I'm getting really sick of valid threads being closed

As it happens, many of us come to this board because we’re interested in a column entitled The Straight Dope, under whose format the general public is invited to submit questions for its pseudonymous author, Cecil Adams, to answer. It may well be, then, that a person who arrives at the Straight Dope website may well have a question he or she wishes to ask Cecil.

Should he or she click on the prominent “Ask Cecil” link, he or she will receive the following invitation:

Accordingly, I would submit that it is in fact highly probable that a first-time user of the website might well be disposed to make his or her initial posting in General Questions.

If we’re especially lucky, the question might even be grammatically coherent.

And another one bites the dust… with nary an explanation.

And now I’ll never know just what the hell it was that bbs2k was going on about. Why, oh why must I care so much?

  1. I hope you stick around because you’re funny!

  2. Joke threads belong in MPSIMS, maybe? And joke threads that dissolve into slapfights belong in The Pit??

:: not junior modding

Restricting the number of visitors is sensible- arbitrarily preventing someone not a relative is not. The obvious examples are a person with no family, one who prefers the company of his friends to his family, people with partners who aren’t married, etc. Gay guy who hasn’t spoken to his mom in 30 years, she can visit but his life partner can’t? Surely this was sensible at one time, but times change, antiquated rules need to change as society does.

We should be grateful we are even allowed to AGREE with the mods!

Here’s another thread closed by a mod for no good reason. All right, he said it was crass, and it probably is, but I don’t see how it’s crass beyond the standards of the Dope:

Because a gravitationally challenged individual without a sense of humor got carried away. If you can stay away from topics on girth, declawing cats, mocking Paul Verhoeven, you’ll be fine.

Fuckwidget, that thread wasn’t closed solely on its own dubious merits. That thread was closed because you are the creepiest denizen of the internet and just don’t know when to stop. This is a case where someone with less of history probably could have opened it… at least until you happened along.

Modding has been unpredictable of late (and I am being generous). We have had some obvious socks trolling left and right under the complacent smile of the mods, and all of the sudden they storm down on threads whose only sin is inanity, if any.

I am seriously hoping this is all being done randomly by a bot. The idea of thinking humans doing this for a purpose is somewhere between sad and scarey.

That’s not what SkipMagic said, though*. I already mentioned in Czarcasm’s What’s new? thread that I thought that was a creepy idea for a thread but it also now occurs to me that it treads closely to the guideline against “Letters to Penthouse” type discussion. That said, I don’t think Evil Captor is even in the top 100 for creepy internet dudes.

*I guess Skip must have PM’d Evil Captor to give the “crass” comment as it isn’t in his lockdown post.

I’m not sure why a mod closed it, but I highly suspect it’s because the thread is just too stupid to live. If I’d seen it, I’d certainly have considered closing it for just that reason.

There are threads that are lighthearted and funny and silly and good. And then there are threads, or at least OPs, which have all the charm and intelligence of a decapitated cockroach.

Then why not let them rise or fall (so to speak) on their own merits? If they are really too stupid to live, then they will die of their own accord.

Most of the time, we do let threads rise or fall. Sometimes, however, a thread is SO stupid that a mercy killing is in order. And sometimes (I’m not saying that this is what happened to that one particular thread), we get so many complaints about it that killing it is a mercy to US. Also, we hope, by closing such threads early and often, that the worst offenders will realize that their threads are Not Worthy. Unfortunately, such hopes are usually in vain.

What obvious sock trolls are they missing?

Fuck it, fine. You could have answered my questions in an open way.

Instead you chose to close my thread and deny me any answers.

I don’t get it.

I really don’t.

What is with the secrecy?

I’m just trying to understand some reasons behind previous actions of some threads.

No this post isn’t related to this thread.

No I don’t anticipate this thread will still exist when I wake up this morning.
Apologies to** nyctea scandiaca **for the hijack,

  • formerly bigbabysweets2000

and heck, let’s do a sig…

TANSTA14 K of G in a FPD

THE creepiest denizen of the Internet? Shouldn’t there be some kind of award that goes with that?

Seriously dude, you need to get some perspective. Congratulations, though, on your ability to read mods’ minds.

Small British Shop Owner got banned only on the very last day of his guestship. And not because of his trolling. Just to cite an example that I don’t think anyone will argue.

Assuming there are no members here who are too stupid to live, of course.