CajunMan and TubaDiva

The BBQ Pit
101

:: reads **if6was9’s ** post::

:: confused, I read tom’s post again. ::

Yep, still says Moderator under his name. After all the bitching and moaning about silence from the moderation, we have one of them step up and clearly explain that there was never an official warning of that member. Conspiracy theorists still doubt. If you ever wonder why there is this stigma of being tight lipped, here’s the reason. They come out and answer a question asked in plain terms, kneejerk reaction from member: bullshit.

Answer: he started a thread knowing full well that the content of which was " prurient and tasteless." The moderator didn’t see this as bad behavior in particular, just a pointless thread and decided to clean it up.

He was wrong.

The members have responded, thread has been reopened. Moderator has not been seen since, so I will not accuse him of dodging an explanation until he’s come back and refused to answer.

102

Well, well, well. What have we here. Not what I had in mind with my OP, for sure.

This all has happened overnight and the two people whose answers we expect, are not yet on duty. Patience, everyone. As much as I hope there is no next time, if there is one, I will wait until office hours to post.

That said, and since we are approaching the commencement of business hours, I will reiterate the important point of my OP. I don’t care if the administration gets a free pass to do threadshitting, who covers for whom and who hates whom. All I need to know is **what, if anything, did pizzabrat do wrong, so we can avoid that behaviour in the future ** and escape being in the receiving end of mod action (whether you call it a warning, a condemnation, a reprimand, a molestation or a friendly prodding)

I can see some people who have shown some interesting traits in this thread, but I will reserve my comments on those to avoid further derailment of this thread. They will get their own pittings in due time.

As a disclaimer, I have never had any general objections to the actions of the moderators or the administration. I am not a board hater, not a “you people” of any sort. I am just a regular guy who likes to have rules made clear to avoid getting out of line.

103

So, say you got a moderatorial bitch-slap for that post and were told “Don’t do this again”.

What is it exactly that you would not do again?

104

So what the fuck was it? A threat? No, no, no, you say, it’s “an admonition”. Sigh. Who’s playing semantic games, now, tom?

The point being, when a moderator posts “Don’t do this again”, what does that mean? What is the “admonishee” supposed to do? If it’s not a real “Warning”, can such posts be safely ignored?

105

It’s the difference between a cop giving you a warning and giving you a ticket when you get pulled over, only here it’s an admonition (or whatever, I don’t think there’s a specific name for a non-recorded finger-wag) and a Warning. You’ve been here long enough to know that.

106

That’s not the question. If a cop pulls you over and doesn’t give you a ticket, he’ll still tell you what he pulled you over for.

That’s the question here. It really isn’t hard. What was pizzabrat “admonished” for?

The way I see it, CM got some emails complaining about the thread in question. He closed it without really reading it and “admonished” PB for … well, I don’t know what.

Look, we all make mistakes, and it appears that Cajun Man made one. It’s really not a big deal. If he had just reopened the thread with “I guess there was nothing offensive here after all, my bad”, no one would be complaining. Or if anyone did complain, I would be on CM’s side. But CM has said nothing, and the other moderators have gone into “Circle The Wagons Moderators Can Do No Wrong” mode.

Again, it’s not a big deal, it certainly doesn’t directly affect me as I thought it was a stupid thread to begin with, it’s just annoying is all.

107

This seems crazy to me. I am jumping back in again, because I want to make clear what I think was bullshit about this entire incident. I was a little annoyed that my initial question wasn’t answered (and still hasn’t been…TubaDiva really only conceded that there was nothing in the rules that disallowed that thread, while still seemingly backing up the reason it was closed in the first place…a reason that we are still unclear on, or at least I am).

But the thing that really pissed me off was this…if I said something on this board that might be regrettable, I have 5 minutes to change my mind about it, and then it is there forever. If I get pitted over it, then that’s my tough luck, and if that pit thread went to 100 pages, there would not be a damn thing I could do about it but put up with it. No mod would close it down because I didn’t like it. Even if I went into the thread, retracted my statement, and begged for forgiveness, if the Dopers still wanted to ream me for another 30 pages, then so it would be.

I see no reason, then, that a mod should be able to close down a thread to avoid people talking about themselves or another mod. That thread should not have been closed. The reason for my opening the thread had not been resolved, and even if it had, I see no reason not to let it die a natural death. I call bullshit on that, and it pisses me off.

108

I was responding more to the “semantic games” part of your post, but yes. I think the intent of his post was easily inferred, but he was vague about it, I’ll grant.

I do think the lot of you are being hysterical biddies about this, but hey, go to.

109

I just want to add that if this was happening in Cuba by this point there would have been at least a few hair pulling fights, a few slapping fights and a couple of posters in a corner would be screaming to be held back lest they kill someone.

This is such a civil fight.

110

La tuya!

111

That’s it! Someone hold me back before I kill him!

112

I did think of dragging the love shack into all this, but…

I’m up for buying** Cajunman** and TubaDiva beers when I next see them (I’ve never seen them in my life)–consider them sympathy beers. There is no enough money in world for me to listen to this squabbling over a simple change of mind.

113

Depends on what I did in the first place. Are you saying that you are so engrossed in over-thinking every moderator action that you cannot possibly imagine any meaning to that sentence?

We need an explanation!, people continue to bleat. So we can be sure not to do it again!

Horseshit, IMHO. If there was an ongoing problem with CajunMan closing random threads for unfathomable reasons, then sure, you go TPTB and say “Hey, this is an issue; it’s confusing people.” But the first fucking time? You guys don’t want guidance; you want heads rolling and abject apologies for what was a minor fucking mistake that was fixed.

You want to know why Cajun Man closed the thread? Fine. I’ll tell you: He thought it was pointless, tasteless, and content free. That’s why he closed the thread. How do I know this? Have I talked to him? Can I read his mind? No. I have a brain in my head and I can figure out all by my little self the realm of likely reasons why such a thread would be closed.

Did he make a mistake by closing it? Apparently so. How do I know? Because it’s been reopened! You guys bitched about it being closed and so they reopened it, which is a tacit acknowledgement of the justice of your complaints, because God knows if TPTB had not conceded your point, the thread would have remained closed.

So I call horseshit on every single person who says I don’t understand! I’m so scared that I might do something wrong myself and then a mod might say something similar to me! As if we cannot, every one of us, deal with that issue when it arises again, if it arises again.

No, the engine for this thread is not confusion or a desire for clarification. It is demands that Cajun Man or Tuba nail themselves to a cross, and if they don’t then by God there will be 10 more pages of this, the 900th iteration of how the mods are all big fat meanies and this board is teh suxxors, because nothing is more fun to the Board bitchers than another round of the same old circle jerk.

Wankers, the lot of ya.

114

Wow. I normally don’t have interest in these matters, Jodi, but your exclamation points, coding, parsing and frothing are bringing me around.
The “engine” is a lack of response to a simple question of the admonitioners to explain themselves. It seems a one or two sentence response would end all of this.
Mind you I don’t need it for myself (though any admonition by the mods should be clear, IMHO), but your thoughts to the contrary seems a bit asskissery.

115

I’ve already stated at length that IMO this is bullshit. Anyone with a functioning brain stem can figure out what happened; I posted it right above. No, the desire that the “admonitioners” “explain themselves” is a demand they publicly fall on their swords. And for what?

Well, you’re thoughts on my thoughts seem a bit of fuckwittery. I was completely confident that in taking a position in opposition to the “hysterical biddies” (as someone else put it), I would be accused of kissing ass, because I could not possibly hold a genuine independent opinion. I just didn’t think it would be in the very first response.

116

Hear ! Hear ! Guess Tuba and Cajun know how Paris Hilton feels. Cant scratch your ass without it making the news.

117

So in other words, you don’t know. That’s the whole fucking point. Nobody — including Pizzabrat— knows what Pizzabrat did wrong.

Don’t do that again.

118

Apparently, he didn’t do anything wrong, becasue the thread was re-opened. What the fuck is so hard about this?

That’s a “yes,” then.

119

I’m willing to agree with Jodi and say, OK, it seems fairly obvious that there was a lapse in judgement here, and although the “don’t do this again” sounded fairly ominous, I have heard it enough around here to say, fine, that’s their stock phrase in such situations, etc. etc.

However, I still call foul on TubaDiva’s closing my Pit thread. If posters wanted to use that to bitch about the thread closing until they dropped dead doing it, that should be their perogative. Mods should not be using their power to close threads in cases where they are being complained about. It really, really, doesn’t look good.

120

Here’s my theory. Picture a modest office, somewhere in Chicago:

New Chicago Reader bosses: So, I think we’ve got everything we need to know about the print edition of the Chicago Reader now. Tell us a little bit about this message board of yours… the Straight Truth?

TubaDiva: The Straight Dope.

New bosses: Yes, yes… the Straight Dope. Now, these boards… you two are moderators?

Cajun Man: Oh, yeah! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

TubaDiva: Yes. Technically, I’m an administrator… but I sometimes perform moderating duties.

New bosses: Well, this board of yours is not very profitable and it’s a potential liability. We’re thinking of shutting it down.

Cajun Man: No! Lâche pas la patate!

New bosses: I’m sorry, what was your name again?

Cajun Man: Cajun Man, I guar-un-teee!

New bosses: You wanna tone it down a bit?

Cajun Man: Sorry.

TubaDiva: Listen, we appreciate the position you are in. But please keep this board going. After all, it’s part of the rich tradition of fighting ignorance.

New bosses: I’m sorry, but that’s just not enough. What else have you got?

TubaDiva: Well… there’s always the Straight Dope moderators’ drinking game.

New bosses: How does it work?

TubaDiva: We’ll show you. Cajun Man, go lock a thread… you don’t even need to give a reason. When the members complain, I’ll re-open it and lock the complaint thread. The game starts when the members start yet another complaint thread.

New bosses: This is a message board about fighting ignorance?

TubaDiva: It’s a long story. Anyway, let’s get started. Which thread did you pick Cajan Man?

Cajun Man: This one started by pizzabrat.

TubaDiva: Ooooh, good one. Now’s a good time to stretch your legs or take a quick bathroom break. Hurry back, the game will start in moments.

One quick bathroom break later…

TubaDiva: …annnnnd, we’ve begun! There’s the Pit thread, right on schedule. Everybody takes one shot.

New bosses: What’s the “Pit”?

TubaDiva: That’s not important right now. Drink!

[drink] Okay what are the rules?

TubaDiva: Everyone takes one sip of beer for every post. Every time you are flamed by name, you have to take a shot. If your name and jackboots are mentioned in the same sentence, you have to drink a shot and a beer. Your names won’t come up, but to make things even let’s say you have to drink two shots and a beer if anyone mentions “our new corporate overlords”.

New bosses: Our new what now?

Cajun Man: When the time comes we’ll tell you. It will probably just be me and Tuba getting flamed, but if any of the other moderators happen by and want to play, they can post to the thread in our defense. I bet tomndebb stops by before we’re done.

TubaDiva: Every time someone posts a link or demands “cite?” everyone has to take a sip of beer. Every time someone quotes an entire posts and adds fewer than 10 words of new text, that’s a sip. Every time someone quotes an entire post in 5 or more pieces and responds to every piece, everyone has to chug a beer. There’s plenty more; we’ll teach you as we go.

And so on, through the night.

So, basically, I picture that the recent events have endeared the SDMB to the new Chicago Reader ownership, ensuring the survival of our beloved message board. It would also explain why Cajun Man and TubaDiva have been off-line.