I’ve seen this done many times around here with nary a word of complaint. My take was that it was apparently okay because it was obvious that the original posters words were being altered, as opposed to changing them within quotes in such a way that no one could tell they’d been altered.
I won’t do it again, but I had no reason to think it was verbotten.
Certainly not from this item in the sticky at the top of the forum:
Bolding as original.
Maybe you were thinking of the time this rule was briefly suspended during the board software changeover, but the rule has existed for quite a while.
[bolding mine]
This part didn’t quite register when I was reading the warning. It likely explains why I’ve seen this done before without complaint or warning, and I appreciate the advice on how to go about doing it without running afoul of the rules.
I apologize.
Of course I take responsibility for it; I’ve said as much in both Pit threads. And yes, I am perfectly capable of not following the lead of the posters around here who post equally inflammatory things about conservatives.
But why should I? At least this way I’m giving them a taste of what their own behavior sounds like to the conservative poster, and it allows me to hold my own in arguments in which a more polite, less aggressive poster would be drowned out.
Again, I know how inflammatory the things I’ve been saying are. The message I’m trying to get across - in part, anyway - is that equally inflammatory things about conservatives get said around here dozens if not hundreds of times a day. We conservative posters get just as insulted and just as outraged as liberals here have been over what I’ve said, and we get it more by many orders of both magnitude and frequency.
So yes, I could behave less agressively, and I usually do. I will admit that I’ve come on quite a bit more strongly in the last few weeks, but this is because I’ve gotten fed up with all this ‘Republicans are EEVILLL’ bullshit, along with all the other lies and mischaracterizations about conservatives/Republicans that are S.O.P. around here in the so-called land of ignorance fighters.
Still, I’m beginning to think the time has come to back off a bit, for it seems even my good friend Zoe is beginning to take offense, and that tells me that perhaps I’ve gone too far.
I for one would like to see some examples of attacks that you personally experienced as over the top: not because I doubt you, but just to get a feel for what it is your reacting to, specifically .
I think I’m going to respectfully decline. It would just lead to a new fresh hell of verbiage, and I’m getting tired of this. This decision is nothing against you, Svin, and I hope you take my declination (is word?) in the spirit in which it was made.
And now I’m off to work. Cheers.
Please raise your hands, everybody who reacted to this by violently shitting themselves in surprise.
Not me, because we all know he’ll be back.
Oh, I hope so. I mean, maybe after another fifteen pages or so of posts, he’ll finally make clear his position on liberalism.
Cher’s Absolutely, Positively Final No This Time I Really Mean It Farewell Tour?
Yeah, it does seem a little convenient.
Especially since Starving Artist apparently uses the Firefox browser (Cite 1; Cite 2; Cite 3). I’ve been using Firefox for quite a few years now, and have never, not even once, lost an SDMB post since i made the switch from Internet Explorer.
If something goes wrong and i accidentally navigate to the wrong page, i can hit the “Back” button and Firefox always remembers the message that i typed into the reply window. Ditto for Board timeouts. I just tested it then—navigated away to mlb.com, let the page load fully, then hit the “Back” button, and my post was just as i left it.
Also, if i’ve previewed the message, which i generally do a few times for longer messages, Firefox will remember my post even if i actually close the New Reply tab, and then reopen it by going to History > Recently closed tabs.
I’ve also been getting none of the mysterious log-in instructions that Starving Artist claims have been plaguing the Boards for the past two days.
So, these appear to be the circumstances, as i understand them:
[ol]
[li]We have a thread started by a poster who has reiterated, time and again, that he’s not especially interested in researching his posts and providing evidence of citations for his arguments.[/li][li]In that thread, we have a whole bunch of other people who criticize him for this behavior.[/li][li]In that same thread, he suddenly decides he’s going to do some research in order to back up his claims and help him make a coherent argument.[/li][li]The same poster has made 36 posts to this thread, and yet the two posts in which he was apparently going to dazzle us all with his research and his citations and his reasoned arguments were mysteriously lost due to a Board foul-up that, as far as i can tell, is being experienced by no other members of the SDMB.[/li][/ol]
Well, OK. If you say so.
Same as it ever was.
Them hamsters be hatin’.
Damn liberal rodents!
Hey, hendo…remember when you were wrong about “probative?” 
I not only gave up Firefox when it kept putting stuff in my temp folder that was chewing up the last of the disc space on my old computer, but it I got tired of it periodically crashing and losing all my bookmarks.
I now have a spanking new laptop and I’m continuing to use Internet Explorer. This is much to my disdain because I detest most things Microsoft, but there you go.
So I don’t think I’d be so quick to think that I know what I’m talking about if I were you.
Now, as to my lost posts:
First of all, a big and hearty ‘Fuck you’ to anyone who suspects they were faked. I have a long history around here and have never shied away from going toe to toe with anyone, and I have certainly never concocted phony excuses to cover behavior that I already said I wasn’t going to indulge in anyway (i.e., becoming bogged down in time-wasting posts involving cites and so forth, and which never solve anything). So again, just what do you think I’d accomplish by phonying up lenthy, cited posts and then claiming they became lost? I would gain no substantive purchase with the posters frustrated by my previous refusal to do so, and the logical response would be to expect me to try again later, perhaps with the assistance of Word.
Secondly, I prefer to compose my posts in the board’s edit window because I like to preview frequently in order to combine posts by multiple users and/or because it helps me find coding errors. It also helps me better guage how the post will flow once it’s been posted to the board.
On both nights I composed my posts in that fashion. On both nights I was frequently met with the log-in page when I tried to preview. On both nights I managed to log in and was returned to my post-in-the-making without trouble. Then - and this is what really set me off last night - once I had finally completed them and was attampting my final preview, I was met with the log in page again, logged in as normal, and then…and here’s where it went wonky…I got a dialog saying I was already logged in, to go back and refresh. On neither night had I gotten this dialog before my final preview, and on both nights I lost my post completely when I went back and refreshed.
Now, you can believe that before I try to post this sumbitch I’m gonna be copying it into Word or Notepad, but given that I only had that already logged in dialog happen once (the night before) and given that I had logged in and previewed numerous times last night with no problem, I simply had no idea lightening would strike twice. On both nights I did have multiple tabs open toward the end to help me check facts and details, and to allow me to go to Wiki, Google, Merriam-Webster, etc., without having to navigate away from the post I was working on, and perhaps that had something to do with it, I don’t know.
But I do know that they came at the end of two long posts that I was quite happy with and felt did a good job of answering tomndebb’s many erroneous statements about what I had previously said only made the situation that more frustrating and aggravating. (I know the proper word is irritating, hendo, but I think aggravating is more descriptive. And besides, it’s a living language, yes/no?)
So there you have it. Believe it or don’t believe it, that’s up to you. Like I said last night, the advantage of being truthful is that removes the onus to convince someone you’re right. All a person can do is tell the truth; once it’s out there, belief is out of their hands.
I was going to leave this alone, but i can’t resist the teaching experience.
This incident shows precisely why Starving Artist’s idea of what constitutes probative evidence is so fucked up.
In my previous post, i offered three pieces of evidence for my belief that SA uses Firefox. SA now says that he no longer uses Firefox, and seems to believe that this demonstrates that i don’t know what “probative” means.
But what the dunce completely fails to understand is that pieces of perfectly good, useful, probative evidence may contradict one another, or one may be superseded by the other. Part of the whole process of debate is to weigh evidence from various sources, submit it to scrutiny and analysis, and arrive at a conclusion based on reason and logic.
This incident also demonstrates that some evidence is, in fact, better or newer than other evidence, and that we can change our positions as newer, better evidence is presented. The only information i had about SA’s browser use came from those SDMB posts; until i was presented with other evidence, it was perfectly reasonable to use those posts to support my statement. Now that SA has provided testimony that he no longer uses Firefox, i am willing to relinquish my reliance on the older evidence and accept that it is no longer valid for this particular case.
Of course, this is a very straightforward case, with trivial implications. When it comes to more complex issues, there are far more pieces of evidence, and many different ways of interpreting them. But the fact that doing this is difficult, and requires effort, does not mean that it is a fool’s errand. It’s orders of magnitude better than simply making unsubstantiated assertions, then dismissing as obfuscatory any evidence that contradicts them.
As for this particular case, perhaps all we can conclude is that SA is a moron who doesn’t learn from his mistakes. But then, that’s old news.
Oh, I don’t know; hope you’d get credit for responding to tomndebb’s reasoned arguments without actually responding to them, perhaps?
Anyway, doesn’t matter. Whether the board somehow sabotaged your posts or you just never made them is immaterial. You have yet to deliver the goods you claimed to be ready to deliver. I guess we’ll just see if you ever do.
Or on the other hand we can conclude that you are a moron with problems in regard to reading comprehension.
My comment about your erroneous claim that I didn’t know what probative meant was simply to illustrate two things: 1) You didn’t know (and apparently still don’t) what probative actually means, and 2) I do.
Neither had anything to do with the Firefox issue per se which was a separate issue. Rather it was to illustrate that, like in regard to the Firefox issue, you simply didn’t know what you were talking about.
Now, in case you missed it when I posted it before, let me refresh your memory as to what probative actually means. This from M-W:
Main Entry: pro·ba·tive
Pronunciation: \ˈprō-bə-tiv\
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century
1 : serving to test or try : exploratory
**2 : serving to prove : substantiating **
[bolding mine]
See? It means it serves to prove something, not that it is evidence of it until something more conclusive comes along.
I am truly beginning to feel sorry for your students.
This will be my only post here, and I likely won’t return.
I usually stay out of your things here, but I think you have skipped/ignored some good advice you’ve received in these two threads. I want to bring these to your attention, and I want you to honestly take their advice in the spirit in which it was meant.
And there’s a ton more if you care to look.
Arguing with people on a message board is not worth it if it starts to have a negative impact on personal relationships.
I’m gonna back out of here for now and see how things go in the future.
Dispassionate civility is a thing everyone should try to attain so we can all not be commie uncivil shitheels like you.
You know I’ll buy that 1) you don’t know how to cut and paste 2) it took you 2 1/2 hours to write a pile of drivel. But sorry, I’ll never, ever buy 3) you bothered to cite it.