It would a hard one to jump onto.
I don’t think I ever had an exchange with lekatt, but from what I’ve seen in this thread and a few of the links I glanced at, I’d say that I agree with the above.
Perhaps if you actually looked farther into his posting style and constant misuse of links to his own website, and factor in his continual ignoring of moderator instructions, you might have a different informed opinion.
a. Context is key. For several years, lekatt persistently linked to pages on his blog that had nothing but his own opinions, claiming that they were “evidence” for the views he was espousing. “My post is my cite” has never been a particularly cogent argument, but when he repeatedly used it to claim a point in a discussion and then belittled other posters for having “failed” to review his “evidence,” it became a serious point of conflict. After several years of that stuff, he was told that he could not point to a link to his blog to pretend that he had provided “evidence” to support his position. A few posters misunderstood that to mean that he could not ever link to his blog, but he was never Modded for linking to an opinion piece that he acknowledged was an opinion piece.
b. would be OK, and when he was simply linking to his philosophical ramblings, he was not Modded.
c. could likely be an issue. However, I never got the impression that he was trying to drive traffic to his site for gain and I do not recall that issue ever coming up in staff discussions. (Other posters have run afoul of the matter of driving traffic, particularly when there appeared to be financial issues involved, but it was never an issue among the staff regarding lekatt.)
d. See a.
He was a harmless old man with goofy ideas. He wasn’t very bright but his worst sin was getting testy when he was dogpiled by belligerent SDMB posters. He was basically a punching bag for SDMB neckbeards who need to show how big their epeen is by proving that they are the athiest atheists around.
I’ll admit he was worse than Hitler, in that he linked to his blog and had a poor understanding of how science works.
I hate to admit it but I think you are exactly right. (As an athiestiest atheist)
Eta what’s an epeen?
e-penis. Here’s Urban dictionary’s take. Basically proving that you are the baddest mofo on your message board, MMORPG, whatever. On the SDMB it means being the quickest and most intransigent skeptic on the board. Don’t forget to throw out poorly understood terms like “falsifiability” and “Occams razor” a lot. I’ll admit I had tendencies to this myself when I first joined up, but the more I post and read, the more douchey it seems.
Its been rare but there have been special posters that had to have special rules just for them. Their particular quirks were not conducive to good communication on the board. Whether it was being forbidden from commenting on certain subjects or limits to the amount of threads started. Some things don’t fall easily into the rules but still need to be moderated because of the disruption it causes. Lekatt was one of those cases. And like most of those that needed special treatment he was unable to help himself and was self-eliminated. I don’t see how that is difficult to understand.
MODERATOR NOTE:
He’s not here to defend himself and this is too much already.
This thread is closed.