In your recent sticky in GQ, Manhattan, you set forth the following rule:
First, I want to agree that acrimonious political debates have no place in GQ, and in that respect I think it’s an excellent rule.
But it seems to me that the stance you’re taking may be extending too far. For an example of what I’m seeing, let’s take the Bush v. Gore 2000 acrimony as an example.
Suppose an OP asks something innocuous about what the term “political question” means in jurisprudence. In the course of discussion, various examples of what the courts have regarded as nonjusticiable “political questions” and what they’ve agreed to hear cases on are mentioned – and the SCOTUS Bush v. Gore rulings come up.
In dealing with the latter, two possible statements can be made:
This is clearly a political opinion with no business being posted in GQ, and your warning on it would be seen as proper by all right-thinking Dopers who respect the rules.
Now, the second:
This is a statement of fact, and the most rabid of pro-Bush Republicans would have to concede that, if valid, it represents a problem with which the Bush Administration and the Courts must deal for the legitimacy of the former and the non-political, evenhanded reputation of the latter to survive.
Too, it can be said in a way that does not represent belligerence, but rather a placing of a datum that must be dealt with into the mix of what constitutes a “political question” and why the courts tend to avoid them. In fact, I’d give it as an excellent example of why the courts are ill-advised to enter into what Frankfurter once called the “political thicket.”
Would you care to comment on how this sort of statement would fit with regard to your rule?
Number produced from the Polycarp Rectum Databank, and not to be relied on by any debater.
You know, I was actually thinking about asking about this, but decided that I am not high enough in the SDMB food chain to be pitting a moderator.
If someone starts something in GQ which is obviously a GD, a warning would be justified. But if a thread starts as a GQ and evolves into a GD, why not just move it to the proper forum?
Poly, please forgive me if this ends up hijacking your thread, but I’m really curious about this.
Seems to me that it depends on how much of a hijack attempt is involved. The threads that appear to have inspired the sticky - this one and this one in particular - were hijacked pretty badly, in each case by people with Agendas whose responses didn’t illuminate the General Question. And in this case, Manny noted that there were already a number of threads on the same topic in the right forum, so moving the thread would be redundant.
Oxy’s hit it on the head. We’re not trying to draw very fine lines in the sand. We’re saying, stick to the topic, and don’t hijack a thread to suit your own political agenda.
I dunno Poly…what kind of discourse would your rectally sourced “fact” lead to?
A question about the techniques of a polling process?
A question about the validity of those poll results?
Frankly…your conclusion that
Seems kind of weak and unsupported as a matter of “fact” (vs debate). The populace often express an “opinion” about something…but act in different manner than their response might indicate.
A clear and significant majority of the populace have no problem classifying abortion as murder (a rather emotionally charged phrase…that I as a pro life person tend to avoid in debate) …but yet their other beliefs are often in conflict with that belief.
I think it’s a bit specious to draw firm, GQ type conclusions from this type of polling …although it certainly is interesting to debate those conclusions.
I dunno Poly…what kind of discourse would your rectally sourced “fact” lead to?
A question about the techniques of a polling process?
A question about the validity of those poll results?
Frankly…your conclusion that
Seems kind of weak and unsupported as a matter of “fact” (vs debate). The populace often express an “opinion” about something…but act in different manner than their response might indicate.
A clear and significant majority of the populace have no problem classifying abortion as murder (a rather emotionally charged phrase…that I as a pro life person tend to avoid in debate) …but yet their other beliefs are often in conflict with that belief.
I think it’s a bit specious to draw firm, GQ type conclusions from this type of polling …although it certainly is interesting to debate those conclusions.
Oxy’s hit it on the head. We’re not trying to draw very fine lines in the sand. We’re saying, stick to the topic, and don’t hijack a thread to suit your own political agenda.
Yeah, beagledave, the example was a bit weak – it was the best I could come up with off the top of my head. The idea that a (presumably reputable) poll says that a fair share of Americans disagree with the methodology used by the Court is the “fact” that I was referring to – I realized that that statement wasn’t clear about 0.2 seconds after hitting “submit reply” (as nearly always happens!).
I am not a mod, but it seems to me that there can be General Questions on sensitive political subjects with factual answers. Sometimes the questions have no complete or satisfying answers, but that something we can learn from GQ as well.
Sometimes, once it is determined that there are no clear answers, the thread is quite properly locked before it can turn into a debate. But I would count those as successful GQ threads. For instance, the second thread that OxyMoron linked to had some fine factual answers from media and adminstration sources before it began to run off the rails.
Perhaps the best example I can think of was a fairly recent thread asking Noam Chomsky - Who is this guy? In that thread several people calmly discussed Chomsky’s role in linguistics and political thought, despite his being a polarizing figure. They effectively answered the OP’s question, and after the factual answers had been pretty fully mined, the thread was locked to prevent it from devolving into a debate. I recall that someone asked a similar question a few weeks later, and was satisfied with a link to the original thread.
In short, I don’t think that a locked GQ thread necessarily indicates a problem with the OP or the majority of the thread. It’s only the political hijackers that are the problem that locking needs to fight.
(In actuality, I just wanted to jump in on a thread where Poly was taking manny to the Pit . If there’s anything that’ll put manny over the top in the Pit race, it’s getting pitted by Polycarp. And on preview I see that it includes a Dex double post, what fun!)
But nonetheless it makes the point. Facts is facts and opinion is opinion.
I’m aware that the second sentence there is not quite true. In a question like “What was SCOTUS’ reasoning in the Bush/Gore decision?” it would be borderline. In “Absent black-letter law, how does SCOTUS arrive at its decisions?” it would be a reasonably factual counterassertion to “The Court tries to reflect the will of the people, subject to…”
In either case, that’s not what I’m shooting at, and I think pretty much everyone knows it. I’m taking aim at “well, it’s not sex in Arkansas, as Clinton so aptly demonstrated” and "it’s a stupid law anyway"and that sort of thing. If something contributes meaningfully to a General Answer, there’s no problem. If something apparently tries to contribute meaningfully to a General Answer but fails (in our judgement), we might knock heads, but gently. If something is a potshot taken knowing I’m not going to allow the full debates that occur in Great Debates, that’s when we’ll pull out the brass head-knockers.
Thanks. Because I do have strong opinions, and IMHO a fairly good grasp of the difference between a fact, a reasonably held belief, and an opinion, I wanted to be sure of what you were targeting before I ended up crossing the line.
Just like my answer to a GQ “Do Christians really think they’re eating Jesus’s body?” would be a statement of what various denominations believe about communion, with an attempt to make clear that I’m stating the “fact” of what their various beliefs are – and if the OP is not a religious but a political question, you can see how that could get a bit tough to make clear.
In this thread I intended to do several things. As it happened, I posted late and on preview I had to ditch a lot of what Fear Itself already said.
That left me with some valuable information to contribute about an entertainer who is rightly regarded by many on these boards as someone who does not exactly fight ignorance.
I tried to anticipate what I felt would be a legitimate draft deferral follow-up question. I also made sure to point out an amusing synonym for the term “pilonidal cyst.”
But I also wanted to give folks a chuckle about the second hole in Rush Limbaugh’s ass, and indirectly allude to his annoying hypocrisy in criticizing President Clinton for avoiding military service while he himself did much the same thing.
Since we have the attention of some of the order-keepers here, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know if such a post is too inflammatory for GQ.
And since I’m not in GQ, allow me to say, “look, Rush has a cyst in the crack of his fat arse!” Nyah, nyah!
Okay, that’s cryptic enough for me to know that I don’t need to be feeding pineapples to the koalas.
If I can anticipate the question before anyone asks it, I sure as hell can anticipate when a thread is going to start sliding down the side of the bowl. I’ll keep it in mind next time.
I wonder which direction Rush wipes his ass… front to back, or back to front? Maybe he just dabs.
