I still have my doubts of an EZ formula that proves stalking. If it was blatant, a report to the mods (who will end up making the decision at their discretion, anyway) will serve. I don’t anticipate them turning over any of that discretion in the name of formulating policy.
Besides, what if the alleged stalker posts in the threads you’ve posted in only 75% of the time? 60%? 80%? What’s the threshold?
If someone had 1,000 posts and every single one had been a reply to one poster in particular, could they be banned/suspended for stalking? Even if they had never insulted that person or broken any board rule?
I think we could all agree that such behaviour may be odd, or even slightly unsettling (especially to the ‘target’), but would/should that be enough justification for moderator intervention? But hey, maybe they just really like the poster in question and would just prefer to interact with them only, or they find someone’s views so disturbing that they register for the sole purpose of debating and criticising that person. I mean, it’s their cash, they can post when and where they like if they’re not breaking rules, can’t they? Some people only post in Cafe Society. Others won’t venture into the Pit and Great Debates, opting for the kitty pictures in MPSIMS as their daily SDMB fix.
‘But’, you say, ‘badchad wasn’t being civil or a sound debater with Polycarp, he was being a jerk’. Well then why isn’t he suspended only for being a jerk alone (which is a no-no anyway), why the need for the ‘stalking’ infraction? Yeah I know, your message board, your rules, but can anybody - God, mod, poster or candlestick maker - justify why ‘stalking’ alone (i.e. sans jerkiness) should be outlawed? Is the mere act of focusing disproportionate attention to one poster jerky enough in of itself? Don’t you sign up to a message board in the knowledge that anyone can quote and reply to your posts? Should you be sheltered from extended attention from a single person?
How would you enforce such a rule? Would there be limits as to how many times you can reply to somebody in a certain timespan? Would I get a message saying that the hamsters’ special algorithms are watching who I reply to and that I’ve called DoesNotExist a cunt three times already this month and that I’ve told Eve that I love her twice the allowed amount?
This is how I see it: badchad was banned for stalking, in which he was being a jerk to the object of his affection. Being a jerk is a bannable offense, also. Therefore, using deductive logic, one can still be banned/suspended for stalking while not being a jerk, otherwise badchad would have been suspended for jerkery. Is this correct?
No, just once or twice, and I framed the issue as insults. I wasn’t aware at the time that stalking could be a valid issue.
Yes
No
I really don’t want to make this thread about me.
I brought up several issues with respect to the suspension of Badchad
I didn’t like the idea I got that the suspension was a result of a pile on. However I will concur that the mod action was appropriate given his actions and not even seriously damaging to Badchad or his opportunity to continue posting.
The second issue I have might not be clear enough from my OP. I eagerly read Polycarp’s responses to Badchad because Badchad’s charges could very well be directed at me and I don’t have 10% of the abilities that Polycarp has to defend his Christian theology which mostly reflects mine. Badchad thus forces the best that Polycarp can offer.
And finally, I haven’t said this, but it is only honest for me to admit that I enjoyed the heavyweight fight between Mike Tyson and Joe Palooka
faithfool, are you sure you are remembering the Aldebaran stalking properly? It was mainly Mehitabel doing the stalking about his location and Lynn actually helped her out. Where was anyone “reprimanded and told to change their ways”?
No, of course you’re not. I would have thought that was obvious. It didn’t get enough of a rise, which is why the person in question went on to more outrageous behavior.
Don’t we already? It’s covered under the “don’t be a jerk” rule.
Which is why I suspect the less reputable of misguided sperm’s defenders, like p r r, tend to misrepresent why he was suspended. He was not suspended because of his atheist views, since there are more atheist/agnostic types on the boards than Christians. And tomndebb was getting ready to sprain something bending over backwards to avoid taking moderator action against him, because tomndebb and Polycarp are Christians, and he didn’t want misguided sperm to have a chance to play the martyr.
The idea that there is a pro-Christian bias on the SDMB is too silly to require refutation. I mean, come on.
Regards,
Shodan
Obviously, to some, it wouldn’t be as easy as I feel it would. However, as you say, the discretion is theirs anyway, I don’t see how adding this to the same roster of “Don’t be a jerk.” would be any different. As to the second part of the post, how is it decided when someone is, or isn’t, a jerk? I’m assuming it’s done by common sense overall. Otherwise, wouldn’t that rule also have to be hard and fast?
Hogwash, badchad was only suspended, not (as of yet) banned. And, as I said to Bryan, how the rule is implemented has to do with mod discretion anyway. So, if they seem to always weigh everything out in their decision making processes (IE: what exactly makes up being ‘jerkish’) regardless, the same would apply as to when someone was “stalking” or not. Like, similarly, they don’t post anywhere else at all, as many appear to do when they’re branded with the One Trick Pony label. For when it’s effusive praise rather than insults, I seem to remember Guin taking issue with a newer (at the time) poster who constantly was offering up virtual hugs and kisses that she felt was creepy. I think that was RyanLiam, but I could be wrong. Anyway, that came to a halt not too long after the above pronouncement by her.
Dutchman, I appreciate you answering my questions and apologize for turning the thread into being all about you. What can I say, you’re just so adorable and all. 
However, going on with the rest of your reply, I’m not sure if I can address anything, even tenuously, beyond your first point, because I don’t believe that his suspension was because of a pile-on. I think it was more of a ‘straw breaking the camel’s back’ sort of thing. So in that light, I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Although, I didn’t know forcing Poly (or anyone for that matter) to give their best was the job of another poster. Hell, I get annoyed by folks that choose to not reply to outright questions directed at them (which seems to happen fairly often to me), but figure that on an internet message board that’s their prerogative. Whadaya gonna do? Be a massive dick and INSIST? Or try to teach and learn something by being just a mere mortal?
Ok Carnal, sorry for the delay in the response. I had to try to go slogging through all that to figure out what I meant. Sometimes, that’s not so easy. 
Anyway, thank you for letting me know it was Mehitabel. It was just right there, but for the life of me, I couldn’t get it any closer. Regardless, if I try to follow my brain’s thought process of where all I was going, here’s the best I got… Lynn’s post about Alde’s IP was in July 2004, four months before his thread to Mehitabel proclaiming his marital status. And I’m still not certain how that would seen so much as “helping her out” on his location, as to clarification that what we list in that field doesn’t always indicate actual physical local. I agree that by using his specific circumstances by way of explanation might not be viewed by all as strictly above board, but I’m sure there are others who only see it as an extension of complete honesty. Either way, it didn’t register much with me.
Now, the final post had what I called a reprimand, be it ever so slight, by Gaudere over mis-stating user names and that’s what I saw collectively tied together (perhaps just in my head) to equal a ‘stalking’ charge, somewhat. So, unpopular Alde is sorta stood-up for, while more popular (ugh, I feel like I’m in junior high again) Mehitabel receives a slap on the wrist. All of this happened before he was banned on Dec. 31st and if I’m anywhere close to correct (highly suspect, I’m sure), Mehitabel wasn’t warned about that again.
And on preview to Shodan; sure, the “Don’t be a jerk.” philosophy probably covers it. However, isn’t that how must of these things slip between the cracks? It’s so nebulous and arbitrary that someone can pull the most obvious of shit (like the aforementioned One Trick Ponyism, combined with even narrowly defined ‘stalking’) and still get by with it because they weren’t breaking any specific rules clearly enough. I, on the other hand, think this particular one should be more distinct to protect assholes from doing what has been done to The Flying Dutchman, Poly or anyone else in that position. It just ought to be cut out, no matter who it is.
/my .02 cents
I find it odd that you would single me out to explain what “stalking” means when you didn’t do it the first time in this thread someone uses a stalikng example, nor the second time someone calls him a stalker, nor the third , fourth , fifth , sixth , seventh , eighth . But how about the ninth time someone talked about stalking in this thread? Nope. . No, You decide to call me on it and explain what “stalking” is. WTF? I find that “odd” (And insulting) as hell.
Oh What a give away! Did you here that ? You all heard it!! Help, help, I’m being oppressed!!
Well, Mehitabel was in the thread sleuthing Aldebaran’s nationality, he evaded the question then Lynn responded to his evasion with his IP information. Seems clear to me she “helped her out”, even if it was months before Aldebaran compiled his Pitting of her. I don’t quite understand the way in which way you interpreted it.
I thought Gaudere’s closing warning was specific to the feminizing nickname. The stalking charge was never officially addressed ISTM, despite the number of mods in that thread.
Well I suppose I didn’t read it all well enough then. As I said initially, I didn’t even remember who all that referred to. There was just so much never-ending shit going on about that at the time, yanno? Anyway, given that, I will certainly defer to someone with more complete knowledge of the situation. That was solely my impression and, as is the case more often than not, I’m usually only right in the broad sense of hitting the barn with a basketball because I threw it in the same county. 
Yes, you are correct that a semi-nebulous policy like “don’t be a jerk” allows some bad behavior to fall thru the cracks. But with a board-full of nitpickers and legalists like the present one, trying to set up a more explicit policy is probably a lost cause. No matter what, a jerk is going to argue that his case is different, or technically he didn’t “stalk” anyone because he will dig up an instance where someone who wasn’t banned responded to so-and-so more often than he did, and on and on and on.
Fortunately for the success of the current “Don’t be a jerk” Prime Directive, people who are jerks in one way tend to be jerks in other ways as well, and thus step over the line unambigously enough to get suspended or banned. As in this instance - misguided sperm made a jerkish comment (“Christ was a cunt”) in order to get a rise out of Christians. It didn’t work well enough - he was hoping (I believe) to get the Christians on the boards to be enraged so he could play gotcha (“Haha! You insulted me back! You are not being Christ-like! Hypocrite!” etc., etc.) when they Pitted him. It didn’t work - so he went on to further jerkish behavior. With the current result.
Maybe he will return a better Doper - one can hope. I suspect not - his habit of treading as close to the line as possible in order to bait Christians into responding is what got him into this trouble, and a suicide by mod (probably by more attacks on tomndebb) is the most likely scenario, unless he matures a lot more in thirty days than I would.
But we will see. I hope his example will encourage other Dopers to concentrate on disagreeing without being disagreeable.
Myself certainly not least of all.
Happy New Year.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, well can’t take all the credit. My staff has helped me prepare an executive summary on these sorts of things.
The poster accused of stalking Aldebaran was reprimaded for that conduct and was further admonished for continuing some portion of the antagonism after he had already been banned. Whether the reprimands did rise (or should have risen) to the level of Warnings, I do not know and am not going to pry into anyone’s history to find out. I am not sure that every charge laid against Aldebaran was fair, but there is no question that he behaved as a jerk on more than one occasion. (Interestingly, he moved over to Fathom where he was initially greeted by some posters as a “refugee” from the mean old SDMB, yet within a month he had outraged most of the posters (many of whom agreed with many of his political opinions) to the point that he eventually had to move on from there, as well.) In some ways it would be nice to have hard-and-fast rules, but then we would still wind up with everyone bickering over whether this phrase was a transgression while that phrase was acceptable–and I suspect that exactly the same people would line up on the same sides regarding whether or not any given poster had “really” broken the rule under such a rule system as we see today under our looser and admittedly more subjective system.
From my perspective, the whole point of any of the rules we have is to prevent (or, at least, reduce) board disruption. Any of us who were posting when the SDMB was on AOL can recall one particular poster who really was capable of disrupting the board. I do not even believe he was a classic troll, in that he was more likely just a sincere idiot. However, he wandered across the whole of the site disrupting any number of threads with his arrogant ignorance and insensitivity to any issue or any person who did not fit his narrow view of the world. Eventually, between his trashing of some threads and the feuds he picked with many posters, we actually began to lose good posters who simply found the site more irritating than enjoyable when they could not open a thread except to discover he had fouled it.
Memories of that poster probably guide the decisions of any staff member who also posted at the AOL board (close to half of us).
Aldebaran, even if he was unjustly provoked on some occasions, seemed to be much in the same mold.
One of the points I have made regarding the subject of this thread is that I felt no urgent need to quash him for the very reason that he had limited exposure in limited threads, meaning he was not, (until he began bragging about his ability to silence other posters), actually disrupting the board, overall. Was his language intemperate? Yeah. So is that of many others. Was his debating style dishonest? Yeah. So is that of many others. However, his penchant for making direct personal attacks on other posters did nothing to further discussion and bragging about how his attacks were “successful” or that he enjoyed driving other posters to silence indicated a mindset that would, if left unchecked, eventually disrupt the board with as many people fighting over his behavior as actually particpating in genuine thread topics.
Well, if being whoooshed is a good way to oppress people, I guess I could work on my naïveté a bit more so that I can oppress more of you more thoroughly.
w/a/d/r and all, but aren’t we mere posters admonished for bringing events and behavior elsewhere back here?
True, but I was not trying to trash him, particularly, (note the lack of specificity). I was using a poster who had already been named in this thread, whom old-timers would remember, (with, probably, divergent opinions as to whether he had been railroaded out or whether he had been mercifully directed elsewhere), in order to set up the explanation of why disruption is a more important criterion than specific rule breaking.
I have no intention of bashing him for particular faults or even continuing to mention him, here.
Oops, sorry, any chance the first day back your title said just member?
I said Hi quickly in one of the first threads you posted to and I thought I noticed member rather than Charter Member.
So think about this, QED:
1/ Read the Old Testament and consider that it is a book that many Christians believe describes acts of their god. Read about all the vengeful mass slaughter of persons well arguable to be innocents that he does
2/ Consider that it forms the belief of many Christians that their god sends innocents to bad places who haven’t heard of him and have never had an opportunity to jump through the hoops he sets in order to avoid that happening.
3/ Consider that “Christ” is the Christian god
4/ Explain to me precisely how no reasonable argument can be made out that the Christian god is an extremely immoral being, by the standards of morality many Christians avow. Explain to me precisely why it is therefore unreasonable to state that the Christian god is a bad, bad being. Explain to me precisely why it is unreasonable to use an insulting term that your opponent has just used back at him.
If you or any other is planning on explaining to me the finer points of your interpretation of theology, don’t bother. I’ve underlined no reasonable argument for a reason.
No of course not. However, sometimes very controversial opening statements are a legitimate rhetorical technique, particularly when backed up by explanations. Whether badchad’s subsequent explanations were sufficient is a moot point. However, the whole idea that the Christian god is good or moral by Christian standards is distinctly iffy. Despite that iffyness, Christians worship their god as if he’s wonderful. Jerking them out of their cosy position to deal with the idea that perhaps their god has with serious faults takes some considerable force, at times.
As a minor note, I’ve been reviewing the various Aldeberan-related links and I’m very glad I didn’t get involved at the time because nobody was coming off well. As a result, I’ll step out of this and related threads.
Yeah, actually. It may change back again. Tuba says it’s something to do with the system or something. Or something about something. Or something.