Which suggests that as the Israeli / Palestinian / Hamas war alternately simmers and flares for the next 2+ years as we count down to Nov 2028, each Democratic candidate will both have their record on-point scrutinized, and will be forced by the then-unfolding current events to take an identifiable position on at least what the US President should do = what they would do if elected. And that’ll all but inevitably include the various candidates making statements about what Israel and Palestine and Hamas should each do.
Good luck keeping the thread on track during that.
I agree. It’s excellent except when it’s not. To me, this example is bizarre. “Pete can’t win because he was part of the Biden team.” Reply, “Biden was great.” I could have said something very similar myself. It’s exactly the conversation we should be having about potential 2028 candidates.
Compounding the error, the mods refuse to admit the obvious. Everyone makes mistakes. Rescind the suspension and slap him around if he actually violates a rule in the future. (he probably will)
Except that, in this case, when DrDeth was doing so in that thread (and he did it a lot), it – again and again – led to hijacks re-litigating Biden (was he a good president or not? Was he senile in 2024 or not?), in which DrDeth was one of the main participants. As What Exit? noted, there were multiple mod notes to him in that thread, telling him to knock it off.
If I was told to knock off something that was entirely within the rules and on-point and proper for the discussion, I’d probably ignore it too. I have no opinion on the rest of his conduct, but this particular post was completely harmless and appropriate.
As the mods instructed him, repeatedly, taking a thread about 2028 candidates into “was Biden a good president or not? Was Biden senile or not?” was not on-point and proper for that thread.
“Is being associated with Biden a net positive, or a net negative, for a candidate” would be relevant for that thread. But that wasn’t what DrDeth was doing there, again and again.
When long-time posters get banned (or are under consideration for being banned), ISTM that the final straw is often something that seems pretty minor to most of us; we don’t always see the pattern of problematic behavior that led up to that.
Being a “cranky old man” is definitely not a bannable offense. Being a “cranky old man who doesn’t respect the moderators or other posters, and habitually ignores mod guidance” can be.
Also, FWIW, for years, I actually rather liked DrDeth and his posts here (probably much more than a lot of my fellow Dopers did). I found him to be smart (if sometimes cranky), and he made interesting contributions. In recent years, it’s seemed, to me, that his activity on the board skewed more towards being simply argumentative.
A fair reading of his response to the other poster is exactly equivalent to what you suggest would be appropriate. “Pete is tarred by being in the Biden administration.” "Biden was great [so I don’t agree]’
It is a single post, and, I agree – in isolation – it doesn’t seem to be problematic. Many of his other pro-Biden posts in that thread were much longer, and much more off-topic.
As it was, it led to the start of yet another hijack, when someone replied to him, before What Exit shut it down.
And, as already discussed, he had been put on a very short leash on that topic by the moderators, due to repeatedly spawning (and participating in) Biden hijacks.
That makes sense. I’m only really aware of that particular post. But, if it’s not a hijack to say “Pete can’t win because of Biden,” then it should be a hijack to disagree.
I have moderated and administered many different groups and fora over the last thirty years a few of which are significantly more active than here and a few that have only a few posts a day. If there is one poster who is causing us way more work than nearly everyone else combined, they just have to go. Nitpicking over whether or not that final straw counts is irrelevant. If they are incapable of or unwilling to to not be a constant pain in the ass, they have to go. The dude ruins way too many threads and has for years. Mods are volunteers, as we all know, and they don’t need the constant fucking trouble. I say this as someone who likes Dr D most than most.
I started out thinking his Biden post was fine and the mods were in the wrong. But the sum total of posts in this thread has changed my mind.
I’m sure his post was just a reflexive action that in his mind was obviously connected to current candidates. But he didn’t draw that connection, and on its own, the post was guaranteed to hijack the thread. Which is his standard MO – post something that in his mind is on-topic with no consideration of its impact.
In this case, the mod action is getting pushback because there is some connection to the topic. But it ignores the constant work the mods must do to clean up these messes that happen so frequently.
Yeah this one isn’t as bad because he got cut off early, but throughout the thread and others like this he is just relentless in repeating his same talking points.
I think you can disagree that Pete is tainted by Biden. I kind of do. But Biden was unpopular. That is an objective fact. DrDeth thinks because he likes Biden than Biden must be popular and everyone else is wrong. So it makes it really difficult to discuss how Biden’s unpopularity impacts other candidates (a very important topic when figuring out 2028 candidates) if you can’t accept basic facts and argue about them every single time Biden’s name pops up.
I get it, same as @DSeid, I went into that thread after seeing the suspension announced in his pit thread and expected to see something egregious. Instead it was a single post that didn’t seem that bad. I scrolled up into September, didn’t see any other warnings, got bored and dropped it. So to an “outsider” it seems harsh.
But the mods here, plus @kenobi_65, have made the case. I think we can all see how that thread could easily be derailed into a “Was Biden good” thread, evidently the law was laid down early in September and I didn’t scroll far enough. So, fair play.
In his pit thread there’s some debate about whether or not he’s a troll. I made my opinion clear there. He has his hobby horse topics, yes, but even those he doesn’t argue (imo) in good faith. I know the rules are muddy there, but that’s where mod judgement comes in.
I’ll throw in my two cents as well and say that that’s an excellent post by @ThelmaLou. I have no dissent about DrDeth being thread-banned in the presidential candidates thread, but I think being banned from the board isn’t justified even in the considerable totality of the circumstances.
We want to try to grow this board, not curtail it with overly aggressive banning. Being sometimes irritating and habitually argumentative and DrDeth’s various other relatively minor transgressions seem to me not to rise anywhere near the level of egregious behaviour that would justify a permanent ban. Notwithstanding his impressively long Pit thread, DrDeth can be a useful, normal poster and he’s been here a long time.
It’s funny you should mention this because I’m one of the posters who was responding to the thread (and specifically to DrDeth) when the topic was locked. I was responding to his comment that he didn’t think Gaza would be as big of an issue in 2028 and I was replying that while I thought that technically falls within the boundaries of the topic, I was thinking about spinning off a new thread to discuss that situation specifically. Upon hearing the mod hammer swinging, I decided it probably wasn’t on topic and I didn’t want any of that smoke.
I don’t envy the mods having to find a balance between restricting discussion so much that it stops versus letting every topic drift until it becomes a different topic altogether.
The “infinite scroll” aspect of Discourse means that any such sticky wouldn’t be noticed by anyone but new posters, if them. Somebody posting for some time in a thread - Dr Deth in this case - wouldn’t notice such a sticky was added, much less read it. Stickies only really work with the older page-based model of forum.