Actually, American Republicans do kind of have a monopoly on a certain kind of whiny jerkish behavior, at least compared to other western democracies. They are more in-line far right with anti-democratic parties in authoritarian regimes. Given that, it’s not surprising that they struggle with abiding with the rules of a board that is trying to promote the exchange of ideas from diverse groups of people.
This happened in my lifetime though. In the 60s & 70s a significant part of the Dems were the outlier. I really think it all starts with and centers on the Dixiecrats. They took the Republican party down a terrible road.
And dammit, it was my man Reagan that reeled them in.
I think that’s both insulting and incorrect.
There’s evidence for the first bit.
Modhat time: OK guys, me too. This part of the discussion should have its own thread in either P&E or The Pit. Not more here please.
The magnet school thread was closed again two weeks ago. No reason was given besides it being a “mess” and a promise that some unspecified people ought to be “issued warnings” and no followup has come since January 27.
It seems pretty apparent that any thread in which long-time registrants in the ideological mainstream here are making fools of themselves has a short shelf life. GIGOBuster repeatedly made the thread unreadable by posting literal gibberish and MrDibble advanced barely on-topic ideas so outlandish as to be trolling then repeatedly did parting shot mic-drops in which he proclaimed his refusal to engage in any sort of discussion, returning over and over again for another one, without any kind of sanction. Instead of reigning in the people who were making the thread unusable the mods looked for reasons to discipline those arguing on the other side and then, when they ran out of any possible way to do that, closed the thread (twice).
In my opinion, all the posts about how advanced education shouldn’t exist at all ought to have been separated to another thread as some sort of first attempt to salvage the discussion. Failing that, the moderators could at least be clear about what the standards are. If any of the following topics are, de facto, not allowed to be discussed on this board, then just make it a rule instead of forcing us to guess:
*Anti-Asian racism on the part of liberals or leftists
*Public school admissions policies
*Whether some people are more academically capable than other people and how the education system should respond to that situation
Right now it seems that those topics are at a minimum considered borderline - witness how quickly they get chased out of any other thread. I honestly don’t know if starting a new thread about the topic of selective school admissions is allowed or not, or what the staff believes the problem with the existing thread was. There is continuing news about the TJ and Lowell stories that belongs in any discussion of the issue but right now it’s effectively a shadowbanned topic on this board.
Had to have a good long think about it all, did we?
And just so we’re clear, I only did one leaving of the thread.
Stating I wasn’t responding to you, and your calling children “slow-witted”, “dumb” and “stupid”, specifically, doesn’t count as a mic-drop. Just a response.
And I also take issue with you characterizing a currently-active and successful pedagogical method as
It seems pretty clear that all those topics are allowed. The thing they’ll shut down is a topic with more sniping than genuine discussion. Frankly I think when limited to the original discussion topic there really wasn’t that much meat on the bone, so the actual topic died pretty quickly.
Of note too is that most of the oxygen for the topics came from what the bigoted Trump administration was doing with this wedge issue.
I was going to let this complaint from ZosterSandstorm to go unanswered, but he also bumped the tread where damuriajashi did get away with declaring all “woke” supporters of diversity as being idiots, with a “clarification” that he wanted to delete that line, the mod let it go. However IIRC that would not have flown in the past as it is clear that posters would use that “out” again and again, and it is happening when him and his group are still declaring other posters in favor of diversity or other progressive ideas as “woke”, the meaning damur gave to that word remains.
As for the ZosterSandstorm repeated claims that I post gibberish, more than once I admitted my grammar is a crime against nature, but it is clear the even DemonTree showed him that she does understand me, as many others do. Suffice to say, is that most grammar Nazis that me and many others in the SDMB have encountered before are the ones that usually get banned.
I and many others. 
ETA. I wish I spoke your language as well as you speak mine.
In that thread you posted the ideas that: no high school student actually wants to take calculus, that anyone who is even slightly ahead of the average in math skill has a “social disorder,” that the purpose of the educational system should be to destroy the notion of “individual goals,” that solutions to global warming and pandemics will not involve knowledge of science, and, I think most egregiously by the standards of trolling, that the reason “the USA is in the state that it is” is because of too many children being taught calculus.
If trolling is defined as advancing arguments that
-it seems incredible for a poster to sincerely believe
-are designed to maximize the chaos in the thread, and/or
-hijack the underlying topic of the thread into something wildly different
then these certainly fit the bill. There is no way that going into a thread about whether the admissions process to a certain high school is fair and posting something as inflammatory, disingenuous, and off-topic as “we shouldn’t teach anyone calculus because it’s encouraging social disorders and is the problem with American society!” would be tolerated if it were of an equivalent degree but coming from a different ideological direction or a less established poster. Indeed, your repeated harping on these wild notions derailed the thread so far that it turned into a “mess” and a “dumpster fire” and it was subsequently closed, though only the people who attempted to keep it on-topic will be sanctioned as a result.
This should almost go without saying at this point, but: the Trump administration did not weigh in on the issue of TJ admissions at any point, and as usual no one knows what GIGObuster is talking about, but his attempt to re-litigate nonexistent issues from the original thread in this discussion while taking the opportunity to associate his opponents with Nazis will also be treated differently than if someone from the other side were doing the same.
WTF? Grammar Nazi is a well-known term:
grammar nazi Meaning | Pop Culture by Dictionary.com.
More links upon request.
@GIGObuster, I never found your grammar to be off or stilted. I think you write very well and I wouldn’t have guessed that English is your second language.
That’s a somewhat ‘creative’ interpretation, although I found his real ideas egregious enough. The stuff about gifted/advanced schooling generally was a hijack, and I think @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness’s subsequent thread on the subject was much better and more constructive.
But I agree it would be good to have a place to put news of developments in the original topic. Perhaps @What_Exit would reopen the thread, or you could start a new one and link to the old thread?
No, I will not reopen that thread. If a new one starts, avoid the sniping between all sides. I know very little toleration will be given.
Modnote: Just a reminder to all, do not try and argue the content of those GD threads here in ATMB. That is not how this works.
It’s inapplicable here. I don’t care that he uses an apostrophe in the wrong place, I care that he posts entire sentences whose meaning can’t be determined, frequent references to nonexistent conversations (e.g. some involvement of Trump in the TJ admissions controversy which apparently only he is privy to), responses to points that were never made due to misreading other people’s arguments, and other garbage that makes any kind of dialogue impossible. Whether it’s due to less than ideal English skills or some other reason really isn’t my problem.
Can you provide some clarity as to what is “sniping” versus “disagreeing” in a thread debating a political issue?
As others showed, this item is not true at all. It is not my problem that you also have trouble with idioms.
Sniping is when the posters start going after each other and not the issue. Those threads became half sniping in the opinion of the GD mods. It was pretty bad in fact.
As the rules say, Attack the post, not the poster.
Honestly, I would hope the difference was more apparent.
If what you mainly want to do is post updates, perhaps putting the new thread in a different forum would generate less fighting?