**Lizard ** posted a thread entitled “Where’s the best weed from?” in GQ http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=43511 . manhattan closed it down and issued Lizard a warning. Why?
This isn’t a flame, manny, I’m just trying to figure out what the limits are. The information sought in the thread was about an illegal substance, true, but Lizard didn’t ask where he could get the best weed; he was just asking if marijuana from different places had higher/lower qualities. One of the respondents to the thread mentioned pot from British Columbia – I already knew that from reading Newsweek (or mebbe Time) for god’s sake.
There is a lot of discussion on this board of illegal activity, from drug use to polygamy to incest. Hell, a few months ago, Lizard posted three threads seeking advice on whether to hire a hooker, informing Dopers he was going to do it, then discussing the event. There, he confessed to committing a criminal act. Why was that acceptable, but raising a topic already covered in a mainstream news magazine worthy of closure and a warning?
What’s the deal?
Probably, if the Chicago Reader is like the one I get Cecil in, half the articles have dope-smoking references, half the staff is in rehab, and all the “customers” but thee and me are ne’er-do-well drifters.
Okay, let’s say the Chicago Reader gets hauled into court on a morals charge.
The defending attorney claims that the Reader is as pure as the driven snow.
The prosecutor says “Isn’t it true that, among the other vices it espouses, this newspaper gives out free advice about the most intoxicating forms of cannabis?”
Defense sputters “Nonsense!”
Prosecution whips out a printout of Lizard’s thread, with the “Contents of the SDMB website are copyright by the Chicago Reader” circled in red.
The judge, whose 15-year-old daughter died of a marijuana overdose back in 1973, throws the book at the newspaper. Cecil, Little Ed, and manhattan are led out of the Cook County Courthouse in iron chains and leg-shackles, to labor in the ice-and-salt mines beneath Lake Michigan forevermore.
Was it really worth it, just so you wouldn’t get burned on your next schoolyard nickel-bag purchase? Think of manny’s poor, gray-haired old mother, weeping her eyes out, his portrait turned to the wall. You selfish swine.
Uh, is it even possible to overdose on marijuana? I was under the impression you’d have to smoke about a ton of it at once for it to be fatal.
Which still doesn’t explain why Lizard was allowed to post about hiring a hooker, so it’d be nice if the moderators were at least consistent about this sort of thing.
No one on record has ever died from a marijuana overdose.
I’m with Sua, Lizard had a valid, legitimate, run of the mill variety, question. Why the closing of the thread? and the warning? Why make a mountain out of a molehill?
I was going to let mouthbreather’s statement stand in for my response, but now there’s TWO dumbfucks here that think they’re gonna teach me something I don’t know about reefer.
“Marijuana overdose” was a JOKE. A JOKE. A JOKE. I considered spelling marijuana “marihuana” to drive the point home, but decided that everyone here was bright enough to get the JOKE without the archaic spelling.
The part about manny being dragged into lifelong slavery and his mother forsaking him was likewise a JOKE.
Here’s a sentence I edited out of my above post. “And the Zotti children! Deprived of their dear father’s guiding hand, left orphaned to work their little fingers to the bone at the Tuna Cannery to earn their daily groats and lentils!”
That was a JOKE, too. I felt it was driving the point home a little too hard, so I removed it.
Sure, sure, scoff if you will, but the essential point remains: why are hookers OK and mary jane verboten?
We’ve also recently seen Homer’s late-night ode to mushroom consumption, so it’s not even that all drugs are out of bounds.
So, here’s my question: which of the following potential threads would be off-limits, and why? So, hey, guys, I want to hire a hitman Got any weed for sale in Chicagoland? Why small children of the same sex are the perfect lovemates I just did a tab of LSD and I’m marroonclgfguyt I’m auctioning off a night with my wife on eBay Which major world leader would you like to kill? Necrophilia: not just for feebs anymore! Stock Manipulation: Fun and Easy! I’ve got a truck full of fertilizer; how do I turn it into a bomb? Post your best whore stories! Where can I get those cable TV “black boxes” cheap? Squicking: The Most Perfect Expression of Love Demi Moore cost Robert Redford a cool million. How much would it take for you to sleep with a stranger? Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As a Downhill Motor Race
Well, obviously, as you can tell from the “member” under my username, I am not a mod. But, here’s my guess on why Homer’s thread was OK, as was the hooker thread.
Those threads were about people sharing things that they had done. They were not promoting their activities, and they were not using the SDMB to facilitate any of their illegal activities. Well, perhaps in the hooker thread he was asking for opinions on the moral aspect of it, but it’s not like he was asking what corner he should stand on or what a good deal is on a BJ and a thumb up the ass.
I know, I know – It didn’t seem that Lizard’s thread was using the SD to facilitate his weed smoking. I’m not sure why that one was closed. Still waiting from the verdict from Manny.
And, BTW, re:
If this is true, you have far more serious problems than worrying why certain threads get locked.
I’m not going to speak for manny but I will give my own opinions:
If we were to close every one of Ace’s hypothetical threads we’d get people accusing us of overmoderating and censorship.
If we allowed every one of those threads to stay open, we’d get people crying out in horror that we moderators sit idly by while such horrible inappropriate activities are being discussed.
If we committed neither extreme and just called each one as we see them, we get accused of being inconsistent and illogical.
In the past month Mods have been accused of all of the above. The moral? We mods can’t please everyone here. But we shouldn’t try to please everyone here.
Part of our job is keeping this site out of potential legal doo-doo. When in any doubt, I close threads like Lizard’s. I personally would have closed it too had it popped up in my forum. Just because a previous “hooker thread” was not closed doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been or that other marginally threads should be allowed to be open. I don’t know, I don’t even remember reading that thread. I’d rather close borderline threads than put the SDMB in such a legally vulnerable position that the head honchos at the Chicago Reader feel that the MB’s continued existence is not worth the risk. Dig?
Don’t you guys know shiftless no-good dirty hippies who you can approach with your dang hoodlum reefer questions?
*I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Six months, two weeks, two days, 18 hours, 46 minutes and 29 seconds.
7991 cigarettes not smoked, saving $998.91.
Extra life with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 6 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes.
I find it highly doubtful that such topics as the one which was the subject of the closed thread would prompt legal action against the Reader. While Free Speech rights do not exist from the board to the members, they DO exist to the Reader from the government. Perhaps one of the lawyers on the board could explain that a bit better than I can, but I think the “legal doo-doo” argument doesn’t wash here.
However, the Reader certainly does have the right to kill any topics that it doesn’t like seeing on its message board, and in my experience as a longtime lurker here and on the AOL board, “dope” threads, where “dope” equalled drugs, always got killed. Part of that was the concern on the AOL board of keeping within AOL Terms of Service guidelines. Part of it may simply be a strong desire on Cecil’s part (smirk) to avoid any seeming connection to drugs.
Goldie
Gentlemen DO prefer blondes – and for good reason!
If it’s a matter of trying to keep the content here within “specific bounderies,” that seems fine. But the legal arguement seems rather pathetic. It seems one could have more of an arguement for a lawsuit concerning a flame war in the pit.
It appears that there will always be criticism of the moderator’s decisions here until there is no longer a “grey area” of what can and cannot be posted.
