Per your note in the thread you closed yesterday re my opinion on the relative morality of imprisoning cats indoors, if you feel the thread was unnecessarily provocative and was disturbing the delicate balance of sensibilities of cat owners, that’s fine, you’re a mod and that’s your call. In retrospect, even though it seemed (to me) to be acceptable to express this opinion at the time I posted it, it became evident that many did not share this point of view, and hotly contested my characterization of the relationship of indoor cats and their owners, also fine. I’ve had a few threads locked in my five years on the SDMB, when things got heated or the mod felt there was really no good to come of them. I’ve even requested that some threads be locked because it was getting too depressing for some people reading them (re the does it really suck to be a grad student thread).
If you didn’t like the cat thread, fine and dandy, you’re the boss of the forum, no question, and if you feel the post you locked was a hot button, dead horse, no good will come of this, train wreck, that’s your call.
The point I do take issue in your final locking note is this:
I have almost 10,000 posts on the SDMB, and I’ve generally considered myself to be pretty good SDMB citizen. I try to help where, and if I can in the Q&A stuff, and try to make sure that GD inquires are reasonably coherent and topical. Re IMHO and MPSIMS I try to make sure my opinions, even if it’s not the majority POV are on point, and it’s just FYI stuff, reasonably helpful and informative, or at least amusing. I’d made a lot of posts over time, and quite possibly some of my posts go astray from these goals at times, but I’ve never considered myself to be a “habitual shit stirrer” whose “act is getting very old”.
Now possibly there are posts of mine over time you’ve vehemently disagreed with, but it’s not my job to make you happy personally in terms of my opinions. It is my responsibility to hew to the parameters of the forum, and I think I generally do a pretty good job of accomplishing this. Mods work hard to keep order, with little recompense other than the satisfaction of a job well done, and maybe a T-Shirt or mug if the moon is right. I respect the efforts you and the other mods put into making things work, but I think you need to separate your evident distaste for my opinions, from your angry and emotional accusations that I am some chronic troll. I think that is unfair and unwarranted given my overall participation the SDMB.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, do you really think the cat-owners were pissed because you have a different opinion than they do? Really? You don’t think it had the tiniest squidge to do with the inflammatory way you chose to express those opinions? You expect folks to believe that you thought calling a group of people self-deluded slave-owners wasn’t going to piss them off? Mm-hmmm. Yeah, and I didn’t figure my brother would mind if I hid his stuff from him when we were kids.
If you’d just had a poor choice of words and weren’t actively aiming to piss people off, you would have apologized for the inflammatory language, clarified your position and gone on to have a civilized discussion. I mean, it was pointed out to you that your choice of words was very likely to make people angry, and you continued in the same vein, so one has to infer that you were deliberately trying to upset people. It was trollery, pure and simple, and you got warned for it just like everyone else who deliberately starts threads for the sole purpose of pissing people off. Get over it.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was calling you a habitual troll, just a habitual shit-stirrer. There’s a subtle but important difference, as shit-stirring can often be unintentional but trolling is always deliberate. I don’t know or give a flying fuck if you have a history of stirring things up, but the warning was spot-on in this case.
First up, I have to admit to a secret, wee amusement when I read through the thread. You (astro) put the needle into a sensitive vein of some people and it was always destined to be a polarising debate, and I think you knew that when initiating the topic. I think that is quaintly referred to as trolling herein. To set up the clash of contrary tales, about what happens to those who do, and those who don’t, about the different values and virtues of a different course of action which looked so much more decent, speaks of an absence of fulfilment and sheer misery. This, I believe set that thread apart as initiating a narrative which has an opposite version - a negation if you like, with all its telling emotion. So, amusing as it became, it needed closure before emotive combustion spontaneously ignited. I have to endorse the locking of the thread.
No I disagree, the notion of “shit stirring = incipient trollery” was quite manifestly linked in her post. There was no subtle parsing about it. But that’s not really the part I found troublesome. I’ve made a lot of posts. If I stepped on my dick and pissed people off in in the indoor cat post, I’ll take my whipping, try to be more careful in the future, and move on.
It was this “persistent habit of stirring shit up -act is getting old” she referred to that really seemed to be something of an ad hominem she threw in because she was highly upset, and I think was unwarranted based on my overall posting history on the SDMB. In looking at my thousands of posts I’m sure I’ve expressed numerous opinions that others have disagreed with, but these were my opinions expressed well within the boundaries of the forum rules. I’ll take my mod beating like a big boy, but to be accused of chronic and repetitive nascent trollery because she doesn’t like my personal opinions is (IMO) not an accurate reflection of my SDMB history.
I get it! The longer we’re here, and the more posts we have, the more obnoxious we are. OOOoo, do we get to be belligerent too?
Wow, and here I thought that over the years I was to strive to be classy, and intelligent, and able to defend my opinions without unnecessary provocation of the masses. You know, be more like Eve.
Boy, am I glad you set all us short timers straight.
I’m not quite sure you do “get it”. Some may not find my opinions to their taste, whether I’ve made one post or a million. If someone has posted quite a bit there is (obviously) a greater chance that people may agree or disagree with what you have posted over time than if you’ve made only a few posts. A far as I concerend you can be as beliligent as you want if that’s what rings your bell.
The “get it” point was that there is difference, and a substantive one IMO, between expressing opinions within the boundaries of forum rules, even if those opinions are controversial and disagreeable to some, and being a long term, “shit stirring”, incipient troll.
No, I think perhaps you don’t get it. The point is that you didn’t get the slapdown because your opinion was unpopular; you got it because you chose to express that opinion in an inflammatory way designed to get people angry, which is a direct violation of the rules of the forum.
You see, it’s quite possible to express unpopular opinions in a polite, respectful way that leads to civilized discourse. We’ve had umpteen billion and twelve threads on indoor-only vs. indoor/outdoor cats, and they’ve all been fine. It’s been quite clear that people feel very strongly on the subject, but I’ve yet to see one of those threads degenerate into the sort of inflammatory crap that was in your OP. You got a legitimate request for opinions, put it in IMHO and keep it civil. You wanna insult people, take it to the Pit. You wanna post something expressly to get people bent out of shape, take it to some other board altogether. Them’s the rules, and them’s been the rules for quite some time.
I’ve learned a lot of things during my 3 year, 1000 post stay here at the SDMB. One is that you get a lot more intelligent debate when you’re not trying to be a complete assbag.
The other is that people can easily attain nearly 10,000 posts without realizing this. :rolleyes:
Your tone was inflammatory, and your rhetoric was flawed. Several people (myself included) asked for clarification on a couple points, and you in effect abandoned your argument. In fact, when you finally replied to the thread, it was to reiterate your previous view, not to answer the questions of those that were confused by yours.
You treat the SDMB like your personal pulpit, from which to decree your opinions, but have no interest in defending your points of view of elaborating on your shoddy reasoning. You say things strictly for shock value. I find it hard to believe you’re a successful real estate executive (as your profile would suggest) if you don’t possess simple reading or listening skills, or have any interest in persuading people.
If the troll fits, wear it. In the meantime, follow my previous advice, and make with the shutting of the piehole. You don’t have a leg to stand on and you know it.
I read most of that thread and though I didn’t contribute, MHO is that you were essentially calling indoor cat owners pet abusers, with stupidity as one possible excuse for it. Not in so many words of course, but it was a disguised pit thread. You night as well have asked, “Are these pet owners evil, or just plain stupid”?
As to a recurring pattern on your threads, I can’t claim enough knowledge of your posts, so agree or disagree with TVeblen. But I do recognize you as a smartass, which I don’t mean in a pejoritive since as it is one of my characteridtics that I struggle against or indulge from time to time. And as a smartass myself, I know how easy it is to phrase things carefully and later claim ignorance about the implications of my words beyond a narrow intended meaning. We all know there are times when being a smartass is acceptable and times when it isn’t, though we probably wouldn’t have exactly the same lists of times. My guess is that TVeblen has a somewhat smaller list of the former and bigger list of the latter than do you, and hence we have civilized conflict.
In all honesty, I read the thread and thought, “Man, the cat owners just went apeshit over that.”
I think the mod was wrong to close it. What would have been better in my opinion would be to pretend this is the SDMB and fight some ignorance instead.
Opening a thread on an inflammatory topic isn’t necessarily trolling. Now, if people cited articles and studies and tried to explain and astro went on a rampage of PETA like proportions, I could see that.
I agree that’s true. However, it wasn’t like astro was there to defend himself. He essentially threw a grenade into a crowd and ran.
If he’d been willing to elaborate on his opinions, then maybe it wouldn’t have gotten closed. As it stands, by all appearances it looked like he wanted to stir shit up. Mission accomplished.
TVeblen was well within his rights to give astro the swift and terrible nutkicking.
Maybe so, it’s just a mickey mouse topic to call shit stirring, IMO. I mean, we talkabout gay marriage, gay adoption, race, perversion, underage sex, murder, war, and politics.
Well, yes, but what I’m saying is that the concept of shit stirring is an opinion, and I didn’t really see it as that big of a deal. I’ve owned cats and such as well and I didn’t have the urge to flame the OP over it.
Could someone open a thread on the same subject with a more level headed OP, or would it be shit stirring as a result of the subject?
It isn’t the subject-it’s because of the WAY he said it. He basically implied we’re all animal abusers because we keep our cats inside. THAT was the problem.
Nah, I wasn’t “highly upset”, astro, nor particularly interested in your opinons one way or the other, for that matter. Maybe mildly peeved…? Nah, not even that. Just doing routine housekeeping.
Perhaps you honestly didn’t realize it, but your posting habits have tended increasingly toward the deliberately provocative. It’s a pattern that’s barely skirted the line for quite a while. Not always, by any means, but often enough to spark concern amongst mods. Your IMHO cat thread went well over the line, so I called you on it. It doesn’t mean you’re a lousy poster. A warning doesn’t have to be interpreted as a threat. It can be just as much a wake-up call to reconsider how you’re coming across to others. Familiarity can breed…not always so much contempt as comfy blindness, not seeing how others perceive what’s intended.
Veb
Who’s tacky enough her own self to note that this is her FIRST pitting, poster-and-mod, ever. Yee haw. Whoopee. I’m a disgrace to mod-dom.
