Moving threads among non-Pit boards as appropriate, okay. But IMO they should never be moved to the Pit, because you are taking an OP not intended to be there and saying “here you go, go to town, fire away at the OP as you like”. (ETA: If they are clearly the kind of rant that belongs nowhere else than the Pit, close the thread and suggest that the OP could create a similar thread in the Pit if they wish.)
And this one was especially wrongheaded. How is stating that a photojournalist created an iconic image that will go down in history appropriate to be in the Pit?
Your intention wasn’t just to point out an iconic photo, it was to ridicule the people in it, as indicated by the rest of your post in the OP:
Most of the subsequent posts in the thread before I moved it were also ridiculing the people in the photo and were also most appropriate for the Pit. Given the way you started out, and the subsequent posts, the Pit was really the only place for it.
I’m really puzzled by what you mean by this, and whether by OP you mean “original poster” or “original post.”
If you mean “original poster,” no one fired away at you. Everybody fired away at the people in the photo, not at you.
If you mean “original post,” everyone who posted in the thread agreed with you that the people in the photo were idiots.
It seems to me your thread got a positive reaction even in the Pit. I really don’t know what you are complaining about.
If you don’t want a thread moved to the Pit, then you should consider carefully your OP. The course the thread took was pretty much established by your own OP.
Yes, no thread should be moved to the Pit, ever. If a Mod thinks that the thread is Pit worthy, close it with a suggestion it can be reopened in the Pit.
The OP may have been hoping to start a non-rant thread to discuss something controversial in a civil and non-heated way, but by moving the thread to the Pit, the mods are exposing him/her to a barrage of flaming attacks - completely contrary to the intent of the thread.
People are willing to express controversial views in a “safe” manner in IMHO, Great Debates, etc. because they know they can air such views safely there, but once the thread is moved to the Pit, suddenly everything that was posted before under “safe expectations” is now exposed to flaming and harassment.
Just because a tiny minority of posters in a thread are tussling with each other, doesn’t mean that the other 95% of posters were misbehaving.
Nobody in the thread was misbehaving of “tussling” with anyone else, including the OP. In fact, everybody was following his lead in ridiculing the people in the photo.
Right, I don’t mean that thread in particularly. But in some other threads in the past, there’ve been times when just 2 (or 3, or 4) posters were going at each other, and mods said, “All right, that’s it, you guys are fighting, we’re moving this to the Pit” even though all the other posters were still behaving normally.
As long as the fighting is only limited to a tiny minority of posters in a thread, the mods ought to issue warnings or mod-notes, but let the thread go on as is.
If your thread has been moved to the Pit and you don’t like it, you cam simply no longer read it, creating the same situation for you as if it were instead closed. You are even able to try for a new thread that doesn’t get moved to the Pit.
Still, saying that, I do sympathize with wishing we had a forum where we could rant about outside things without also opening ourselves up to personal attacks. From what I can tell, that used to be MPSIMS, but no longer. I only see the need for personal attacks in the Pit when Pitting another poster, not when doing rants about outside things.
But that isn’t this board, same as this isn’t the board to ask for personal advice without people telling you that you’re actually the bad guy or that you’re bad if you disagree with (and thus don’t take) their advice.
