at post #25, Colibri states (forgive the amateurish quotes)
Moderator Warning
Quote:
Originally Posted by ralph124c View Post
More recently, I very much doubt that engineering marvels like the Hoover Dam, Golden Gate Bridge, Holland Tunnel, could be built today.
Not because the engineering talent doesn’t exist…its because the necessary permitting, environmental impact statements, etc. wold take decades to complete. And you would always have some nutbag group protesting it, even after all the hurdles had been cleared.
Look what happens when you try to reduce carbon footprints (by building a nuclear power plant)-the protest groups come out of the woodwork-and tie you up in court for years.
Moderator Warning
ralph124c, you’ve been around plenty long enough to know that political potshots are not allowed in General Questions. This is an official warning.
Aruqvan then says nutbag isn’t a political party and Colibri invites us to take the argument here.
He states: A political jab doesn’t have to be against a specific political party. The use of loaded terms like “nutbag” and “eco fanatics” is inappropriate for GQ, and doesn’t contribute to the discussion here, and in addition is off topic from the OP.
I just can’t understand how the post by Ralph is a “political jab”. Is a jab against an interest group political? For instance, if I have a go at the RSPCA (Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) because of their campaign against whips on race horses- is that also political?
If Colibri had issued a warning for using “loaded terms”, I could understand (if not agree with) in that forum. However political seems as if it is drawing a long bow.
I don’t see how this merits a warning or even a caution flag, especially because the nutbag group in this case is a hypothetical one (“some nutbag group”).
Warning? No. I don’t really see anything political about it (though I personally have a similar sentiment, so I may be biased). Note? Probably. It doesn’t really seem to be on topic.
GQ has stricter rules and specific ones against that sort of thing. Maybe this is going to get down to a semantic argument. That type of post was specifically asked not to be made in the OP and could have hijacked an interesting discussion and the poster is a repeat offender for dropping stink bombs like that in threads. The thread was meant to be about engineering and technology, not regulations and laws and snark about environmentalists.
Not to speak for the mods, but I think this is a big factor. The poster in question has a well established habit of doing this in all sorts of threads, and neither acknowledging the issue nor modifying his behavior.
You seem to have a strange set of values. I use them in rhe same thread- starting a new thread and using the multi quotes is a bit of a challenge. I fail to see it as absurd- especially as the quotes have not been in existence for 11 years.
Anyway, lets cut to the chase and ignore absurd arguments from posters who have been here for 12 years.
Highlight the text, click the quote button (not the quote button that appears under every post - the quote button that appears when you are typing a post, looks like this).
Sorry for the derailment - I know that I get a little tweaked when threads I participate in go off the rails. It just…struck me weirdly.
Usually if multiquote doesn’t work, there’s a tiny 6-point font sentence under the text box that says something like “multiple quotes not a part of this thread have been selected. Do you want to use them? Yes/No” It’s easy to miss.
Colibri is probably not going to see this thread until the weekend, but speaking as a non-GQ mod, I think the big problem is this part of the post:
This is not a comment about hypothetical protesters, it’s an off-topic political comment about real-world environmental protesters. Colibri says ralph214c has a history of that, so he took that into account in deciding to hand out a warning.
I’ve also fixed the thread title so it’s clear warning was given in GQ, not GD.
Marley - my concern is that if that’s the benchmark for giving ralph a warning, why doesn’t he have a thousand warnings? That’s honestly an underestimation.
He says anti-nuclear protesters are nuts, and that’s a political comment. You don’t have to name a political party to make a comment about a political issue.
Marley, with all due respect, I can’t follow that reasoning. Everything is a political issue, if you want it to be. If I don’t get kerbing that is a political issue for me and my council. However, if I say people climbing trees to protest against them being cut down are nuts, it could also mean I fear for their safety.
An anti- nuclear movement may be sensitive, but it comes across to me that calling it political is a back door approach to calling it for the actual reason- the author was using inflammatory words.
There’s no rule against mentioning something that could be a political issue. The rule proscribes off-topic political comments, and that’s what this was. The thread topic is “What human-made structures could not be rebuilt today?” and it’s a discussion of the feasibility of rebuilding various structures. ralph214c’s comment was basically “anti-nuclear protesters are nuts.”
