Fair 
Oh, horseshit. Of the 21 posts prior to yours, 12 of them were discussing the issue of responding to paywalled links, with a fair bit of pushback against the complaints about Sam’s remarks. Several others were serious explanations of why Sam’s underinformed sermonizing against stuff he hasn’t read is often annoying. The remainder was drive-by one-liners entirely normal and expected In a Pit thread complaining about a particular poster.
I think you’re overreacting. This isn’t “extreme hostility”, this is routine exasperated grumbling. If you really don’t understand why very many posters routinely find Sam’s underinformed sermonizing somewhat exasperating, fine, you do you.
OK, I’ll do me, and I’ll do it in the following way, even though I don’t want to turn this into a long drawn-out argument and won’t participate in such, as my intent here is not by any means an uncritical all-out defense of Sam. And this is not directed at you specifically, the above quote is just a reference point.
Look, I don’t subscribe to the Sam_Stone channel, so there are undoubtedly many episodes of Sam’s dumbfuckery that I’ve missed. My comments were mainly prompted, in part, by the immediately hostile reaction to Sam’s relatively innocuous post. Which reaction occurred here as part of one of the longest pittings I can remember, despite the fact that we’ve had far worse and more annoying posters who contributed virtually no value to the board. Whereas Sam has.
The practical question is whether anyone as put-upon as Sam has been will be motivated to stick around. I would imagine that many either don’t care or see his departure as desirable. I don’t, because Sam has made informed and useful contributions to many threads on technological subjects. On top of that, some recent board drama that’s not appropriate to get into here has added to the perception that Sam may not be willing to stick around much longer, and that would be a big loss to the board.
Two things I was just looking at prompted these comments. One was Sam’s informative contributions to the ChatGPT discussion thread. The other was the old goodbye note on the occassion of Bone resigning as moderator and leaving the board, which was recently back-linked from another thread. It’s this paragraph in particular:
Nearly any prolific conservative poster has a running pit thread. Every comment is interpreted in the most negative way possible, and after a while it gets pretty tedious. Granted, much of what is said is well deserved. But some of it isn’t. But rather than quality argument, intelligent voices [get] drowned out by low quality bickering.
And you’re claiming Sam was making a quality post in this case and there was an undeserved pile-on?
Because the evidence is against that. Rather than one of his few relatively well done posts, it was a steaming, poorly thought out turd - another in a looooong line of them from a poster that loooong ago lost any benefit of the doubt. Once you lose that benefit of the doubt for years upon years of bad behavior, it has to be earned back, not granted out of some misplaced sense of fair play or balance. Don’t expect people to regularly dig into a pile of shit because you consistently find the odd kernel of corn every time.
And given the nature of the topic and the response - relating to the merits of ‘self-reliance’ in the asinine way Sam defines it - it’s rather ironic that this defense even exists, as it contradicts his own notion of how it relates to himself.
Which is why he gets this feedback. For posters that contribute nothing to the board, they get an eyeroll and move on. For Sam, we know he can do better than this.
This is why people take the time to write out fairly long constructive criticism posts about his behavior. But, to some any criticism is hostility.
The post that started this last round off was not hostile, it was criticism. It acknowledged that he should be better, and asked if that was really how he wanted to come off. It is an observation about behavior.
Where should such go? It doesn’t belong in the thread, that’s a hijack, and making things personal. So, it goes to a place where we are allowed to call people out.
If he can find somewhere else that he can find the same quality discussion, then he probably should move on if he thinks that’s what’s best.
I disagree. I think that most posters recognize that Sam does make quality contributions, sometimes. If he stopped making hot take knee jerk reactions, most would see that as desirable, but he doesn’t have to leave to do that. He just has to stop making hot take knee jerk reactions.
I have no idea what you are talking about, and I’m not sure that it’s fair to put that on those who have nothing to do with it.
Yeah, that was a pretty holier than thou, self serving woe is me, poor martyr, so put upon exit post. I didn’t agree with many things Bone had to say as a poster, but I respected him, until he posted that bit of whiny tripe. Conservative comments are the ones that are interpreted in the most negative way possible? Fuck that, the whole reason that conservatives stopped being welcome was in them constantly misrepresenting anything said by a liberal in the worst possible way. It wasn’t their views, it was their acting in bad faith. It did get pretty tedious, and there was plenty of undeserved muck thrown at the more progressive posters. Unless we are saying that conservatives are inherently not able to post in good faith, then it has nothing to do with them being conservative, and all to do with them not posting in good faith.
And yes, it is not only misrepresenting other posters, not just articles put out by other posters, but even cites that he brings that gets Sam pitted from time to time. In your opinion, should we simply ignore when he does so? If not, in what manner should we respond?
You said it better than I could have, so I’ll just quote you for emphasis.
I think it’s totally fair to call Sam out for misusing and not reading cites. That’s been the bulk of the criticism lately.
But I also think he gets somewhat unfairly called out for not coming back to threads to acknowledge his mistakes. It’s nice when people do, but it’s not the standard behavior here, particularly in a contentious thread where someone is in the minority. Yet Sam seems to be the only one who gets pitted for it.
Open admission of being wrong is great and I wish more people here did it. But complaining about people who don’t admit error starts to feel like you just want them to grovel before you while you point and laugh.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. Something about driving your enemies before you and all that.
Because he then - quite deliberately - repeats the errors. After being rather conclusively shown that he is mistaken in his understanding of events, he simply goes silent for a while and then blithely posts every debunked point as if they had never been discussed before. That’s why he gets pitted for it - not for being wrong, but for posting in obvious bad faith.
Which reminds me - we’re probably about due for yet another iteration of his “Russia collusion nothingburger” claims.
Pitting him for being wrong is totally fair. Pitting him extra hard for being wrong twice is even better.
It’s the “come here and admit you were wrong!” that gets old.
Surely Biden’s laptop is more pressing?
Fair question. But I’m not in a position to tell people how to respond, nor am I claiming that Sam doesn’t deserve much of the criticism he gets, because from the examples I’ve seen he often does (although, to be fair, some of his curt “I don’t care” type remarks are an understandable reaction to constantly being under attack).
Basically I was just expressing surprise at the extent of this pitting, since we’ve had far more contentious and annoying posters, and secondly, Sam does contribute knowledgeable posts on technology and other subjects and I’d hate to see him driven off the board. We mostly all think of ourselves as good posters and nice people, but collectively, this can be a tough crowd.
It’s not that he doesn’t come back to threads to acknowledge his mistakes, it’s that he comes back to threads without acknowledging his mistakes, and continues to do them.
Is it because we randomly chose Sam as the person to pit over it, or is it that Sam is doing something more than those who don’t?
If the complaint were that simple, then I could see why you would think that. As the complaint is not that simple, your feelings on what you think that others want are ridiculously absurd. No one is pointing and laughing, no one is demanding grovelling. That’s just something that you made up out of whole cloth for some reason.
By “this pitting” do you mean the thread, or do you mean the latest comments on his hot take knee jerk misrepresentation?
If the latter, then I’m surprised you consider 3 posts to be something that could be described as “extent”.
No, I was referring to the overall thread.
Ah, then I’m not really. The OP is an extremely well laid out criticism of his behavior. When he repeats the behavior, sometimes someone makes not of it in this thread.
Then there’s the fact that the majority of posts probably don’t have anything to do with Sam at all.
I mean, as I said, if someone is doing something that annoys you, where would you call them out for it?
I mean, no shit the complaint isn’t that simple. I acknowledge that upfront and agree that Sam deserves a lot of what he’s getting. I called out one particular complaint that I think is not as justified. It’s one aspect of the thread, not the main one (which again, since maybe I’m not being clear, I agree with).
I’ve been following this thread since the beginning and know what people are posting. You personally have not participated in the shaming of him for not returning to threads and apologizing for being wrong. But others have.
Maybe you don’t read these posts as demanding groveling, but I do. And others do as well.
A lot of demands for ‘apologies’ for being ‘wrong’ I see as just another tactic to attack the other side, or I disagree about being wrong, or I think the thing I’m ‘wrong’ about was a triviality no one else would be attacked for. And especially in the Pit, where anything I say generally kicks off a new round of attacks.
And look what I’m being asked to ‘apologize’ for. I said the Hunter Biden laptop might be real, and appears to have damning info on it. I got dragged into the pit for that, but man, it sure looks like I was right.
I said the Durham investigation might turn up something damning. If I was wrong about that, I was wrong in exactly the same way so many people criticizing me were wrong each time they declared that Trump was ‘going down’ over some speculation over what Mueller had. Yet I’m supposed to apologize to the same people who made the same error while they gloat and call me names. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
I’m also on record as saying that the Pit sucks, it’s a detriment to this board, the people who inhabit it take advantage of it to attack political opponents and drive them away. So let me be clear: If you ask me for ANYTHING in a thread pitting me, I will respond however I damned well feel, or not at all, at my whim. As far as I’m concerned, the minute you attack me in the pit over some trivial bullshit, you lost any claim to so much as a second of my time if I don’t feel like offering it. This is not Great Debates, and I’m not obligated to cite anything here or justify myself in any way. If you don’t like that, don’t fuck with me in the Pit. Ask me a legitimate, respectful question in a forum suitable for it, and I will answer.
And some of you don’t seem to realize what it’s like being on the other side of the mob. Some of what you claim is me ignoring demands of some sort is more about me not having enough hours in the day. While each of you may have written one message that demands an answer, and then get mad when I don’t answer, you have to realize that if I answered everyone carefully I would be doing nothing else in my life. It’s common for me to log in here and discover a dozen ‘demands’ that I address something or other.
In the meantime, I correct errors people make on this board all the time, and over 22 years I have yet to pit anyone for it, even when it looks like they are being obtuse or obstinate. Because you know what? No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, and we’re supposed to be here for fun. It’s also why I almost never report the numerous cheap shots people take at me in places where they shouldn’t. The mods are volunteers, and I don’t like taking up their time. And really, the people who tend to do that aren’t worth the effort. I just let it roll off and ignore everything they have to say.
One by one, the board’s conservatives and libertarians have left this place. There’s almost none left. That’s a damned shame, because I’d rather have a vibrant community of debate than an echo chamber of people who all think the same and spend their time fellating each other and calling out the ‘other’.
That’s why I’m still here - to provide at least a bit of an alternate viewpoint, especially for the lurkers who don’t comment and are here to learn something and want to hear both sides.
Called it!