So, DrDeth let me tell you about that time I met this chick and she got out some… 
Which one?
Yes and no. Yes, I’m saying that the Dope has every right to censor whatever they want. No more 9/11 conspiracy threads about that same damn video that’s been the subject of umpteen-billion GQ threads? Please! A very modest effort to keep IMHO from degenerating into a Doper Red Light District? Eh, big deal. This board belongs to the guards, not the prisoners. It’s not even like they closed ALL the sex threads, so you all surely have enough fodder to open links and titter around at the naughty talk about sex toys (there’s at least two threads open on that, IIRC) or various saucy encounters. Heck, I even recall a poster being scolded not too long ago because it seemed that his talk of sexual proclivities were becoming a broken record.
And no, I’m not saying that the board should censor things solely because of my preferences. It just happens that we have a confluence of interests here.
On preview, I throw my lot in with Klaatu.
about the whole thing blowing over soon, that is. :smack:
I’m sure even moderators can get fired. Gods ye be not.
October of last year.
Look, folks, I’m not going to spend a lot of time defending this action. I don’t want the front page of IMHO to look like the contents page of a sex magazine. That’s all.
If you believe that I am performing my job incorrectly, the email addresses of the administrators are available for you to use.
Personally I don’t much care one way or the other if I have less sex threads to read, but I do agree that it was unnecessary and a poor precedent. As such:
Hey guys! You all remember that one thread? You know, the one about Frank…and…
Wasn’t it gross when he…
Drat, jumped on that bandwagon just one minute too late…
ignore that last post. There is nothing to see here, move on please
I don’t thin Frank goes far enough. There aren’t too many sex threads, there are too many threads, period. Nobody reads all the threads and I think the mods shold simply do away with the uninteresting ones. Furthermore, whenever a new thread is created an active one should be sacrificed, presuming the new one is interesting enough.
Although I agree that these two closures are probably more to do with Frank’s personal taste rather than board policy, I do recall reading something official that said something along the lines of: “Sex: the medical approach is OK, the Penthouse approach is not.” Now, I don’t have a problem with either the content of these threads or their closure, but in the light of the above it seems clear that Frank wasn’t just acting on a whim.
I think you made the right call, and I’m glad you made it. I’m no prude, but if I want titillation, I’ll find porn on the 'net. The number of sex threads seemed to keep expanding, and that’s just not why I come to the SDMB.
As I’m a mod on another high traffic board, I know all about catching heat for an unpopular decision. Comes with the job, along with non-existent pay and general thanklessness. Kudos for making the call, and for sticking to your guns when the assholes come out of the woodwork to bitch about it.
If it is against the rules, fine, say so. You arbitraily closing down threads willy nilly just cause you are a prude, or your religions demands it or whatnot, is not ok. I wrote the admin, cause Frank-ly, I don’t wish to pay 15 dollars a month, and have some Fundy tell me “It’s not against the rules, but I don’t like to see it, therefore it is closed.”
Against the rules: Ok
Offends your delicate sensibilities, sometimes: Not Ok.
Defend your side or not, the administration has ONE email from me.
As I see it, WE are the customers, if one manager is being a dick, contact the upper management. I ain’t paying my money to give you an ego-boost.
Frank, IMHO you made the right call as to locking that thread. Thank you for all your hard work. 
But do note, this forum is the correct forum for the OP to bitch about your call.
A year - 15 dollars a YEAR. Sorry.
I don’t expect to you respond at this point, but please know that I’m also not trying to attack you. Just trying to parse the logic.
What it sounds like you’re saying is that you, as an individual user, didn’t like the way the IMHO page was lined with topics about sex. That’s understandable, and Ravenman agreed with you. I just don’t understand how your opinion on aesthetics as a user of the board translates into putting on your mod hat and eliminating that thread for the good of the board, especially when your opinion seems to be in the minority (based on reaction in this thread and the fact that there were thought-out contributions within at least some of the threads at issue here).
This statement
really suggests that you’re going to be placing a value judgment on any future (and perhaps currently existing?) threads along the same lines. Can you, at the very least, provide some sort of guideline as to what’s relevant to you? If someone in the next week is thinking about starting a new thread that relates to sex, should they hold off until the others have died down?
But at the same time as we had several threads on sex, we had several threads on dogs, several related to genocide-denial, interest in fictional characters, the validity of pure democracy, and Iraq threads still going 5 years strong. There’s always X number of topics that strike off pent-up questions that people always meant to ask or things they meant to bring up, but not till they read that first did they realise they wanted to post it.
The “dogs” topic began with Lissa starting a thread about her dog eating the trash. This made me remember to ask about inbreeding among dogs. Which then further encouraged someone to ask why larger breeds live longer.
This only lasted to three threads (that I noticed) but there’s no saying whether it would have striked off more given any other time of the week.
And if it had ended up spawning a phase where there were a whole ten threads (!) on the subject does this mean that we should stop all topics on dogs because, “If I want to read dog stuff, I’ll find dog stuff on the 'net?”
If I want to read about the War on Iraq and the War on Terror, I’ll find news stuff on the 'net?
If I want to read about people’s fantasies for fictional characters, I’ll find fanfics on the 'net?
Of course I could go and look these things up on the net, but in general if I’m talking about the War on Terror here, it’s a discussion about it, not news or someone’s (uni-directional) blog. If I talk about dogs, I’m talking about dogs, not just researching it. And if I talk about sex on the Dope, it’s to discuss a topic that holds interest to me, and not to provide me wank-material–which is all I would be able to find elsewhere on the net.
If you’ve no interest in discussions of sex, then by all means don’t open the threads. But if I’m here paying $15 to have a forum to discuss issues I can’t discuss in real life and receive mature answers from lots of other people who might know better, then that’s what I want to have the option to do that regardless of whether the timing of my question happened to meet the moderators current position on the topic.
And if it isn’t the moderator simply acting with his puritan ideals, then let’s fricking block out the 8000 threads on the Iraq War. Yes, Bush is an idiot. Yes, he continues to show this every day, just as he has every day before since 2001. And yet, still, we have mass postings every day on this one same topic.
Now finally we have a brief respite granted by Sex Week, and personally I can only view that as a good thing. I get to follow a certain topic and see what all questions people have on it, and what all answers there are, all nicely compacted into a certain time frame that is digestible all at the same time. This is getting my money worth.
If you feel you’re wasting your money on it, then certainly I can see that, but I might just as well get tired if your favorite topic, “Affros,” became the pet child of the week and think I’m wasting my money on it–but so it goes. I’m still not going to applaud a moderator saying, “Okay, that’s enough affro. This isn’t cowbell here folks. I’m tired of this topic so you all can just stop here.”
There are rules for what constitutes valid sex talk on the board. For instance, not to post sex-fantasies or otherwise erotic text (essentially to approach sex from a scientific and advisory stance, not a “let’s all get one another off!”-type.) Or that you must double link to anything Not Safe for Work, and label as Not Safe for Work. And then of course the unofficial rule of labelling threads TMI as necessary. The closed threads violated none of these rules.
Now, yes, there is the argument that having SEX up there in eighty places can make the board go NSFW, but Frank isn’t making that argument. But even if he did–still we’re talking about one week where this will be the big topic, and then it will go away: to some extent it should be the responsibility of the viewer to moderate what he is reading at work–or if not and we do bear the responsibility to keep the thread listings looking SFW, then that’s something that should be added as a rule; and of course, it’s a poor precedent as followed logically (logic being one of the goals of the board and again something I am paying $15 to experience) we would need to start blocking out all discussion of GW Bush.
Or as the saying goes: “It just doesn’t make sense!”
Frank, good call !
Occasionally there’s just too much gratuitous sex on these SD mesage boards making outsiders wondering what the hell we are all about.
Furthermore, I don’t trust the OP of the locked thread. I’ve had plenty of experience and she (if she really is a she) just doesn’t add up to my experience of reality. I could change my mind if just one of the thousands of women on this board would agree with “her” but that just didn’t happen.
That thread was a troll, pure and simple.
Well, I wasn’t interested enough in that thread to even open it until your post, but I do agree with her. I’m one of about .0000005% of women who get off on vaginal intercourse, and about 70% of the time, would rather not do the foreplay thing beyond a kiss or three. I like petting and groping plenty, but sex for me is just fine without it.
I’m not saying “she” isn’t a troll or a male (honestly, I’ve never noticed her before), but I am one woman who agrees on that particular topic, since you were asking.
As for this thread, I think that “too many threads on one topic” are best dealt with by Messageboard Natural Selection. If it’s got a twist that keeps people posting, it will thrive and reproduce. When there are too many in that ecological niche, they will die off due to lack of growth and reproduction. Introducing artificial selection into it just seems arbitrary and dumb, and I don’t personally like arbitrary and dumb moderating.
I was going to suggest that Frank would do well if he could find a way to accomplish the same goal, but not appear so inconsistent.
But hey, The Flying Dutchman, paragon of reason, thinks it was a good call… and thinks the OP might have been a troll! Heh. If irony were lightning, this one would have collapsed the power grid.
Would a mod please change the thread title to read correctly, “Frank, enough with yer ethics, Pilgrim”?
Well, that’s helpful. Maybe you can give us an exhaustive list of your other prejudices so we can tiptoe around them.
Is that what moderation has come to? “It bugged me, so I locked it, and I can’t be bothered to explain why”? This smacks of being tired of the responsibility and deciding to just phone it in.