In this closed thread
lissner:
and Ed replies
Wow, let’s drive the posters we disagree with off the boards. If that ain’t fighting ignorance I don’t know what is.:rolleyes:
Sorry I don’t know how to quote closed threads.
Driving away posters we disagree with on issues worth debating is a bit different than driving away posters we disagree with on Board policy.
If he’d said that because Liberal left due to the Dope’s liberal bias or something, it’d be different.
I don’t understand. Is board policy not an issue worth debating?
I interpreted that as Ed Zotti making a joke about someone singing a hymn of Thanksgiving for Ed’s management. Of course, people’s reading of his comment will be coloured by their preconceptions. (like my reading of it was)
Actually, my first reading was along the same lines as Arnold’s; indeed, Ed’s explicit purpose seemed to be to discourage snarky celebrating of Liberal’s departure (as can be seen by viewing the post in full). It was a bit of a faux pas to allow the interpretational ambiguity, but I wouldn’t really get worked up over it.
Ah, sorry, I missed the smiley. My mistake.
I’m not a big Ed fan, but now he’s getting pitted for closing threads he didn’t close?
I don’t think there’s actually any explicit smiley around, though there seems to be one “implicitly”, so to speak. [You know, the way these things were conveyed before the explicit smiley was invented…]
Not really, although that’s just my opinion. It’s kind of a trick question, though; we don’t have debates on board policy; we have flamefests. When something happens vis-a-vis board policy that people dislike, they don’t go find the Pit/ATMB thread about it and calmly note their disapproval.
They all go off and start their own threads and hurl invective at Ed/TD/SkipMagic/Jerry/whoever. Feel free to skim through all the threads we just had about the Old New Pit Rules. There was one thread with people saying, “hey, this kinda sucks,” and 20-30 full of people going, “how dare you tell me to stop saying fuck, you stupid fuck! I’m leaving!”
People have some funny ideas about how we all “add value” to the Boards and such nonsense- as though people who post videos on YouTube suddenly expect a say in how they should be running their business. It’s Web 2.0; users-as-content is becoming the default, but only here does everyone get all shirty when they want to decide what the rules are and the Powers That Be say no. Smart people answer questions in GQ; some do it to show off, some do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Either way, nobody owes them anything except the people whose questions get answered.
I look at it this way: we’re all playing the same game, but at the end of the day, Ed’s the one who brought the ball, and he gets to decide who runs with it.
Um, no, try again.
Sorry, I thought lissener’s comment was rude and pit-a-ble and Ed’s, the owner of the board, even ruder. Not knowing Ed as a regular poster I can’t fill in the missing smileys. Thanks to all who know Ed better than I and can intuite his posts and hidden smileys.
I was a little surprised by it, but Liberal’s gone. I’m sure he cares what people are saying about him, but it’s not as though Ed owes him anything anymore, is it?
Personally, I always liked Liberal, but he lost any respect I had for him with his stupid “new neighborhood” OP.
Looked like an obvious joke to me.
Looked like a joke to me as well.
Oh for og’s sake, I’m as willing to rake Ed and the other admins over the coals as anyone after the events of the last week or so, but this really isn’t anything to get worked up over. Regardless of whether he deserves it or not, Ed’s not exactly had the best of weeks around these parts and I’m 99% certain that his post was more a dig at himself than anything else. Could he have thrown in a smiley to make things more obvious? Sure, but we’ve all been guilty of similar in the past - a major problem with message boards has always been a tendency to write as if you were speaking directly to the person/group you’re addressing, and inflections and subtelties are so easily lost when tone of voice and body language are not observable.
Dismiss me as a brown-noser or whatever you will, regardless of the truth of the matter, but I think quite a lot of people really just need to step away from the Straight Dope at the very least, if not the keyboard altogether, do whatever activity it is that best chills you out for a few days or so, and try to get some perspective.
Damn, after the last however long since he started taking a more active role in the Pit, I didn’t think I’d see the day that I’d be defending Ed. That’s how stupid this thread is.
Do you really think he is not reading this thread right now? Really?
Darn. Now I may never a chance to use the nuclear bomb attack on Liberal that I’ve been carefully refining all these years, for a moment when he really needed it. It combines casual racism and condescension with an extra little twist just for him and would probably make some people here laugh while a greater number wouldn’t care for it at all.
Ed owns the board? No more Chicago Reader owned by Creative Loafing? That seems that it might be a good thing to actually have a business with an owner involved on a daily basis. We could get a whole accountability economy thing going.
If he is, then he can stick up for himself if he likes. If he’s not, he won’t care either way. He is, by his own admission, gone. That doesn’t mean people should be taking potshots at him, of course, but by the same token why bother fighting his battles?
Man, you guys are such fucking wimps. (We can still accuse other posters of fucking wimps, can’t we?) Ed Zotti’s been acting like a jack-booted thug since he took over, and yet you all cowtow to him, because – let’s just put it all on the table here – because you all think he’s THE REAL CECIL ADAMS. C’mon, use your heads people! The REAL Cecil Adams retired fifteen years ago, and is living like a king in Patagonia. After all, it’s the name that inspires fear. No one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Zotti!
(And yet, it does feel strangely quiet with our dear Liberal departed…)