# May I have a reason, Tom? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [August 2, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058 "2009-08-02T14:20:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/1 "2009-08-02T14:20:40Z")
For this [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=526587) being closed? Apart from the snark about pissing contests, disinfectants, mops, I mean. I thought \*\*Shodan \*\*and I were being remarkably civil, though we obviously detest each other. What was your specific problem that required the thread being closed? If you wanted me to phrase more decorously my reasons for not going on a cite-search for \*\*Shodan \*\*unless he was prepared to offer some deeply abasing apology when I proved him wrong, then couldn’t you have simply made that point, and allowed me to re-phrase? What’s your damage, Heather? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/2 "2009-08-02T14:32:52Z")
That was mystifying. What went on there that doesn’t happen in every other political GD thread? (Largely the reason I avoid political GD threads in the first place, but there you go.) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/3 "2009-08-02T15:27:21Z")
I was not even looking at your exchange with Shodan as the reeason for closing the thread. It had 28 posts and over half were either smart-assed remarks, shots at other posters, or criticisms of the OP. Your feud with Shodan was just icing. Questions of partisanship always descend into examples of blind partisanship on the SDMB (with the usual suspects contributing well over half the bad feelings). I don’t know that the question is impossible to answer, but that thread was not going to provide an answer. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/4 "2009-08-02T15:34:50Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I was not even looking at your exchange with Shodan as the reeason for closing the thread. It had 28 posts and over half were either smart-assed remarks, shots at other posters, or criticisms of the OP. Your feud with Shodan was just icing. > > Questions of partisanship always descend into examples of blind partisanship on the SDMB (with the usual suspects contributing well over half the bad feelings). > > I don’t know that the question is impossible to answer, but that thread was not going to provide an answer. New memo from on high about “raising the tone”, huh? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/5 "2009-08-02T15:58:43Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > that thread was not going to provide an answer. I wish I had your kind of prescience. No sense telling people to stick to the subject, or stop doing X or Y or Z–no, sir. Shut it down, that’s the ticket. No sense in letting it get out of hand. In fact, why not shut every thread in GD down before it starts, as long you’ve got a really strong premonitition of how it’s going to become a noxious trainwreck eventually? After all, isn’t that what you’re here for? To close down discussion and debate before it gets started, or after it gets off on the wrong foot? May I start a similar thread again? Or is that being obstreperous? If not, is there some kind of new rule here I’m unaware of, forbidding a certain type of thread in GD (where a mod moved it, over my objections, by the way) concerning partisanship vs. policy? ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/6 "2009-08-02T16:40:53Z")
Perhaps we should have a forum for pissing contests? Our motto shall be the contest between the rival stationers in Pope’s Dunciad (1742 version). > [@](#): > > The Goddess then: "Who best can send on high > The salient spout far streaming to the sky, > His be yon Juno of majestic size > With cowlike udders and with oxlike eyes. > This China jordan let the chief o’ercome > Replenish, not ingloriously, at home. > > Osborne and Curll accept the glorious strife > Tho’ one his son dissuades and one his wife. > This on his manly confidence relies, > That on his vigour and superior size. > > First Osborne leaned against a letter’d post, > It rose and laboured to a curve at most. > So Jove’s bright bow displays its wat’ry round, > Sure sign that no spectator will be drown’d. > A second effort brought but new disgrace, > The wild meander washed the artist’s face. > Thus the small jet which hasty hands unlock > Spirts in the gardener’s eyes who turns the cock. > > Not so from dauntless Curll! Impetuous spread > The stream, and smoking flourished o’er his head. > So, (fam’d like thee for turbulence and horns) > Eridanus his humble fountain scorns. > Thro’ half the heavens he pours th’exalted urn > His rapid waters in their passage burn. > > Swift as it mounts all follow with their eyes, > Still happy impudence obtains the prize! > Thou triumph’st, victor of the high-wrought day, > And the pleas’d dame soft-smiling lead’st away. > Osborne, thro’ perfect modesty o’ercome, > Crown’d with the jordan walks contented home. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/7 "2009-08-02T16:51:39Z")
Is “insult by quoting Pope” cool in ATMB? If so, I got choice zingers if ya want 'em. He was a nasty mo-fo, Alex was. Just gimme the high sign, Tom. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/8 "2009-08-02T17:04:11Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > May I start a similar thread again? Or is that being obstreperous? If not, is there some kind of new rule here I’m unaware of, forbidding a certain type of thread in GD (where a mod moved it, over my objections, by the way) concerning partisanship vs. policy? If I had read(carefully) your OP in that thread, and were a moderator of IMHO, which I am not, I probably would have moved it to the Pit, rather than GD. When you said > [@](#): > > I question whether Sam Stone and his ilk… , you pretty much laid out the tone of the question. And, yeah, I re-read your whole OP carefully. I DO understand that you were trying to conduct a poll of sorts, but your language(perhaps necessarily) seemed to set up a confrontational situation. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/9 "2009-08-02T18:22:13Z")
Obstreperous. What a marvelous word! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-i-have-a-reason-tom/505058/10 "2009-08-02T19:14:20Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > I wish I had your kind of prescience. I wish you did, too. > [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > May I start a similar thread again? Or is that being obstreperous? If not, is there some kind of new rule here I’m unaware of, forbidding a certain type of thread in GD (where a mod moved it, over my objections, by the way) concerning partisanship vs. policy? If you can figure a way to ask the question in such a manner that you are not inviting, indeed, begging, for a whole thread of _tu quoque_ responses and sniping, go ahead. You say that it was moved “over your objections,” but “your objections” were little more than not so veiled insults and histrionics. Then, in your next post, you continue the high moral tone with > [@Criticism of the Obama administration](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/criticism-of-the-obama-administration/504974/9): > > I’m torn between giving righties’ posts that same sort of dismissive response or reading them to see if there’s any non-partisan substance there. If you can’t post without belittling “the other side,” then take it to the Pit. The comments you posted gave me no reason to believe you were seeking an “honest opinion” so much as to provide a platform for smug or selfrighteous condemnation of the the political Right. Given the nature of several posters on the Right, it required no prescience on my part to see where the thread was heading and I see no reason to tell respondents to your posts to stick to the topic when the topic appears to be “how many ways can I bash the Right from behind a mask of an ‘honest question’?”