I’ve been critical of some of BrainGlutton’s threads in the past, especially his tendency to start a thread with nothing more than a cut-and-paste quotation and a link.
But your recent moderating of his posts about Ben Carson is silly. Despite the fact that the three posts he made were identical, each was completely appropriate and relevant for the thread in which it was posted.
Most ridiculous was your moderating of his contribution to the Stupid Republican Idea of the Day thread. That thread contains over 20,000 posts. It is one of the longest threads in the history of these boards, and there are literally hundreds—probably thousands—of posts in that thread that contain little more than a link and a quote.
Your decision to moderate each of those instances was not only dumb, it had a more detrimental effect on those threads than the posts you were moderating.
As i said, i think that there ***are ***times when BrainGlutton posts in non-productive ways, especially when he is the thread creator and simply starts a thread with a link and a quote. But those posts were completely fine in the context of the three threads where they appeared.
If you have a throat problem, take some medicine rather than looking for excuses to clear it in public.
I will require some guidance if I am to maintain my pristine purity (fifteen years and only banned once!). Every so often, I find a link/quote that so eloquently speaks for itself, I will cut and paste it with nothing more than a snide notice that I find comment unnecessary. Less often, I will deploy precisely the same post in two places where I think it appropriate.
First couple of times I did it, I noted the fact with minor trepidation: “Is this OK?”. Never had even the mildest rebuke. Am I to be obliged to alter my behavior, while letting BG take the heat?
I have no problem with the link-and-a-quote style in SRIOTD, I do it myself. But cross posting on three threads is a fair cop, even if the content is appropriate. I frequently post in Election threads that would be equally at home in SRIOTD, but I refrain because I know when others do this, they will pop up in my subscribed threads three times, which I find mildly annoying. Not worthy of a warning, but come on, pick a thread.
For clarity’s sake, here are the mod notes. Notice that the notes are not for “comment and link style” posting, but for cross posting the exact same comment, cut and paste style, in multiple threads.
Sure, probably. I make no comment about his response. I was only concerned with the original moderation. If he gets a note or a warning for the response, you won’t find me starting a thread about it.
But if each post was appropriate for the thread in which it appears, what’s the problem? Just because the moderator in question happened to be reading all three threads doesn’t mean that everyone else was. What if i were following, for example, the Ben Carson thread, but not the SRIOTD thread? The post is about Ben Carson, and it adds something to the discussion of Ben Carson, so having it in the Ben Carson thread seems appropriate, whether or not it also appears in the SRIOTD thread.
He posted a relevant message in three (or maybe two; see below) threads. Big fucking hairy deal. If it was actual spamming, or trolling, or something that wasn’t relevant to the threads in question, you’d have a point, but it wasn’t any of those things.
See, here’s one observation that i can understand and even get on board with.
While the post was on the general topic of Israel and the Middle East, it probably didn’t need to go in the Israeli election thread. It didn’t really add to what was a fairly sustained discussion. But it was completely in keeping with hundreds of previous posts in the SRIOTD thread, and it was also perfectly relevant to the Ben Carson thread.
Well I have a feeling if he had just posted it to those two threads then Jonathon probably wouldn’t have bothered to step in. I’m sure I’ve seen BrainGlutton do this before though. He comes across some tidbit and thinks he has to disseminate it wherever remotely applicable.
I’m with Fear Itself. Pick a thread. If you want to put the same link in each thread, do the work to write distinct threads that work within those threads. If it’s too much work to write a decent post, that’s a sign.