This. It’s going to depend on what the question was and how it was ‘refuted’. I remember years of ‘the US’s illegal war!’ threads, where both sides pretty much thought they HAD refuted the other. Or 2nd Amendment threads about what ‘well ordered’ and ‘militia’ actually were and meant and how the original authors viewed them in the context of whether gun ownership is an individual protected right or not. Obviously, if someone is asking a GQ type question that has a cut and dried answer and someone is repeatedly bringing that up and questioning it then that’s one matter. But in GD the ‘truth’ is, IMHO, a bit more fuzzy and hard to define in some of the debates on this board…and the world view of the poster is going to heavily impact whether they believe the citations and refutations provided to disprove their view. The mods have to walk a fine line in debate territory.
There is something that can be done and bad faith posting has been dealt with in the past. It’s something that would have to be looked at on a case by case basis and I couldn’t state how I would mod something out of context.
Speaking in generalities here.
We’re probably not going to moderate someone just because they are particularly thick about a certain subject and refuse to change their beliefs no matter what the evidence. Some people “just know” things and you can’t change their minds. That doesn’t mean they are being malicious or jerkish.
On the other hand, if we think that it’s intentional, that falls pretty clearly under our “don’t be a jerk” rule and would definitely be moderated.
It’s also possible that if someone keeps derailing threads with a particular type of post, even if they aren’t being intentionally malicious, that we will restrict them from posting to certain threads or certain topics. There are quite a few topic bans in place at the moment.
Different forums will have different rules as well. There are things that you can bring up in GD that are arguable and that’s fine within the context of GD, but something whose factual aspects are debatable would be much less acceptable in GQ, for example.
If you see someone posting in this type of fashion, report it. We may not be aware that they are continuously making the same kind of statements in multiple threads. Or maybe we’ll decide that it’s not a problem, or maybe we’ll moderate it. So report it, even if you aren’t sure if it’s a problem or not. We’d rather have too many post reports than too few.
Don’t ever be afraid to report a post. The worst that can happen is we decide it’s not a problem. No biggie.
When do the mods step in? The poster in question is, in fact, interjecting his position into multiple threads, refusing to provide cites, ignoring any and all rebuttals. Is it two threads? Three? Upon receipt of complaints?
I myself found it irritating by the second thread where I found it (and suspect it’s happened in others) and it might rise to the level of notifying a mod if I see it again. From the mod perspective, is it similar? Forgive a few slips, then correct? The behavior seems particularly ingrained in this case.
Note, btw that I am not upset by the poster’s views per se, if he would debate them, but he does not. In fact, I would actually like to understand the viewpoint and what informs it.
Report the post. If we see enough of those there’s a higher chance of us intervening.
I hope it doesn’t, but, in theory, this could happen to me completely unintentionally. I don’t do the whole “subscribe to threads and check back in” thing. I respond, then I move on. If the thread pops back up again and I’m still interested, I may check back in again.
So it’s very possible I just didn’t see the refutation. And, if that happens, I don’t know how to deal with that short of just PMing me to let me know what I’ve said has been refuted. As long as you do it nicely, I won’t mind, and I doubt anyone else would either.
I can think of at least a couple of specific times when I’ve done it, both of them in what I would consider areas of expertise (once on physics, and once on Tolkien). Thanks to CalMeacham and Qadgop the Mercotan for (eventually) getting through to me, by the way.
Problem is that there’s frequently considerable disagreement as to whether or not something has been “refuted”. It’s very common for partisans of one side of an argument to believe that they and their allies have conclusively refuted their opponents, and you sometimes see these people expressing frustration over the fact that these opponents keep maintaining the same position in other threads. But these opponents likely just disagree as to whether in fact they were refuted, and they may well believe that the first group is the ones who were refuted and keeps bringing up their position anyway.
The only way to have moderator action would be to have the moderators take official positions on who “won” each argument, which is not something many people would be in favor of.
Nor I, for that matter. The day I have to be a judge and not a referee is the day I stop trying to wrangle Great Debates.
It needs to be fairly straightforward to get me to try to moderate argument and such. Like the ‘marry my dishwasher’ nonsense. That was patently silly beyond words.
Right, we’re dancing with this. What spawned this thread is not BigT or anyone else who has selflessly thrown themselves on the grenade. We’ve all probably held onto a position longer than we should have. In this case, we’ve got a “seagull” debater. Drop a bomb and run. Like so:
“Politician X has multiple felonies.”
“Really, what are they?”
Crickets.
Next thread.
“Don’t forget about all of those felonies!”
“Cite?”
Crickets.
If you want to talk about felonious behavior, fine. Bring your evidence and let’s talk about it. Stop dropping little conversational bombs and running away. I believe that would be the type of behavior that the OP is referencing. In this sort of instance, the Mod is not being asked to judge whether the argument was “won” or rebutted successfully, although I know several mentioned rebuttals (including me - apologies for muddying the waters). As I think about this behavior more, it really leans more towards thread-shitting. IMHO.