Ah, but you’ve neglected the fact that manhattan and Collounsbury hold views so similar that they could easily be mistaken as a single person. 
I suppose it would be inappropriate to use the term “barrel of monkeys” here. So I won’t. But really, what could be more fun …?
Oh, bite me. Collounsbury was banned even though he never, to the best of my recollection, clearly broke the “no personal insults” rule in GD. Other posters have repeatedly violated the clear rules of GD and yet stay posters. He was banned because in our personal judgment he was being jerkish, yet when we use the same personal judgment and don’t do what you want, suddenly we’re suspect. If you want him banned so bad, can you kindly come up with a direct rule violation to complain about, rather than statements that we allow from others all the time? I banned him before and I can ban him again, but saying we are clearly unfair won’t help your cause.
Hey Gaudere, care to answer WHY you consitently give Col a pass in GD?
Yes, I totally see where you get that statement from this part of Gaudere’s post:
Or did you perchance imagine a reply from an administrator that would warrant your assessment of Gaudere’s post? Perhaps something that, oh, wasn’t its polar opposite?
Look, I’m happy to admit that part of the reason that I spend energy criticising collounsbury is that he’s been rude and obnoxious to me. Nevertheless, if he had never attacked me and in fact agreed with me on most issues, I’d still feel basically the same way about him.
I do agree that, generally speaking, Democrats and Republicans are motivated by politics not principle despite any pretensions to the contrary.
But feel free to point out where you think my reasoning is unprincipled. (And for what it’s worth, I agree that december is a pain in the ass.)
Is name calling allowed in GD, yes or no?
Drooling idiocy is name-calling.
Is it allowed, or not?
milroyj, perhaps, again, you are misreading (or failing to read part of) Gaudere’s posts. The relevant part here:
So rather than saying “Hey, he gets away with shit all the time!”, try something like “check post here, here and here, and especially note where he called this one poster a piece of camelshit attached to the underbelly of a leprous hyena.”
Alternately, you could try emailing an admin with “Hey, check this person’s posts here and here”. Or “report this post to a moderator” … I hear that’s a pretty useful feature. Used it myself once or twice, in fact.
Find me a direct rule violation. Explain why when Collounsbury says “you are ignorant”, I should warn him, when we have allowed the same sort of comment from others as long as I’ve been a mod. “Jerkism” is a subjective judgment, and so if someone will be banned under it, they will be banned based on our judgment; I don’t see how exercising the judgment we were chosen as mods for gives anyone “a pass”.
[sub]A nice, cramped barrel. At the bottom of the sea…[/sub]
Been there, done that. Doesn’t seem to help much.
You, yourself, have warned Col about name-calling in GD. Now you are saying it’s OK?
“You are a drooling idiot”==direct personal insult, not allowed
“Poster Y, saying that invisible green beetles cause gravity by flapping their wings is drooling idiocy”==attacking the argument. Technically allowed, but it got Collounsbury warned and then banned last time since I thought it was too close to the line.
Er, why are you asking if “drooling idiocy” is allowed when it got Coll banned last time?
Saying you do not know what you are talking about is not namecalling. It is neccessary to GD because sometimes people really do NOT know what they are talking about and this shoud be pointed out. If a creationist says the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution, it is perfectly legitimate to say he is ignorant. Whether the poster is in fact ignorant I leave to the judgment of the GDers.
Becuase you are being blantly, biasedly, unfair. Just because he agrees with the majority opinion doesn’t mean he’s right, for heaven’s sake.
Just to get this straight, we now have permision from an Admin to call people drolling idiots in GD?
I do not see how I am unfair. I would react to “drooling idiocy” from a newbie just the same as I reacted to that term from Coll. Those are the rules! Attack the post, not the poster. However, if you attack the post too immoderately, in my judgement, I will warn you. As happened with Collounsbury.
Collounsbury agrees with the majority opinion? How so? 
No. As I said above, it is technically acceptible but in my estimation it implies somewhat that the poster is a drooling idiot. Therefore you do not have permission. I also as a general rule frown on those who post things just to make my life harder.
milroyj, are you trying for some record on the SDMB? Consecutive posts wherein you misinterpret (and blatantly…I’ve met dogs who comprehend better’n you do) another person’s posts? Because I don’t see ANYTHING like this in Gaudere’s post. Here, for those who would like to review what she actually said (as opposed to what she may have said in Bizarro World), is the relevant portion of her post:
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I just gotta disagree with this.
In a previous thread in GD, collounsbury said the following:
IMHO, this is clearly a personal insult. Instead of simply saying that I’m wrong (which would have been appropriate), he suggests that being wrong is a CHARACTERISTIC of me. That’s an insult.
For the record, my reason for wanting Collounsbury reigned in is not because I find him personally annoying. I frequent other message boards that are not as well as controlled as this place, and the heat-to-light ratio is way higher. I can take it. Besides, Collounsbury hasn’t been going after me for a while, and I actually agree with most of what he has to say about reconstruction. So this isn’t personal.
My problem is that allowing Collounsbury to rampage through Great Debates has a coarsening effect on EVERYONE. In short, it degrades everything I like about the Straight Dope, which until recently has been one of the few places on the internet you could go to find calm, rational discussion. And that’s still the case in General Questions, and IMHO, and a few other places.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer the case in Great Debates.
And now I’m going to say something that will no doubt get me flamed, but what the hell…
This board has an unusually high number of abrasive left-wing people. Far more than you’ll find on the right, who are generally courteous. Even December, who I agree can be frustrating at times, is unfailingly polite, even though he takes FAR more abuse than he deserves.
But on the left, we have:
Collounsbury
ElvisL1ves
Tejota
Diogenes the Cynic
rjung
elucidator
minty green
Now, all of these guys are intelligent, thoughtful posters when they want to be. And IMO, all of them skirt the rules regarding appropriate behaviour in Great Debates. Some worse than others. Collounsbury is by far the worst offender, but in my opinion because the others look up to him, he sets the tone. When Collounsbury goes away for a time, the whole board gets markedly calmer. He shows up, and suddenly the whole lot of them are dropping cheap shots all over the place, people start retaliating, and then the place starts to suck.
I’ve seen this before - the character of a message board is often controlled by the character of a handful of prolific, powerful posters. Others tend to fall into line behind them. When you let one of them break the rules and be abusive, others follow, and eventually the whole thing goes to hell.
I was just about to say that I don’t want to tell the mods how to do their job, but I guess that’s exactly what I’m doing. But I’ve run message boards like this and been a part of them since 1978, and I’ve seen this happen before. The SDMB Great Debates forum is going to hell slowly, and Collounsbury is part of the reason. This is still my favorite place to hang out, and I hope to be around here for many years to come - it feels more like ‘home’ than any of the other virtual spaces on the net, as far as I’m concerned.
I just hate seeing it wrecked by someone with a hot temper who should know better. The mods are right - he IS an asset, when he behaves. Posters who really know their stuff and can communicate it well are hard to find, and you don’t kick them out lightly. I’m sure that is the major reason why Collounsbury gets so many chances.
But the very popularity and authority he enjoys is also horribly destructive when he uses it to publically abuse people. No amount of intelligence or communication clarity will offset the damage he does when he goes on a rampage.