As much as it pains me to start yet another thread regarding HD, I don’t think it’s fair to force someone into the Pit if they want to discuss posters’ thoughts about a post.
It eliminates any chance of a civil conversation and just relegates it to the free-for-all name-calling and insults that is a hallmark of Pit threads.
Looks to me that, had the thread remained open, it would have been moved to the Pit. Where it would have been redundant.
I don’t think it would have been moved to the pit. I’m actually curious about the answer to the question as well. Not all disagreements have to be moved to the Pit.
Well, “take it outside!”, doesn’t quite have the same effect on a message board.
Actually, trying to compel a poster to respond to a question, (in a new thread or multiple times in an existing thread), is regarded as harassment and would get the question closed and the questioner Warned. No movement to The Pit involved.
Taking a tangential question out of a thread and asking for a conversation is harassment? Merely asking once is in no way compulsory.
Asking for a poster to respond to a question is “trying to compel a poster”? That seems a bit of an overreach.
You might want to talk to ecg about that; what you quoted are his exact words.
The OP of that thread was playing an obvious game that was just too obvious. “I just want a civil discussion.” Uh-huh.
Thanks for starting this thread. I was going to raise a couple of these issues and this seems like an appropriate forum.
First off, ecg’s closure message said:
I take issue with the characterization of my invitation as “an attempt to force someone to answer something that you feel was not adequately addressed in its original thread” and “Trying to force someone into answering a question to your satisfaction”. I was not attempting to “force” anything. In my OP I said “I’d like to give you the opportunity to do so here, if you’re willing” and in the note in the other ATMB thread, I said:
(emphasis added)
It was merely an invitation, largely because I had been ordered to cease any sort of side discussion in that ATMB thread. If he chose not to answer, I had no intention of following up further, either with additional threads, or PM’s, or posts in other threads, or by even bumping that thread. I don’t think the language used (“force”) accurately reflects the nature of the request.
Furthermore, this particular poster and I have a bit of a history of being invited to share thoughts on subjects (even in that same forum)
I could understand the “harassment” angle if I had brought it up over and over again, or brought it up in other threads not related to the topic, but this was literally the second time I had mentioned it (the first being the post in which I had actually asked the question).
I hate say it, but i agree with Ditka here. Leave that thread open until such time as it needs moved to the Pit. Then close it for redundancy.
Secondly, ecg said “Since a Pit thread for this topic already exists, I am going to close this.”
Now, admittedly, I don’t spend much time perusing the BBQ Pit, and Gyrate had already said “You know, this conversation is already happening in the Pit”, but is it really too much trouble to provide a link? It wasn’t obvious to me, just glancing at recent Pit thread titles, which one contained the discussion that my thread supposedly shared a topic with. I did a search in the Pit for the word “lacrosse” and there appears to have been no mention of it in the last five months or so. Which thread(s) were either one of you referring to?
It’s also a ridiculous suggestion for one to use a pit thread if one doesn’t want to be subjected to verbal abuse or Betty Crocker recipes while having a discussion.
Ditto. Granted, I’ve only been half paying attention to the recent flurry of similar threads, but at face value, I’m not sure I understand the question. Besides, if Andy didn’t want to answer, he can ignore it and it’ll go away.
And, I feel like I’ve heard mods say tell posters many times over the year to ‘go start another thread’ in an attempt to stop a hijack or get two posters to take their discussion elsewhere. That seemed like it’s exactly what was happening here.
Assuming iiandyiii didn’t request the thread to be closed, it seems like it should be open. If he doesn’t respond, it’ll die. If he does, that’s one conversation that’ll be out of all those other threads. If it raises to the level of actual harrassment (ie if HD starts sending him PMs, starts more identical threads, follows him around from thread to thread) that would be different, but I don’t see that here.
Finally, for full disclosure, I’ve never liked threads getting closed preemptively, ‘just in case’ or because a mod ‘doesn’t see it ending well’.
The whole point of having a thread that is outside the Pit is to have a discussion on it that is non-flaming.
Nothing wrong with having two versions of it ongoing at the same time - one for sane and rational discourse, the other for verbal napalm.
The description of the Pit is
This is a beef.
Sure, HD puts all sort of pretty pretty words around it, but the core of this thread is a question HD wanted answered and didn’t get. No matter how politely you put it, the thread has iiandiii’s name in the title, and is a direct request to answer a question already asked somewhere else.
It belongs in the Pit. If HD is unwilling to post there, then he doesn’t get to call out other posters for things they have or haven’t done, because the Pit is where those threads belong.
I would say that if HD wants to post the same question, but not make the thread about iiandiiii not responding to the question in ATMB, then he should be allowed to do so in IMHO.
That thread was started from a PM agreement between the two of you. The closed thread was not.
Whether you understand it or not, you don’t get to compel someone to answer a question to your satisfaction. Do not attempt to do this again outside of the Pit.
If the thread had been a more generic discussion about the topic and had actually been a spinoff from the ATMB thread and not a blatant attempt to force a specific answer out of another user, then it would not have been closed.
If HD or anyone else wants to have a discussion on the topic in general, feel free to start a new thread.
That makes sense to me. I saw the thread in question, and I have an opinion on it, but didn’t reply because it seemed like it was fishing for a specific member’s opinion (and not mine).
But do you think we should close that other [THREAD=860925]as-of-yet-unanswered thread[/THREAD] asking HurricaneDitka to elaborate on a specific opinion? For consistency? It seems like the circumstances are very similar: HurricaneDitka made a statement and a new GD thread was created asking him in particular to explain himself. On second thought, maybe that thread is OK because [POST=21163203]he sort of asked for it[/POST].
Anyways, I guess the takeaway here is that when making spin-off threads, don’t limit your solicitation of opinions to a specific member unless you have their permission.
To HurricaneDitka, why not just send iiandyiiii a private message if you want his opinion?
~Max
I’d like some clarification around what the “this” is in “Do not attempt to do this again outside of the Pit”.
I’m clear that I’m not to start a thread addressed to an individual poster asking them a question. Beyond that though, in GD and Elections it’s fairly common for people to say things like “Hey, I still haven’t seen an answer to my question in post # xxx” or “OK, but that doesn’t really answer my question, I was really asking about ____”. Does “Do not attempt to do this again outside of the Pit” encompass these latter types of posts (which, in my experience, are fairly routine and common)?
Because I thought it stood a good chance of leading to interesting conversation that others might benefit from reading / participating in.