Yeah, lou, while I’d certainly say that some axioms are based on faith (eg. science can tell us everything that we can possibly know, or there’s nothing that’s impossible for us to know), I wouldn’t go as far as to call that a religion.
On the topic of the thread, I am again reduced to wondering why this dumb troll hasn’t been removed from our community.
When asked to back up his claims, the troll claims that:
Well that sounds completely reasonable… surely he’s not trolling and he accepts going back to the original Hebrew as a valid way of getting at the meaning and…
IIRC, remarks like “pearls before swine” have been enough to get some posters warned in GD.
And, of course, this troll still refuses to actually debate rather than shit in the thread. Why does the tag under his name not say BANNED?
I’m honest in my questions, if a bit frustrated and confused as to why the hammer hasn’t fallen yet. I’m certainly not owed an answer, but I’m curious as to your thinking here if you’d indulge me. Thanks for your time and attention.
Both the leper comment and the lemmings comments were of the general nature that posters have gotten away with when they were not specifically aimed at another poster (which was the context of my Warning to him). I have still not figured out how you determined that you, personally, were the object of the “leper” comment.
Possibly. Would you prefer that I allow my personal dislike to shape my actions to be more harsh than otherwise? It is not as though I am the only Mod in GD and I do not recall seeing any actions from the other Mods against either of the two current problem children in GD for infractions I have permitted. In the recent trainwreck, I had two separate posters claiming that I was failing in my duties, one because I had not openly called for the banning of one troublemaker and the other because he wanted me to be specifically harder on believers than on other posters, just because.
Realistically, these guys are not disrupting the whole board (or even the whole GD Forum). They are each one-trick ponies who can only irritate a limited number of people on a limited number of threads within a fairly narrow range of topics. I certainly wish that they would either become contributing posters or go away, but we have lots of posters whom one person or another would deem “useless.” My job is to make sure that violence does not break out in the GD Forum and that rules are not completely ignored by posters. In these cases, I do, indeed, look for bright line violations, simply to avoid having to deal with numerous charges that I am making up my own rules to punish posters I do not like.
No one is completely useless; he can always serve as a bad example.
I didn’t get a warning, but then I hadn’t just got a warning for being insulting in GD in the same thread. Is it just that it wasn’t as clear that Bible man was insulting… well, pretty much everyone against him in that thread? I think the lemmings comment would certainly be at that level.
Note, however, Revenant, that you did not get a Warning. I admonished you to avoid the sort of thing that will lead to greater hostility at a point in a thread where courtesy had not already gone into the trash and you had both the intelligence and the innate civility to recognize that your comment would lead to greater strife and you backed off. There is no great black mark next to your name on that date in the Straight Dope Book of Life.
Both of our two current troublemakers lack either (or both) the civility and the wit to recognize that situation. Most of their comments fall into the category of rude behavior that is not quite in violation of the rules. We tolerate that in any number of situations every day. In fact the haste with with I often seek to head off such displays recently earned me the epithet “prissy,” however I don’t get into every thread all day long. Generally, I post comments such as those I directed to you when it appears that bad feelings have not yet broken out, in an attempt to forestall them. Once posters are expressing their mutual disdain, I figure it is too late and do not interfere, again, until it looks as though someone is about to lose control or derail the thread. Anyone who has read threads in which our two current problems have posted should already know what they are like and more “tut tutting” by me will not really solve anything.
Well, I’ll elaborate then: BM said that ThePCapeman was most likely follwing the thread because he had a wager on when I was going to convert to (his brand of) Christianity. PC responded by saying that the statement was pathetic. Then BM responded by saying
“Exactly the word I was groping for, it’s all very pathetic indeed - kind of like watching blind lepers taking wild swings at those sent with the serum that will cure them.”
It seemed, and indeed, seems clear to me that the discussion was over my ‘conversion’, that PC was calling the mere suggestion pathetic, and that BM was in turn saying that it was pathetic that I would not be converted, that I was like a “blind leper” taking wild swings at him, the person sent with the ‘serum that would cure me’.
Now, I can see how you might disagree on the interpretation… but I don’t think that it’s unfair or unlikely, at all. And I’d bet money that it was his intention, to boot.
Come on, do you think that’s what I was suggesting? I was just wondering if you might not be going too easy on him so as to make sure that you were being impartial.
That is certainly true, but at least from what I’ve seen, you seem to be a bit more active. Might just happen to be the threads I end up reading… and it might also be that mods might not want to step in with a mod hat if another mod is already handling the thread.
Again, I just want to make clear that I was honestly curious and asking a question with respect, and not trying to get on your case.
That does indeed make sense, and I’ve said before that I’m glad moderation is a bit (or a lot) more lenient than my hot-blooded wishes might run. I still think that at least one of the two is a jerk, and the more I see of the second I’d apply that label there, too. But like I said, I was more curious (and frustrated) than anything else, and I’m not trying to give you a hard time at all.
Heck, I still think I deserve a warning for my accidental slip of posting to the GD thread while thinking I was responding in a different window to this Pit thread. So sometimes I suppose that y’all break in my favor
Thanks for taking the time to listen to and address my concerns here.
