Defending Reeder

Why can’t the mods just deal with a Reeder-type poster (disobedient but not particularly malevolent) by simply deleting the offending threads or moving them to the right forum?

Is it such an affront to mod majesty that some people simply won’t obey all the little rules?

Now, moral hazards being what they are, I can imagine a poster who is trying to push mod buttons then doing more and more of the offending actions just to cause problems. In that case, perhaps banning is appropriate.

But I do not agree that excessive Bush pittings were detrimental to message board quality, and I have yet to see the “cite” for Reeder’s alleged excessive wrong-forum posts.

In the first post to the ATMB thread, Tuba lists six warnings in addition to the ‘last straw.’

Please do everybody a favor and give the paranoid shit a rest.

Who says they never did that? In the end, it appears you’re suggesting we should suspend the few rules we have for anybody who’s too stupid or stubborn to pay attention to them. Why make more work for the mods when they’re not the problem?

All WHAT little rules?

It’s not paranoid. It’s a basic thing we find in relations with authority. Take parents and kids. You can get punished for doing something wrong, and you can get punished for not doing what you were told.

The major part of what Reeder got banned for was for not doing what he was told. I don’t care how many warnings he got if the warnings were issued for things that did not detract from board quality.

Of course you don’t. You’re not a mod, so you didn’t have to devote your free time to dealing with them. You don’t need to be very observant to figure out that if you keep ignoring polite requests, people are going to get pissed at you.

:rolleyes:

The warnings are there in the threads posted in the ATMB

Their board, their rules. I have to inform you that I also was warned once: in one occasion it was due by my ignorance of posting a political jab in GQ, for the other one I did complain and it was clear that the moderator made my quote change on the way to giving me the ticket, so IMHO that warning was a wash since posters did complain to the moderator and his/her actions on my objection thread. But, after that, no more warnings, because I learned my lessons.

If you still think this was a dumb banning, you should wonder why even liberals and people like me that complained before to the mods, are not supporting your defense of Reeder here.

Yes, GIGO it’s totally a YMMV thing. I’m saying I don’t like it; I’m sure others do. I’m voicing my opinion, nothing more.

ISTR a number of threads where reeder was told, “Shut the hell up! I’m on the same side as you and you’re making all of us look bad!” by various posters. In fact, reeder’s continued priviledges were argued by some as proof that the boards “were left leaning.”

I won’t say that the boards are better off without him, since I tended not to pay much attention to what he posted, but he’d been warned a number of times and failed to heed those warnings, so the fault lies with him.

That must be why so many leftists begged everyone to not take him to be representative of the rest of them.

This banning is not highly controversial. A weak and desultory argument put forward by a lone malcontent — pointing fingers everywhere but at himself — does not constitute controversy. You admit you have no suggestions for alternatives, and what exactly your complaint is is unclear. You bring up a lot of names — other than your own, of course — of people who deserve scrutiny. From where I sit, your fit precisely the portrait you’ve painted of the mods. Your judgments are arbtitrary, capricious, and flippant.

Exactly. He was annoying, and he added absolutely nothing to the political tenor of the boards, while constantly posting these thoughtless, two-line whinges about every moronic thing he could scrape up to blame Bush for.

Bottom line? He contributed nothing, and he was annoying as fuck. The admins are banning folks for being annoying idiots? Good. If I could, I’d take 'em all out for drinks just for doing this.

I would be hard put to find a better or more concise description of **Reeder
**'s behaviour.

Even by your own putative “unpacked rules” he is justly banned.

Here you lost the argument.

Anyone who found Reeder “insightful” doesn’t know the meaning of the term.

There’s no point in my rehashing Reeder’s history on the boards; it’s all laid out in the multiple warnings in the threads the mods cited. “Entertaining”? Only in the sense that scratching mosquito bites until they bleed, and then picking off the scabs and showing them to random strangers, is “entertaining”.

Some bannings are judgement calls. This wasn’t one of them.

Regards,
Shodan

I missed that in my first reading of the OP. I wonder if Aeschines would mind sharing a few of the “insights” he gleened from Reeder’s posts…

I would also note that the Admins have banned luminaries such as Collunsbury, who’s knowledge and intelligent contribution cannot be disputed. It’s not really about what you contribute, but how you contribute. Collunsbury was too abrasive, and attacked people in GD, IIRC, thus he had to go.

If you act like an unhousebroken dog, they first try to housebreak you (warnings, the Reeder Rule) then they send your ass packing if you don’t shape up. It’s not their job to scoop your shit from wherever you decide to squat.

OMG!!!11!! BUSH IS TEH 5UXX0R5!!!111!!!

I can’t be bothered to look up the cite, bacause it goes back maybe a couple of years, but he apparently was ‘laconic’ solely because, according to Reeder himself, he found it extremely difficult to type for some unstated reason. I don’t know whether he had some functional disorder or not, but there must have been something behind his remarkably childish and labored prose style and he gave every impression of at least having OCD.

BTW, if one bothers to look up his threads over the past couple years, he did indeed frequently flame other posters.

In any event, I think the Mods put up with him considerably longer than was warranted. He knew where the line was, was warned repeatedly, and crossed it it anyway. I feel a bit sorry for him because he clearly was somewhat mentally unbalanced, but his banning was richly deserved and he has no one to blame but himself.

OMG BUSH’S DAUGHTER IS TEH 5UXX0R5!!!111!!!

Are you really that stupid? Do you honestly believe that he was banned for posting about Bush? :eek:

He’s had more warnings than I have legitimate posts. He had more strikes called against him than a toddler playing t-ball. I think the moderators were exceedingly patient with him. I’m not making any judgements on his personality or throwing any insults (don’t want to bash those incapable of self defense and all), but this ban was deserved simply on the weight of the warnings he recieved.

OMG!!!11!! BUSHCO IS TEH 5UXX0R5!!!111!!!

Link.