Knock it off. You guys want the Dio Show to stop. Don’t respond to him.
There is no Dio show.
Seriously, I don’t see the point of this thread. I disagree with the vast majority of Dio’s opinions, I agree that his debating style leaves much to be desired, that he can often be a jerk, and that a number of the threads he posts in have a tendency to be derailed, but the constant complaints of the Dio show are almost on the same level. I don’t think Dio is a troll for the simple fact that I consider trolls to be people doing what they’re doing for the sole purpose of creating drama and getting attention, whereas I believe, as awful as his behavior can be, Dio is honest about the opinions he holds and, like a lot of people I’ve met, just isn’t really willing to consider the possibility that he is wrong, which leads to poor debating and aggressive behavior.
That said, I don’t think a banning is in order because it is important to have views from all perspectives, particularly when they’re unpopular and honestly held rather than just trying to play devil’s advocate. The answer, however, isn’t to expect people to ignore him, as so many have suggested, but rather to hold him to the same debating standards as everyone else is. I’ve engaged him in some discussions and, quite simply, when he wasn’t willing to provide cites or would make poor argumentation, I would just write off his arguments, but when I felt he made meaningful points, I would respond to them. That’s no different from anyone else I engage where, if they keep pushing the same points without cites or without accounting for my responses, I stop engaging them.
As for Dio, I’d just like to see you tone it down a bit. I understand how frustrating it is to be branded as you are, and at this point, any time you engage anyone, confirmation bias will just continue the stigma. So I’d suggest to you that when you feel realize you’ve just posted 10 times in a thread in the span of a couple hours, reconsider your approach. Personally, I’d rather see one well thought out response with appropriate cites, than half a dozen posts made while emotionally charged. And when you realize you’re just repeating your points over and over, saying it one more time won’t change anyone’s mind and it will just feed into that notion of the Dio show, and perhaps you should just let it go. Finally, if you’re getting upset, just take a break.
Either way, I don’t see how this sort of thread will do anything but be antagonistic. The only part of this whole matter that really bugs me is when interesting threads get derailed, but the answer isn’t to be pissed off at someone for having an out-there opinion that he can’t really support, the answer is to bring it into another thread, report the posts so moderators can bring the thread back on track, or whatever.
There are dozens of posters who hold many of the same positions as Dio who are ten times better at expressing themselves and don’t have to resort to his level of bitchiness. There are very adept bible scholars, other stupid Viking fans, overprotective fathers, and more than a handful of left wingers who could fill Dio’s “perspectives” without all the baggage that comes with him. I’d love to actually hear from them instead of having Dio dominate each and every thread or position he takes. The only thing people would be missing if Dio stopped posting here is his attention whoring, his sheer numbers of posts, and the ill will he creates for himself. Somehow, I think the board wouldn’t suffer a bit and would actually be quite a bit better without him.
I wouldn’t mind having this be a consolidation thread for all of the Dio-bashing, ala Stupid Republican Idea of the Day, just to avoid the inevitable weekly pitting of him. His very own thread for the Dio show.
The problem is, I don’t think you’re ever going to get that. In the thread about the 8 year old kid, he just started making things up and refused to look at any of the cites other people gave him. Okay, you can take down an 8 year old kid, fine, whatever. But no matter how many people threw cites at him saying that the kid at a piece of molding with a pointed knife like end, he refused to call it anything but flimsy paneling, that’s the problem. Once he decided the kid had flimsy paneling no amount of articles would change his mind, in fact, I’m willing to bet if you looked at the history on his computer, he never even read them to begin with.
We don’t even have to argue about how sharp paneling that’s been torn off a wall is, that’s not the point, the point is that he started making things up and arguing from there. Once that’s happened we aren’t even talking about the original subject anymore. I don’t have a problem with thread drift. It’s interesting (to me) when we start out talking about why, for example, my computer has 4 gigs of ram but is only registering 2 gigs and 3 pages later we’re talking about Dyson’s vs Bissels. But this isn’t thread drift, this is just plain lying, making things up, refusing to read cites etc in what I can only think of as a ruse to get everyone worked up. If you don’t want to call it trolling, roll the whole thing up and call it threadshitting. That works for me. In the example that I used, when Dio was trying to argue his point all based around the fact that it was a piece of flimsy paneling, tell him to find a cite saying the kid had a piece of flimsy paneling, otherwise he’s threadshitting.
Yeah, yeah, I see the inherent problems in that. Not the least of which is that the mods don’t need to referee every thread and if they did there’d be an unimaginable amount of technicalities (define paneling, define sharp, define flimsy etc) to deal with. But I think everyone understands my point.
I think the crux of the problem here is that we’re so bureaucratic. I wish the mods could just use their judgment. Instead of trying to apply the rules, instead of looking for a rule that someone is breaking, if you think someone’s acting like an ass, you suspend them for a few hours to cool off. Not everything has to be quantified and exacting.
That’s what I assumed the intent was, when I posted my wtf at his “that guy sounds like a douche” comments.
I think we made it to March 7th before we had the March Dio pitting. Looks like we made it to the 11th of April before the April Dio pitting. Therefore, I predict the May Dio pitting to occur on May 15th.
I have the 15th of May. Feel free to choose any other date.
Put me down for 200 quatloos on the 9th. I think your analysis that times between pittings is increasing is flawed. That was just a statistical fluke. Look at the long term trend man! Or are you one of those global warming deniers that use evidence of one bad winter or mild summer to debunk the mass of evidence? 
Do you folks really not get it? Dio loves this attention. In thinking that you’re putting him in his place by your witty responses and the creation and perpetuation of a cutesy title for what is happening, you are actually being manipulated by him. I suspect he gets a boner every time he reads “The Dio Show”. And now Invisible Chimp somehow thought it was a good idea to start this thread? I bet Dio had to change his drawers when he first saw it (and not because he crapped himself).
What is amazing is that you all know that ignoring him will end this, but you simply can’t resist responding to him. Even when you try to organize yourselves (“he’ll show up here, we’ll all ignore him” “Ok, he’s here, this is what we’ve been practicing for”), it falls apart almost immediately. Dio makes a post (#67), and guess what post #68 is? Yep. **Billfish **taking the bait (how appropriate) and responding. And he waited all of two minutes. This is laughable. I’ve seen better self-control at pre-school birthday parties.
The only think more absurd than The Dio Show is the notion that its continued existence is Dio’s (or the mods’) fault.
mmm
Yeah, but you’re doing the same thing you’re accusing everyone else of, mmm. You feel that nobody should participate in this thread, and that the thread shouldn’t have even been started, but you cannot resist coming in to tell everyone that they shouldn’t be participating. Thus perpetuating the very problem that is annoying you in the first place. And then you complain about everyone else’s self-control.
“Self-control” is never going to work to solve this problem. It’s a message board. People talk to each other. That’s the entire point of this place. If the solution to a particular problem is for everyone on the message board to not talk to someone, I think you need to find a different solution, because that is never going to work.
You think we should just ignore him and wait for the mods to do something?
Fuck that. It aint happening, the mods are going to do fuck all, so I am going to have a laugh at the prick instead. At least I am not shitting up other peoples threads to do so.
Whats amazing is that not once here or in the ATMB thread has anybody said, “He is doing nothing wrong”. Its seems that everybody agrees that he is a jerk. In most discussions of posters in these situations there would be some attempt at a defense, but not here. Everybody agrees he is a jerk.
On most message boards that would tell the mods something. But hey, “just dont talk to him”. I ask again, is this a new rule for trolls? “You can stay, but we are going to give you dirty looks if you do so there!”
Fuck that. I am going to point and laugh at the retard.
That’s why I also specifically asked him to chill out. Even though I’m a Christian myself, I actually find a lot of his knowledge of the Bible useful, particularly when they’re things I’m not as familiar with. He definitely could be a lot less abrasive, but I think it effort on both sides. Simply put, he can’t fill up threads if everyone “Is too!” doesn’t get an “Is not!” response. I’d rather just see people let him make his point, decide if it’s worth responding to or not, and then if he gets into a cycle just give up.
I also disagree that we wouldn’t suffer at all. Sure, there’d be a lot less derailed threads in GD and the like, but he does make some useful contributions in those at times, and his participation in threads that don’t lend themselves to debates (like in Cafe Society), he is perfectly fine. The issue is that his debate style sucks, and while he’s probably the most egregious example on the board, he’s hardly the only one. There’s tons of threads that get derailed with the exact same behavior. That’s why I’d rather see everyone adjust they’re behavior, not just ban the catalyst and hope the problem goes away.
If that’s the purpose, then that’s fine. I agree that see seeing a new pit of him every week, sometimes worthwhile, sometimes not, but usually for more or less the same behavior gets tiresome.
I have no problem with thread drift either, if it’s natural, I’m specifically refering to situations where an interesting topic gets distracted with some obnoxious person coming in and arguing a technicality, or turning an intereresting religious discussion into a “you know God doesn’t exist, right?” discussion.
I wouldn’t call it threadshitting either, though, because I think that also requires an intentionality of derailing a thread. I suppose to a certain extent he does probably know that entering the thread is likely to do that, but I don’t think that that necessarily constitutes that his posts are necessarily that.
The thing is, I’m sure we all know people like this in real life, who view the world in black and white, and have absolute opinions about everything, even things they don’t really know anything about. Chances are, you have someone like this in your family and they raise obnoxious political debates at family gatherings or the like. These sorts of people use to endlessly frustrate me because I’d make what I felt was a solid point, and they would ignore it and keep spouting whatever it is they’re ranting about, twisting sources, misquoting me or whatever. The simple answer was, respond if I felt like I had a point, and if they ignore it or can’t respond to my points, let it go and move on.
I agree here. There’s a lot of cases I’ve seen where threads get derailed and, rather than moderating the derailment, they just close the thread. Yes, moderating should take time with important discussions like bannings and the like, but sometimes things need to be nipped in the bud.
But this is where my call to action is, when people see Dio being obnoxious and repeating the same point, report the thread and, hopefully, a mod will respond relatively soon and bring the discussion back on topic. There doesn’t need to be any official warnings just a “hey this discussion is about X, if you want to discuss it, bring it to another thread” and then offer warnings if people can’t either let that discussion go or move it to a new thread.
So, I guess my issue with the moderation isn’t so much that he needs to be banned, at least not at this point, but that moderation needs to be swifter in catching it and not so worried about ruffling feathers and bringing it back on topic rather than closing it. If, at that point, Dio, or anyone else, continues to derail after a mod note, that’s when he should get official warnings, possibly leading toward a ban.
There are several posters on the SDMB that I refuse to engage. Dio, despite the fact that we hold many of the same political views, is definitely one of them. I’ll never understand why he doesn’t get the Liberal treatment.
Oh, and Joey, you have the wrong approach. If you really want to drive Dio off (or make his head explode), the proper response is to give him his own medicine. If everyone would simply respond to his blather with “No, you’re wrong. It’s a fact. Full stop.”, he’d dry up and blow away.
Optimist. You’d just wind up with an endless loop.
I can see your point, Ms Whatsit, and I concede it. I lacked the self-control to resist coming in here and say what I felt needed to be said.
With that said, The Dio Show will get no further attention from me.
mmm
Y’know, as the guy who as far as I can determine originated the term “The Dio Show” (although it was originally “The Dio Zone”, as in “this thread has entered…”), I’m going to reiterate why I coined it.
**Diogenes **is obviously a highly intelligent poster, and he’s got a lot of specific subject area knowledge (for example, in Biblical scholarship). Moreover, when he’s on the ball and not taking a thread personally, he’s a joy to read and occasionally hilarious (see also the Charlie Sheen riff upthread, or for that matter the Diogenes battle rap which may have been the single funniest dope post ever).
However, on his hot-button topics (including but not limited to: “teenagers (especially girls) and sexual activity”, “NFL Football involving the Packers”, and of all things “driving laws; interpretations thereof”), he reacts with his balls instead of his brain. Now, I’m pretty sure (but I’m not going to bother searching for it) that he’s even admitted as such in one of the threads concerning teenagers and sex–in the context of “I have an 11-yr-old daughter, that highly colors my posts”. Anyway, in any thread about a hot-button for him, someone will eventually say something (usually in the op) that brings on an immediate shift to “the Dio Zone”, characterized as:
- one-liner or otherwise relatively short posts
- repetitive assertions of an opinion as incontrovertible fact
- flat dismissal of any post, anecdotal or real-data based, that contradicts that opinion
- responding to each poster who disagrees with Dio in their own post rather than aggregating with multiquote
- extremely rapid-fire posting (on the order of every five minutes or less)
It’s been my suggestion, both to **Dio **directly and to moderators when reporting more egregious examples, that there are certain topics that **Dio **needs to be encouraged to just stop and think about his posts before flipping out. When he does so, even on his hot-button issues, he returns to being a thoughtful and intelligent poster who is an asset to the board. It’s for this reason that I think talk of banning him rather than simply asking him to consciously change his responses to specific stimuli is probably harsh.
**Dio **has no reason to particularly care about my advice, granted, but he’d likely accomplish more AND cause much less annoyance and strife by making a list of topics where he is accused of starting “the Dio Show”–hell, this could just be “any thread involving teens and sex”–and consciously deciding to push himself to his usual thoughtful and incisive posting style instead of going into angry short-post mode.
Well, it costs me two seconds to C&P the stock response. It costs Dio all the rage and bile he covets so much. Who loses?
There comes a time when “can be a joy to read” no longer balances out “derails every thread he enters”. For Dio, that was sometime in 2003.
Entertaining maybe, but not terribly effective for what we’re trying to accomplish on this board.
Also, I assume you’re kidding, if you really think that would work with Dio, I think you’re wrong. He’d be happy to go back and forth all day.