[QUOTE=John Mace]
I had no idea this MB was so steeped in mystery!
[/QUOTE]
You still don’t 
[QUOTE=fluiddruid]
I’m not going to be drawn into an argument with you. Again, for the second time now, explain to me how posting a thread saying “How many of my threads are you going to remove”, just after a moderator removed your thread, isn’t opening a new thread after one was closed?
In any case, you’ve been warned, and frankly I see no point in hashing out in a public forum when we can’t really get to the meat of the matter. You have my PMs, you have Frank’s PMs. We’ve explained to you that you’re acting unreasonably, and to stop it. Now, it’s up to you.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I got Frank’s PMS alright.
But please, don’t avoid the matter. The second pitting. Nothing had come from TPTB when that thread was posted.
For the third rude pitting and the silly ATMB thread, I have already apologized. Although it is not much of an excuse, I was really pissed at the moment. As for them being against mod instructions, again, no mod instruction had come at all at that moment. They came as a response to them. It took a lot of cage rattling to get any form of response.
[QUOTE=lalenin]
I have no idea what this situation is about, since I missed the original deleted thread, and the subsequently deleted thread as well. But I must say that with only the veiled comments about “forbidden subjects” and “moderators action should be discussed in private” I have read in this thread to go on, this whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
[/QUOTE]
Why?
“Forbidden subjects” tend to be matters of promoting illegal activities, attempting to bring real harm to other posters, or similar things. A separate category of forbidden topics are those that have a history of being raised for the sole purpose of disrupting the boards. They have already been done to death and raising them again does nothing but give posters opportunities to re-open old wounds. Those matters or feuds have already reached a conclusion. Often the “losing” side wants to continue to raise them in the hopes that a new population of dopers will side with them, but long, bitter experience has demonstrated that such discussions are equivalent to picking at scabs with dirty fingers rather than changing the dressings on a wound. We don’t need to spread infection and we are not going to let either side disrupt the board just so they can make nasty remarks. (That is a general view of things that can be considered “forbidden subjects” and is not intended to be a comment on the specific situation.)
I am not sure what you mean by “moderators action should be discussed in private” since I do not find that statement in this thread. However, I will give you a f’rinstance: accusations of trolling tend to derail threads. Even if posted in good faith, it immediately divides the participants in the thread into two camps: those who believe the action is trolling and those who do not and nearly always causes the thread to be trashed as the topic changes from the OP to that of whether a particular poster is trolling. In fact, there have been instances in which one poster yelled “Troll!” for the express purpose of derailing the thread. That is why we have the rule forbidding calling out people as trolls in the other Fora: we want to avoid hijacks and derailed threads. Therefore, we insist that such accusations be discussed directly with the staff and not on the board. (This, too, is a general view of things that can be considered “forbidden subjects” and is not intended to be a comment on the specific situation.)
er, this might be a bad time to ask for this. But. Can I have some more mailbox space? The barrage from this has eaten up all my allowance and I am 2 mails away from having to delete posts about this that I might want to reference in the future.
You know, now that I have your good will and all.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
For the third rude pitting and the silly ATMB thread, I have already apologized. Although it is not much of an excuse, I was really pissed at the moment.
[/QUOTE]
I have seen your apology, and that’s fine, but that’s why you were warned.
Though perhaps you will not believe me, all it would have taken was a followup PM with either Frank or I, before posting numerous threads. It may comfort you to believe we were intentionally avoiding you, but, it really is just as simple as we discussed.
As I explained to you in private messaging: “While I apologize that you wanted clarification and didn’t get it - I thought I gave my assessment of the matter - we opted not to give you a warning for trolling. I didn’t think to contact you further personally, but, I’m sorry that you were left hanging. But, that said, the time for you to ask for followup was before reopening the thread in the Pit. Twice. And posting in ATMB.”
We’ve discussed the matter. If you choose to believe in a Great Moderator Conspiracy to avoid you, well, that’s your prerogative. But, as I’ve said, we’ve discussed it and I don’t see the point of splitting hairs. You tried to troll, were stopped, flipped out over a perceived slight and got warned. It happens, just don’t do it again.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
er, this might be a bad time to ask for this. But. Can I have some more mailbox space? The barrage from this has eaten up all my allowance and I am 2 mails away from having to delete posts about this that I might want to reference in the future.
You know, now that I have your good will and all.
[/QUOTE]
You’ll really be better off cutting and pasting the contents of those mails into Notepad and saving them on your computer.
If there’s a major conspiracy going on, can you really be sure that the contents of those PMs will be safe in the hands of the enemy?
[QUOTE=Sapo]
er, this might be a bad time to ask for this. But. Can I have some more mailbox space? The barrage from this has eaten up all my allowance and I am 2 mails away from having to delete posts about this that I might want to reference in the future.
You know, now that I have your good will and all.
[/QUOTE]
If you’re running out of space, you can download your private messages to your computer.
Go to your private messages page, scroll down to the bottom, and just above the Forum Jump drop-down menu, you’ll see some links for downloading your messages as XML, CSV, or Text files.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
er, this might be a bad time to ask for this. But. Can I have some more mailbox space? The barrage from this has eaten up all my allowance and I am 2 mails away from having to delete posts about this that I might want to reference in the future.
You know, now that I have your good will and all.
[/QUOTE]
Why don’t you post all your PMs in this thread? Surely no one would mind your posting Private Messages. Right?
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Why?
“Forbidden subjects” tend to be matters of promoting illegal activities…
[/QUOTE]
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation.
[QUOTE=Frank]
Why don’t you post all your PMs in this thread? Surely no one would mind your posting Private Messages. Right?
[/QUOTE]
Well, Frank, to be fair, you did ask him to support his assertions regarding what you said to him in your PMs. I’m not sure how he could have done that without showing the content of those messages.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
One reason the thread discussing the first removal was made to go away is that, in the view of the staff, any discussion of that removal would result in a re-opening of the discussion we felt was inappropriate to begin with. (In other words, there is a strong feeling that the second thread had as much to do with keeping the original topic alive as it did with discussing staff actions.)
We also had a number of other issues taking our attention, last night, so it is possible that one Mod or another thought that a different Mod was handling a situation while this one fell through the cracks.
Given that we do not see a way that the various closings and removals can actually be discussed without re-openng the matter that has already been ruled a trolling violation, (and it ain’t a big deal, but we consider it a violation of the Don’t Be A Jerk rule), trying to get specific threads restored or re-opened or discussed is simply a non-starter.
[/QUOTE]
For the record, I was the one who removed the two threads last night. In my view, it would have been impossible to really discuss the removal of the first thread without reopening the whole issue that got it removed in the first place. In fact, nearly all of the replies the first thread got before I removed it were “What the hell are you talking about?”
Since neither of the Pit moderators were on line at the time, I thought that was a reasonable precaution until they were on duty. After informing the other moderators of my action, I then had to go out. By the time I came back, I believe fluiddruid was aware of the situation, so I left it to her and the other moderators that had been involved to deal with.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
I do not think I could possibly make it clearer that I was not trying to sneak the topic back in.
[/QUOTE]
Honestly, Sapo, can you really be that stupid? Even if you honestly were not “trying to sneak the topic back in” anyone with the slightest experience in the Pit would realize that the discussion would soon devolve into speculation about what the original topic was, and that was exactly what happened. Please do not insult our intelligence, or your own, by pretending that you didn’t have any idea that that was what would happen.
FTR the original question was a legitimate one. Why [del]everybody[/del] some people are frothing at the mouth and warning people and dissapearing threads and officially accusing people of trolling is confusing, to say the least.
[QUOTE=mhendo]
Well, Frank, to be fair, you did ask him to support his assertions regarding what you said to him in your PMs. I’m not sure how he could have done that without showing the content of those messages.
[/QUOTE]
I asked him to support his quotes of me. I’m mildly surprised that he would post the content when they do not support the quotes.
As to the other assertions: angry? Probably more like not in the mood for playing along with him pretending he didn’t know what he was doing. Dismissive? Oh, yeah.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
Oh, I got Frank’s PMS alright.
[/QUOTE]
Frank’s got PMS? And it’s contagious?
[QUOTE=Frank]
I asked him to support his quotes of me. I’m mildly surprised that he would post the content when they do not support the quotes.
As to the other assertions: angry? Probably more like not in the mood for playing along with him pretending he didn’t know what he was doing. Dismissive? Oh, yeah.
[/QUOTE]
Well, i’m not really interested in analyzing whether or not he accurately represented your PMs in his post. But even if i disagreed completely with his analysis, that wouldn’t really change the fact that you asked him to support his assertions, and he provided evidence that he believes supports his assertions.
Also, even before he posted the direct quotations from the PMs, i had assumed that his quotation marks were meant to indicate the general tone of your responses, rather than the exact words. If that was, indeed, his intent, it seems that he wasn’t too far off the mark.
I’m not really sure how i feel about the general issue of taking PMs or private emails between Mods and Dopers and posting them in threads. Generally, i guess, i would consider it rather poor form for someone to take something i had sent to them privately and post in on the forums. But if i called them out, and asked them to justify an assertion based on a PM i had sent them, then i think it would be reasonable for them to reproduce the PM so that others could judge for themselves.
I have no particular interest in leaping to Sapo’s defense here. He probably should have just sucked it up and carried on with his life. But it seems to me that he was treated with pretty short shrift, and also that the original, disappeared thread was far from the clear-cut case of trolling that some people here are suggesting.
Just MHO.
[QUOTE=Frank]
I asked him to support his quotes of me. I’m mildly surprised that he would post the content when they do not support the quotes.
[/QUOTE]
How could he do that without posting at least part of the content? Were you surprised that he posted the entire content of all three notes? (I’m assuming he did, although maybe he didn’t.)
I never did get my “a” that I tried to buy in the second thread… just sayin’.
[QUOTE=mhendo]
… i had assumed that his quotation marks were meant to indicate the general tone of your responses, rather than the exact words.
[/QUOTE]
I assume that quotation marks indicate exact words. Perhaps Sapo thinks the same way you do about them.
By answering the question - first, second, third - as appropriate.
But whatever. I’ve no argument against that I was dismissive, and no interest in making such an argument, and no desire to revise and extend my remarks. If Sapo does feel the same way as mhendo about quotation marks, then that’s explained the part that upset me.
[QUOTE=Frank]
I assume that quotation marks indicate exact words. Perhaps Sapo thinks the same way you do about them.
[/QUOTE]
In standard English usage, quotation marks are commonly used to denote a paraphrase as well as a direct quotation. I’m surprised you were unaware of this.
[QUOTE=Miller]
In standard English usage, quotation marks are commonly used to denote a paraphrase as well as a direct quotation. I’m surprised you were unaware of this.
[/QUOTE]
The lacunae in my knowledge sometimes surprise even me.