(I’m not sure what a good way to show who I’m replying to – maybe @Shodan? Anyway…)
Thanks for the thoughtful and cited post. I’ve seen people admit they were wrong here – certainly on regular scientific and math questions, when cites are brought and nuances are explained. It’s naturally going to happen less often in political discussions, but the continued debate is useful for lurkers. It has been very useful to me in the past – I’ve learned tons from the gun debates here and it has changed my mind on some things.
I don’t want to continue a discussion of HD here, except if people want to bring further sea lion behavior. He has his own thread. I’ll just say that he debates in a significantly more disingenuous way than, for example, you do and that pisses people off. This is a place where interesting debates can be had, but if one side is JAQ’ing off or sealioning or denying basic facts, or just lying, it makes the debates much less interesting.
Yeah, we’re all part of this hive mind. My day for a warning is next Thursday.
I think the name for the kind of poster who never adds value to a thread should be octopusing. Nearly all of your posts are meta, just complaining about the language, the direction of the thread, or how the posts are being made, never contributing to the subject at hand.
But that isn’t true. As I said on the last page, WillFarnaby is a world-class nutcase but he isn’t sealioning.
Truly, I really think that HD and D’Anconia are probably the only posters who make this silly debate tactic the vast majority of their presence here. Of course there are others that do it occasionally.
But I hear the right-wingers circling the wagons that “sealioning doesn’t exist!1!” because they would rather have two disingenuous posters among us who represent a right-wing view of things, rather than hold up some basic standards of behavior.
To reframe the issue, Der Trihs used to be an intolerably aggressive lefty who used insulting language to frame just about every debate, often teetering juuuuuuuust this side of the rules in not insulting a particular poster. Mods catered to him for years, and finally told him to knock it off. GOOD. Doesn’t matter what his political views are.
I’m not saying overly pedantic nitpicking and asking for cites for opinions isn’t annoying. The outrage over it is transparently partisan and instead of advocating posters demonstrate agency they whine that they are baited by the polite request for a cite.
I’ll second this. Generally, I don’t think Shodan is a troll or a disinenuous poster. HD is different. It’s not about positions on the issues, or support for Trump, or being conservative – it’s about how they post. HD posts very, very differently (far, far more dishonestly and disinegenously, as far as it’s possible to determine these things over the internet) than Shodan and most other conservative Dopers.
Just for the record, I had simply never heard of it. Myself, when I saw the thread title I was thinking “hm, either a failed German invasion of the UK home islands or…something really naughty involving sneaking up on a sea lion while it’s sleeping…”. I, of course, went with the second option because that’s just how I roll.
Any category you’re born into is equal, really: There’s no way to not be a sealion, like there’s no way to change your race. So the comics as written are rather problematic, in that they target some group for being born a certain way, and the fact they don’t mention a specific real-world race of humans to get the short end of the stick is mostly due to the fact the creator isn’t stupid.
That this board culture, of all places, would descend to wielding “sealioning!! oh noes” as a cudgel against people asking that arguments be backed up with logic and evidence? Oh how the mighty have fallen. :smack:
That’s because your original post was incorrect. He wasn’t suspended for sealioning, he was suspended for having multiple warnings, including failure to follow moderator instructions, sexualizing posters and their arguments, JAQ’ing off, accusing another poster of lying, insults, being a jerk (in the ITD warning, basically), and also sealioning.
Here’s your chance to redeem yourself – were you wrong when you said he follows the rules except for sealioning?
I don’t think I’ve ever received a warning, let alone gotten suspended. It’s not that hard to debate in good faith, bring cites when making claims, address the OP, and not insult others.
I think the term means when this is done disingenuously, IOW when it’s time to recognize the truth of a simple statement in order to establish that you are interacting in good faith, that you live in the same world, you just refuse and go backwards to a pedantic point.
I don’t see any reason why disingenuous or disruptive behavior should be tolerated just because “someone else can always ignore it.”
Otherwise, why can’t I tell you to go cram a MAGA hat up your lilly white ass in the Elections or Great Debate forums? You can always ignore it. You have agency. And, since I’m a liberal, the mods will love me and the throngs of lefties will build statues in my honor. So why shouldn’t I come up with creative suggestions on your orifices in some other forums here?
ETA: oh and by the way, I’ll add that DrDeth sometimes exhibits a similar pattern of asking for cites and then saying they don’t count. He, however, is far more aggressive and insulting than HD. If you are concerned about partisanship with this criticism of debate styles, listen to this: the mods should do something about DrDeth too.
HD was suspended from the boards just last month for not following the rules.
Or is it your intention to deny the four separate non-“sealion” infractions he accumulated in the last year? Even without the “sealion” one, he still would’ve had four separate warnings.
As one point of comparison, I’ve been on the boards since August 2002. I have no warnings in the last year. In point of fact, I have no warnings in the last 17 years. I would not characterize HD as a poster who “follows the rules”.
Sea-lioning doesn’t bother me that much, possibly because, as you say and I agree, it’s easier to see when it comes from the other side of the ideological divide. So I am more used to it.
I would be hard put to explain why even I thought I was debating less disingenuously than HD, or for that matter less disingenuously than anyone else. I was also recently suspended, although not for sea-lioning. Go figure.
It does not seem to me that sea-lioning disrupts debate all that much. If someone is not debating in good faith, that’s why God invented snark, Cecil invented the Ignore list, and mice have scroll wheels. YMMV.
