I thought you show excellent judgment in acknowledging that a Mod really shouldn’t moderate a thread he started, but giving your (again excellent) reasons for violating that principle in this instance. I think it’s the least a mod could do, saying in effect, “Not such a good idea, generally, but please indulge me here for the sake of preventing this whole thread from flying off the rails.” I think there are better alternatives to this (emailing another mod, asking him to look at the post in question, and then abiding by his/her judgment), but at least you showed a little sensitivity to your somewhat contradictory roles as an admin and as a poster, and (implicitly) that those roles when conjoined present an ethical issue. Good on you. I appreciate your effort.
Crap! Someone stole prr’s account. We’ll get to the bottom of this…
Is this an attempt at damning by faint praise? If not I can’t really see what this thread is about.
Anyway I don’t see why a technical etiquette breach matters when it’s obvious to anyone that any sane moderator would have done the same thing. It’s not as if Marley was censoring counter-opinions to his own. He was just stopping thread shitting.
There’s no rule against it, but I agree it’s not ideal. In this particular case I wanted to prevent a thread hijack and those can happen quickly. I’m also by choice kind of the only mod in Elections - tomndebb and twickster back me up when needed, but mostly their attitude is that since I supported the idea for the forum, I am stuck with it. 
Man, I can’t catch a break!
It’s dead-serious–I’ve been requesting (mostly politely, sometimes not-so-much) that the Mods recuse themselves in threads they’d like to post in for several years, or at least do what **Marley **did here: apologize for the obvious conflict of interest. It’s kind of silly when a thread gets all heated and controversial (and shit, of course) and the dude moderating it has to spend half his time chewing someone’s ass out and the other half pretending to being a fair and impartial judge of people’s arguments.
I think it’s the equivalent of a guy telling his cowering girlfriend with the black eye and varicolored bruises concealed under inappropriately long sleeves that she “looks real pretty today.”
waaahwhyareyoumoddingmeIdon’tdeservetobemoddedinfactyou’reahypocritebecauseyousaidthisaboutsomethingisaidbutyoudidn’tsaythatabajillionthreadsagosoyoudon’tdeservetobeamodandimgoingtoflounceovertoATMBandpissandmoanbecauseIdon’tseewhyyouhavetosinglemeoutforbeinganabusiveprickbecauseinmyheartitrulybelieveihavearighttobeanabusiveprickandifyoucallmeoutforbeinganabusivepricki’mgoingtomakeyourlifehellbymakingyouengageinpointlessargumentsabouthesamegoddamnthingeverygoddamndayuntilthedayidiebecauseitiss
mygodgivenrighttobeanabusiveprickandyou’reallabunchofmeaniesfornotlettingme
“abusive prick” in ATMB? Hmmm…curious how long this goes unwarned. We’ll see.
If it does, I won’t complain. 
Sorry to raise a stink, and I don’t have a beef with you, but do you really need to be so tweakerish about this stuff? Every time you do it, you lose not only the argument, but credibility.
I’m always so touched about people’s concern about my loss of gravitas. Bless your heart.
An Arky, I have a sneaking suspicion ppr doesn’t take your last post seriously! Or even really bless your heart!
I’m not convinced he’s even a priest.
MODERATOR WARNING FOR JERKISH BEHAVIOR.
You already knew you’d get warned, so I’ll save the pixels.
samclem, Moderator
Well, I for one, have never Moderated in a thread that I initiated.
*Note to people who have only been around a short time. tom has started two threads since becoming a moderator. The job just sucks the creativity out of you.
I just watched an episode of Perception and the screwed-up-sleuth™ solved a code that looked just like this.
I want to warn everybody in this thread not to open packages sent to them they aren’t expecting because they may contain canisters of sarin inside.
And check on your parents to make sure they aren’t being held hostage.
More like “Today you really did a good job of not forcing me to hit you”
“… too hard.”
[Nelson] Ha! Ha! [/Nelson]