He’s not a conservative, is he?
I guess it’s never had a chance to come up in any interaction I’ve had with him, which has generally just been general hostility, unrelated to politics, like his performance art in that Octopus Teacher thread.
It does make my question in his previous suspension thread still relevant, but that’s closed and I don’t see the value of starting a new one.
My interactions with him show that he’s got an idiosyncratic set of views. He’s super duper anti-gun-control and super duper anti-seeing-racism-in-gaming and super duper pro-Democrats and super duper pro-seeing-racism-in-terms-like-developing-countries.
I think every one of his views is something I’m willing to have a conversation about. But he doesn’t ever say, “Interesting point,” or, “Huh, I hadn’t thought of that,” or, “While I understand why you’re seeing it that way, I see it differently.”
I do appreciate his apology (I’d posted in ATMB that he’d been rude and supercilious and sneering, and he asked for me to show him where, and when I did, he apologized). If he can really make an effort not to go into those ruts of inflexible sneering thinking, I think he’d be an okay poster.
Thank you for reminding me of this.
If anything, DrDeth is a case study for when a problematic poster is not a troll. It seems to be a vanishingly rare breed.
I have never gotten the impression that DrDeth is trying to get a rise out of people, except in little ways like the a/an stuff. That doesn’t rise to ‘troll’ any more than ‘regards’ or the quarry thing.
My hot take: there are people who have lots of trouble picking up on social cues in real life. 90% of those cues are simply not present in a message board. So this hypothetical person lowers their head and bulls forward, well past the point where they may or may not pick up on uncomfortable silence or eyerolling in real life. It’s also easy to skim past stuff you don’t want to read, so they’re not getting the same level of useful input that they need to read the room. And they need lots more input than your average bear.
When a person like this finally realizes that they’re fucking up, they’re capable of apologizing and correcting their behavior because they’re not trying to be jerks. But they’re probably going to backslide eventually, and it’s nobody’s job here to gently remind them over and over again when they’re beginning to approach the line.
So that’s how you end up with a poster who frustrates the people around them and who takes up disproportionate amounts of staff time.
I think DrDeth values this board and I think he values the conversations that he has here. Whether that’s worth yet another chance ain’t my call, and I’m glad for it.
He’s also anti-bike lanes. And seems to hate bicyclists in general. Because we all prefer to ride on the sidewalk 
I assume that’s just being a poor typist, and not intentional. My phone tends to write “your” when i intended “you” and i guarantee you I’m not doing it to annoy anyone. I would guess it annoys me more than anyone else.
And then one more
…
Un-fucking-believable.
That would be believable if it didn’t happen all the time, and in both directions (a for an an for a).
This thread will close in 10 hours as DrDeth is suspended for 30 days.
@Miller might override this though and reopen it.
I just want to say I’ve always been more amused by DrDeth’s antics than upset.
…although that gives me pause. There’s a special place in hell for people who would antagonize cyclists.
It is absolutely intentional. He’s even tried to defend this annoying idiosyncrasy, and persists in it even when told how annoying it is to some of us.
The ATMB thread is closed so I guess I’ll ask here…
What’s the point of having an timer on when a thread topic is going to be closed (ETA: 9 hours at time of this post)?
Nowadays I genuinely believe it is unintentional. He is just too stupid to understand the a/an rule, too stupid to learn how to use apostrophes and too stupid to learn to spell -ough words. He can’t admit this though, so when called on it he tries to save face by claiming he is deliberately improving communication.
It gives people a chance to get any last thoughts in under the gun.
I’m fine closing it now, if that makes any difference. Hopefully he’ll show some humility and genuine change when he returns from vacation. And if he doesn’t, the “New Topic” button is right there.
Who would do an thing like that?
I thought people would be upset if I just closed it and this would head off another thread. We generally close suspension announcements, though there have been exceptions. So I thought I should close this thread before the day was out but leave it open for comments.
Have you ever noticed, no matter what decision a mod makes, someone will object?
I wasn’t objecting. Just curious as I’ve never noticed the practice before.
It meets with my approval. 
I thought it was the best choice in this case. Nothing being perfect. We have these timers which are kind of cool. I usually use them to temporarily close threads that are overheated in GD or P&E.
Not complaining! Just curious!
Is it common practice to close a Pit Thread when the subject is suspended?
Not sure, but if it is a long suspension it seems like the right thing to do. As I mentioned, I might get overruled. Which is fine.
We do close pit threads when someone is banned.