I Pit SmartAleq

The BBQ Pit
61

So you’re okay with people going around calling other people “cancer”? The only reason to frame things that way was to attack the person. If I called you a “cancer on this board,” I expect you’d see it as an obvious personal insult, and not be happy that I didn’t get Warned or worse.

What SmartAleq did was fucking stupid. It makes no sense for anyone who actually cares about this board to attack the guy who is trying to figure out how to save it. It makes no sense to attack the guy who is the only reason is still here after TubaDiva died.

It would be one thing to bring up past money mistakes, and saying that perhaps someone with more financial planning should help come up with ideas. It’s another to try to shoehorn every past grievance into it as an attack.

Now you guys are trying to say that cuntgate was a monetary decision? Uh, wut? The whole thing was caused by a mod who was tired of being harassed and having hate speech (“cunt”) spewed towards her. Ed didn’t think mods who worked for free should have to put up with that shit, and decided to outlaw “cunt” in the Pit and say that mod actions should be addressed civilly. Yes, he also overreacted by creating a banned words list. Yes, at the time, that seemed this big huge thing that caused a board split. But surely we all realize by now that it wasn’t that big a deal.

It’s just dumb, and cements my view of SmartAleq as the type who just holds onto grudges and never lets them go, relitigating the past over and over, no matter how many times people apologize or how different things are now.

It’s hard for me to think she actually cares about the board and not just her anger toward it. It’s an outlet for her. Which is fine, but then there’s a forum for that. It doesn’t contribute to our goal of trying to save the board.

You are right: how the genocide issue was moderated is a much bigger deal than all of this. I actually wanted to say that such is why I have never financially supported this board. Every time I see it making strides, there’s something that tries to pull us back to the dark ages.

But I didn’t because I saw how much the thread had become about Ed-bashing, and thought my post would be wasted. I know that I wouldn’t still be reading the thread after that. The guy came to us, hat in hand, saying that he needed a bit of financial help and thought he could funnel that into keeping the board afloat, and so many people just laid into him.

Where was this ire when Ed made excuses for a transphobic poster? Where was this ire when his trans topic thread included the canard about transgenderism possibly being a mental illness? Those were things to get upset about.

His trying to find a way to keep us relevant and thus keeping our forum alive? And things that have long since been dealt with (the Barn House forum, pay-to-post, cunt-gate, etc)? Those are stupid. To then use that as an excuse to lay into someone you don’t like? Yeah, fuck off about that.

Bigotry and how it has been dealt with may be a cancer around this Board (albeit one we’ve been making progress towards treating.) But no one person is the problem.

And if someone better at marketing came in, they might make changes you won’t like: e.g. getting rid of the Pit. It’s kinda incongruous with “welcoming new people” to have a forum where people can flame them.

One good thing about Ed is that he lets this community mostly run itself. That might not be the case if someone else is in charge, or if he has no input on who comes in.

62

Its not about priorities, its about consistency even in a heated conversation. It cost nothing to be civil, if you can’t make an argument without name calling then you may lose support of those who may actually agree with some of what you are saying.

63

No, but I’m also I’m OK with them getting mod-noted and not necessarily warned, the first time they do it, though.

Happy to believe you, but I would like a cite. Because you already weren’t allowed to Pit mods before then, is my recollection. Which I admit might be wrong.

I’m not sure who you’re suggesting just shrugs off transphobia. I’m not sure which thread you’re talking about, but I’ve participated in plenty of threads about the topic.

They’re not an excuse. They’re a pattern. You know what they say about people who keep doing the same thing and expect a different result?

Actually, if he wanted to, Ed could make it not a problem with a few new rules. He always could. He could have made tom do his job on moderating hate speech, for instance. Banned race realism before Cartooniverse had to do all the work. So in some ways, he is the one person who is the problem there.

And I’d be fine with that, if everything else stayed the same or improved.

Yes, that is the one good thing. And look at how he fucks it up when he doesn’t.

Funny how that consistency only serves the in-group, whether it be about race or about this board.

64

Sorry, WTF is Barn House?

65

Ed wrote a book about rehabbing a home in Chicago, “The Barn House”. There was also an associated subforum here about home repairs. A bit of self-promotion but it got some posts and was buried way on the bottom of the forum list. Book was okay; I liked it but it probably requires some Chicago roots to really appreciate.

I’ve no idea why people are flipping their shit over it today or acting as though it was one of the greatest abuses in SDMB history.

66

Thanks. That does seem like much ado about nothing.

67

It was … not popular at the time. and also brought to the surface Ed’s childishly petulant side.

68

Carrying a grudge over a subforum from 13 years ago isn’t a great look either.

69

You say “carrying a grudge”, I say “a small but memorable part of a consistent pattern”, potay-to, po-tah-to

Also, it happened at a time when the Board was rife with technical difficulties that were not being addressed, so the self-indulgence on display was not a good look.

70

No, that used to be allowed. Pitting mods was made against the rules as part of the same package of rule changes that included the banned word list.

71

My misrecollection, then.

I’m sure that it all happening at the same time as the book and subforum launched was entirely coincidental, then.

72

Huh. I joined in 2007 but the Barn House thing went right over my head.

I do remember Cuntgate though. Still not sure how I feel about it.

The reality is, the board is dying, and people may not like Ed but he’s the only one with a vested interest in keeping the board running. I like it here, but there’s definitely been a shift toward officially sanctioning a certain set of ideologies that has diminished the discourse considerably and driven people away. I want to see an influx of people from many different perspectives. While I’m dreaming maybe we could get some actually young people. Do we even have a single Zoomer?

OK so my point is, maybe let’s not alienate the one person trying to help.

73

You mean the Barn House stuff? That all came much later. The Pit rule changes were right before I became a mod, which was back in '09. The Barn House forum (and, I believe, Ed’s associated book) came out in 2013.

74

Nope, same time (2008) - see the linked Pit thread.

75

Huh, I stand corrected.

76

Well, yes and no.

These boards have been mismanaged (business-wise) for roughly the last 20 years. I vividly remember* opening multiple threads in a bunch of separate tabs, while reading a different thread, just to have a chance for some of them to not time out. Reading the boards one thread at a time was an exercise in futility, you’d sit for minutes at a time waiting for a thread to load only to have it time out.

Why? Because the Reader wasn’t going to spend money on a new server. We weren’t profitable, and should just be happy we existed at all. This is because the board is associated with the Straight Dope, and the people who own the SD are not interested in running a message board.

So, Yes, the Barn House forum is not a big deal, but it is part of the pattern where this message board is owned by people who don’t really want it and don’t know how to run it. Evidenced yet again by being threatened with closure because we don’t carry our own weight, during a time when the owners are technologically incapable of accepting subscription money.

*I recall doing this from my apartment in Tarrytown, which I moved out of in 2001.

77

Ehhh. I don’t think this is even partially true. When Ed retired a couple of years ago it didn’t change the board at all. I think affect of the board has been mostly negative since I’ve been around. There are tons of people that have and are trying to help whether its offering to donate money or time to keep this board up.

If this board was given to the mods as a non-profit to run I have no doubt it would keep ticking until most of us died off. The biggest risk is that due to changes in the google algorithm we dropped off the front page on a lot of searches this drop in traffic then caused us to lose more traffic and its been a downward spiral.

I think this board paid for itself for the last couple of years just fine but when we lost the ability to have the membership paid for the drop in revenue got people in corporate’s attention that plus Ed getting dropped from his new column brought us here. I’m happy to pony up for a membership to keep the board going but paying to work for Ed sounds pretty stupid especially when most of the money will either go to him or the corporate overlords.

78

It seems like that’s always been the case. And it is weird to me that Ed would want to keep a board running that he never participates in. But he’s the only one at Sun-Times who seems to give half a damn. I do think we need to do something though I dunno what.

79

Holy Christ! I somehow missed all these thread back in the day. The pure hate on display in them make me seriously wonder how this board didn’t die years ago. Skimming through them, I recognized a whole lot of names that I knew, but are no longer around. This current round butt-hurt will probably cut us in half again. Well, I’ve pretty much been debrided of everything I once valued over the last few months, so I guess I’m ready for what’s coming 'round the bend…

All Time is Wasted.

80

Is it possible, in your mind, to completely agree with the quoted part above, but also think that Ed’s role in moderating / administering the board has been … less than helpful?

There are at least three roles that Ed is playing that are worth teasing apart. First, there’s Ed the admin/mod here. This is the Ed who created ridiculous fora to promote his own book, created a banned-word list, changed the Pit rules, basically created the schism of '09, and then disappeared, because he’s not really a contributing member of the community. That’s the kind of seagull administration that has @SmartAleq and @MrDibble so rightfully irritated.

Then there’s Ed the person, who some think is wandering around the halls of the Sun-Times (perhaps virtually during pandemic days) convincing the suits to just keep the lights on at SDMB. Or maybe he’s unfortunately reminding them that we even exist, and thereby potentially creating the conditions for us to get shut down! The truth is, nobody in this thread has any idea, and it’s all idle speculation.

Lastly, there’s Cecil, who we all know is Ed. Many of us found this place originally through his columns (and I hear he has books, too, though I have no direct evidence of this.) Now he’s proposing to write some new columns, and give paying members some input as to their topics. His old style of column may have been rendered obsolete, but… I’m not so sure. I think there’s a huge potential need for well-researched answers to general questions. One of my favorite subreddits is AskHistorians - randos like me can ask questions to the academic historian community, and if you get an answer, it’s pretty-much guaranteed to be on-point, well-thought-through, etc. But it’s aggressively moderated. Don’t even try to leave a top-level comment unless you can really claim expertise in the subject matter AND are willing to write a relatively deep and well-sourced response. Consequently, many questions are unanswered. I see the best case of a new SD being like that, but across more fields and with less expertise (but still researched.) I’d love to see that. I’d pay for it.

I pretty much agree with everything in the quoted part of the OP. Ed really should lay off any administration of the board. Find one or two well-trusted members of the community who would volunteer. Focus on this new project. That said, I still think @SmartAleq was completely wrong to post it in that thread. That was Ed, posting as Cecil, looking for feedback on that idea. It was just the wrong target for that vitriol.