You heard the man. He doesn’t have time to moderate properly.
I can perfectly understand why the thread was closed…GQ is not for chatter and bullshitting, it’s for Q & A and the Q had been A’d.
I can also see a reason not to MOVE the thread to MPSIMS…because it needs to remain in the GQ archive for future reference.
However, isn’t there a way that the thread could be copied to MPSIMS and let the chatter continue…then it could be closed in General Questions?
I really don’t have time to reply to all my well-wishers in this thread, so I’ll just pick this one at random.
If you know how to do my job MORE properly than I, then send in your application bub. As for moving the thread in question, …it didn’t need moved. I mainly do that when it is opened in the wrong forum. In this case, it was opened in the right place.
You and others are correct about my original closing of the thread. I didn’t immediately put in an explanation of why I closed it. I fucked up there. Sometimes it happens.
Here’s my decision: I’m re-opening the thread in a few minutes. Not because I give a rat’s ass about all the bellyaching, but because I can see that technically it was not answered completely. The OP asked about a Supreme Court decision. I doubt that there was one, but if you can supply it then Og bless you.
BUT, I’m on that thread tonight like stink on shit in a pay or free toilet. If you have something that addresses the OP, then add it. If not, don’t post in that thread.
And, again, I think the mods in GQ allow WAY more posts that are anecdotal and off-track than are necessary. I get complaints about this EVERY DAY. MULTIPLE ONES.
So, who do I serve–the masters that tell me I allow too much or the ones who say I allow too little. And the final answer is, I do what I think is right and best. That’s why they pay me the big bucks. 
Oh. Well, it’s nice to know that in the midst of making the correct decision you can still find a way to be a total cock about it.
Man, this just makes me sad. The idea that more than one person a day would get so cheesed off over a GQ post they think is anecdotal that they’d actually report it is kind of horrifying.
How about in the course of deciding what is all right and best and all you consider erring on the side that allows for the greatest freedom and flexibility? Not that I read every Pit thread that gets started, but based on the number of threads about kneejerk lockdowns (let alone the ones that result in a reversal of the lockdown) as compared to the ones suggesting that the Mods are being too lenient, and just on general principle, allowing for maximum freedom is IMHO almost always the right decision.
What would allow for the greatest freedom and flexibility would be to have no moderation at all. The forums are set up as they are for a reason: to allow certain types of discussions in a particular forum. If all forums are allowed to become indistiguishable, then what’s the point?
No thanks. I clearly lack the requisite humility, sense of perspective, and willingness to listen to people who’ve actually paid to be here. I’d probably just turn out to be an arrogant little tin god. And fuck your smiley, too.
I was, clearly, speaking within the context of a moderated forum.
It does not appear that anyone is disputing this point.
No one to my knowledge is suggesting that the forums be allowed to become indistinguishable.
Slippery slope fallacy.
You’re arguing strenuously and with attitude that[list=a]
[li]a thread that had turned into MPSIMS material should be allowed to continue in GQ[/li]
or
[li]a GQ appropriate thread should be moved to MPSIMS[/list][/li]In either case there is a blurring, a slurry of forum types.
What I honestly don’t understand is why - if people are so wrought up about not being allowed to tell anecdotes about pay toilets - someone just doesn’t go start one in the appropriate forum. Threads are started all the time that have been inspired by other threads. Jeez, all the energy that has been spent in bitching about samclem’s decision could have powered a three page MPSIMS thread about pay toilets by now.
Not when MPSIMS has a proven tendency to metastasize.
Remember, everyone needs to go over there and post only facts in that thread. No cute comments, no flush jokes, etc. :eek:
So what? There’s always overlap between forums. Threads that could properly go into multiple forums are here in abundance.
And as far as my “attitude” is concerned, it got a lot worse after the first big ol’ “fuck you” that samclem shat out here and worse still after his second big ol’ “fuck you” with “I don’t give a rat’s ass what any of you think” chaser.
You can’t really think that this is about pay toilets. This is about a Moderator, in the wake of an unpopular (and now admitted to be erroneous) decision to close a thread for a suspect reason, closing a thread that to all appearances was entirely innocuous for no stated reason. Had Cajun Man not blown the Secret Santa thread closing and had TubaDiva not followed up that decision with naked contempt for those who disagreed with (or in most cases, had never even heard of) the “rule,” then my response to samclem’s decision would have been one with much less exasperation. Had samclem put an actual reason for the closure in his lockdown post, the tone of my OP would have been much different. Had samclem not responded to the concerns of people who believed he acted heavy-handedly in locking the thread by behaving like a near-perfect horse’s ass, this thread would have prpgressed much differently than it did. This moved way beyond pay toilets and deep into the heart of “I’m a Mod, what I say goes, if you don’t like it tough shit and I don’t care what you think anyway and let’s see you try to do better” territory.
This Years Model
Yet another Mod that just doesn’t get it.
Too much moderation is begining to really cheese people off. You are all begining to smell like persons much taken with their own agendas. You don’t seem to hear anything this community it trying to tell you.
I can’t believe that I just saw a mod chastise us and tell us what we could post in the thread he was “deigning to reopen”, don’t strain yourself now. In a thread about toilets, sheesh. Just get yourselves a fingerwagging icon and be done with it.
God save us all from blurry and slurry, the sky might fall.
Get over yourselves already.
Not to mention false dichotomy, or the fallacy of the excluded middle.
So there are enough hours in your day when it comes to being petty and vindictive, then? Interesting.
So what? The different forum guideines are there to keep similar threads together for ease of reading. They are there to facillitate discussion on this board not act as a barrier to it. Once you start closing threads just becuase they don’t exactly fit into the guidelines you are enforcing a rule for the rules sake.
Its better to nip this ridiculous mod action in the bud than continually restart closed threads elsewhere. Closing a thread and saying open a new one if you want to keep talking about it is simply daffy. If a thread is no longer in the correct forum then move it to the correct forum.
Whats even more disturbing about the closing is samclem’s attitude. You have multiple people in this thread telling him not to increase his moderation presence. What does he say to this? He tells us to basically go fuck ourselves and that he knows whats best. Thats an absolute joke. Its terrible customer service and its terrible moderation.
I am beginning to wonder what you actually have to do to get fired from moderation here. This is not an isolated incident for sam and he is not the only mod like this. I am not the only one that has noticed this either. Many long time posters have noted the increase in apparently capricious and arbitrary decisions. Most of these can be traced back to a few mods and I think could be solved by replacing them.
In samclem’s case he erroniously closes a thread, gets called on it and proceeds to be a giant dick about it. Why isn’t it expected that after being a moderator for so long you should know that this thread did not need closing and to at least have some sort of humility? If he can’t manage to listen to us and treat us with a little bit of respect he shouldn’t be a mod. He needs to take a look at himself and see if he wants to still be a mod and the administration of this board also needs to look at him and see if they still want him as a mod. There are plenty of people that would be willing to take his place and would be able to do a better job.
If any of the mods need an example of how to be a moderator I suggest looking in tomndebb’s direction. He always seems to be on top of insults being traded in GD and instead of closing the thread he heads it off by issuing a warning. I don’t think he has ever closed a thread in the middle of an interesting discussion to satisfy some arbitrary forum description. He simply enforces the don’t be a jerk rule and moves misplaced threads. Thats all we ask of moderators and all that is necessary.
and he has a better attitude. Maybe sam will come here and be nicer; would it be better then?
Quis custodiet ipsos cutodes? Who moderates the moderators? What I find disturbing is that as soon as the actions of any staff member are called into question, regardless of the merits of the issue another mod or admin can be relied on to leap in and defend them with - often speciously - even when the original actions were indefensible. This Year’s Model backing up samclem in this thread, but the most egregious recent example was TubaDiva leaping to Cajun Man’s aid in his recent pitting with a clearly made-up “rule” that no-one had ever heard of.
OK, that one ended amicably when common sense prevailed, but this staff solidarity right, reason or no is starting to create a poisonous atmosphere of staff vs. posters. I can understand that no-one wants to publically dump on a colleague, and that’s fine by me, but this trend of leaping in to fight someone’s corner seemingly only because they’re a fellow mod is going to create a destructive “us vs. them” culture on this board.
I can see your point, Case Sensitive, but This Year’s Model’s point seemed to be the same as one I’ve made in this thread myself – why not, instead of gnashing teeth about unfairness, simply start up an MPSIMS thread?
As it is, now the GQ thread has been reopened, that’s all by-the-by. But are you asking staff to just turn away from a colleague and leave them to be torn apart by – well – the wolves? Is it because they have the powers they have that this should be how it goes?
Well, part of the problem is hats, I guess: are they defending samclem mod hat on, as a colleague, or mod hat off, as a poster? You never see a staff member arguing against another in the Pit, which leads me to the conclusion that they’re here with hats on.