I called it out as trolling and got a smack on the wrist for it. No skin off my back, I only said what became quite clear to most folks in that thread in short order.
I agree fully w/ Ascenray and Procrustus. My personal preference would be that the boards presume that someone who starts a provocative thread cares enough to at least check back in. I’m not sure how the boards are enhanced by such apparent bomb-lobbing.
Failure to participate or at least check in on such a thread could earn a “gentle reminder” or possible locking of the thread, with repeats receiving progressive responses.
Seriously - the boards didn’t exactly NEED yet ANOTHER thread for same folk to explain why Trump was horrible in so many respects.
I’m sorry, but this made me laugh out loud. I read judicial opinions all the time and this post struck me as a suggestion that the SDMB requires establishing some kind of jurisprudential precedent before doing things. It doesn’t and never has. Things have been declared by fiat of the administration quite often.
Second, the hijacking issue doesn’t, in my view, require any sort of notice-and-comment proceeding to rewrite the rules. It just requires that the mods stop interpreting and applying the rule on hijacking so strictly. The rule should be used to stop malicious hijacking, not natural conversational drift. It’s perfectly possible for a thread to spring multiple lines of discussion (like this one has) without disrupting the thread. So my suggestion would be just to start applying the definition of hijacking much more narrowly. If people are complaining about individual posts then the answer should be something like “just put up with it unless someone has actually posted to the extent that the thread is in imminent danger of being spoiled. People are smart enough to be able follow multiple branches of a conversation.”
Third, the proposition of the OP of this thread also shouldn’t require public notice-and-comment on the level of the Administrative Procedures Act either. Just extend the definition of jerkish behavior to “habitually starting controversial topics without ever acknowledging or responding to good faith responses in the thread.”
I agree with most of what the common throng of posters and the mods have said in the thread. As for the thread that spawned this one, I took my opinions to the pit, and they can stay here.
As for what could/should have been done in this circumstance, I’ve boiled my opinions down to a few points.
If the Poster had dropped the line in an existing anti-Trump thread, I’ve of considered it either clueless or in bad faith, but maybe/maybe not a troll depending on past posting history.
By creating a thread, especially in politics and elections, and asking for something to be explained to them, I personally feel it is absolutely in the bad-faith category at best and very likely some form of low level trolling when they refused to respond.
On the other hand, if the mods went out of their way to issue a warning about it, probably under the ‘jerk’ Ur-Rule, they’d probably also have to hand out 2-3 other warnings for people who made direct accusations in thread, but were let go with only a note.
So, for the good of the board, what has happened to date is probably the best outcome for the majority.
But, while there have been multiple statements of how the poster has acted poorly here, there has only been mild Mod based comments in thread, so I have a suggestion based on similar concerns of bad-faith posts in the past.
In the originating thread, I would suggest a strongly worded mod NOTE, addressed to the OP of said thread, indicating much of what we discussed here. That creating a thread requesting a discussion on a topic and not participating is against the spirit if not the letter of the rules, and has all the appearance of bad faith. That since it’s a borderline issue, no warning is being issued, but the poster is instructed to not do so in the future (at least on charged issues) or there will be a warning.
So the poster is informed, in ways they can choose to ignore that they’ve gone well beyond good behavior, that they should improve, and that while there are no immediate consequences, there will be in the future. Which should be a good thing to leave in the thread for others to see as well.
And if they DO continue this pattern and pull a warning, it will provide a good reference for the inevitable future ATMB thread about “why did I/that poster get a warning?”
Seconding @ParallelLines’ suggestion.