I’m pretty much with Tamerlane– can’t see how anyone who knew him could be surprised. I’m not glad to see him banned, but he only has himself to blame.
Diogenes the Cynic and Sarah Palin:
Two brilliant minds, neither one willing to compromise their own deeply held beliefs due to the inspirational personal integrity and rigorous intellectual honesty that they both show the world on a daily basis.
I know in my heart that in 500 years from now, both of these brave and noble Cultural Warriors will be equally revered and held in exactly same esteem as the other!!!
Keep in mind, our version of “counseling” involves a tazer and a rubber hose.
I’m particularly not surprised that he got banned for actions in a thread about Sarah Palin. The guy had one big-ass hard on for SP.
Sorry to see him go. I’m sure he caused the mods a lot of headaches dealing with reported posts, but he brought a lot of (acerbic) wit and a lot of knowledge to the Boards.
Given his tragic experience earlier this year, its sad to see.
I appreciate that this was a difficult decision for the mods and it does look to me like they worked hard to avoid it as an outcome.
In my view there had been a noticeable change in how he was posting, but it wasnt enough I guess.
Otara
I was very sorry to read that Dio has been banned.
I’m going to miss this man a lot.
Over the years he’s educated me, he’s gotten me interested in religion. I looked forward to see what he had to say on various subjects.
Maybe the reason I don’t understand the dislike of Dio is because I’m not a poster so I didn’t take his board style personally.
There are many good posters on this board, smart people, educated people, people with a flair for writing and conveying their opinions concisely but none of them made the impression on me as much as Diogenes the Cynic.
His lack of input on the Straight Dope Message Board will be noticeable. He was just so much fun to read.
I greatly admire him and think him to be a fine fellow.
I apologize for how this post is written. I know it’s clumsy.
If you’ve got 56000 posts, you’re going to need to mix it up now and then
Well that’ll cut down the traffic in the Pit.
I regret that he never became the board member he could have been if only he would have listened to other people for once in his damn life when they were only trying to help him. And there are others I fain would have seen gone before him. But he brought this on himself and I’m not faulting the mods for it.
He won’t be missed by me. There are plenty of other people that just can’t wait to dive headlong into a gun thread with the usual comments, and his anti-Packers schtick threatened so many NFL threads it was ridiculous.
Other than those types of threads I’ve done my best over the past few years to avoid him because I don’t enjoy banging my head against a wall and arguing with what is essentially a bot. Whatever you said generated either an insult or some variation of “I’m not wrong”.
If you think you’ll miss him you may rest assured that there will be many more like him. Nature abhors a vacuum.
When I get to two thousand posts I want to be allowed to call somebody in GD a fartlicker. Just to mix it up a bit.
[del]Bollocks[/del] I respect the fact that your viewpoint differs from mine and I respect utterly your right to hold it, but I do not accept that the word “need” is in any way justified in context.
I’m disappointed, but I cannot profess surprise.
I’m kinda new here, and was just getting to know him.
I agreed with nearly everything he said…although, perhaps, he said it a bit more loudly than I would have.
But, doggone, he was one of the best educated souls ever to post here. EVER!
The moderators’ decision was just…but, even so, TANJ.
Trinopus
OK, now I’m worried about someone coding a Diobot - I may not be able to sleep right for months.
I started the thread, and I wasn’t surprised to see him booted; merely sorry that he will be absent from certain threads.
Well, too bad, but not unforeseeable. I had a problem with him always going off half-cocked in political threads where a more reasoned approach (with cites) would’ve been more effective. He wasn’t always quite like that; it seems like he really tweaked out in the last year or so.
Anyway, I look forward to being able to have more reasonable political (and football!) discussions without all that hoopla derailing it.
Well, it’s not exactly a shock like the fall of the Berlin Wall… maybe the Berlin Room Divider.
Maybe Dio would’ve settled down a bit if he was a Mod?
To all those bemoaning the loss of Dio’s expertise, maybe I should try to recruit my brother, a Biblical scholar, here. My brother will be defending his thesis any day now, then he should get his PhD. IIRC, Dio only had a Bachelor’s in religious studies. Fun fact: My brother isn’t an atheist, but his doctoral thesis is on the devil. If my brother doesn’t want to join, there will be plenty of people to fill in. Dio’s specialty isn’t unique, and was outweighed by his jerkish behavior. I agreed with him much more often than not, and I still didn’t like him very much.