Helpful how? I genuinely don’t understand why it bothers some people whether or not a OP participates in his own thread. Either it’s an interesting discussion among the people who do participate or it isn’t, right?
Has anyone ever changed his or her mind about anything after reading the discussions on this board?
Yes.
Not about anything of consequence.
Yes. But it’d take some time to state a specific example.
No I joined in July 2009. And again on my FB page (which I will link to you in a PM if necessary) the majority of my friends are people around my age so unless there is a massive conspiracy all evidence points to I’m 14.
Maybe you’re a fucking idiot. How’re we to know?
A good rule of thumb is to just not talk shit about people unless you have a good reason to. So far I’ve seen no good reasons to talk shit about CL/QSH.
Is it really so bad if he doesn’t participate vigorously in every thread he has started? His what if Germany won World War I thread is pretty interesting. I haven’t posted to it, but I’ve followed along. I haven’t seen any evidence that he is any more annoying than a lot of posters.
I’d say a whole shitload of people saying they find him annoying is evidence that he’s more annoying than a lot of posters. What you have not found is any evidence that he annoys *you *more than a lot of posters.
I haven’t, either. I agree with him on practically nothing, politically or socially, but he’s not as annoying or vitriolic or cringe-inducing as some people (ones who agree with me on that stuff and ones who don’t, both). He really comes across to me as a kid who’s metaphorically tuning into a bunch of different radio stations to get opinions and listen to different types of music than he’s used to. I really dislike some of his “presets” but he doesn’t spend most of his time standing on a table shouting slogans for them, either.
WHAT…is your purpose?!? ‘I seek the enlightenment on the Straight Dope…or the Holy Grail, whichever comes first’
…
WHAT…is your favorite color?!? ‘Blue’
…
WHAT…is the air flight velocity of an unladen European swallow? ‘10 meters per second’ (didn’t think I knew that one, did you? :p)
…
WHAT…is your name?!? ‘It’s Curtis…er, no, it’s Qin…’
TWAAAANNNNNGGGGG!
-XT
No fair. That was questions FOUR.
Exactly my point. 
-XT
There are a lot of posters on the SDMB. A very low percentage of them have shown up in this thread to complain about CL/QSH. Maybe it’d evidence he’s irritating; maybe the thread jsut attracted some assholes. Either way it isn’t much of a sample.
Though I objected to the question posed in the OP, I did indeed find him irritating. But I am also an asshole.
Well, I certainly can’t fault you for not being open and honest with us. 
I have.
True. All answers on whether someone is annoying are going to be personal. He and I share very different world views, but I personally don’t find him annoying. I don’t know that I’ve seen all that many posters say he is annoying in this thread. I’d be curious to see how the numbers compare to any prolific poster on this board.
Most people don’t get Pitted, let alone Pitted repeatedly and have many users show up to agree that they’re annoying. My point is not that **Curtis **is necessarily objectively annoying, or even a bad person: simply that he is more annoying than a lot of posters. How many people have gone their entire posting histories without being Pitted even once? He must be more annoying than every single one of them, since none of them ever bothered anyone enough for that person to Pit them.
Hell, I’m sure that same designation applies to me; god knows I piss the shit out of certain people here. It’s not a value judgement; simply a statement of fact.
Personally, I find him to be an irritating little twit that Thinks he’s smart. That’s what the ignore button is for.
You must have half the SDMB on Ignore.
Not that you would see this post, though.
Regards,
Shodan