The “Positive Gun News of the Day” thread belongs in a debate forum. It’s basically Bone passing on news clippings of what he regards as ‘good’ gun killings, which of course is a matter of debate. So could the thread kindly be moved into a more debatey forum? GD, IMHO, the Pit, it doesn’t matter to me. But MPSIMS seems way out of place for a thread like this, especially given the grisliness of the topic.
I go to MPSIMS for more lighthearted stuff. I’m really tired of being reminded of shootings, deaths, and Bone’s gun obsession every time I go there.
Why? What could be more mundane and pointless than posting the 1 in a 1000 cases where a gun didn’t do more harm than good.
Further, I’m not sure your vexation at having to scroll past a couple of lines of text on a list is sufficient reason to move it to a forum that has already seen numerous,
“Guns is bad”
“No them ain’t”
types of threads.
MPSIMS forum is often used to announce deaths and other personal tragedies, as well as to discuss news topics of all kinds, from the silly to the serious. I’ve skimmed the thread, but I don’t think it is out of place in that forum. My other MPSIMS mods may have a different opinion, and can weigh in if they think it should be moved, of course.
If you feel the thread has been getting to “debatey” (which doesn’t sound like what you’re saying here), please report those posts as they come up to see if needs to be moved.
We’re not talking about personal tragedies here. We’re talking about news items that don’t involve anyone here, except by sheer coincidence.
And the news topics brought up here are generally single fairly significant incidents, rather than a themed thread all about the same sort of local news incidents that wouldn’t be worthy of any note on their own.
No, what I’m saying is that debate is practically the only reasonable response to the thread, at least that is reasonable within board rules.
And there have been debate-type responses from the very beginning of the thread. And see posts 533, 537-541, 543-550 for a fairly recent bit of debate about one shooting.
Well, how about sharing your own stories about positive gun events? Don’t have any? Then move on to a different thread. Not every thread here is a debate, and we’re not required to move threads around just so that you, personally, can have the kind of discussion you want. You want to debate about guns? I’m pretty sure you can find at least one other thread somewhere on here that’s about that.
If you think this thread is in the right forum, say so. I’m arguing that it’s not, and I’m giving reasons. You can agree or disagree with those reasons.
What I hear you saying is that any time a poster thinks a thread is in the wrong forum, the poster should just shut up and say nothing.
Well, I go to MPSIMS to get away from the things we argue about in the debate forums. Isn’t that kind of what it’s for? Hell, that’s why debate in breaking-news-type threads in MPSIMS is out of place, or at least that seems to be consistent with the idea.
This is a thread with a specific theme, about a controversial issue. If MPSIMS is the forum for such threads, I can think of a few I’d start there that would be consistent with that notion. But they’d change the character of the forum - as this thread is doing.
People are already debating the incidents discussed. In the thread.
MPSIMS is an odd duck of a forum, especially when one reads it as Mindless and Pointless Stuff as I always seem to. It always seems a bit jarring to see bad news threads there, like my baby has a terminal illness.
That said, there’s nothing more pointless (or mindless!) than a positive gun news thread so it seems like just the spot for it.
If the thread is meant to just be an update of news stories (debatable or not), then MPSIMS seems like the right place. I’d hate for GD to turn into a slew of “Good News About Issue X of the Day” threads.
OP, you have posted in the offending thread 17 times. It’s obvious you are incapable of scrolling past it, so I guess there’s no point in making that suggestion.
Well, it is relevant in a direct response to this part of your OP:
Part of your argument is that MPSIMS forum is too lighthearted a place for such grisly news. My response is that this is a forum that runs the gamut from light-hearted to tragic, for both personal and news related items. Based on that argument, the thread is not out of place and you still run the risk of seeing upsetting threads in that forum, even it were to be moved.
Well, your OP made no mention of the debate aspect of the thread, and that’s what I was responding to. Looking over the thread, again, to me it seems more like a discussion than a debate, but other mods might see it differently.
What I hear him saying is the thread may not be for you. If you feel the strong pull of “Someone is wrong on the internet” then open your own thread in GD to debate the issue. As long as the thread is staying on it’s stated purpose I see no reason at all to move it. The only time I’ve had to moderate was when someone was clearly threadshitting.
Your point that MPSIMS is only for light hearted subjects is false. Tragic and dark events are discussed there all the time. That is not a reason why it should be moved. If you have that much trouble with the thread don’t click.
This is the forum where the top sticky is “Happy Doper Milestones.” Three down from that is the death notices of the posters who died in the In Memoriam sticky. It’s not lighthearted stuff only.
I read and engaged in that thread for a little bit, before realizing that wasn’t what it was for. Bone’s a great guy in many ways, but that thread is more like religious proselytizing than anything else; he’s Sharing the Good News with us, and I don’t especially enjoy subjecting myself to proselytizing for the most benign religions, let alone for this sort of weapon-worship.
Roll your eyes and scroll on, is my advice, just as you turn your head and keep walking when passing the preacher on the corner.
I’m not sure why the distinction between a debate and discussion is relevant. The description of GD reads:
“For long-running discussions of the great questions of our time. This is also the place for religious debates and (if you feel you must) witnessing.”
The only debates mentioned are religious debates. The rest are just “long running discussions.”
Now whether “positive gun news” is a “great question of our time” is debatable, but I’ve always taken that line to be self-deprecating. It’s not that they actually are important, but that the people arguing act like they really are. I don’t see the mods actually limiting GD to “great questions.”
In short, GD is just our forum for containing contentious topics and fierce arguments–getting them out of other threads. While whether this particular thread has become contentious enough is a mod call, I don’t think it’s fair to act like the OP is being unreasonable in bringing it up.
If it starts getting contentious then it will probably be because of some threadshitting or hijacking which I will have no trouble moderating. I don’t see any reason why there can’t be one thread in which articles where people have used guns for self defense are linked. And I believe the best forum for that thread is in MPSIMS. It’s not like there is a lack of gun control debate on the board. There is already a much longer running “Stupid Gun News of the Day” thread it The Pit. There is no need to turn the MPSIMS thread into a clone of the Pit thread since the later already exists.
I applaud this. There was a period where most gun threads were being tossed into the pit because a few cowards were terrified of a gun thread that didn’t have anti-gun rhetoric in it and would threadshit deliberately knowing it would be closed or thrown into the pit. This was happening to other topics as well at the time. I really like your proactive stance regarding this kind of .
I did say so. I said why I think it’s so. And I said why I don’t think your arguments apply this particular situation. You seem to have missed all that, and just gotten:
…which seem to be more about you, than about me.
Yeah? Well, hate to break it to you, but that’s not how this board works. If you want to debate, say, gay marriage, you go to GD. If you want to talk about how happy you are to have just gotten gay married, you go to MPSIMS. We don’t move a thread about someone happy to be married to GD, just because some asshole wants to argue about whether they should have been allowed to be married in the first place.
Likewise, if you want to argue about guns, go to GD. If someone wants to talk about the cool new gun they just bought, they should be able to discuss that in MPSIMS without having to worry about the thread turning into a debate over gun rights.
The SDMB is intended for a general audience. It’s not intended as a place where issues are only discussed in the way that you, personally, want them discussed. If that’s what you’re looking for, there’s a lot of good tutorials on how to set up your own blog on YouTube.