Like I said in the other thread (about whatshisname–the guy with the ancient socks), I wish the mods wouldn’t tie themselves into pretzels trying to come up with a tortured reason to warn someone.
This clearly wasn’t (in the hands of a normal poster) a political jab except in the loosest sense. Thing is, Ralph is a Jerk. He regularly threadshits and throws “bombs” into normal discussions with non-crazy people.
Instead of trying to find some rule you can torture to warn him, why not just say “Ralph, you’re being a Jerk. Again. You’re officially warned, now shut the hell up and try to be less stupid next time”.
It’s the random misapplication of rules (like this one) that drives posters (ok, me) nuts. The first rule is “Don’t be a Jerk”. Just use it on him and be done with it.
But that statement is true. The reason a bunch of human-made structures can’t be rebuilt is various protestors. We don’t have more nuclear plants because it’s unfeasible to fight all the eco-type’s lawsuits.
The problem isn’t that concept, which is factually correct, it’s that Ralph was a Jerk about it (again). It’s not politics in this case, it’s Jerkdom.
It’s a cumulative situation. This isn’t the first time that poster had to be told to keep political jabs out of GQ. Repeated moderator notes for the same behavior often results in a formal warning, as it should.
The OP posed a hypothetical where the structures are destroyed by aliens with a “anti-monument laser.” It’s absurd to bring real-world nuclear or environmental protests into it. The OP was asking about the feasibility of rebuilding real-life structures. Complaints about anti-nuclear power protests are totally irrelevant, and it’s just as sensible to pretend the aliens blew up all the protesters.
Quite honestly, that “no political jabs” rule is way over sensitive. I pretty much stopped posting there due to the unlimited interpretation of what constitutes a political jab. This thread is pretty much an example of this. Ralph’s post was in no way a political jab, yet it was convenient for meeting the “no political jab” weekly warning quota. Like I said, it’s easier to avoid posting in GQ than try to determine if what you post could possibly be construed as a jab.
And yet most people never get warned for their posts there. If you keep the posts factual (with the occasional bad joke), never try to push any kind of agenda, and never include commentary on any group, it really isn’t very hard.
But the hypothetical is stupid. If you’re starting your premise by excluding real-world answers, it should be in IMHO, not GQ.
“What if dinosaur ghosts came back from the past and attacked us with ray-guns. NO SILLY ANSWERS” isn’t a GQ topic. Neither is “Ignoring real world stuff, can we build rebuild stuff?”. Would “Yeah, let’s use fission bombs to level the ground, matter-transmuters to create the material and anti-gravity beams to put it into place” be a GQ-acceptable answers?
A GQ question shouldn’t be allowed to exclude real-world answers.
Real-world answers are not excluded. The tangent about protesters and whether or not they are nuts is being excluded so the topic can remain focused on the technical feasibility of rebuilding the structures.
“Can we rebuild certain historical structures in the modern day?”
“We could, but one reason we don’t is because of various protesters”.
If you want you can call that response off-topic, but frankly its a perfectly valid answer to the question asked. On the off-topic scale its definitely a one out of ten.
As Fenris says, if you want to warn the guy then just warn him, but lets not pretend he was particularly out of line.
The OP specified to ignore human obstructionism as part of the thought experiment (bolding mine):
For most people I’d assume they were an outright jerk for ignoring a specific condition in the OP, but this being Ralph, my guess is he simply didn’t read any further once he spotted an opportunity to go off topic grousing about “how things are nowadays”. It’s a pattern.
He was, though. I don’t agree with Fenris’ suggestion to simply use “don’t be a jerk” as sole justification for dishing out warnings in cases like this: posters should have specific guidance in advance as to what behaviors are unwelcome, particularly in forums like GQ where the goal is to have calm, factual discussions. But I absolutely agree with him that the mods shouldn’t feel compelled to try to semantically torture the language of rules to justify actions that are in clear violation of the spirit of said rules.
I think ralph’s exact point could have been made in a non-inflammatory way and no one would have raised an eyebrow. Let’s pretend he had posted: “I would argue that the prevailing social views toward large scale construction projects have a greater impact on their feasibility than mere engineering capability. We live in a very different society now than the pharoahs did. Between worker protections and environmental impact restrictions, social forces would make construction of new pyramids less likely to succeed now than then, despite our vastly superior technologies in mining and transporting large stone blocks.”
Do you think there’s even a chance he would have been warned? I don’t. Because it’s not just about the fundamental point, it’s also about how you express it. In GQ, you have to go out of your way to express potentially inflammatory positions without taking potshots. Want to refer to “nutbag protestors” or “idiotic religious groups”? Do it in the Pit or GD, or suck it up when you get warned.
In theory, I can appreciate the simplicity. In practice, one needs to clearly spell out what was jerkish, to provide clear guidance to what is expected. That is why we have all these specific rules to spell out what “being a jerk” is.
Two points: first, the OP specified Assume that everyone is behind constructing a perfect facsimile so that cost is not a hindrance. That statement in itself precludes “protestors would not allow it” or whatever.
Second, the tone of the remarks was not really GQ, and apparently this poster has a habit of that. Ergo, stricter moderator attention.
If you (the generic you) cannot see the political jab in referring to environmental protestors as “nutbags”, then it probably is best to refrain from posting in GQ. I’ve been posting there regularly for 10 years and have never gotten a mod note for political jabs. It’s really not hard unless you just can’t help seeing everything through the prism of your political beliefs. There are definitely a handful of posters here like that, but they are a tiny minority.
Hijacking, yes, but “bush league” is an American term that means “amateurish.” it comes from the various levels of professional baseball. There are the major leagues, then below them are various levels of minor leagues. The lowest levels of the minor leagues commonly have teams in smaller, more rural towns, or as we say, “out in the bushes.” The players are usually less accomplished and the quality of play is not as polished as in the major leagues.
