While I agree with everything else you said, this part I have quoted does not make sense to me. Can you explain further? Is it more of the idea that, if someone really did commit suicide because of a thread, they were likely to do it anyways? Or perhaps that closing the thread wouldn’t help?
And, RandRover, I actually find myself agreeing with you, but, take it from me, insulting the mods doesn’t do any good. Both you and I seem to think the mods should stick to enforcing the rules, rather than breaking up things because they are worried about what might happen. Unfortunately, they disagree, and they are the ones in power. All we can do is try to be polite when we want to voice our disagreement, so they will, at the very least, take us seriously.
It would be nice to sometimes have one of these threads where the Mods say “Yes we stuffed up” rather than the circling of the wagons. I am not saying this is the thread but the blustering defence of “almost every” decision can only lead to one point of view.
The truly interesting thing about the poll was that a poster that is presumed to be 15 years old came up with these 75 on his own. Perhaps our educational system is improving after all, at least in the subject of World History. I am quite certain that I did not cover such weighty topics as this when I was in high school.
Yep. And that pretty much says it all. Being a mod is pretty much whatever you guys say it is. I honestly don’t see why you bother with the pretense that posters’ questions about moderator actions have any bearing on anything, when you can declare whatever you want by fiat.
Neither. Having been through such [ fake ] drama online — and even if I hadn’t — I think that either people threatening to kill themselves, or announcing this future intention, are going to do it or not going to do it; and the response[s] in no way affects that decision *.
Should people kill themselves that is sad, but feeling false emotion over the fact someone one has never met has died, which comes to us all, would mean emoting non-stop over the individual deaths of the 150,000 people who die each day. Any death is **very **important to the subject, and lesserly so to family and close friends if any of either: it doesn’t mean that much in the grand scheme of things.
*Unlike those ( perhaps invented ) incidents where weak-minded jumpees off high buildings are tipped over the edge by encouraging chants of ‘Jump, jump !’ by viewers still more idiotic than they. Which is direct incitement, and not simple internet discourse. **
Well, then I am not sure I agree, seeing as suicide hotlines exist, and seem to work, at least some of the time. I don’t think you can make someone commit suicide, but it is possible to stop someone. If they are posting on the Internet about it, they clearly want to be stopped.
And while I agree it is false emotion, I do believe that, if you even jokingly tell someone to go kill themselves, and it turns out they do, you will feel guilty about it. Unlike the other dying 150,000 people, you’ve actually interacted with the person, and thus had some contribution to their life. It almost certainly isn’t your fault, but the guilt will remain.
In fact, that’s the reason I’m for shutting down such threads. Well, that and, according to another forum I frequent, it can make you liable to lawsuits.
I’d just close the thread with a recommendation that you call a suicide hotline where people are trained to help you through it.
That poll was absolute garbage. People wouldn’t have ignored it, they would have posted to say that it’s garbage. Hell, I’m posting to say that it’s garbage. But, I’m also saying that it’s cool when mods throw out garbage. Is there anyone here who laments not being able to participate in that inevitable clusterfuck, excluding the postcount pride people?
I can think of many boards that “which are better, hammers or potatoes?” style discussions belong, and they all end with chan.
Czarcasm called it right. Life is too short to be faced with such inane threads. Yes, yes, I know, many threads could be called inane, unworthy threads will quickly die, etc, etc, but there has to be a line somewhere, right? Czarcasm decided this particular thread was on the wrong side of that line. He made the right decision.
You contradict yourself. If there are other methods of dealing with inane threads, then such a line has no purpose.
And Walmarticus’s opinion is equally specious, as, if that actually happens, that means that people want to discuss how bad the OP is. In fact, a lot of threads wind up having this happen to them. The OP is allowed to request that they be closed, but I’ve never seen them closed as a matter of fact. Thus, there is large precedent of moderator not throwing out garbage.
As for whether I would post in the thread: I have no idea, since I have no idea where the thread would have went. But, even if I weren’t going to post in it, I still would see no reason to say that no one else was allowed to do so either.
The only reason that has been offered so far is based on equating the thread with either a content-free, or a YouTube-style post. And while I must admit it is the best argument I’ve seen for locking those types of posts (as it actually addresses the question of “what does it hurt?”), but I don’t think it applies to this thread.
AFAIK, threads locked for being pointless in the past were either content-free or posts that we suspect the OP would not want to exist. Neither apply in this situation.
As for YouTube style posts: I thought the main problem there is the trolling, spamming, and high insult level. (Well, that and poor spelling/punctuation/grammar/woo, which have mostly been eliminated here by posters rather than moderators.) We already have rules against those, for which the moderators are excellent in dealing with.
To my mind, the only reason any thread should be closed is because it’s genuinely harmful in some way, or because it is repeating another live thread.
No matter how incredibly inane it was, nothing anyone has said has made clear to me what the harm of leaving it alone would be, particularly the harm that would be so great that the thread had to be closed.
You are both missing the point in the same way that Czarcasm has. It’s not a question of whether the thread was a bad thread or not (and please do substitute whatever word you wish for “bad” (e.g., “garbage” or “inane”)). The issue is what mods should do about such threads.
I (and others) think that the mods should do nothing about those threads–if they are truly terrible, the other posters will judge them to be so, and they will sink like a stone. If you don’t believe me, pick a forum and sort by replies, and you’ll see pages and pages where posts only got 0 or 1 or 2 or N (where N=not that many) replies.
You two (and others) think that your judgment of goodness should be substituted for others’ judgments. If that’s where you wanna be when Jesus comes back, then go right on with your bad self, but it seems like a shitty way to live to me.
and on and on…there’s a ton of SDMB discussions that start with “Here’s 50/100/75/whatever things with something in common. Discuss.”
It was a perfectly good topic with fairly well-thought-out and actually pretty original choices for the point of departure. Czar may not enjoy reading alternate history discussions, but I do and it’d be interesting to see people “defend/justify” their pick.
I’m sorry that Czar doesn’t think Dopers are smart enough to one choice from 50/75/100 and defend it, but as my growing list of examples shows…he’s wrong, they are smart enough and have done it for 10+ years just fine.
Close spam, leave everything alone and stop making up stupid rules on the fly.
*Note–the kid’s options were at least mostly all legit pivotal historical events and were all connected. It’s not like he did a “Prunes vs Tape Dispensers: Who’d win?” type of random comparison that a few people have tried to claim.
I, too, think closing the thread was a mistake. And Czarcasm, it was intended to be a poll, with some interesting choices, actually. Based on the responses it might have generated, it probably would have have spawned some more pointed discussion threads.
This just seems empirically wrong to me. Of course it’s subjective, so we may not agree, but I’ve seen plenty of terrible, inane threads that have received plenty of responses. Many of the responses only exist to point out how bad the thread is, and end up devolving into arguments with the OP about semantics or how the thread was phrased, etc. To me, this represents a waste of time, a derailment of the intellectual resources of the site as a whole, drawing some posting-time away from those who may otherwise thoughtfully add to a different thread. It’s clutter, it’s a splintering of quality, and a waste of time.
iamnotbatman, do you have anything in mind that fits that bill? I’ve certainly seen that happen before, but it’d be good to all be working from the same perspective. I really disagree that that “represents a waste of time, a derailment of the intellectual resources of the site as a whole…” etc. In the general case of a random person posting an inane thread that receives that sort of attention, there is a positive that comes from that - it serves as an example and learning opportunity for the OP and others on how to construct a proper topic and communicate it. Closing it would more likely push that OP off the board, lowering the potential “intellectual resources” of the board.
In this particular case, it doesn’t really apply. Curtis has had dozens of threads closed preemptively, and he keeps doing it. Over and over and over. He hasn’t learned. He has shown zero signs of being even slightly interested in learning, or participating or contributing to this board. It’s not his threads that need to be moderated or closed - it’s *Curtis *that needs to be moderated or “closed”.
Assuming your premise is accurate, I think what bothers most of us is the idea that we can know, a priori, which threads will follow that path. When a thread goes to hell, fine close it. But a thread that has the chance of being interesting, even to a few people, should be allowed to have its run. (Barring, of course, it is not breaking general board rule such as promoting illegal activity etc).
I can sympathize with this point of view, but you have to at least admit that there is a line, somewhere, at which point a moderator has to act. In this particular case I would come down on the side of the “cut it” side of that line (I’ll admit it is a close call).
Two very important factors to take into account:
The mod was willing to accept a revised thread, and his suggestion for revision seems rather neutral and fair
People who repeatedly post problematic threads should be treated differently – otherwise there is no consequence for thread-vomit-drive-bys (short of banning) that might be efficacious in curtailing the negligent behavior