I don’t see how this is warnable:
It’s a perfectly valid debate, so long as it stays away from victim blaming, which the poster took pains to avoid in both aspects (the rape part and the Jewish part).
So no, I don’t see it as beyond the pale, trolling, or even being a jerk.
…“perfectly valid debates” don’t have a place in General Questions. The claim “it is a simple fact that the woman can reduce her chances of being assaulted significantly by changing her behavior” is not a “simple fact.” You may not see it as “beyond the pale, trolling, or even being a jerk”, but you will find that many on these boards will disagree with your opinion, including me. It was the right call.
Not as an OP, no, but that reply wasn’t the OP.
Awesome, so instead of rule of law, we have rule by “many people would agree.”
Almost nothing in SDMB moderation is “rule of law.” Virtually everything is interpretation, context, and history. Check the last thousand threads in ATMB if you don’t believe me. No message board can conceivably be run by bright-line rules. Ask Facebook how those are working out for them.
I’ll grant that I don’t know SamuelA from Adam, so there might be some history that I’m not aware of.
…it doesn’t matter.
There is no “rule of law” here. This is an internet messageboard. Whether or not somebody is trolling has always been a matter of opinion. Its subjective. There is no objective standard. You don’t think it was trolling. Okay then? What do you want the rest of us to do about it?
There most definitely is.
In my view, first of all the entirety of the OP and many of the arguments that followed sounded to me very much like victim blaming and the premise being advanced was utterly absurd. Secondly, the rape comment had similar connotations, and moreover has to be seen both in the context of the board’s desire to avoid misogynistic comments and in the context of this particular poster delighting in the worst kind of exploitative misogyny in the Pit thread about him in which he was an eager participant (check out the last half-dozen pages or so). Given his posting history, neither the OP (the post) nor the rape comment can be seen as innocent. I think both were handled appropriately in the circumstances, via thread closing and warning, respectively.
Does so. The debates are often part of the factual answers. What word processing software should I get? might lead to suggestions of MS Word, which would trigger the debate about Microsoft’s anti-competition history. Then to suggestions of some Apple product, which would trigger debate about Apple’s seemingly overpriced proprietary software. All helpful information for answering the OP.
I don’t recall asking you to do anything.
Fair enough.
Based on prior performance in other threads, it was marginally possible that SamuelA was sufficiently ignorant and socially unaware that he could have been just asking for information. The thread was allowed to run on that basis. However, at that point SamuelA had been informed multiple times that it wasn’t possible for Jews to “just assimilate.” For him to ignore that information and continue to insist that Jews should have assimilated to avoid being murdered was, as Chronos said, not something we need on the board. The rape analogy was just icing on the cake.
At some point, it doesn’t matter whether someone is saying despicable things out of malice or out of stupidity.
…an OP titled “What word processing software should I get?” probably wouldn’t even stay in General Questions. It would get moved to IMHO. It isn’t a GQ question. It has no factual answer.
I beg to differ.
Nevermind, I apologize for bringing it up.
I suggest you read this thread if you want to get some idea of his history here, which is not a good one.
We don’t suspend or ban people merely because they get Pitted, but if people get Pitted it very often is because they’ve been behaving like jerks.
Oh, Jesus Christ! This is why I wouldn’t want to be a mod.
Well, you didn’t know his history, but there’s lots and lots more. Maybe the worst part, related to the misogyny issue, is his bragging about engaging in illegal sex tourism where he claimed to bang young girls for money in Ukraine, which girls were (a) poor and desperate, and (b) possibly under age (it’s been documented that every sixth prostitute in the sex-trafficking trade there is a minor). To him they’re all just “hotties”. It doesn’t matter whether he’s just making it up, it matters that he thinks this is some kind of accomplishment, whether real or imagined, and that the rest of us are probably jealous and secretly admiring him. We’ve had misogynists on the board before, but this takes it to a whole new level.
Yes.
I had worked my way out of “incoherent rage” and came back to that thread this morning to say something more coherent, only to find the thread closed; but, upon reflection, what I was going to say would only have been a more vehement rephrasing of what I’d already said. I did include two major points in addition to the impossibility; but again I’d already done that. Anybody who didn’t pay attention the first time probably wouldn’t have on repetition; and certainly it doesn’t seem likely that SamuelA would have done so.
Actually, it’s kind of amusing being criticized for “defending” SamuelA in one thread while simultaneously being criticized for warning him in a different thread at the same time.
In modding, I am often reminded the chess term zugzwang: any possible move will worsen your position, but you are compelled to make a move all the same. 
A secret, dawning horror that some of the prostitutes might really have been just girls is the reaction I usually see from ex-military who toured Asia when they were 18 to 21. I don’t know anyone who brags about it.
I again admit to being wrong for my criticism, if that helps any. On the plain face of it, it does look like a warning for making an argument on a thorny topic. Viewed through the lens of his past posts, though, things start to look more and more nightmarish.
He also once claimed that women found slavery cruel because it meant their off-spring won’t survive to reproduce themselves.
His history when it comes to women here is disgusting, and it most likely will end up getting him banned.