BrainGlutton has done this on several occasions, this being the most recent. The problem is not specifically that the threads are his own, but that they are frequently inconclusive but cited as evidence anyway. This has a rather wrong feel to it, though I cannot label a specific fallacy or faux pas therein. (I do not have access to the search function to present more examples).
I hope I would have posted this anyway if BG’s politics coincided with my own.
I tend to read that more as, “Here’s a thread where I’ve laid out my argument,” not so much, “Here’s a thread where I’ve proven that I’m right.” YMMV.
I dunno, I’ve noticed this behaviour myself before now. He does tend to pimp his own threads an awful lot, often when they’re not even entirely relevant, and yeah he does tend to make it sound as if he’s totally settled the argument. It’s a bit annoying, to be honest.
The linked example is a good one: can you really sum up the thread Brainglutton linked as just a bald “Yes” to the question asked? I can’t see that even Brainglutton’s posts claim or argue that someone is “automatically paranoid and/or ignorant” for wanting a gold standard, let alone proving it. It’s a thread discussing Heinlein, and his personal motives for advocating one. Hell, the thread seems chock full of perfectly decent reasons why Heinlein might think as he did without being paranoid or ignorant. By no stretch of the imagination can it reasonably be summed up as the categorical statement BG reduced it to; it’s hardly even relevant, frankly.
If he linked other people’s threads then I might believe it was just a helpful “here’s where some points can be found” kind of thing. As it is, I pretty much only see him linking to his own threads, and often with no more than a peremptory “I’ve done this, why are you bothering?” kind of attitude. I’m having trouble searching for examples, which is slightly unsatisfying, but the sheer number of posts BG makes in GD are a bit of an obstacle, particularly since there’s no obvious filter term for when he posts links.
He starts some great threads, but I really don’t understand his need to shop them around at every opportunity.
Well, his thread is his cite.
Here’s another one:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8220171&postcount=31
In this case, the fact that he answers “yes,” and links to a thread where he laid out his argument implies that he thought he “won” the prior debate.
It’s not an uncommon thing. For example, in one of his books A.A. Fair wrote a long paean to Erle Stanley Garder and theCourt Of Last Resort. Nothing wrong with that until you discover that A.A. Fair is a pseudonym used by Erle Stanley Gardner.
Personally, I think it’s very rude of all you other people to start OP’s in BrainGlutton’s forum.
But this one is in the pit. I thought **BrainGlutton ** called dibs on GD? 
Liberal, your link is identical to the ops. I think you meant to provide a different link.
Jim
I don’t know, but the dude posts too fucking much. Seriously. Way too fucking much. It’s not an issue of I’m worried for him / get a life. I really don’t care about that. It’s an issue of every third thread in GD shouldn’t be by the same person.
It wouldn’t be bad if he actually put forth an argument in each OP instead of just linking to another thread or news article, and asking questions like an essay prompt.
I agree. The dude seems to have to start a GD thread every time he has a random thought or reads some article somewhere. *Here’s an article, what do you think *is not an OP.
And yes, he does pimp his own threads to an eye-rolling degree. And when he’s not pimping them, he’s bumping them. It’s the posting equivalent of cutting in line-- not a good way to win friends and influence people.
I’d say he’s the poster child of why we need a rule to limit the number of threads started by a given person in a given time frame. I’ve got nothing against the guy, and he can be fun to debate with, but give the thread starting a rest.
Man, I’m disappointed!
I ran off to GD, thinking that I would see of glut of BrainGlutton’s threads and have a good laugh about the sheer number of them. When I got there, the first page had 4 BrainGlutton threads and 2 John Mace threads, not quite the deluge I thought there would be.
John Mace, what type of rule about thread starting did you have in mind? Perhaps the quality of thread started negates the need to create such a rule because if the quality of thread is not good, it will fall quickly off the front page and doesn’t create that great an impairment to the rest of the forum. This is just a guess. I don’t hang out much in GD.
And John Mace, I’m anxiously awaiting your responses in that philosophy thread in GD.
And oh, as to the OP’s question, I don’t know about intellectually dishonest, but I don’t find the practice very persuasive. So if the intent of the thread is to be persuasive, then it’s just counter-productive.
BG has started more threads in the past week than I have in six and a half years. Admittedly, I’m not the most prolific poster, but I’d still say that’s a lot.
48 GD threads in the last month. That’s about 10 per week. A good debate lasts at least a week, so that tends to push a lot of other debates into the black hole of “page 2”.
Like I said above, it tends to push other threads onto page 2. Imagine if we had even just 5 posters who started 10 threads per week in one forum. Personally, I think if you’re averaging more than 3 GD threads a week over a long period of time you’re hogging the microphone. But that’s just MHO. Others may disagree.
I’m not quite ready yet.
Well, shit. Fuck it. I’m not going to look for another one. I blame Andrew Jackal. 
I do not have a stake in this battle, but just for the fun of it, why don’t you go to BrainGlutton’s profile and click on the option to see all threads started by him. When I did this a few weeks back for some stats I was putting together, I found he had started over 400 threads in the last 12 months. This so exceeds the numbers of any other poster, that it should at least explain why people have taken notice.
As a disclaimer. Myself and **John Mace ** are the most prolific posters on the board. We are open to similar criticism. I do not mind BG, as many of his threads are interesting and I find it easy it ignore the ones that are not interesting to me.
Jim
Is there a such thing as a conclusive thread* on this board? I’d think such a think would be a sign of the End Times.
*Excluding GQ.
I 'unno. Valteron’s been on a tear lately.
Of course, all his threads are pretty much the same and he’s childish in all of them, so maybe he should only count once.
Huh. I just checked and somehow I thought he’d had more than two recent threads started on militant atheism. Not much of a tear, as tears go, I guess.