On the closing of the Omegaman thread

From the get-go, **fluiddruid **has wielded the lockstick with a heavy hand and a blind eye. She really needs to dial it back several notches.

I don’t think **Omegaman **was trolling. As to whether trolling = nutter, the point is moot. Being crazy is not, and ASFAICT, never has been justification for having one’s thread closed.

There has been an apparent suicide-by-mod by someone who admitted to being off his meds.

If so, I stand corrected. At any rate, my point obtains. Are there really enough instances of thread closings due to the OP being a “nutter” to establish precedence? She said, in so many words, “troll or nutter, it makes no difference.” Is that what we want as policy?

I gave you a pretty hard time in the recent past, and I feel like now I want to thank you because you really seem to be going out of your way to allay concerns about a heavy bias on your part. Your posts about people of faith and our beliefs lately have been far more even-handed and objective. It’s really hard to express exactly what I want to convey, but it is a sort of gratitude. And maybe this is hard to understand, but it’s also a relief.

You’ve yet to acknowledge the validity of our beliefs, however, still refering to them with psycho-babble about cognitive strategies and such, but every step of progess is appreciated. Very little remains for the realization of mutual respect. If you will stop refering to my faith as some sort of cognitive dissonance, then you’ll be showing me the same respect I show you. I long ago stopped saying that atheists are missing something or lack the necessary wiring to comprehend, and stuff like that. It’s time for you to do the same. It’s clearly now within your ability. :slight_smile:

I don’t think he posted with the intention of engaging anyone in a debate, which is why he put the OP in the right place, IMO. Maybe anyone who truly believes in Satan is a nutter, but I never noticed that being a reasonably polite nutter who puts posts in the right places is against the rules.

In any case, someone who lives in Vegas might have good reason to believe he is closer to Satan than the general public. :slight_smile:

There have been occasions where mods have closed threads because the OP was clearly having severe mental problems, and there was concern that either the thread would exacerbate those problems to the point where the poster might harm themselves, or that it had degenerated to the point where the posters were simply taunting a person who was badly ill, which was deemed unseemly. But I don’t think either situation applies here.

My vote for not trolling.

Also, my vote for Shodan as “Doper Most Likely To Climb Onto Any Random Nearest Cross At Every Possible Opportunity”.

Yes, you’re right, as **Lute **pointed out. As you say, this does not apply here, and even if it did, her statement is by no means policy.

That makes it pretty clear that being a “nutter” is the same as being a troll. If that’s the case, it’s news to me.
ETA: Perhaps I should have said “being crazy, in and of itself.” Thanks to you and **Lute **for the clarification.

I’m just not seeing the problem with the closed thread. I’ve seen much worse go on for much longer around here with no mod action whatsoever.

Free The Omegaman Thread!

I agree with most of the posters in this thread that Omegaman didn’t appear to be trolling as we typically define it, as he appears to be sincere in his beliefs and his primary goal doesn’t appear to be to get a rise out of people. That said, we have a rule against trolling more because we don’t like the kind of threads trolls create than because we simply want people to be pure of heart. And Omegaman’s thread did bear a rather striking resemblance to a troll thread: incoherent, unfocused, peppered with a range of inflammatory ideas and topics, and doggedly avoiding any rational debate in favor of crazy rambling and random antagonism. I know, I know, it’s the Pit, we tend to overlook all of these things at various times, but there are limits.

So while I may not have used the same words as fluiddruid with respect to Omegaman, I see where she’s coming from and I agree with her actions. In a faceless, written medium, all we have to go on are your words. The best way to avoid being mistaken for a troll is to not post like a troll.

Dunno. I think it’s impossible to tell how many closed threads had a “nutter” as the OP. :slight_smile:

Man, I have to tell you, I think you are a kickass mod. No attempt at sucking up here; I doubt you even know whom I am.

BUT; this smacks of circling the wagons here. She simply wields too heavy a hand. Cites provided upon request. There is simply no precedent for closing a Pit thread because the poster is a nutter. You speak of limits. Can you sincerely look that thread in the eye and say it stretches them? Seriously?

This closing is a fucking joke.

How many were closed with the stated reason being that the OP was a nutter?

To clarify, it wasn’t faith in general I was referring to in those terms (which I admitted probably sounded condescending), but the specific “blame Satan” defense to the POE. I called it a “cognitive strategy” (I didn’t say “dissonance”) because I do think it comes from an emotional need to reconcile God with evil (an eternal task for anyone of faith, I think you’d concede). I don’t think that particular defense parses logically but I understood it emotionally.

(Omegaman might not have consciously realized he was making a POE defense but that’s essentially what he was doing and I was trying to nudge him in the direction of examining that defense before the other thread was closed).

Sorry, I wasn’t aware that I had stumbled into 12A. :wink:

Could this approach be reflected in the rules?

Omegaman, we need to talk to you.
Me and Giraffe have been noticing lately that you’ve been having a lot of problems,
You’ve been going off for no reason and we’re afraid you’re gonna hurt somebody,
We’re afraid you’re gonna hurt yourself.
So we decided that it would be in your interest if we put you somewhere
Where you could get the help that you need.

Thanks. :slight_smile:

I’d say that thread was a borderline case, but that closing it was reasonable. I considered closing it myself a couple of times, but each time decided to give it a little more time and see where it went. When I saw that fluiddruid had closed it, I wasn’t surprised at all.

I can’t say I feel particularly strongly about it, either way. It wasn’t the worst thread in the world, but it was definitely crappy. While many crappy threads are allowed to die a natural death, the fact that the OP was actively steering the discussion with essentially nothing but stream of consciousness babbling meant that it was unlikely to die any time soon or go anywhere good, despite the heroic efforts of several posters to extract an interesting discussion.

The hardest part of modding is not the rule enforcement, but the pruning. Untended forums can grow into brambly, unkempt places, but overpruned forums can die. I personally think this closing was on the healthy side, perhaps in part because I imagine having to wade through ten of its siblings down the road. Obviously, many of you disagree. It’s good for us to hear from you – often, the only input we get on thread closings is from reported posts asking why thread X is still open and crapping up the forum.

What? The board membership has a strong anti-Christian bias, but I get the impression that the administration has a pro-Christian bias instead. And why would this closing be read as pro- or anti-Christian?

(and this without going on record as for or against the closing of the thread in question)

Well, no, because we still don’t want people trolling even if they do post coherently, and because codifying what types of threads are over the line would be a mess.

This is one of those areas where the mods just have to use their judgment, then you all throw rocks at us if you don’t like what we do. :slight_smile: