No one expects the tomndebb inquisition

About This Message Board
21

tomndebb, surely even you can understand that the issue is not closing the thread. Nobody has said it should be re-opened. That’s just your bullshit straw man.

The issues are:

a) closing the thread when your hot button, which is anyone daring to mention the “Green Peril” in other than laudatory terms, gets pushed, and

b) not letting anyone know where and when we are going over your line.

If you don’t hand out warnings, how are we supposed to know what you consider unacceptable and avoid it in the future??? Serious question here, bro’ …

22

tomndebb you’ve been here long enough to know that personal insults directed against other posters are not permitted outside the BBQ Pit forum: please don’t do this again. And no, I don’t propose to quibble about what constitutes a personal insult.

23

But no warning issued? That’s probably wise.

24

Look, we’re not psychic, some of us do have social lives, and we can’t all reach an instant decision: it just happens that I was the one who happened to catch it this time: all i can say is that tomndebb does have a history of this type of behaviour, and it’s under discussion. But if you’re unsure about any particular post, please don’t take matters into your own hands: that’s what the “Report This Post” button is for.

25

Uncanny!

26

I knew you were going to say that, which is why I’ve already reported it. But you knew that…

27

Look, we’re trying to build a community here, and we have one abiding principle: “Don’t be a jerk”. Obviously we can’t make a list of forbidden terms or rigidly define exactly what constitutes a personal insult: apart from such a list being counter to the spirit of community, it would run to hundreds of pages, and there will always be posters keen to test the exact boundaries. What I will say, though, is that casting aspersions upon another poster’s motivations or in any way implying that he has an axe to grind is tantamount to an accusation of trolling, and we have a forum specifically set aside for that.

28

It is your “job”, tomndebb, to point out when people are crossing the line. And while it’s easier to just close a thread - issuing your half dozen warnings is probably what you should have done, even if most of the warnings would have been to people you think are on the “right side” of the argument. I don’t see how you can even say “Well, shucks, if everyone wants me to go do that I will. hurr hurr”.

And careful Vinyl Turnip, you are perilously close to becoming an amusing and funny version of Bryan Ekers.

29

First of all, as pointed out, this is an insulting statement. You should, in my opinion, avoid such statements.

Second of all, it might have been a good idea to drop into the thread and establish that jerkish behavior was being engaged in before it reached the point that a sudden door slam was neccessary. Having reached the point it did, you might have tried to put the brakes on, and kept an eye on it before slamming the door and swallowing the key.

I’m a pretty mild mannered person here, and I’m certainly not in the camp of any of those engaged in the pissing contest in question, so this set of opinions might be worth more than a passing thought. :wink:

30

somebody call the wahhhmbulance!

31

Actually, this whole thread is just your overheated imagination.

I had looked in on the thread several days ago and found a lot of snide posts without much substance, but nothing over the line. Yesterday I received several communications, including, but not limited to, Reported posts and e-mails/PMs, complaining about the rules violations in several posts. When I re-opened the thread, I found that there were multiple posters in multiple posts hurling personal insults and accusations of lying. Since my experience has been that simply slapping hands does not actually bring a thread back to civility once it has become a donnybrook–because too many posters just have to respond to the last insult they believe themselves to have suffered–I shut the thread. Given the blatant nature of the insults and the accusations of lying, I saw no point in wasting time pointing out what the participants already recognized, (as indicated by my in-box).

Then you simply had to violate board rules to open a Pit thread to insult me over something on which I had neither expressed an opinion nor paid much attention in that thread. Now you want to invent issues to which I should respond so that you can carry on with your little crusade in a few more threads and fora.
I am not interested in playing your game and the notion that I would be prompted to close a thread just because you had posted one more rant based on cherry-picked factoids, as if you had actually persuaded anyone who did not already agree with you, is just silly. It leads me to wonder why you are pouting when you should have been pumping your fist and shouting “At least I got in the last silly claim.”

It is certainly my job when there is any question about what violations might have occurred or when correcting one or two posters will keep a thread on track. Once the thread has derailed under the assault of multiple flagrant violations, that is just a waste of time.

32

tomndebb, you claim to be a moderator, who is supposed to be neutral. Now you want to accuse me of “cherry picking factoids”, “inventing issues”, having a “little crusade”, “playing games”, “ranting”, “silly claims”, and "pouting’??? So what? Since when are those subject to moderation?

You are far, far too personally invested in this issue to “moderate” it. You are so far gone that you say “as if * had actually persuaded anyone who did not already agree with [me].” As if? How on earth can you tell whether any of the lurkers (who far outnumber the posters) has been persuaded by what I have written? And again, what does that have to do with moderation? Are you now judging threads on the basis of how many lurkers learned something?

Let me offer an opinion, tomndebb, which is that you should never moderate a thread which is discussing Islam. Do the decent thing, recuse yourself, ask somebody else to do it. You are too invested, and you are more than willing to abuse your moderator’s privileges to see that opposing views are not allowed. It is a flagrant violation of your responsibility.

Finally, I ask again, who went off the rails, and where? If it is me, fine, I want to know. But your concealing of your moderator’s judgements condemns everyone, even the innocent, and that sucks. I may or may not be innocent, I’ve been guilty more than once … but when you accuse everyone, it just leaves it up to people’s imaginations, and we don’t learn anything about what the rules are and how you are interpreting them.

As to my putting it in the Pit, you are right, it should have gone in ATMB. My bad, I apologize for that, it won’t happen again.

I hope that you can say the same.

33

What is this, an audition?

34

Yeah, 15 pages are hardly enough to get such profound [del]hijacks[/del] thoughts across.

Let me offer an opinion that you should never take intention’s whining especially seriously. Not even once. That would be a flagrant violation of responsibility.
I trust that we have GD rules here. That is, no insults to anybody have been delivered, but questions have been raised about the pattern of argument.

35

Boy, now ain’t some folks devious! I’ve been reading TomnDeb for about nine years, even been scolded once. Couple times. Three, tops. But in all that time, I never got the slightest inkling of any pro-Islamic fanaticism! Talk about sneaky!

36

Clearly, you should get out more … but I do love the way you parade your lack of knowledge as though it were some badge.

But then, given that you share his views, I suppose you wouldn’t notice …

37

Measure for Measure, this is the appropriate forum for posting complaints about moderators. That is one thing that makes it different from GD. You may call intention’sposts “whining,” but if they are, then this is the place to whine.

intention, if someone has invested fifteen pages worth of time into a thread, that’s a lot of focus and attention. Even when the topic wanders, people’s emotions can be just as caught up. But the rules are still there and as Dopers we are responsible for not straying too far from the subject and for avoiding personal attacks. We break the rules at our own peril.

Having a contentious thread closed abruptly may be a little like being removed from an addictive substance cold turkey. But if you don’t know where you crossed the line in that thread, you really should familiarize yourself with the rules of the SDMB and of the individual forums that you participate in. If you still haven’t figured it out, ask a moderator that you do trust to explain where you crossed the line.

I have been very critical of Tomndebb in the past. I think that he is unable to refrain from retaliating against those who criticize him. This thread is a good example and you have pointed out his sniping at you. I think that his words are abusive and don’t belong here. But I am not a mod.

Although there is nothing wrong or bad about being a Muslim or defending Islam, I have never noticed Tom being particularly interested in the subject. Where are you getting that notion from? Where has he shown deference before?

I assume that you don’t confuse Islamists with Jehadists and that you are reasonably well educated about the difference in the two. Are you also informed about Buddhism? Catholicism? Taoism? Hinduism?

38

Zoe, thanks for the suggestion, but it seems totally impractical. I don’t know who crossed the line in the thread because tomndebb refuses to say. I don’t know if it was me, or someone else, or both. Why should I ask another moderator to explain what is in tomndebb’s mind? How does that work, how would another moderator know what tomndebb doesn’t like?

How about he explains what’s in his mind?

tomndebb and I have disagreed before, both about Islam and about his moderating. Now he wants to snipe at me. Coincidence, I’m sure.

I was a Buddhist for many years. I have lived and worked in countries with a Muslim majority. I studied Islamic Sufism in depth. I make a clear distinction between Islam and Muslims.

But call me crazy, I also think that any religion that in the 21st century advocates stoning women to death for adultery, and carries that sentence out, is primitive and barbaric … and tomndebb really, really doesn’t like that. It threatens his worldview that all religions are equal, or something, I’m not really sure.

tomndebbnislam

39

Alright, that’s enough. I don’t care who threw the first punch - and frankly I have neither the time nor the inclination to read back through the entire thread to find out - but you know well enough by now if another poster insults you, you do not respond in kind. I’m closing this, since it’s clearly runs well past its course and degenerated into playground name-calling: if anyone wants to start a new thread on topic, they may.

40

It’s odd that we have all these threads about “Why did mod X do Y” and “What are the exact rules”, and all we get are platitudes about how it’s a judgment call or that you’re looking into it.

And then the threads get closed.

It’s pretty obvious that if a mod is grinding a personal axe as a mod, that’s a bad thing. It’s also obvious that if mods are closing things based on “rules violations” and don’t enumerate the actual violations that there is a lack of transparency. Of course, the mods, and by extension, the board owners are free to do whatever they please with the board. But it seems to me any board depends on its community to add value, and these are the sorts of policies that jeopardize the diversity of the board, which, to me, is important.