Jackmannii, you sure the lack of december pit threads isn’t due to the majority realizing that such things are pretty much just a waste of space?
Not to mention that it takes all of five posts to realize what december is.
In other words, you disagree with his opinions.
Gosh, what a tragedy. God forbid you should have to put up with that on a message board.
december’s primary sin is that he has a simplistically Republican partisan outlook, which makes him one of at least a dozen posters I can think of with simplistic partisan outlooks, but he seems to take the most crap for it, largely because he starts the most threads. He isn’t pushing the line. He isn’t even approaching it. He raises OPs in the right forums. He doesn’t do drive-bys. His alleged propensity for inventing facts, based on the cites provided, seems to actually be a propensity for choosing to believe sources that support his position, a charge I could level against a hundred people, or to provide genuine facts that are non-sequiturs in the context of the debate.
In terms of personal conduct, he’s most definitely not a jerk - he’s one of the most polite posters on the board despite the fact that he’s subjected to more outright insults than anyone else on the SDMB, often for no reason other than who he is. He also does raise some pretty good threads - his current thread on “Should the INS treat Canadians like criminals?” provides a balanced OP with a few choice cites, and it’s a very interesting topic.
Sorry, but I don’t see where he’s breaking any rules. Sometimes he seems to be ignorant about some things. I can dig up some threads where you’re ignorant about some things. I can dig up threads were I’m ignorant about some things. Maybe he’s ignorant more often than you, but there’s no quota. There is no SDMB rule, so far as I am aware, against being ignorant, dumb, or heavily politically biased. If extreme partisanship is a bannable offense, december isn’t even at the front of the line for banning.
I don’t see why any of this merits 1,500 Pit rants or implications he should be banned. Awhile ago I was in a GD thread with a poster who, as near as I could tell, drew all their opinions from two magazines. The poster deliberately dropped every thread of debate when contrary evidence was presented, claimed they were unable to open linked cites that proved their points were wrong, (when everyone else in the thread could open them, mind you) and quite deliberately misrepresented my position and the position of others on several occasions, started changing the subject when things didn’t go their way, and introduced more strawmen arguments than a scarecrow debating society. It never occurred to me to start a Pit thread - it was frustrating, but I’m not going to Pit someone because they’re a bit scrambled. (It was not December or anyone else in this thread.) Being partisan and bad at debating is not the same as being a jerk.
Of course, I’m imposing my own personal standards on what “being a jerk” is. I would assume, based on 15 years of experience with newsgroups, FIDOnet, message boards, etc., that “Being a jerk” includes personal abuse, violating specific rules, drive-bys, obvious trolling, etc. Pissing you off because someone is ignorant or doesn’t agree with you or just isn’t fun to debate with isn’t what I’d call being a jerk, but you’re free to disagree.
IMHO, the vitriol directed towards December is ridiculous.
Da’hell? I don’t like him because of his political stance?
Um, sure. Yeah, that’s it.
:rolleyes:
On the first point: Nope.
94% of december’s threads belong in IMHO and 5% belong in the Pit. Instead he fills up GD with his fact-free glurge and his “Oh, we Republicans (who are never mean) are so picked upon” schtick and his “Everyone who has ever spoken harshly of any Israeli action is obviously anti-semitic” schtick.
On rare occasions, he does, indeed, initiate a thread in GD that has substance. He currently has two. (He also had one last month and one over the Summer.) When he actually posts a GD thread in GD, I do think people ought to respect that and not drag in animosity resulting from his more typical behavior.
I certainly agree that he does not deserve banishment.
Of course, the opinions that really matter are those of the staff. Coldfire for one appears to disagree with you.
Gosh, thanks so much for the clarification. I could have sworn that he pisses me off 'cause he continually mischaracterizes my (and other’s ) positions, posts deliberately inflamatory crap in the wrong forums, is condescending while also being wrong, thinks that an OP/Ed piece is gold, while data is ‘misconstrued’, says he’s an accuary IRL, while demonstrates a frightening lack of understanding of routine statistical analysis, etc.
Can you provide an actual example of this? (I don’t recall this ever). Thanks.
Which is fair enough; if their interpretation is different from mine, there it is. I’m sure the staff have varying interpretations. Their own standards aren’t even consistent anyway, as evidenced with the subject of another Pit thread running right now. It’s not my call who gets banned and who doesn’t, but IMHO, December isn’t a jerk by any reasonable standard. It’s just my opinion.
Sorry, wring, but where’s the disagreement here? Sounds like you’re saying he’s ignorant and isn’t fun to debate with. So I wrapped it up a little more concisely. We agree.
Look, December’s a crappy poster, at least in debate posts. I won’t argue that. And he has started some inappropriately placed threads, though I scoff at the cited “94%” figure. Technically speaking, I still don’t think he’s of sufficient jerkitude to consider him a Jerk, and the level of vitriol he’s subjected to is absurd; poster after poster insults him in GD and gets nary a word from the mods 85% of the time, and in many cases he gets snide comments in threads that are going just fine, simply because he’s december. (The aforementioned Canadians-at-the-borders thread being a case in point.) On the other hand, Collounsbury’s been an abusive asshole for years, but he’s still around. Why is that?
Well, Collounsbury’s smarter, or puts on a better show, anyway. And there’s something to be said for his knowledge around some critical topics. But I sure hope they don’t start applying the board rules selectively based on how smart you are, with Wile E. Coyote Supergeniuses given free rein to break the rules, while the duller lights get heaved left and right. (For one thing, I’m afraid I’m closer to the latter group than the former.)
The term “pile on” in the internet message board sense is being absolutely defined in the endless december threads. I mean, I can understand ripping someone in the Pit if you’re just sick of them and think they should be banned, and I just ripped Collounsbury. Once. Beyond that, shit, just send the mods an E-mail and accept their decision to ban or not.
I agree with Rickjay 100%. December’s opinions may not be yours, but they reflect those of a pretty big chunk of the country. He has a right to talk about them and debate them. If he can’t represent his ideas well, he’ll lose the debate.
But none of this gives any of you the right to continually attack him in rude and personal ways. I can think of a lot of posters around here who are a lot more argumentative, a lot more ignorant of the facts, but who get away with it simply because their political bent fits in more closely with the SDMB average.
And then there are people like Collounsbury, who dive bomb threads and start spewing vicious crap all over the place just because someone had the audacity to try to discuss something on which Collounsbury happens to be well versed. And yet, because he fits into that comfortable center-left area, he gets a ton of slack. Let’s see how long the SDMB would put up with some redneck NRA type who came around and continually told the stupid motherfucking idiots to pull their motherfucking heads out of their asses.
The day December gets banned from this place, I’ll take a walk with him, because it’ll no longer be the kind of place I want to hang out in.
Regardless of wether I agree with Decembers policies, I dislike him because he deliberately chooses to misrepresent information to fit whatever little political bent du jour he is on. When called on it, he rarely answers.
If true, the world is fucked.
The only way december will get banned is if he breaks the rules. Of course, if he did get banned, and you chose to leave doing the opressed little martyr act, I’ll cry you a river.
Which rules would those be ? It seems he can make a mockery of the board’s copyright policy and still have a friendly mod run interference for him. link
Which is precisely what december has done in the supplied link. Had he chosen to post massive excerpts from a piece of crap such as the protocols of the elders of zion, he’d have been banned in a heartbeat. Having instead pasted in an unattributed piece about democrats figuratively “drinking the blood of their own dead”, december gets manhattan’s kindly assist.
Sam, I agree with you that much of the criticism of december is partisan shit slinging, but the guy also gets away with more vile bullshit than half a dozen regular posters.
Oh stop your peevish whinging, I’m hardly center left, unless left has become redefined to include hard-core free-trade support, etc.: in the real world I’m usually center-right in a East Coast moderate sense. Center left…
As for all this whinging about december getting pitted, what the fuck are you morons complaining about? That’s what it’s for: I don’t mind my pit threads, if I deserve them I deserve them, if not … well so the fuck what, it’s a motherfucking message board for pity sake. Get some fucking perspective you whinging idiots.
December annoys people - including me - and there are valid criticisms re his citation method (distortions - funny one forgets this) etc. So, let em air em out, instead of whinging on “oh the poor conservatives, so put upon… blah blah blah…” That’s just whiney bullshit, and there’s nothing more tedious than whiney and incorrect bullshit.
And the same goes for me - don’t want any special privs at all, and if there is anything that bothers me it’s the idea that I have them (I certainly never asked for nor expected). I piss some of you off, it is entirely appropriate to complain, criticise and otherwise vent. It can be quite useful, even for me(*). Won’t see me whinging on about oh how those conservatives this, those on the Right that.
(I do agree BTW that a good portion of some criticisms of d boy are indeed of the “I don’t like his politics” variety and they should be dismissed.)
(*: Sure, I sometimes go farther than I thought I had gone. I actually do regret that.)
Capital Hilil Blue, which Squink compares to the protocols of the elders of zion was given quite favorable treatment in this article from the New York Times.
Yes, thanks to manhattan, now we know that your little diatribe was lifted from Capital hilil (sic) Blue. Whether a reporter at the NYT wrote kind words about the little scandal sheet is irrelevant here. You seem quite eager to link to articles in the legitimate press, yet you make a habit of not providing links when the source is less ironclad. All of which is just a strawman argument to obscure your abuse of copyright law. I have no problem with your bending the rules to push your own evil little agenda, but you’re NOT just bending. You seem to think you’ve a special license to break them.
Yes, thanks to manhattan, now we know that your little diatribe was lifted from Capital hilil (sic) Blue. Whether a reporter at the NYT wrote kind words about the little scandal sheet is irrelevant here. You seem quite eager to link to articles in the legitimate press, yet you make a habit of not providing links when the source is less ironclad. All of which is just a strawman argument to obscure your abuse of copyright law. I have no problem with your bending the rules to push your own evil little agenda, but you’re NOT just bending. You seem to think you’ve a special license to break them.
No response from tomndebb? OK, I’ll say what I think.
This accusation is a falsehood. I have obviously not read every post by december to this message board, so I cannot vouch that he has never accused someone of being anti-Semitic based on their speaking harshly of an Israeli action. But I have read quite a lot of them - including the Palestinian ones - and I don’t recall this at all. So I can vouch that this is not a december “shtick”.
So what have is tomndebb misrepresenting december’s positions. This is the type of thing that many have objected to about december, including wring in this thread. (For an example - just yesterday - of wring misrepresenting my position, see this).
Why does this happen? Not because tomndebb (or wring) coldly and deliberately decided to lie about things. I don’t think they would do this, or for that matter, think they could get away with it. What actually happens is that people feel strongly about things, and this clouds their memory and judgement. People confuse things that other people have actually said with things that others of the same ideology have said. Or - perhaps more significantly - people ascribe ulterior motivations to their opponents, or interpretations (“what he really means to say is…”) and confuse what the person has actually said with what they imagine the person really means or believes. (And of course, what people imagine their opponent “really means” will invariably be more extreme and less logical than what they’ve actually said). And so it goes, both for december and for his opponents.
Another accusation is posting unsupported assertions. So, from yesterday’s posts, two fine liberals posting unsupported (and untrue) assertions, and refusing to back them up. First Tejota. (Interestingly wring, a big believer in cites when challenging december, categorized my similar challenge to Tejota a “your haste to spank tejote”.) Also, I am Sparticus. Of particular interest in the latter case, my request for a cite to back up a ridiculous assertion was itself challenged by two other liberals, who felt that the original assertion was so obvious that it did not need a cite.
In sum, december is not perfect, but neither are too many other people. The reason december gets all the attention is not that his debating style is unique or significantly worse that anyone else, but rather because he continually posts threads that rile up many people. As a result, his many opponents pick through his every argument, and his every miscue is the subject of inordinate focus, while the numerous similar transgressions of others slide on by. In fact, most or all of the december pile-on threads are themselves full of the very sort of transgressions that december is being accused of.
Bottom line: if you want to criticize specific december posts, by all means take a shot. If you feel it’s not worth bothering with the guy, ignore him. But stop pretending that you’re up there on some pedestal of righteousness and are genuinely troubled by december’s tactics or integrity alone. This is far from true.
I should mention that there are other beneficial aspects to december’s posts beyond helping one score cheap but satisfying victories.
#1: On occasion december posts something reflecting an opinion that I hold, at least in part. This prompts me to step back and re-evaluate my views. Is there something I’m overlooking? Am I going on the basis of undocumented assertions or predjudice? december has, at times, helped me to focus my thinking and made me a more balanced debater.
#2: Most of his posts reflect poor debate tactics, ranging from using dubious sources to making grossly inaccurate partisan generalizations. Since opponents are prone to leap upon these transgressions and severely chastise him, this likely helps prevent other (especially new) posters from falling into similar traps, thereby improving the quality of debate.
Of course, it hasn’t sunk in with some posters at the opposite end of the political spectrum, who use similar tactics but are less prolific in december’s endearingly passive-aggressive way.
Idea: to save annoyance and wear-and-tear on the psyche, why doesn’t some enterprising poster come up with the all-purpose december refutation page? All it would require is a couple of pages of webspace, featuring links to some of our boy’s cataclysmic meltdowns, plus characterizations of his most common abuses and how they can be recognized. Then, when another inane december post appears, one could simply comment “That’s an example of Tactic #6 in the december Code of Bad Debating”, link to the page, and offer a brief rebuttal if needed. That way one can minimize time spent in responses, without fear that new SDMB members will be taken in by flimsy arguments.
In my previous baseball analogy, I inadvertently left out one of the biggest thrills in making solid contact against a december pitch. That’s when time seems to dramatically slow down, as in the climactic moment of The Natural. The fallacy drifts in as big as a watermelon, and you can actually read the “Republican National Committee” logo on it, right before you smack it into the next time zone. And then the stirring theme music begins…
Gives me goose bumps.
Agreed. This is three times now you’ve posted a good working definition of “trolling” as a description of december’s activities on this board. If there is something I’ve learned in my life, it’s this. Being of a long-suffering temperment is a good way to ensure that one suffers for a long time. I’m not particularly long-suffering as a consequence of this belief and I’m not particularly inclined to continue to give december the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions when he posts the “threads that rile up many people.”
Enjoy,
Steven
december is like the middle child of the SDMB family, always clamoring for attention; that’s the only reason he posts the way he does. Nearly everything he posts is just there to get the most attention possible no matter if he really believes in the subject or not.
This post is just an opinion, of course.