Closed by Chronos who stated it may re-open (or not) after he has had time to consider. Fair enough, I have no problem with that, it’s not my thread after all. But one of the unfortunate consequences of thread closures is that a moderator (RickJay in the present instance) can make a comment and ordinary posters lack the ability to defend themselves against whatever was said. Call it the Power of the Last Word. You eat babies. Thread locked. OK, it wasn’t Rick that locked the thread and I’m sure it wasn’t his intention to leave me unable to respond (without opening a new thread, which for so trivial a matter would be silly). But this is still something which works to the detriment of normal members. I’ve seen countless people cut off with no chance to reply. It’s just a little unfair but since I can’t come up with a general remedy for it (moderators obviously need to lock threads occasionally) let this mild protest suffice. It would be pleasant if the thread were unlocked but if it isn’t I promise I won’t cry myself to sleep each night over it.
I don’t see why the thread was closed at all. It was a heated discussion, but sometimes discussions get heated. Is every thread going to get shut down when posters get testy?
Well, do you eat babies? I’ll let the mod in question answer if he’s had time to reconsider.
Speaking in broad terms and not on this particular thread since it’s not my forum, sometimes. Just getting testy while on topic? It probably won’t need moderating unless it starts getting into Pit territory. Testy sniping that is derailing a thread away from its topic? Yeah there is a good chance it won’t be allowed to continue.
I’ve been following that thread and it was de-railing, in large part due to you Aldi. It was becoming a repetitive course of someone mentioning instances of media person X being accused of improprieties, and you defending them. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but the repetition even in the face of the accused admitting the act, and your insistence that the victims shouldn’t feel victimized acted to create the testiness.
I see no indication that RickJay’s post had anything to do with him being a mod, or with the thread being closed.
As is so often mentioned after a thread is closed, absent mod instructions to the contrary, if you want to keep discussing something, start a new thread.
I guess that it’s my fault for not making myself clearer and that’s exactly what RickJay accused me of, defending these people. I wasn’t defending the people themselves at all. I think Spacey is guilty as hell as are in all probability the others, lechers and creeps to a man. (Hoffman I do have doubts about.) The thing I found concerning was the anonymity issue in one instance and I had issues with Rapp’s statement which I won’t go into again because this thread is about the closure. In neither of those cases did I imply Spacey was innocent. Such was my ‘defense’ of ‘these people’.
But to return to the point of this thread I too wondered how the other thread could be defined as a ‘train-wreck’. An admonition by a mod would have been sufficient to stop me ‘derailing’ the thread, which in this case seemed to signify that my opinion was unwelcome. I really don’t see the point of shutting everybody up in order to get me to shut up. A polite request would have done the job, or even an impolite one. But enough lest I be accused of derailing this thread.
If you’re complaining about the thread closure, fine, I have no comment either way. But your third sentence is very misleading, where you state “But one of the unfortunate consequences of thread closures is that a moderator (RickJay in the present instance) can make a comment and ordinary posters lack the ability to defend themselves against whatever was said.”
My reading of that sentence – and ISTM any ordinary reading of that sentence – implies that RickJay used his moderator powers to get in the last word by posting to a closed thread. As Sunny Daze has already noted, the fact that he is a mod has absolutely nothing to do with any of his comments in that thread. He was participating as an ordinary poster, and his last post was made about 18 minutes before the thread was closed, something anyone could have done.
Your references to “a moderator” as compared to “ordinary posters”, and then yet another reference to “ordinary posters” later in the same OP, in my view are inappropriate and misleading. Everyone commenting in that thread was acting as an “ordinary poster”.
I think you are misinterpreting what happened. You may have been the ringleader (maybe if it’s a derailment that makes you the conductor) but you weren’t the only participant. Chronos didn’t have time to figure out who did what. Speaking from my own experience I don’t read every thread in my forum. I read many but not all. Sometimes a report will come in for a multi page thread I haven’t read. If I’m lucky I only have to go back a couple of posts to get context. Sometimes it requires reading the whole thread. I don’t often close a thread while figuring it out but it’s an option that is available.