At the beginning of this year, Jonathan Chance laid out some new rules for Great Debates and Politics, one of which pertained to hijacks:
I would suggest that we extend this further, in one way that would apply to other forums as well: **If an OP asks for only people of a particular category to reply to a question, it should be considered a hijack for anyone else to reply. **
For instance, we’ve had many threads in which the OP would ask, “Women, what do you think of (this or that)?” but the majority of responses weren’t from women; they were from men talking about what they thought women thought. Or, the many threads of “Trump voters, why do you support Trump/tolerate his lying/scandals/ignore his flaws” - but the vast majority of replies weren’t from Trump supporters, they were from Trump opponents talking about what they think Trump voters think. This rather defeats the purpose.
Such a restriction wouldn’t have to apply for the whole thread - perhaps the mods could set rules that only the first 20 replies have to be from the target audience (ie., women or Trump voters, per the above examples) but that once 20 has been attained, it’s now open for all to reply.
If it helps clarify the issue, in this thread I started, I asked if someone could be banned from the thread. It was done, though I feel it was because of the response to the poster’s thoughts vs my desire to have him evicted. I don’t think my request played into it at all.
That was because the poster was threadshitting and being a jerk. I have on occasion banned posters from a thread when they were being disruptive.
Personally, I would not exclude anyone from a thread a priori. You can request a certain kind of response in an OP, but you can’t expect the mods to enforce it for you, nor should you junior mod it yourself
I wasn’t trying to suggest otherwise. Like I said, I asked if he could be banned from the thread, but I don’t suspect that my request factored into your decision.
If I came across as otherwise, it wasn’t intentional.
I don’t agree with the OP. I think if someone’s just disrupting a thread that’s a reasonable request to solicit the opinions of some group, that can be moderated under existing rules about threadshitting or hijacking. But the blanket ban that OP advocates would ban posts that make valid arguments that question the underlying assumptions in such an OP. And I think any OP should be open to that kind of challenge. Setting up a thread that strictly only allows input from certain people is open to easy abuse - ostensibly asking a question, but seeking only biased responses that advocate one side of the matter.
But this often takes the form of talking ***over ***people who know better from experience.
Suppose an OP asks gay people their opinion about something, and a heterosexual person chimes in; “Well, I’m not gay, but let me tell you how gay people think,” that would be straight-splaining. It would be tantamount to claiming that a heterosexual knows better than a gay person what a gay person thinks.
I don’t see how you could “talk over” someone on a message board.
I am 100% certain that person would be corrected by gay posters.
This is not to say that certain responses might be jerkish, and could be moderated. But these can be handled on a case by case basis. There is no need to establish a new rule to deal with them.
That’s not responsive to what I wrote. If responses like this were inappropriate to the point of threadshitting or hijacking, they can already be moderated under the existing rules.
I oppose a blanket ban where the OP has the right to ban any kind of post from certain categories of people, including posts that might make reasonable arguments to challenge the underlying assumptions in an OP.
To give an example, hypothetical OP:
Under your proposal, non-athiests would not be allowed to challenge the underlying assumptions of the OP that (a) all Christians claim biblical inerrancy, and (b) ignoring this verse (I have no idea what that verse actually says, by the way) would make you a hypocrite.
I think polling subsets of people is sometimes reasonable, and when bona fide attempts to solicit opinion are disrupted by threadshitters, they should be moderated under existing rules. But no blanket ban on commentary or criticism of an OP.
The gentler, kinder SDMB, might consider Velocity’s suggestion, but it’s based upon a premise that we are all stupid as fuck, and have skin about as thick as the pages of a bible.
Assuming you’re referring to cases like the OP asking, “Women, what do you think of …”, inevitably followed by dozens of men then chiming in, have you ever actually seen that ‘moderated under existing rules’? I think it’s actually a pretty interesting idea, though it would certainly require some sort of restriction on its use. Poisoning the well and then restricting who can reply (like in Riemann’s example) is not going to be illuminating.
Again, respect for the rules and one another should make it unnecessary to make any more rules than we have. If an OP asks that only a certain category of member respond, common courtesy and respect should be enough to make it so. Besides, if I am excluded by request but have strong feelings, I can always start another thread of my own or take it to the Pit if I’m really revved up about it.