I’m not going to rehash that thread here. I can already see it taking form again.
When you complain about he who can do no wrong (or always get away with it) I am not so sure. Its just human nature to be irritated with the person that does the bitchin even if the bitchin was for a good reason. Cause you’ve just “caused” a problem thats made work and aggravation for someone else.
Oh, I am probably not officially in trouble. But I’d be damn suprised I’ve generated any goodwill here.
Let me again mention the club that I was in that had a dog problem. The dog problem just would not go away. It never got better. The powers that be never did anything about it. At best half assed token measures that accomplished nothing. It festered. Different people complained, the complaints were duelly noted, filed away and ignored. Sound familiar?
Finally a last straw event happened. A good friend of mine was on the executive board. He was one of the ones trying to fix the problem from the begining (and IMO in very fair accomodating ways). Well, with this last straw event he decide enough was enough and he was tired of innocent people suffering from the irresponsibility of others, so he pushed for a club vote to ban dogs. It tore the club apart.
Guess who gets blamed for causing all this drama and being a dog hater? Its not the main irresponsible person with the dog (who is STILL causing problems I hear). The powers that be in that club now hate him with a passion. And my friend even has a dog he loves.
Oh, and I meant to also point out that ALL those previous people that bitched about dogs and tried to do something about it? They aren’t the bad guys either. Its just the LAST guy that “caused all the trouble”.
Well, specifically in my case, it was more that I’m not really interested in political discussions in the context of a family gathering. But these people are perfectly fine to have around and engage in other discussions and, even in those topics they can’t give up, they might have some limited appeal.
That is, my point wasn’t that you should hope that crazy uncle Fred doesn’t show up since he is, afterall, your uncle. It was more that it only takes a little bit of effort to not engage his pet topics that bother you, and enjoy his company for what he does bring.
For me, it’s the same with Dio. I have no interest in discussing threads involving children and/or sex with him, because I don’t think he can be rational in those discussions. With religion, sometimes he adds value with some of his biblical knowledge, and sometimes he detracts with unsupportable opinions, and since I have interest in some of those, I make an effort to seperate them and engage in the former and disengage in the latter. And in some other threads, like in Cafe Society, his posts are usually very good. That’s exactly how I behave around a crazy uncle Fred type who has hot button issues, and it works just fine.
This is where I blame the mods for failure to act. Unlike a real life family get together, we can mostly ignore people who we choose not to engage in. When we can’t is when we are actually interested in a particular discussion and two people get in a shouting match. To this point, mods have generally acted much too late, and often with just a thread closing.
That’s the whole problem, too little too late. The precedent for this behavior has so far been pretty much to let it go until it’s a trainwreck, and then close it without admonishing those who caused it to derail. To ban people for this behavior without actually first making a concerted effort to curtail seems rather arbitrary to me. I would think that any long standing member deserves a legitimate opportunity following active mod enforcement to adjust their posting style.
No it’s not.
FWIW, while I agree with most of the complaints about Dio, I think the “lying” charge is a bit overblown, based on the examples cited. I think the problem is that Dio combines a very broad, extreme, and absolute positions on some hot-button issues with a tendency to make cryptic and technical statements (possibly due to the fact that he’s posting so rapidly and frequently). Sometimes, if you’re paying close attention to the wording, you’ll see upfront that he’s put in qualifiers and that these are relevant in the context of the discussion, but I think people miss them in the passion of the moment and the focus on the ridiculous extremism of his views. Later, he falls back on the qualifiers when challenged on the posts and people think he’s being weaselly or worse, but I think it was what he meant all along, for the most part.
On another note, I think the difference between fact and opinion is not as clear and definite as many posters (including Dio) think. Obviously facts and opinions are two completely different things, but whether something is or is not a fact is itself an opinion. I think this tends to confuse things on occasion.
I’ve actually noticed it’s just as often the case that the ostensible qualifiers are nitpicky or spread across multiple posts in a way that screams “post-hoc justification” to many.
It’s not. I’m not going to do it publically, since I don’t want to drag it out, but I’ve seen at least one example with my own eyes where Dio outright lied.
He lied, was presented with information that proved that he was lying, then, ignoring the evidence, continued to lie. I can PM it to you if you’d like, but it’s been mentioned, possibly in this thread, but I think it was brought up twice in the 8 year old/pepper spray thread.
Thats my opinion too. There are plenty of rational posters that put qualifiers in for good reason. And when they “use them” so to speak, they have good explanations for why and the discussion still carries on in a reasonable fashion.
That doesnt happen with Dio. AND, given all his other bad behaviors I highly suspect its just another tool he uses to “get away” with what he does.
Also, there are qualifiers and there are “oh, give me a fucking break” qualifiers.
Joey P, you make a good point about newbies. Perhaps they could set up the boards so that all new members automatically have Dio on ignore? Then when they wonder whom this Dio person is that everyone keeps talking about they will do some research and find all the previous pit threads* and realize they aren’t missing anything.
*let’s face it they’ll never have a sticky Dio pit thread because then Bricker will want one and then Starving Artist and so on and so on until the pit is just a bunch of stickied annoying posters. Then how will the rest of us wannabes get any attention?
Very possible. I didn’t intend a catch-all Dio defense. But I do “think the “lying” charge is a bit overblown, based on the examples cited”.
For example, consider carefully at the exchange over whether and when Dio calls people names, beginning with this post. IMO, Dio was not lying or being inconsistent with his words, and they made sense in context. His position (& I am not claiming that it’s true) is that he’s no worse than other people in terms of being insulting generally, but that he’s never insulting simply because someone else disagrees with him. In my judgment, that was what he meant at the time he made those statements, and he was not weaselling about it afterwards.
So it’s be an opt-in system then.
That never works. Not when it comes to Diogenes the Cynic.
He does much more than that. He regularly makes stuff up. That is, he lies outright – and yet, thanks to the message board rules, nobody is allowed to point this out, even when it’s blatantly obvious.
This is true even on matters in which he’s fairly knowledgeable, such as mainstream Bible scholarship and certain aspects of politics. He posts articulate statements that are rooted in fact, as many other Dopers do; however, he also makes stuff up when painted into a corner, and it happens a lot.
He got to you didn’t he…you’re one of them now, I can see it in your eyes.
No, but really. He twisted the words around after he made a blanket statement.
His EXACT words were “I never whine and call people names” and then he came back and said “I never said I “never” called anybody names.” If you define lying differently, I’d like to hear it.
Okay, now Dio will tell you that you have to read the entire quote which was
“There is no irony in it. I never whine and call people names and accuse them of trolling because they diagree with me.”
Fine, the entire freaking thread was disagreeing with him (as usual), so he was still lying when he said he didn’t say that,
Now he’ll come back with something along the lines of ‘Wait, no, I didn’t say anything mean to the other posters, it was directed at packer fans in general’…we’ll it was in a thread full of packer fans. When you insult all packer fans in a thread full of packer fans, you’re insulting the posters.
Now, Dio will come back and so “I never said that” and we’ll start all over. Except we won’t since I won’t respond to him.
Stop over analyzing it. Just look at it on the surface.
He said he never calls people names.
I provided proof that he called people names
He said “I never said I never called people names”
Ignore what was said in the “proof” just look at the two “he said” parts. He said he never calls people names, then he said he didn’t say that…it’s not that hard, he lies.
Also 55,000 posts is way more then I care to look though, but do you think at least once in those 55000 posts he called someone a mean word or accused them of trolling, someone that disagreed with him? 55,000 posts is a lot of posts to use the word “never” about.
I’ve seen it happen multiple times. I wanted to point this out, but the message rules simply don’t allow us to state that somebody is lying.
Or he’ll say that “No such thing as X exists,” then when asked to defend such a claim, say “What? How am I supposed to prove a negative claim? Obviously, I can’t do that. Why don’t YOU prove that I’m wrong instead of asking me to show that I’m right, huh?”
Good God…that sounds like Dio Care.
And here I was thinking Obama Care was going to suck.
And some odd grammar from me.
Do you disagree with the notion that you have to read the entire quote? What was the point of your first paragraph here?
“I don’t call people names because they disagree with me” is not the same as “I don’t call people who disagree with me names”. The word “because” is crucial here.
Either way he’s still doing two things. Actually calling people names and being an ass by doing so.
Only God really knows why the fuck he called someone a name.