I agree. That’s why I didn’t post to say that people were too mean to Ed or were too worshipful. There was both of that, and also intolerance of each other. There is an intelligent discussion to be had about it if people could set the feces down and stop tossing it like rice at a wedding.
Agree but more than anything else - well written!
How long ago was that poll?
I’m the one that called it violent, and I was speaking SPECIFICALLY about mordecaiB and his incredibly aggressive dislike of all things Cecil, apparently.
Zero problems with actual criticisms about plans/idea/whatever, but FUCK ED AND HIS FAILED COLUMN wasn’t exactly constructive.
Complaints about the lack of merchandise and the incredibly shitty “reasons” for it? Agree. Hell, I agree that Ed shouldn’t even have closed the thread just because it wasn’t going the way he wanted. Complaints about the lack of ACTUAL administration on this board since TubaDiva passed? I’m on board. But the absolute vitriol being flung at Ed/Cecil was just out of place for that particular topic in that particular forum.
Do you have some specific post in which @mordecaiB said “FUCK ED AND HIS FAILED COLUMN”? My read was a bit persistent in the critical comments of the plan but fair comments that were mostly constructive and very polite.
Seriously please link to a post by that poster that was over the line, and not just critical honest opinion and honest questions from someone being solicited as a potential customer for a new business plan?
Um, scroll up to post #83.
Darn it, ShadowFacts beat me too it. But on a more basic level, there was a lot to disagree with about Cecil’s plan, and people did so. The posts in question felt like a whole lot of ‘Attack the Poster, oh, and also the post.’
Please link because I don’t see post 83 even being by that poster. Maybe I’m doing something wrong?
Oh in this thread.
I don’t read those as violent. Okay a bit personal. But to some degree no more out of line than the gushing was.
Questioning the motivations is valid.
To my read.
And not on the level of FUCK ED AND HIS FAILED COLUMN.
You have a much, much, much looser definition of constructive criticism than I do, to put it mildly.
Diff’rent strokes, I guess.
That was me, and that was in the Pit thread, which, need I remind you, started out with a whole lot of invective directed at SmartAleq. Don’t see you calling out any language from that side of the argument.
That’s only because you’re not reading all my posts in this thread. Or do you not consider that language part of the fecal tossing?
No, I was just referring to the one post I replied to, where you were only calling out the language of one side of the argument.
I support anything that preserves the SDMB.
That’s definitely the tone of some stuff I remember from a while back, too.
It would absolutely not surprise me to discover that the newspaper which owns the SDMB brand (and by extension the messageboard) has absolutely no idea the forums actually exist.
I mean, here in Australia our journalism sector has been absolutely crippled by a perfect storm of lost ad revenue and freefalling readership numbers, meaning journalists have been laid off wholesale - we’re talking hundreds, probably thousands of jobs gone. Most of the major rural newspapers in my state got shut down last year, for example.
From what I gather, the situation is the same in the US (or very similar) so I would imagine there simply isn’t room for a line item anywhere in the budget of a newspaper for “Random messageboard associated with a column we stopped running years ago”. It might be covered under “IT” or “Social Media” or something big enough and broad enough to encompass the forum without specifically saying “Hey, there’s a discussion board as part of this”.
Whatever the situation is, there’s definitely ways to bring in some money to run the forums without passing the hat around, so if they’re not being considered there’s obviously a reason for it that may be above our clearance levels, so to speak.
Yup to different strokes. I can’t read that as shouting expletives.
Those quoted portions were also not constructive criticism either (other posts were). They were however honest feedback, bluntly delivered. Different thoughts than many others posting had to be sure, but worth having expressed and shared and not only thought by that poster alone.
Mr. Zotti’s skill was explaining well in a style that was edgy and novel for its time. It and the Cecil character were however, IMHO and of some others, of their time. And some of us at least saw the “joke” about his needing money as likely the reality and were put off by the attitude of how Cecil has returned to save us by letting us pay him to do work for him.
Yes it was bluntly expressed but I think it was a perspective that needed expression as well.
Wait, was Ed Zotti always the ghostwriter for Cecil Adams? I was under the impression that the earlier columns (frankly the more entertaining ones) were ghostwritten by someone else and that Ed Zotti took over sometime in the past decade or two.
There were a couple of earlier writers, but Ed took over in 1978.
Wow, that’s earlier than I thought.