I’ve been quite pleased with general upswell of opinion that concurs with ours. I’ve also noticed a significant change in the demeanor of **Collounsbury’s ** posts lately suggesting that this thread has not been in vain.
The SDMB staff now for sure knows how a lot of us feel. I’m quite certain we’ve affected their perspective on the appropriateness of future posting, maybe not to the degree we would like perhaps, but we have not been ignored.
Any continuance on your part here will only piss off everyone and can only be detrimental to your cause.
Well, earlier you seemed to be interpreting Collounsbury’s comment as a statement about my debating skills. Now you seem to be backing away from that interpretation.
And I hate to belabour the point, but it seems to me that you’re reaching here.
Ok. Ultimately, if Collounsbury cleans up his act, I’ll be happy.
lucwarm - he was saying something about your debating skills in the same way that something like “Your post is full of errors” says something about your intelligence. If you want to look at every sentence with the word “you” in it and a derogatory term, and claim “that’s breaking the GD rules”, that just shows that you do not understand the “attack the post, not the poster” rule.
Arnold
That has to be the stupidest post I’ve ever seen. Only a moron would support it. Its anal retentive rhetoric, attempting to justify a Neanderthal policy of arbitrary standards, fairly reeks of ignorance and wholesale disdain for honorable debate.
[sub]Did I do it right?[/sub]
Libertarian - perhaps you can explain something that has always confused me. Since you’re constantly advocating that people should be able to do what they want on their own private property, wouldn’t it be more seemly if you didn’t repeatedly go onto that person’s private property to criticize the way they do things? Or do you refuse to practice what you preach?
And yes, I would interpret your post as attacking the post, not the poster.
Arnold
Though you’ve stated how you “would” interpret my post, it seems that you actually interpreted it in such a way that you responded defensively; that is, you interpreted it as a personal attack. And I don’t really blame you. A skillfully constructed ad hominem or tu quoque is still an ad hominem or tu quoque.
With respect to your question, I do what I’m told on private property. If I find that untenable, I leave. In this case, the owner of the property has offered a room where people may go to complain and criticize. When that is rescinded, I’ll take great care to keep my opinions to myself.
Incidentally, just to make sure the record is perfectly clear, I have no complaints about you. In fact, I admire you. You are, in my opinion, a kind and decent man who is fair and of even temperament. That, of course, doesn’t mean that you’re incapable of an occasional error in judgment.
Actually, the above quote, by deduction, claims that Arnold is a moron, and so I would warn you for it. For, if only a moron would support it, and Arnold manifestly appears to be supporting it, Arnold is therefore a moron. Now if there was some doubt as to whether Arnold did support his post, it might be passable, as it must be directed at a poster to be an insult. For example, you could post in GD, “Only a moron would believe A+A!=A” and as long as there is no poster in the thread who has just advocated that A+A!=A, the insult is not directed at a particular poster and is acceptable.
However, I take an extrordinarily dim view of people who push the limits of GD rules just to make life harder for the mods, so if I see you posting like you did above in GD I will assume you are trying to give us a hard time in order to prove some point and I will take appropriate action. I urge everyone to behave with reasonable courtesy and moderation in GD. The rules are limits beyond which you should never pass, but the fact that we have a hard line there doesn’t mean the proper place for a poster is standing riiiight next to that line.
[sub]poor lil horsie[/sub]
Libertarian, I think you’re setting up another strawman here. No one says that it’s impossible to post following Great Debates rules, yet in a way that’s obnoxious and irritating.
I didn’t say you don’t have the right to complain about board moderators. I said that it seems hypocritical to do so, coming from someone who is an ardent defender of people’s right to manage their personal property as they see fit.
Jiminy Christmas now I’m really pissed off!
(re-reading in context) Never mind!
P.S. Libertarian - you do have other excellent qualities.
Arnold wrote:
Thank you. But…
You have seen fit to manage it by inviting us to complain. Why ought I to exclude myself from the privilege you have extended to me? If you think that seems hypocritical, then I submit that your judgment is skewed.
Gaudere
I have no intention of skirting the line in Great Debates. You know — or should know — that.
Libertarian - there is a difference between allowing people to complain, and inviting you to complain.
#@@# submit button! But the reason I would expect you to exclude yourself from that privilege is, as I mentioned before, because of your stated espousal of the absolute right of property owners to do what they want on their own property. i.e. my reasoning goes like this:
[list=A][li]Libertarian says property owners should have an absolute right to do what they want on their property;[/li][li]Libertarian is also opposed to rudeness on message boards (as we can see in his anti-Collounsbury-posting-style stance);[/li][li]I would suppose that Libertarian would think it rude to go onto someone’s property and disparage the way they manage their property;[/li]therefore I would imagine that Libertarian, if he were consistent with his beliefs, would not engage in actions as described in c).[/list=A]
Sorry, Arnold, I don’t think that follows at all. By offering The Pit as a place for posters to complain about/discuss the moderation of the Board, Lib by his own ethical standards (and mine as well) is perfectly justified in doing so.
To use a really, really bad analogy: it would be rude (and illegal, but let that go) to walk into someone’s house, uninvited to help yourself to the contents of their fridge.
HOWever, if the home-owner has posted signs saying “FREE FOOD! C’MON IN! FREE FOR ALL! ALL YOU CAN EAT!” it’s perfectly ok to partake.
If you’re gonna have a forum where people are permitted* to air their grivances, you can’t fairly complain when they do.
Fenris
*I ain’t gonna step in the bear-trap posed by the nuances of “invited”/“permitted” 
I disagree Fenris. For example, I think it’s rude to throw things on the floor in a restaurant. I went into a bar once where peanuts were served as an appetizer, and people were throwing their peanut shells on the floor. Obviously, I could have thrown my peanut shells on the floor, but I still didn’t. In that same bar, a guy at the next table was calling the waitress “hot stuff”, leering at her physical attributes, trying to pat her gluteus maximus, etc… I think this is demeaning to women, and just because it was allowed at that restaurant doesn’t mean I was going to indulge in that behaviour. It would have been inconsistent with my principles.
I never said it was unjustified of Libertarian to complain in The Pit. I say it’s inconsistent with his stated principles.
Arnold, that brings up an interesting question. Do you and/or the rest of the administrators believe that it is rude to criticize (whether constructive or destructive criticism) the way that the SDMB is run, or the way that a particular administrator or moderator behaves in a specific situation?
If such an act is not offensive, then I fail to see how or why Libertarian should believe as you stated in Premise C.
(I don’t speak for Libertarian, so apologies to him if this question is out of line.)
How did we get from a thread about GD behaviour to a thread about pit behavior? Looks like this ride ain’t over. We got ourselves a new horse.