Because it came up in the case of Cesario and the pedophile thread.
Would it make some sense to make a general rule of “Don’t drop the topic that obsesses you on every unrelated thread on the forums”?
Or is it already covered with other existing rules?
I just think it is weird to have user/situation specific rules.
Ditto for the “buckeyes” thing. That’s probably covered with anti stalking rules, though. Is there such a rule?
It’s covered under the registration agreement: “The board is not intended to furnish you with a forum for promoting your personal agenda. We reserve the right to ask you to limit postings on a particular topic, or to refrain from posting on such topics altogether.” and “Do not post the same or similar messages or threads to multiple forums; multiple threads on the same topic; or an excessive number of threads on any topic within a limited period of time.”
The line “You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use the SDMB to post any material that you know or should know is false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, or in violation of U.S. law.” arguably covers the buckeye" question, and since that time, we have clarified that following a poster from thread to thread in a harassing manner is against the rules.
These two rules may have been brought about by specific situations, since the rules don’t cover every single eventuality - you know how the story gets told, ‘we started with “Don’t be a jerk” and that was it’ - but they don’t apply to one situation or poster only.
And with Argent Towers / Hogg though I think that’s died down by now hasn’t it?
I think this would be a good rule. / is a good rule and should be more strongly enforced. But not punishable by banning except in extreme cases - can’t the mods just delete individual posts that violate this rule?
We prefer not to remove posts unless they’re spam or sock-work. I don’t think we’ve ever banned someone for this kind of thing.
I can tell you conclusively that it’s over. I saw that people didn’t like it…so I stopped doing it.
Yip. It’s the one rule I thought Cesario might be breaking. I even thanked the guy once when I read a post of his that didn’t have anything to do with his “favorite topic.”
Tell it again, grandpa!
I figured it would be covered, I just couldn’t come up with the ruling from the top of my head. Asked and answered.
**Reeder **comes to mind.
Cool. Sorry for singling you out when there are a lot of other examples I could have used.
While the general rule is good, the problem is that the people who do this probably don’t realize how obnoxious and intrusive they’re being. So it only makes sense to very occasionally put a specific rule in place for a specific poster. I mean, sometimes you just have to hit people over the head with a clue-by-four.
We’ve had:
Evil Captor & bondage
Reeder & the limit on the number of active pit threads he can have at once
Handy & the posting of medical information
Restricting Cesario from posting off-topic pedophilic comments would fit right in there.
Again, these types of rules should only be created rarely and in response to very specific situations. But they worked before, so they should work again.
(Though in the case of handy, his repeated violations got him banned. Which did solve the problem, I suppose.)
You’re right. I don’t think handy would count- he was instructed to stop posting medical advice and he kept doing it, so I would say he was banned for ignoring mod instructions.
Like I said in the ‘On an ask the pedophile’ thread, Cesario has been mod-noted a handful of times for doing just this kind of thing. I posted links to four of them and found a fifth earlier tonight. Because he was written up in different forums by different mods, we didn’t compare notes and realize how often it had happened. We don’t usually keep track of mod notes but this is a situation where we should have done that. He’s been here six months, and after being told to knock it off (say) twice it should have escalated to warnings.
I think it was lekatt who for a while the mods would stick every post he/she made in GD on out of body experiences in its own thread. He/she was the only person I ever actually noticed being chided for that sort of thing actually.
It is funny that you of all people should post to this thread.
Only for someone determined to look at arguing with religion at all as intrusive. When I start doing things like posting in threads where people talk about their uncle or pet being dead and in Heaven and point out that they are just rotting in the ground, you’ll have a point.
Well, I challenge anyone to look at the thread for which handy was banned and not think he was banned because the PTB were just sick of/embarrassed by him.
Accepted. It said “you were warned to never again post on medical topics. Goodbye.” The reason was given quite clear in the post. handy received instructions not to post on medical topics, and, since he disobeyed, he has now been banned. To read anything else into it is disingenuous at best.
Honestly, I don’t know how you got what you got out of it.
I don’t think it’s disingenuous to think that his noting condoms’ deficiencies in protecting against many diseases does not constitute “medical advice”. I’m pretty sure it’s printed on the boxes and he wasn’t really advising anyone to do anything or diagnosing them. He was basically making a completely uncontroversial remark about “safer sex” in an “unsafe sex” thread.
Personal insults are not permitted in this forum. Please refrain. You know better.
On the general topic, the first time couple of times that we dealt with one-trick ponies were political (my recollection is someone was anti-Bush to the point that every single post they made, even in completely non-political threads, had a dig at the then-President.) I don’t think we’ve ever banned someone for it; usually, when we tell them to broaden their topics, they do.
So, just for the record:
How many posts about the super bowl, the weather, or this or that other routine topics would Cesario have to make before a completely on topic and fairly named AT thread would be allowed, if it is really the ratio of single-mindedness that is the true concern here?
an infinite number, since he’s been ordered never to post on that subject again.