Hey, as long as you put them in the appropriate fora, that’s fine with me. I’m not much of a thread-starter, but I have no problem with it when others choose to do so, whether their politics are closer to Olentzero or to Freedom2. If threads aren’t posted to, they quickly sink off the front page of the forum, and then they don’t trouble anyone anymore. If they are responded to, then they must be filling a need in the marketplace of ideas that is this message board.
RTF: Hmmm…OK.
So if a whole lot of dopers all start quite a few threads a week (or a day) with ground-breaking topics like “look at this new cartoon I found!” or “Atta boy, <Doper who wrote something I like>” than that is just fine? Won’t that start to clog the boards? If we all were as prolific as Stoid, every new thread would probably be pushed down to the second page before they really had time to get any responses.
The Ryan said:
Which, I will admit, is a valid point. We do have the right to ask (not TELL) others to shut up.
Personally, I feel more comfortable asking someone to shut up based upon the manner of the their speech (e.g. when they’re talking behind me at the movie theatre) rather than based upon the substance of their speech (i.e. because I don’t like what they’re saying.)
Mandelstam…
Whoever said it had to be one or the other? I said that liberals are NOT outnumbered. I didn’t say they “dominated”.
Do we have a lot of conservatives? You bet. Do we have a lot of liberals? You bet. Depending on which topic we’re talking about, I can be either. In a gun control thread, I’m very conservative. In a homosexuality thread, I’m very liberal.
It all comes down to he “issues”. When it comes to things like religion and faith, I believe that liberalism “dominates”, for instance.
So you’re saying there’s a difference between “being liberal” and “being a Liberal”. In my mind, if someone follows “liberal” ideals (which is a whole 'nother debate… if you choose, I can post my beliefs about that in GD), they’re “liberal”. I don’t care whether they call themselves “liberal” or not. They can call themselves a baked potato, and they’d still be “liberal”.
And you accused me of “tame generalizations”…
Frankd6…
Are you suggesting then, sir, that…
… is an “intelligent discourse”?
Physician, heal thyself.
Find me a cite for that. I never suggested that she be banned for posting content I don’t like. I suggested… no, I flat out SAID it… that she’s an irrational moron.
Ah, there’s that “intelligent discourse” you mentioned earlier, isn’t it?
So you’re saying, “If you don’t like somebody, you can’t do anything about it until they do or say something REALLY bad”? I say it again… you, sir, are an idiot.
Do you even know who Stoidela is?!? We ARE telling her to shut up based on her “manner of speech”!! It’s not that she says something… it’s that she says it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandover… without EVER listening to a single post that might possibly contradict what she believes!
It’s akin to a little child plugging their ears and saying “I can’t hear you! La la la!” when someone tells them to stop watching so much TV.
RTFirefly…
Stoid is constantly being compared to other posters… in this case, there IS no comparison, as the only people who post dozens of threads, with the seeming intent only to stir up reaction, are… well… nevermind.
I’ll put it this way… Stoid has made more “Anti-Conservative” threads in the past few months than all the posters, who made similar “Anti-Liberal” threads, combined in the same period.
and
Actually, yes. I’d like you to quantify your claims. Of course, first we need to agree on the definitions of conservatives and liberals, although, I suspect that by any definition, I’m in the conservative camp. I’d also like to comment that if you’re gonna lump Republicans and Libertarians together as conservatives, you gotta include Socialists, Communists and Greens with the Democrats as liberals.
And if it had been the other way around, it wouldn’t have bothered me in the least. Let’s scope out the possibilities:
I. Nobody posts to her threads.
They drop out of sight, and are quickly forgotten.
II. People post to her threads.
A. She's said nothing worth responding to.
Well, shame on those who responded.
B. She's said things worth responding to.
1. The people responding to her can come up
with better counter-arguments.
She'll get tired of starting threads where she
loses the arguments, and will start fewer threads.
2. Her arguments are clearly better than those of
the people raising counterarguments.
Then unless the thread's pretty redundant, what's
the problem? And if it IS, link to the nearly-
identical thread, then stop responding, and let
the thread drop out of sight.
3. It isn't clear who's got the best of the argument.
That's the norm with MOST political issues, so
again, what's the beef? Same general comment as
with 2.
On the whole, I think that if it’s a problem, it’s probably a self-correcting one. And if it doesn’t seem to be self-correcting soon enough, we have these guys/gals called ‘moderators’. Since we’re primarily talking about GD here, has anyone emailed Gaudere or DavidB to see what their take is on this?
As I said, if a conservative or libertarian were starting threads in the quantity that Stoid does, I personally wouldn’t be bothered in the least. (Libertarian did this for awhile, so I speak from experience.) I respond to threads that interest me, to the extent that time allows, and pass up those that don’t. Simple, yet effective.
Right now, btw, two of the 50 threads on p.1 of the GD forum were started by Stoid. (And none of the 20 threads on p.2, for those who have ‘Show threads from’ set to ‘last 5 days’.) I realize it frequently has been more than that lately, but this particular thread was started less than three days ago, so that means she’d started at most two threads on GD in the 2+ days immediately prior to the OP. Somehow, I don’t think our mods are going to consider that to be a red flag.
[Edited by John Corrado on 01-02-2001 at 04:38 PM]
Well, here’s how I look at it. If someone can call the Democratic Party “socialist” while keeping a straight face, they’re pretty much a knee-jerk right-wing ideologue. Similarly, if someone can call the Republican Party “evil” while managing not to laugh, they’re a knee-jerk left-wing ideologue. Furthermore, if anyone consistently advances arguments in support of their belief system which are intellectually dishonest, overly vituperative, or logically bereft, then they’re just spewing partisan polemic and it’s hard for me to take them seriously.
Under these criteria, based on my observations:
Non-ad hominem conservatives* include but are not limited to John Corrado, IzzyR, Sam Stone, divemaster, Anthracite, Jodi, and Necros.
Ad hominem conservatives include but are not limited to The Ryan, Wildest Bill, Diceman, Crafter Man, astorian, puddleglum, grienspace, Scylla, Asmodean, and Freedom2.
Non-ad hominem liberals include but are not limited to Kimstu, xenophon41, Mandelstam, RTFirefly, Gaudere, Arnold Winkelried, jshore, and, I hope, myself.
Ad hominem liberals include but are not limited to Stoidela, RTA, oldscratch, and…I’m sure y’all can think of several more; at the moment, I can’t.
*By labelling these people as “liberal” and “conservative” I am making a judgment based upon what I perceive to be the prevailing sentiment in their posts. It’s entirely possible that I’m completely wrong. If someone I’ve styled as “conservative” identifies themselves instead as libertarian or moderate or liberal or unclassifiable, mea culpa; I’m just trying to give a sense of how I see the left and right wings breaking down on this board.
But this is a silly tangent, anyway. Like Milo says (!), every group is outnumbered by all the rest on this board–the exact boundaries are defined by your particular perception. (How about this, Milo? On most economic threads, people who take the “liberal” view usually find themselves in the minority to opposing “conservatives” and “libertarians,” while in most social threads its usually the “conservatives” who find themselves in the minority to the “libertarians” and “liberals.” Damn quote marks.) And you’re right, SPOOFE, in that a more liberal religious view probably predominates here–at least insofar as most of the vocal posters on this board generally consider scientific creationism and religious intolerance to be Very Bad Things[sup]tm[/sup], and insofar as considering scientific creationism and religious intolerance to be Very Bad Things[sup]tm[/sup] is a liberal attribute, which it’s really not.
However.
There is a substantive difference between a Democrat and a liberal. For you to contest that is simply to display a sweeping ignorance both of the history of American politics and of current events.
It’s got very little to do with whether or not I agree with their viewpoints. As Mandelstam says, it has something to do with what they call themselves, but it goes beyond that. If we call Dianne Feinstein a liberal when she has consistently championed causes which are anathema to most of the progressive movement, then what are people like Jim Hightower or Paul Wellstone? (No, not “socialists.”) By using the appellations “Democrats” and “liberals” interchangeably, you’re relegating anyone to the left of the Democratic Party to the radical fringe, and crafting anyone in the left of the Democratic Party as being functionally indistinguishable from a Blue Dog or a member of the DLC. (Oh, and look into the Democratic Leadership Council, will ya? It embodies that Venn diagram I was talking about.)
But as you said earlier, most people are more complex than this. Most people, in fact, are baked potatoes. Political ideology isn’t a linear thing, and it’s certainly not binary. I kinda think of it like the Kinsey spectrum, except with a bunch more externalities. What makes someone a liberal or conservative changes not only with the issue but with the time, as Kimstu elegantly pointed out on one of the GD ideology threads. Today’s progressive may be tomorrow’s reactionary, even if their views stay the same.
So though I’m classifying people here as “liberal” and “conservative,” I think most people fall somewhere in the middle. Hell, I think most people on this board fall somewhere in the middle, though they might lean a bit to the right, like you, or the left, like tomndebb. But you don’t get to say, “I don’t care what they call themselves, this is what they are.” That’s not accurate, and it’s more than a little presumptuous…it’s damn likely that they know better than you what they believe and where it fits in, generally, with the beliefs of the people around them.
And this is what I find so goddamn ridiculous. How can you make blanket condemnations like this? Do you even read Stoidela’s posts, or do you just roll your eyes? I’ve seen her have a reasoned political debate many times–contrary to your assertion, Stoidela almost always listens to the opposition’s objections and tries to respond to them. No, she doesn’t really budge from her beliefs, and yeah, she probably starts too many threads…but she’s certainly not this chattering childish automaton that you’ve made her out to be!
Here’s a hint: if you ever find yourself writing a sentence that contains an unqualified assertion about someone else (“she NEVER does this,” “he ALWAYS does this”), then that assertion is most likely wrong and you’re probably gonna look like a dolt for having written the sentence.
Changed the ‘Show threads from’ to 10 days in GD, and guess what - no additional Stoid-started threads. So during the week-plus immediately preceding the OP, Stoidela started exactly two GD threads - and one of those was a link to that cute Occam’s Razor graphic about the existence of God.
So kwitcherbitchen about a ‘problem’ that, to the extent that it existed, was gone well before this thread was started.
Hey Gadarene, Where do you get off calling me an “Ad Hominem Conservative?”
You rotten sonuvabitch!
That’s funny, Scylla. 
I never said you didn’t have a sense of humor!
Lemme clarify, too, that among the ad hominem conservatives and liberals I was including both knee-jerk ideologues and just, well, jerk ideologues. If it helps, Scylla, I think of you more as the former than the latter. grin
Oh, and add Chronolicht to the list of ad hominem liberals.
So what am I, chopped liver? 
While just being strictly humorous in the previous post, my feelings are hurt.
Any Ad Hominem attacks I’ve engaged in have been at specific people, for specific behavior, not at general political beleifs.
Stoid has personally earned my ire in the past. Not because she was a liberal, but because I thought she was being a jerk. I’ve always liked her though. I’ve attacked Rush Limbaugh, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, and that SOS lady in Florida, again not because of political beleifs, but because of reprehensible behavior.
So, I think I’ve been mischaracterized.
Well, like I said in the previous post, if I did mischaracterize you, that’s my fault and I’m sorry. It’s my perception that you’ve been intellectually dishonest in some past threads, Scylla–that is, I remember you making assertions which had already been shown to be wrong, and doing so in what seemed to be a persistently ideological manner. To me, there’s no greater sin on this board than to deliberately foster ignorance in the face of verifiable facts (it’s why I go nuclear every time someone talks about how much the media vilified Ronald Reagan, for instance).
That little list of “good” and “bad” conservatives and liberals was nobody’s opinion but my own, and it’s certainly subject to change; I did list my criteria, though, so that people might see where I was coming from.
Oh, and Maeglin? Yes, you are chopped liver. If it helps, though, you’re not ad hominem chopped liver. 
Gadarene:
may I trouble you for a cite or two of my “ad hominem conservatism.”
I did read your criteria, and I try hard not to do what your suggesting. Sometimes looking in the mirror impartially isn’t easy though. Time might make it easier to see my error(s), if I indeed made them.
Whew! Even though I don’t qualify as a liberal, at least I’m not ad hominem chopped liver! Mehercule!
MR
I’ve gotta stick up for Scylla as a fundamentally honest poster. I’ve been in threads with him since early last year, and I’ve always seen good arguments and good questions from him. I’ve never seen him as a knee-jerk of any stripe.
Fair enough, Rufe. Tell you what, Scylla–I know that you do pride yourself on your ability to change your worldview when new information presents itself, and I agree that generally you’re able to do this very well. So I’ll retract what I said about your being an ad hominem conservative–'specially since I don’t have the energy at the moment to go sifting through election threads in search of the stuff I thought I saw. Here’s the provision, though: if I do see you jerking that knee, I reserve the right to call you on it and point you back to this thread. Deal?
Hey! No fair being honest and self-aware, dammit!
Hard-nosed? I thought it was his right ball that was calcifying…
You forgot Ankh_Too, although people like Stoid and Chronolicht claim that (s)he’s not a liberal… which I disagree with.
No no no no, I didn’t say they’re the same thing. My apologies. I’m saying, if we’re going to compare conservatives to liberals, we really shouldn’t get down into “they’re not liberal enough to be a liberal”, because, like I said, it depends on a person’s POV. In the eyes of some, I’m probably very liberal.
So for the sake of THIS argument, I think it’d be prudent to stick with the “All Dems are liberal, but not all liberals are Dems” notion (which isn’t always true, I know… it’s a generalized statement).
Well, okay, you’re right. I should clarify. In this thread, I’m referring almost primarily to Stoid’s tendency (in the weeks preceding and following the election) to get a “Bush is evil!” comment in edgewise at any opportunity.
I will admit that, outside of “loaded” topics, I often find myself on Stoid’s side. Why? Because I guess she just doesn’t find herself as “emotionally involved” in topics like “What constitutes child pornography?” and such.
I HAVE been overgeneralizing about her. For that, I apologize. But DAGNAMMIT, it gets annoying when a debate about candidates is interrupted by “so-and-so is a horrible, horrible person controlled by horrible, horrible people!” If she doesn’t want to be defending herself all the time, she shouldn’t go on the offensive so much.
And you’re right, she HAS stopped the “start a new thread every day” routine. But she still keeps it up occasionally in a perfectly innocuous thread…