However, less than 24 hours later, he attacks December in yet another GD thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=194836&perpage=50&pagenumber=2
To sum up:
I have the same question as Sam. How long does he get to do this and get away with it?
I really respect the guy’s in-depth knowledge of MENA and cheerfully supported his return to these boards. If he gets banned once more for the same irrelevant offensive and abrasive characterizations in a factual forum, I may not be entirely unhappy about it. Correcting someone’s misapprehensions is one thing. Routinely impugning other people’s perceptions in such an obnoxious manner gets rather tedious after a while. Somehow, Tamerlane manages much of the same remonstrance without all the spewing and vitriol.
I’m generally interested enough in what Collounsbury has to say to put up with his abrasive style. I say give him LOTS of strikes.
No special treatment, but I do like the guy a lot. He should stick to the pit, period. Enough debating goes on here.
I say everybody should be subject to the same rules.
It seems like he’s already gotten lots of strikes. This includes being banned and reinstated. How many more should he get?
Haj
I do understand why he gets fed up, particularly with some people who think that they know about Muslims and the Muslim world from what they learn on Fox News and WorldNetDaily (I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I know many Muslims in the UK and it irks me when someone goes around painting all muslims as insane Islamo-facists) and are absolutely adamant that their view is correct.
I do seem to remember once being on the receiving end of Collounsbury’s scorn and it’s not the best way to debate, but on the otherhand he does have alot of value to say and you shouldn’t ignore that.
Exactly. Why can’t Col?
I agree that Collounsbury should stay in the Pit if he can’t restrain his urge to flame. The Pit does have many good and interesting debates, and he’s contributed positively to many of them here. Flaming in GD (or other fora besides the Pit), though, is an official no-no, as I recall.
That’s like asking why your responses and question aren’t as sharp as Sam Stone’s.
Yes I agree. Apparently the Mods have a different opinion, which hasn’t been explained to us lesser folks.
BTW, I got banned (and later reinstated after public and private apologies) for flaming someone in the Pit. There are limits.
Well, they are and they aren’t. This board, with all of the wonderful, gifted Mods that they have, is about as good as you get out there in cyberland.
But, do you ban someone for one bad comment? two? three. How many?
In any december thread of my choosing, I can cite you comments from posters other than collounsbury which are grounds for banning the member who uttered them. It wouldn’t be that difficult. And they are repeated. Where do you draw the line?
Col is horribly abrasive. december is horribly clever in how he posts stupid threads. There’s no board rule against being a semi-jerk, only in being a jerk.
More’s the pity.
At least you recognize your station in life.
Where do we draw the line? Perhaps the line should drawn around someone who has been banned, and reinstated, and continues to violate board rules after repeated warnings?
I don’t have a link, but he got warned in Cafe Society for being a jerk. Why would anyone feel it necessary to be a jerk in that forum?
Because if I read one more, ‘What if Colonel Sanders wrote The Lord of the Rings? Would Frodo be a delicious a bucket of chicken?’-type thread, I too would become a jerk in CS.
Damn those posters who prise your eyes open and FORCE you to read speculative posts.
I love Coll’s posts. They’re incredible to read on most occasions. Like all of us, he tires easily with fools, and suffers them with zero tolerance and it shows.
But you know, oddly, I love the guy’s style. He’s as much an institution as december is, and when those two go at it hammer and tong, it’s like watching a classic McEnroe v Borg final.
That Coll has disdain for december there can be no denying. However, it has to also be said in the interests of fairness that your typical Collounsbury post, on almost any subject he cares to write about, is simply dripping with inarguable facts and historical perspectives which I find incredibly valueable.
The trick, I find, is to engage Coll as something of a mental tennis game - he loves to hit winners - so you can either go for the huge ace right up front (which is frought with danger) or you can simply engage the guy in a less adversarial style which results in a far more rewarding kind of rallying. Once Coll recognises that you aren’t prone to speaking out of your arse and that you’re genuinely interested in actually learning something, he invariably displays immense respect and writes with much restraint. It’s just the idiots he lets loose on and I have to say, I can’t blame him for getting fired up at times - especially given the almost imperial arrogance demonstrated by a small number of his fellow countrymen these last 4 months.
Dumb question time now… if someone on this messageboard is banned, where is it noted, if at all?
Boo Boo Foo: It’s noted underneath the user name: member is replaced by BANNED.
Are we thinking of the same two tennis players? I recall both of them having more tennis skill in their armpit hair than december has knowledge or debating prowess in his entire being. Watching Col and december “go at it” is like watching Nolan Ryan hit the broad side of a dilapidated barn with a fastball. The only thing you wonder about is how loud the smash is going to be when the pitched ball goes through wood.