Phew. Well, I guess I’m safe, and will not have to commit virtual seppuku.
Coming to this thread late, but my $.02 on the OP …
Yep.
GD can be a complete public forum open to all comers who are free to post anything they want so long as they are civil, or else it can be about “fighting ignorance,” but it cannot be about both.
“Fighting Ignorance” involves occasionally saying that certain ideas are “ignorant” and should be fought, that there are certain bounds that need to be observed; that while reasonable people can disagree about some things, those who are defending “Bush has an IQ of 95” or “Clinton had Vince Foster killed” theories are being ignorant and need to be fought.
That can get hard, so the SDMB has chosen to interpret “Jerk” to refer only to forms of speech, not content, and thus buffoons can stay so long as they are polite about it. There is some value in that; I believe of freedom of speech. But I don’t go to buffoon rallies and I don’t invite them in my house.
Yes, you can just say “ignore those people;” but going into GD nowadays is rather like being invited to a party where you know several interesting people will be … but also that three or four bores will keep butting into the conversation. As interesting as it is to hear what Gobear or SimonX or Age Quod Agis or many others say, I can’t do it without putting up with Milum and Reeder and the like. After awhile it just stops being worth it.