But what if they’re quadrangled and milled?
For anyone who really wants to know, I believe don Jamie is referring to this late, lamented humor site, where the phrase he mentions was sometimes given as a third option when two unpopular figures (like, say, Barney and Wesley Crusher) are pitted against one another.
Don’t be so hard on Scott. Lots of people never get their pony to master even one trick while it’s alive, much less withstand continuous postmortem pummelings.
Ah. Thank you for increasing my cultural literacy.
This dotty old woman was about to nod off at the keyboard until I found this tangent:
Now that has the necessary gravitas for me.
Kudos to the OP for sticking up for quality discourse.
Fought some ignorance, posted a smartassed remark, sought to make the board a more polite place, encouraged board participation, and provided a bit more knowledge and sources of knowledge for the Teeming Millions. And you?
“Do not meddle in the affairs of Mods, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.”
I will admit that the linked threads show a bit of… underhandedness in avoiding pittings. I will assume that Mr. Plaid did not feel extremely strongly about the subject matter, in which case he might have been best in just not posting in the first place…
But,
Why all the hate for Scott Plaid? Really. He paid his money and has the right to post anywhere and as often as he wants. Hell, if coherency was a pre-requisite here, tons of people would be kicked to the curb. Probably me (Tell me I am not incoherent, please? Not consistenly at least. I try to preview.)
He is not my best friend; in fact a comment he made on a post of mine (that admittedly may not have been understood as in joking manner in which I wrote it) left me mildly antipathetic towards him. But hardly enough to feel the rancor against him that some people have. In fact, I learned to word my posts carefully and diplomatically as possible, using the proper amount of emoticons to get my point across. Hmm, maybe I should try to fix that last sentence to resemble something coherent. 
(see smiley)
It seems to me that people spend a lot of time pointing out that they do not understand him. Maybe because I am trained to work with people with reading and writing disabilities (and I am in not saying that Scott Plaid has one) that his posts are not as incoherent as they seem. It often derails an interesting thread. Honestly, it just seems rude to keep pointing it out. I dunno, nitpicking is a pet peeve of mine.
If you do not understand or agree with his posts, why not just leave them alone? Vicious cycle and all that.
I haven’t seen any hate. I see irritation enough to start a Pit thread, yes, but so far, no hate.
I don’t think it’s just one thing that’s really led to this Pitting, either. Friend Scott has several annoying habits, any one of which would hardly go noticed since so many of us do them now and again. But Scott pushes the envelope by maintaining practically a catalog of irritating behavior which he draws from again and again, constantly, like a kind of SDMB water torture dripping on our eyeballs.
And he just won’t shut up. I don’t have a well-thought out reason for feeling this way, other than he went from “Hey, a new poster” to “Hey, there he is again” to “Wow, he has a lot of opinions” to “He posts a lot” to “Dude, could you, I dunno, not post on EVERY thing that enters your brain?” to “OMG STFU!!!” in the space of 5 months.
It’s not logical, but it does annoy the piss out of me, just like the lady at work who, whenever anyone is talking about anything, she feels the need to come over and put in her two cents.
See, there I go with the unclear language. I meant more like the urban slang “hate;” y’know, not hate-hate but dislike.
I understand he has irritating behavior and did not say it did not warrent a pitting (or did I? short term memory= -1 min). I am just saying if irritating behavior was a crime, well, hooboy. Just seems pitting should be for more heinous crimes. He and I joined about the same time but I have not seen what it is that raises the blood pressure of some other poster. Scott is nothing if not earnest. My impression is “mostly harmless.” Seems like he is easier to ignore. I guess if this pit is more of a venting, though… no harm, no foul. I was just saying, is all.
boofuu,
How long have you been reading the boards? I ask simply because your membership dates to about the time that Scott Plaid started contributing, so you may be less aware of what threads were like before he joined.
Both misplaced pittings linked in the OP show (to me) a high profile, high post, new poster who is dissatisfied with the way that the board works, and has worked for a long time. He seems to want to change the world, or chase off the oponents. I never approve of new posters (or low post count posters) who think they should be able to change the board, rather than adapt their behavior to it.
If Scott posted less frequently, he’d be easier to ignore. I’ve been seriously thinking about starting a pit thread on him for a couple of days. However, I’ve never started a pit thread, and my feelings tend more towards exasperation than vitriol. I almost never post in threads that he posts in (and would almost never post in the threads he posts in if he wasn’t there posting in them).
Therefore it seemed like my starting a Pit thread on him would be whiny. So I have been hoping that someone else would start a Pit thread so that I could chime in with “Shut up” or at least “Slow Down”.
Scott Plaid
Back off on the use of [del] to mark out cutesy comments that don’t add anything to the thread. The most egregious example of this is the Yu-gi-oh /T. J.-Oh card in the mutant registry thread. Phrased the way it was, it struck me as minimizing the significance of both Scott Plaid’s point, and the point made by Bricker that it responded to. (And both Tomndebb and Bricker thought it was less relevant than Scott did anyway.
Heck, back off on the cutesy-ness even when not struck out.
Back off on the gleefull assurance that your side is fundamentally right and the other side is wrong. (Note: you are not the only offender in this respect. The other offenders I can’t change. I probably can’t change you either, but you are a new enough (and young enough sounding) poster for me to make the effort).
And please, if a thread (in GD) is not going your way, there are a limited number of appropriate responses:
-
Quit posting in the thread. Perhaps with a message that says “I have not changed my mind but have wearied of trying to change yours/wearied of discussing this issue”
-
Start a new thread in GD- and link to it in the old thread saying “here is where we can discuss whether Bush lied for the umpteenth time, so that this thread can remain more focused on whether the board is unbalanced and what can be done about it”
-
Start a Pit thread. Be warned, though, the responses in this thread, and the ones linked to in the OP, suggest that you may get piled on instead- as many posters would prefer having people like Shodan and ** Bricker** around to fight with than you around to agree with.
Ugh. The link in the above post goes to page 3 of the Mutant Registration Act thread. The post I refer to is #148, near the bottom of page 3. Obviously, I have no idea how to link to a single post.
Click “Reply to” or “Edit” on this post and copy the text that demonstrates
the way to link to a specific post within a thread while opening the whole thread
(where the “p=” and “#post” number are the same and can found by hovering your cursor over the “Edit” button at the bottom of the post and looking at the end of the displayed URL that ends “p=#######”)
and
the way to link to a single post so that only that post is displayed
(where the “p=” can found by hovering your cursor over the “Edit” button at the bottom of the post and the “postcount=” number is the little identfying number in the top right corner of the post.
(Be sure to NOT then attempt to reply or edit; just copy the text into a notepad or other document that you can use as a template and then cancel out of the edit or reply function.)
Or you could right-click on the post number, select “Copy Shortcut”, and paste.
No sweat - I took ya too literally. Happens.
Click on the number in the upper right hand corner. That’ll open the post in a new window. Then it’s just like any other link.
That’s what I love about this place. Come in for the Pitting, but stay for the valuable tech tips.
Can I just vote for “shut up”?
Good God man, do you stop posting long enough to use the bathroom?