A reasonable dialogue over the Sultan Kinkari situation

The BBQ Pit
1

In the ATMB thread about the Sultan Kinkari episode, I was attempting to have a reasonable dialogue with the posters who feel that it happened because he was unpopular or low post count, or the mods or evil, or whatever. Monocracy and BuddhaDog were two people I was specifically addressing.

This is the thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=91382

Monocracy chose to continue to make sniping remarks, as did others, and the thread was closed.

So I’m going to try again. The thread is in the Pit to save mods trouble if it spins out of control, but please let’s try to stay civil here.

My position is this:

Everyone in that thread said offensive things. Sultan, however, also posted an ATMB thread about how far you can go in the Pit without being banned. I think this made him look, fairly or unfairly, like he was trying to make people angry for his own amusement, which is against the rules.

He was not an innocent being trampled by big mean regs. Anyone holding that opinion has to address the fact that:

He called the rescue workers at the WTC morons

He said, “fuck them.”

He said his experiences with death were comparable to their experiences of sifting through rubbles and 5000 corpses.

Monocracy also introduced the element of Loch Ness Hump’s banning. It is my position that Loch Ness Hump, despite claiming he didn’t think that bobkitty deserved to be pawed by a stranger, went on to say that it was her fault for wearing sexy clothes.

Also, there were several topics I was discussing with Buddha Dog before the thread was closed. I’d like to continue those discussion if BD has further opinions.

Again, if you want to flame, call names, or otherwise be obnoxious, start your own thread. I am pursuing logic as far as it can take me.

–John

2

I’m with you all the way. I am not familiar with all the other threads or issues you mention here. But I do think that Sultan’s behavior smelled of baiting.

He had to know. He had to know that he was going over the top. How could he have not? Especially with the question he asked in ATMB. Come on. He knew.

I think I’ve repeated this on several threads, and I’ll repeat it here. It isn’t about bitching or feeling “uncomfortable” about a cross. Other people have expressed that same feeling, but they haven’t been banned, have they?

In this case, it’s about calling people who do feel something about it (in this instance, the Ground Zero workers) “morons” and “hypocrites” and saying “fuck them”. To deliberately say something so mean-spirited about these exhausted souls - well, it’s just so amazingly over the top.

3

I learned to avoid him early on. He was a jerk. He went beyond jerk. If he wasn’t baiting (a bannable offence) he was a profound jerk (a bannable offence).

4

I’m glad you opened this thread. I want to make a few things clear.

Specifically, Monocracy said that people had been banned for sexual harassment, and gave this thread as an example:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=90401

However, in that thread (second page), I clearly stated that I had banned LochNessHump because it was BingoBurringo/Trenchmouth returning under a fourth name. It wouldn’t have mattered WHAT LNH posted, s/he’d been banned and re-registered. As soon as I noticed this, I banned that name.

Sultan Kinkari/wishbone wanted to play Pit Limbo (How Low Can You Go?), which is really trolling. He didn’t want to voice his opinion so much as see how far he could go without being banned. I didn’t want to play this game. So I evicted the player. Incidentally, the email I received from him didn’t make me inclined to restore his privileges.

Lynn Bodoni
Administrator
For the Straight Dope

5

How can you tell when people have re-registered?

6

I’m guessing same IP addy…

7

Lynn, thanks for an official perspective on this.

Dropzone, while I may or may not agree with your post, I’d really rather we keep this thread civil; calling anyone a jerk is not helpful. I’d have no problem if you started a thread called “Sultan Kinkari was a jerk and I’m glad he was banned,” but please don’t name-call here.

–John

8

How can you tell? A few ways.

  1. Some posters have a schtick. FatherJohn, for example, rants for days about the evils of SUVs.

  2. Some posters use specific words or forms. Mark Serlin, for example, capitalizes white and black when referring to “races”.

  3. Some have a particular style of writing. If, for example, one particular poster had the habit of posting without using any punctuation, and got banned, and then a week later a new person showed up who did that, this might be a clue as to the identity of said new person.

  4. IP address. Some trolls are really stupid and will use the same ISP and get banned time and again.

  5. Similar names. For example:

bedboy1
bedboy2
bedboy3

or

[metal][number]
[metal2][number2]
[metal3][number3]

or

cement
sement
cemment
cemente
simment
There are others, of course. I’m not a mod nor am I a troll-hunter.

9

Point of order … Can you do that? Start a Pit thread and declare No Name Calling?

It don’t quite fit. Especially on this subject.
It’s like calling for a football game and declaring No Tackling. This ain’t quite the playground for a Touch game, see what I’m saying?

Anyway, here’s my Non Name Calling couple of cents …

Sultan was less than pleasant, but so were a few other posters in both concerned threads. He wasn’t the only one “pushing the envelope.” I don’t have a single problem with Sultan’s banning, but I think there are a few other posters that need to be a little humbled, or at least humble.

10

Lynn, I think most people will agree Sultan was scrapping to push as many buttons as possible. He won’t be missed. However, I think that intentionally hurtful and over-the-top salvos were shooting at him too from a couple particular posters (including, ignominiously enough, by one of our more respected mods). Obviously not as offensively far-reaching as Sultan’s heartless comments, but still. Why was nothing said to them?

11

Just wondering…
Has anyone ever been brave enough (or stupid enough) to name himself or herself “troll” or some variant?

12

Jack, :slight_smile: please look over my OP again. I want to have a civil discussion. But I know the chances are good this will end up being nasty from time to time despite my best efforts, so to save the mods time I put it here. It has been done before; I did it just recently because I wanted to see if gobear was bearing a grudge against me for an encounter we’d had. (He wasn’t, BTW)

I can’t force anyone not to flame, as I am not a mod, and in general it seems silly to try and control a thread, but in this case I did politely ask in the OP and it would be nice if other posters would respect that. If people get out of control, I will post a friendly reminder that this is supposed to be friendly. If no one wants to listen to me, of course, I certainly can’t make them listen. But I can try to keep on topic.

–John,
who is saying things twice and explicitly because he’s be stomped on for ‘trying to dictate how others post’ before.

13

Blah, all that and I left out the point.

I believe in the power of reason. You are more likely to resolve an issue by civil discussion than saying, “You’re an asshole and you’re wrong.” And even if the other person refuses to be civil, at least people see how it stands; you were reasonable, and they chose to be a dick.

Once its been established that you tried to reason with them, I think it is justifiable to unload on them. But I’d like to try discussion first, hence this thread. If you’re ready to jump to abuse, I’d prefer you did it in another thread.

I know it seems naive to think that discussion would ever get you anywhere, but most Pit threads where I took an active part have generally ended with the principal parties at least agreeing to disagree and admitting that the other party isn’t really a total tool.

–John

14

Yep.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=8268

Was never banned, but didn’t seem to do much of anything.

15

I agree with Peepthis’ sentiment. I agree that Sultan was way over the line. However, I think he was not the only one to step over the line. I am wondering why others weren’t called on it. He deserved to be banned, but others need to apologize to the boards for their comments. Since this thread is not supposed to turn in a flamefest, I won’t name names.

16

This is not a good way to protect your thread. We’ve had a couple shut down here already and it is likely that, with emotions running this high, this one could go the same way. Plus, did you just say “let’s try to stay civil here” in a OP for the Pit?

I also have leftovers from the pit thread that I would simply like to clear up before we all move on. FTR I was not doing the dogpile thing on Diane(which is what I percieve was the reason the thread was closed). I began composing my reply when the post I replied to was the latest post in the thread. There were 16 posts between when I started writing it and when I submitted it, many of those part of the “dogpiling”. I guess I should have reviewed the thread during one of my preview sessions, but I didn’t think about it. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Secondly, and I consider this on topic for this thread, is this exchange.

See, I had a different take on it. To me, and I only read the pit thread Diane started, his early posts were fairly coherent and I saw that point in them. There were several times he mentioned his belief that the cross, or a Christian symbol, would be permanent. This was one of his major beefs to me. He was objecting to the cross as not being representative of the populations who were working and those who had been slain there. It occurred to me that if someone had said, “That isn’t an official symbol. That is just a piece of rubble some of the workers raised and which some of them feel comfort in. We’ll be sure a memorial encompasses all the beliefs of those who died, in the meantime the rescue workers are taking comfort in the symbol so it stays. We’re certainly not taking the time away from recovery efforts specifically to take it down.” that Sultan would have been ok with that. I could be wrong, if he was a troll he certainly would have kept going. I believed he was objecting to having so many people painted with the Christian brush and would have been appeased by seeing a non-denominational or multi-denominational effort, even if it was yet to come in the future.

Like many of us, it seemed he was simply fed up with the hipocracy that trying to encourage political correctness breeds in much of America. Things like disallowing prayer in school, but celebrating crosses as religious symbols(and having them consecrated by a priest) at disaster sites. I also find this disturbing. America does not separate Church and State, they simply pretend to so they can’t be sued for it.

I have taken the time to read the original thread and I happen to believe I was mistaken about Sultan’s primary point. Upon further research, I believe he was indeed against the presence of the cross regardless of it’s intended permanancy/origin/purpose and was properly flamed for it. As manhattan said “The place is posion for the soul. Anything that might lighten the burden of those who have to sift throught that site is OK by me.” There is a time and place for PC, this isn’t it.

Steven
This doesn’t change my opinion about Diane though.

17

Actually, I was using it in the “legal” sense. As in “Don’t be a jerk.” But I see what you mean and I apologize.

Although if you didn’t want name calling you should have opened this in GD, where I would get a stern talking-to for calling someone a jerk.

18

I just finished reading most of the threads. A few questions:

Does anyone else think Manhattan’s comments were extremely offensive? I won’t bother reposting them here, as per Yue’s request to keep things civil, but I am really disgusted. Wasn’t Sultan banned for “offensive” behavior?

And Diane’s comments in response (also regarding grandma’s genitalia)?

And what happened to Diane? She disappeared after her opinion was blasted by nearly everybody. I guess it seemed like people were ganging up on her, but this is not the first time that such pile-ons have happened in the pit. And it seems a little suspect that a mod would come along and close the thread just after. Are some members treated differently than others according to their friendships with mods? Is it okay to unanimously blast some folks but not others? Hmmmmmmmm…

19

**

And that’s why he was banned.

20

Leander :slight_smile: if you’d look over this thread, you’ll see that several people have already said that they were also offended by the comments of both sides in the thread. Let’s see, k. os, peepthis, and Jack Batty have all said that they thought others than Sultan were out of line.

According to Lynn’s post in this thread, Sultan was banned for being offensive for the sake of seeing how far he could push the envelope. Manhatten and Diane’s post, appropriateness aside, were based on their actual response to Sultan’s comments; Manhatten I know lives within walking distance of the WTC, and has an obvious personal connection to the relief efforts there.

I imagine she may have gone to bed, or out to dinner, or something. There are any number of reasons a person might not post for a few hours.

Actually, threads do quite often get closed off when they become gratuitous pile-ons. Some times it happens soon and sometimes later; I don’t think I’ve ever seen it correlate to anything more than how busy the mods are and how closely they are monitoring the situation; judging by the sheer number of closed threads involved, I’d say they are following this one rather closely too.

Could you please clarify this as a statement instead of a leading question? Something along the lines of, I feel that the mods give special treatment to their friends. It is difficult to debate questions, even rhetorical ones.

–John