Then I would call on people who support December to e-mail Ed and to try to get an answer as to why december was banned, since it was clearly not fair, and to appeal for a reversal. I’m going to do that.
Finally, who is at the top, above Ed?
I always wonder at how these people who think liberals are controlling the country explain Bush being president and Congress being controlled by the Republican party. Even if it was just the media, surely simple media bias would be enough for liberals to dominate?
It’s very self-satisfying to consider yourself part of a discriminated minority, I suppose.
This used to be the case, but moderators can ban now. I believe it’s been that way for a few months. I can’t dig up a link, though, since you can’t search for the word “ban.”
As far as the SDMB is concerned, I think Ed is the top. Cecil is probably too busy writing columns, plus he doesn’t really like computers.
Mrs. Zotti, of course. 
Actually, some of us are not trying to figure out why december was ousted, having accepted Dex’s word for it.
As for personal attacks? Well, I might have ignored the implication that anti-war protestors encourage terrorism if I hadn’t already read the threads suggesting that anti-war protestors were also anti-American, endangering the lives of US soldiers, and in the pay of Saddam Hussein. Given that I, and many others, have clearly made our views known about our opposition to this particular war, including directly to december, it’s kind of hard not to take repeated attempts to impugn our character as a personal insult, in the same way that Esprix (to pick the most visible example) would almost certainly take a GD OP stating that “Homosexuals may be responsible for 90% of all child molestation” to be a personal insult.
nisobar: Cecil Adams is above Ed. Go right ahead and e-mail him.
And I apologize for misspelling your name, nisosbar.
Apos said:
I agree completely. Essentially, December was shunned. Run out of town on a rail. A bunch of members here decided he was persona non grata, and attacked him at every opportunity. Whether he deserved it or not was not their decision to make, and having mobs of angry people run people off the board should not be allowed. If December hadn’t been so stubborn, he would have left a long time ago of his own volition. It bothers me that this was allowed to happen, and the mods never went to December’s defense. That makes it all the more so troubling when he gets banned for an offense which is not clear and in any event looks like something that happens rather often around here.
He did post a lot in other threads. They just go unnoticed because his attitudes did not stand out so much in contrast in those threads.
Then you didn’t get the memo. According to at least ElvisL1ves, I’m just as bad as December was.
This is a very fair point. December painted a very large target on his chest by starting all those OPs. When you present a hypothesis, it’s up to you to defend it. An OP is often presented as an hypothesis, and attracts a lot more criticism than a comment in someone else’s thread. No question about it. If he had been exactly like himself, but spent more time in other people’s threads rather than sitting on top of his own, he’d probably still be here.
Could be. It would still have to be a democratic process, though. Nobody gets banned just because of one rogue Mod.
OTOH, if december hadn’t been so stubborn, he would have permantly cleaned up his act after that first emailed warning.
Squink said:
Never been pitted. People have tried, but my pact with Satan causes them to have epileptic seizures as they attempt to press the ENTER key.
It’s true - I’ve never been pitted as far as I know. But why should people bother? They get away with the equivalent of pit attacks in Great Debates.
I think I’m beginning to see things more clearly now. I’ve been lurking and posting here not too long, and haven’t seen events transpire like old-time members, but I do indeed see the moderators going around willy-nilly, arbitrarily closing threads, banning members, etc. If that’s the way the SDMB is run, then I probably need to find a different message board, or at least bump SDMB down my list of IBB’s from number 2 to 3 or 4.
It’s amateurish and unprofessional not to have a more clear set of guidelines as to what are bannable offenses. The SDMB has oodles of members, but if Cecil or Ed don’t really care what happens on the message board or what the moderators/other administrators do, then are any of us here really having a productive debate at all when one side is punished for offenses which go unpunished when the offense promotes the opposing viewpoint’s position or is committed by a confirmed member of the moderator’s political ideology?
I am definitely not conservative, but I thought december’s posts were thought-provoking and intelligently constructed (like the post about Maureen Dowd’s “racist” column about Clarence Thomas), which made me think a little bit more than if I was listening to someone preach to the choir. IMHO.
Daniel argues:
I’ve stayed out of this argument because I haven’t been around the SDMB long enough to have an opinion that’s worth bandwith. I merely offer this clarification (based on personal experience) for consideration:
Bullshit is a nasty, smelly, amorphous blob of excrement, that clings to the flinger as much as the flingee.
Horseshit is smooth, often shiny, well-formed into neat buns, and less offensive to the olfactory sense; all in all, much more attractive at first glance than bullshit. But it’s still crap.
Compost is manure and other organic materials that have been seasoned over time and metamorphosed into fertilizer that promotes healthy growth.
So, was december shoveling bullshit? Or horseshit? Or offering well-cured compost? Again, I haven’t been around long enough to take a stand. Maybe we should open up a poll in IMHO? “December: Bullshit? Horseshit? Compost?”
Oh dear god, won’t somebody please compile a comprehensive list of bannable offenses for nisobar, then individually explain why administrative action was taken for each and every locked thread and banned poster? This is serious, people–he’s threating to bump the SDMB down to number 3 or 4 on his list of message boards!
:rolleyes:
I’m fairly new as a poster but have been lurking for some time. Until the Iraq War, I didn’t think december did a thing that approached being bannable. But it’s clear to me that he feels so passionate about the righteousness of this war that he just couldn’t keep both feet in bounds. Although I disagreed with him 95% of the time, I thought he started a lot of threads that I learned something from. Generally, I’d learn much more from the opposition posters than from him, but he started the ball rolling on a lot of interesting threads. I will miss his contributions and hope that after a cooling off period, he returns.
I hope that december finds peace and happiness whether he returns or not. I didn’t often agree with him, but he seemed like the kind of guy I’d like for a friend.
Looks can be deceiving. In my experience: [ul][li]Threads are locked because they’re redundant, opened in the wrong forum, spam, or it was requested by the threadstarter. [*]The vast majority of those who were banned deserved it for posting spam, personal attacks outside of the Pit, trolling, or sockpuppetry (returning after they’ve been banned under a previous name).[/ul][/li]
On preview: will that do, minty? 
>> december’s posts were thought-provoking and intelligently constructed
Ha! Like the one where he said the UN were disqualified from doing anything because of the workers’ strike at their cafeteria? If that is not asinine I don’t know what is. Or the one where in the face of all evidence and reasoning he staunchly defended that the Cuban government forced children into prostitution? I never saw him offer an interesting opinion or idea. he just repeated rubbish he had read elsewhere and was incapable of any intelligent reasoning.
And how about calling people who criticised the present government “antiamerican” or say they were helping terrorists? Or those who disagreed with him on the israeli-palestinian matter “antisemitic”?
And BTW, I am more on the side of Israel than of the Palestinians and I am as capitalist as one can be and I have a few other points of coincidence with december so it is hogwash to say it was the lefties who piled on him. He was a disgrace for those of us who did not want to be associated with him. He was a jerk and he was rightly banned for being a jerk. Good riddance and may he never return.
Because I’m so polite?
That’s only because you don’t find debunking conservative bullstuff (and boy, has there been a lot of it in the last six months) to be a good thing. But that’s okay, Fox News is just a remote-control away.
Besides, I save all my good material for Cafe Society these days – Pratchett quotes, transforming robots, and 80’s video games all at the drop of a hat. I do birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, too.
As for all the forehead-clasping po’ persecuted righties() whining in this thread – damn, I knew I should have picked up more nails when I went to Home Depot earlier this morning. You guys already have enough wooden crosses around here for a low-income housing project…
( = And yes, Weirddave, that means you too. Just because you say you’re a moderate doesn’t make you one. 
)
OK, I have a question. Now that the original december is gone, is Reeder now promoted from “the lefty december” to just “the december”?
Perhaps we need to formalize the rules for the title of december. We can have a left december, and a right december. Reeder pretty much has the left locked up, but maybe we need to elect a conservative to hold the now-vacant right december title. Any nominations?
Excuse me while I recover from spewing my coke all over the monitor
I’m generally in agreement with you on most issues, but your stand on socialized medicine, the hallmark of social liberalism smacks as ultra right wing, particularly from a Canadian perspective. It is ironic that in this thread we have december advocating for a British style socialized health care system while you criticize Canada’s socialized system which Canadians (including many conservatives) would never give up.