Ouch.
When you and the “barage” of people claiming intellectual superiority are done sniping at each other, maybe we could start again:
Welcome to the SDMB. You’ll find a range of thoughtful and intelligent folks here, plus as they say, a few total dipshits. Are their forums without dipshits? You seem to have a lot of experience on various forums:
Which ones do you prefer and why?
Key Words I’d like to emphasize in your previous post Mykeru:
Sheer rabidness of SOME of the reactions…
Within a handful of posts…
A handful of posters…
some of you people…
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Don’t judge the Straight Dope Message Board by the reactions of a few. And even some of those few you rail against so vehemently are actually quite intelligent and well-spoken, but they are not infallible. Sometimes people overreact; sometimes people enjoy getting people to overreact too. Go figure. But it may not be a bad idea if you stick around awhile, check out other threads in other forums, before you go off on your tirade on your site. But you are free to do as you wish of course.
And it should be “Rumors of my being “slammed” are greatly exagerrated.”
Figures…
exaggerated.
Rev., the problem from my perspective is that at first glance you appear to have come just to make waves. Looking at your posting history now, I wouldn’t classify it as trolling (something I would have labelled you as earlier this week), but as overly defensive. When that happens, as it often does on other boards as well, the regulars come down pretty hard.
Why? Because when a new user has the majority of his posts in the Pit, odds are this is a poster that doesn’t have the best intentions of contributing towards the board. Is that entirely fair? Probably not.
My take is that when you had that “handful of regulars” accuse you of being a troll/puppet/etc. you got on the defensive immediately, and saw those attacks as purely 100% against all of your arguments. I’d recommend you take some time off, read over that horrid thread again, and try to see where we were coming from. You were also quick to lump people into a convenient category (as you called anyone arguing against you a Robertson defender), and things spiralled down from there. All in all, just not a good start. You’ve shown you’re damn well capable of holding an intelligent conversation - I’d just recommend not placing yourself in a position where you’re in the middle of the firefight, and have to defend yourself from all angles of attack. Being cornered doesn’t do much for one’s disposition.
No, not everyone but I have seen a tendency among the trolls to have no email address listed. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what the Reverend is but it does strike me as odd for someone to hide their email address hidden here when all any one of us has to do us go to his fucking website! Excuse me for being logical.
I really thought hard about posting this for the simple fact that I consider some of the people in this thread as great friends (and still do). I hope it is taken as constructive advice instead of criticism.
Holy hell guys, step back for a second. Reverend Mykeru’s opinions regarding Pat Robinson is not the end of the world. I too think it is a sick commentary on his life when he uses conventional medical treatment using the money he scammed off of the people he “healed” with prayer. I am having a hard time mustering up compassion for him.
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.
I just spent some time reading some of Reverend Mykeru’s posts and in spite of his sarcastic assholish behavior (I can’t say that I can blame him for some of it), he certain seems intelligent and articulate and would probable be an asset to the SDMB if given the chance.
Newbies, especially those with strong opinions or have a good grasp at coding, do not equal sock puppets. I am embarrassed that we have given a new person the impression we are paranoid and so self-centered as a message board that we fail to realize there are others out there that use the same posting and coding procedures.
In my not so humble opinion, one of the things that has brought the board down a bit in the last year or so is the eagerness to run off newbies, especially those with strong personalities or opinions. Sure, it’s a good technique to ward off the trolls, socks, and idiots, but in the process we are running off good people. We need to be a little bit more willing to give a newbie time to shine or time to shoot themselves in the foot before we start slamming doors.
I expect that a few people will chime in with examples of newbies that have fit in nicely and have had no problems, which is true, but take a look closer - these are typically posters who have conformed to mold of what is allowable in our perceived “clique”.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I like diversity. I hope he sticks around.
Reverend - relax a bit, eh?
I was not accusing you of being anyone’s sock puppet. I would have been obvious about it if I was.
Then why don’t you go away instead of complaining how bad it is here?
See my response to grendel.
The old “I know you are but what am I” defense. Brilliant! :rolleyes:
The mods here have enough trouble with trolls let alone trolls who can send private messages or go back and change or delete their posts. Disabling PMs and edit/delete functions cuts down on needless busywork so moderators can actually moderate.
I hate to repeat myself but, really, why don’t you go away instead of complaining how bad it is here?
OTOH, If you do plan on staying here, you really should learn to get used to how this message board works instead of trying to get it to change to your needs. There have been plenty of others who tried that before you came along, especially when we were leasing space from of AOL. Some of them eventually became productive members while others never bothered to join up when this site became active in spring of '99. And we don’t miss them one bit.
You know, College Park. As in University of Maryland, College Park. Terrapins, won the NCAA men’s basketball championship last year. Like three miles from DC. Though it’s rather obvious now that you don’t go to college here.
Oh yeah, and please stick around. Personally I think you’re being horribly tasteless, but not an outright jerk.
White Lightning, do you remember how you started off on these boards? Do you remember how a reg misunderstood what you were saying and started a pile-on? And how I had to get in there and bash some heads together? And look what an excellent board member you have become.
Well it’s time to step back and take a deep breath here.
When someone comes along who is articulate and quick, it isn’t the time to start running them straight out of Dodge without consideration as to what they are saying. A see a few people that I love on these boards beeing a wee quick here to put words into other people’s mouths.
On another point: y’all have to realise that Rev is right - there are other boards out there. Posters will arrive on these boards as already moulded, fully-fledged message board regs, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they act that way.
Reverend, I posted a couple of hundred times on the Darwin boards myself about a year ago. I believe that I remember you vaguely from that time. It may interest you to know that the reason I stopped posting there was that the Darwin Forums simply can’t hold a candle to the SDMB. Despite what you have, admittedly, experienced so far, the posters here make the posters there look like a bunch of neanderthals that are incapable of stringing two sentences together.
Oh - and we have no Zest here either.
pan
Right, and not all boards have the same social interaction of course. Hopfeully when regs from other boards finally find their way here they will learn to adapt to us instead of expecting us to adapt to them.
Snobbish, isolationist, and incredibly lacking in depth, but noteworthy. Thanks for the tip.
Shhhhhhhhhhh.
Don’t tell anybody, but the Rev. is growing on me.
Sorry for the rude welcome.
kabbes
I think Zest was a little before my time. I date from the Doctor X debacle where everyone was Doctor X’s sock puppet, the rise of the Collective™ outright rebellion against Northcutt and the Emily Post Fascists and the subsequent purge following “Darwin’s” complete meltdown.
Jeff Olsen
First off, adaptation wasn’t the issue. The issue was that some people thought it was suspect when I knew vB code and means of quoting, etc. and therefore pegged me as a sock puppet, as if the SD is the only forum on the fucking planet.
Secondly, adapt to this board? What in fuck does that mean? Does that mean I have to be even more of an asshole? Does that mean I have to be a thin-skinned ranting fuckwad that starts threads that have no other purpose than heap ad hominem abuse on people and set fire to strawmen?
Look at the thread you are in. Honestly.
After explaining ad nauseum and more or less reasonably in the other thread that I didn’t have glee about Robertson and his cancerous prostate, just a lack of sympathy due to his faith healer shennanigans and his hypocrisy of talking the talk about being healed by Jesus without walking the walk, the OP in this thread contains:
Oh yeah, that’s a pretty good capsule summary of my argument. Yeah. Let’s sniff more Drano.
Of course, after distorting my point, making up others and beginning a thread in which they can practice grade school insults, they then get all bent out of shape when I note their troll-like behavior.
Speaking of being an idiot, the poster also claims that I hijacked the thread when, in fact, it was one of your board regulars that went off on some side rant about Godwin’s Law, even though I wasn’t the first one to cite Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer. That was ivylass, and then Burner (Go ahead, check it) and then others, but they were not a perceived “newbie” and so **iampunha ** held off on deploying Godwin’s Law until he came across someone he though never heard of it before.
Because, after all, if you have only a handful of posts on the Straight Dope one must be new to the net. I wonder if some of you Straight Dopers are the same people who, in the past, have threatened to complain about my various sites to AOL, even though I don’t use AOL, on the assumption that AOL is the internet. Maybe not. Maybe morons don’t always congregate.
Not that I’m complaining. I’ve seen worse on boards, but don’t think I’m going to adapt to your tactics, oh noble Straight Dopers. So far I am remarkably unimpressed. Even your Amida Buddha sage Polycarp is nothing more than a bag of gas that quickly turns flatulent. Sorry, was I mean to Poly? Did I have a moral obligation to let him talk smack like the Church Lady with a blocked colon? Silly me. I failed to adapt.
It’s rather hard, I would think, to continue to treat this board and these posters as the end all in net forums when so far I have seen nothing but loosely glued paranoid idiots seeing trolls and sock puppets under there bed, who distort other people’s arguments just for the sake of having something to beat on, and couldn’t argue their way to the sidewalk after jumping off the roof.
spit
The only saving grace is that the caliber of idiots here are free material.
NurseCarmen
Does this mean I have failed to be a consistent asshole?
Speaking of which, I am still traumatized by the time a nurse took the thermometer out of my mouth and asked “Why does this one say ‘rectal’?”.
Just a nod to the continuing SD ass fixation.
Super Gnat
Nope. I got my degree at NAU in Flagstaff, AZ. I am not from here, I came here from New York by way of Arizona.
Horribly tasteless is a lifestyle choice.
Oh, by the way, Jeff Olsen I think your defense of perhaps the dumbest bit of paranoid ad hoc crap is exceptionally amusing. Please find more tell-tale signs of my sock puppetry so I can have more material for the web site that is not mine.
Nnnnah. More like an endearing asshole.
:sigh: Where in the hell did I call a sock puppet? Yes, I do find it odd that you hide your email here yet right out in the open on your website. You’re telling us to learn to read? Frinds and neighbors, it seems we’ve encountered the King of Chutzpah! Plus living proof that some ignorance just can’t be fought. Y’all can squbble amongst yourselves.
:exits thread:
Aww, Jeff, now that you have buggered off you can’t see this Public Notice which, since I don’t own that domain according to you, can’t be there anyway.
Just as well, the cognitive dissonance would throw you.
Jeff, I too have been around for a very long time (a few years on the old AOL board and then here) and know that we have created a quality board by running the idiots and assholes away. Lately however, I have noticed that some people have taken this one step further by chasing away people who might not fit the mold tightly enough or don’t sniff enough butts before they voice their opinion. I think we have lost some potentially good members because we didn’t give them a chance.
Reverend is articulate and certainly appears to be intelligent. He is also sarcastic and brutal, but ya know what? Those are the same qualities we applaud our regs whenever they post a rant or flame an asshole.
I’m not trying to be obtuse, but in all honesty tell me - Is it because of the things he actually said or the fact that he is a newbie? Are you spun around because a newbie had the nerve to voice a strong opinion and stick to it or that maybe he didn’t sneak in the door quietly and fall into the mold without waves? Would your opinion of his posts be different if a respected reg name was listed as author instead of someone we just heard of?
He may be a complete asshole or it may be that he just got off on the wrong foot that expanded when it was applied that he is a sock. He may end up a valuable member of the SDMB or he may leave or get banned. I am just bothered that the decision is being made by others, prematurely
Mykeru
I’m beginning to like you as well. Just by way of orientation, you’re a bit of Collounsbury (he’s banned), a bit of David B (he’s unbannable), and a bit of me (I’m insane).