A few days ago somebody started an FQ thread titled close to “Did Nazi Germany Have Nukes?” IIRC the OP was a regular poster whose name many of us would recognize. I do not recall who it was, only that the name seemed familiar to me.
We got about 60 posts in with good discussion, cites, and everything. Of course the concensus was “No, they did not; not even close.”
Yesterday / last night a newbie crank showed up to school us all on the “truth”: the Nazis had many nukes and even many test detonations to their credit.
I, and probably many others, reported the increasingly heated crankery.
A mod (either @Aspenglow or @What_Exit) locked the thread last night to stop the trainwreck pending further action by an FQ mod.
Now, 18 hours later, I find the entire thread seemingly cornfielded.
If it’s a reasonable request, can the Moderati fill us in on what was wrong with the thread before the crank showed up that caused it to be cornfielded, not just locked, or only the crank posts cornfielded? Or is the thread cornfielding just temporary until the crankectomy is completed?
Things are being discussed by the Mods on that thread. It is cornfielded for now.
The Nazi fan troll is banned though, so if the thread in restored it will be without his posts. As he shat out 17 posts in that thread and many replies it will be somewhat tricky to restore.
Would be funny (as in funny-queer, not funny-hah-hah) if the OP was the crank using the same userID. Ask a seemingly reasonable question, let the discussion pick up speed in a unanimous direction, then drop the nuclear GOTCHA bomb on the assembled target population.
Or worse yet, the OP and the crank are the same person with two userids.
Even upon rereading that thread, I’m not sure if it was because, “OMG! Sock participated! Doesn’t matter how good the discussion is. Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” or “It was an oopsie doopsie / software error and not worth the effort to fix it.”
If it really was the former four years ago, that might be the answer to your question.
Ref posts just above, it seems I was mistaken about the OP’s history/age around here. Oops.
I’m not lobbying for any particular outcome here, but in this one narrow case the thread was 100% on the rails until the crank showed up. Then there were crank posts, and direct responses to crank posts, then the mod thread lock. Once the crank showed up there wasn’t any ongoing natural thread progress.
Which gives us a very clean case here.
Simply truncating the thread just above the first crank post and reopening would be a low-ish effort response and the few legit posters whose crank responses disappear won’t have lost much.
OTOH, if the OP was just a set-up for the sock-crank attack, a 100% cornfield is probably the best move consistent with standing policy. It’s not like we haven’t discussed the actual history of the Nazi nuclear efforts umpteen times before.
In any case, the question was convincingly answered, so do you really need the thread to linger open? Deleting it completely may be too much when you can simply edit it and leave it read-only.
Not to be all 20/20 hindsight “I knew it all along!” because I still don’t, but I thought the OP question had a whiff of troll-bait about it. It did generate some interesting discussion though (my single contribution aside).
That would be some intermediate-level trolling to act as both OP and trocking contributor, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it hasn’t happened before. Anybody hear of any known or suspected instances where it has?
That person was quoting Nazi scientists from the Nurenbgh. trials and had read all this material, citing people, saying the nazis were at least 2 generations beyond the allies in nuke development. Was downplaying other cites about jewish scientists. When discussing remnant radioactive testing evidence, they diverted, and started saying things like “the layman wont understand” etc.
Suspicious, I agree.
I had cornfielded it, not long after @ParallelLines closed it as the troll was running amuck. There is still an ongoing discussion about this thread so more may be to come.
Note: Trimming was 17 troll posts and 15 replies.
Off-Topic note: Oh cool, a new feature for the Staff. Our Staff Notes now automatically say who added them. Very nice.
A lot of people complain about judgment calls by the mods, and bemoan the relative lack of brightline rules. Nuking a thread started by a spammer, troll or sock seems to be one rule that’s pretty much brightline for all mods, along with a few instabans.
I was wondering where my thread went, until I read all emails I got as the OP.
It has taken a life of its own, which I have found interesting. My knowledge of the subject was limited to seeing the Oppenheimer movie. And yes I saw Barbie too.