Thank you for your considered opinion. However, this thread is examining when the staff should actually intervene to close or redirect a thread with a subtext of how we should handle perceived trolls. I’m afraid that regardless of your personal views of the value of specific threads, the staff needs to have some sort of objective standard (granting even the subjective nature of the judgments regarding how closely a thread follows that guideline) on which to base our actions. E-mailing you for your views of every thread submitted to the SDMB is probably not a practical option.
Got it. I think it best to give the poster the benefit of the doubt, unless a pattern of inflammatory posts is established. A charter member asking “do you sniff your soiled toilet paper”, while a bit oddball, could be viewed as legitimate, A guest with a series of bizarre posts asking the same may be viewed differently.
Has there not been a standard, in the past, that threads are closed when they are based on demonstrably false premises? This sometimes happens honestly, when early news reports on a breaking story are confusing or wrong. My recollection is that such threads get locked.
Otherwise, it’s too easy. I can go into GD right now and start a thread, “Bush caught snorting coke in Oval Office; where’s the outrage?” Chances are the ensuing train wreck will include some legitimate discussion of Bush administration policies, but that isn’t a good reason to keep such a thread open.
As it is now, as long as that thread remains active, every time I open GD, I have to read a lie (in the thread title) about how people called Richards a cracker first. At the very least, edit the thread title!
Unfortunately, the phone camera was turned on after Michael’s rant began, so while the premise has not been demonstrated to be true, it has also not (yet) been demonstrated to be false. If we changed the title of every thread for which there was disagreement over the title’s premise, half the posters would never be able to find their own threads.
I agree that the assertion in the title of that thread appears to be utterly without support, but, again, anyone who has read the first dozen posts is going to be well aware of that, even if they are returning to the thread after several days.
(I’m beginning to figure out how the ACLU lawyers felt in Cicero.)