Dex, I daresay you’re dealing with True Believers and there simply must be a Large Conspiracy Against Them.
Okay, I have to admit it. That was damned funny.
Creative Munster:
Yeah, right…as if Coll was a liberal.
Collunsbury was actually a fairly standard, right-wing conservative with an in-depth knowledge of the MENA region, who also happened to be extremely critical of the Bush administration’s policies in that region. And it is entirely reasonable for moderators to be reluctant to ban him, since he was a fantastic source of facts about the MENA and related topics.
It is worth noting that, despite his “unpopular” opinions, december had a much longer tenure here on these boards than Coll did. But you might be right; had december been as obscene as his conservative companion Coll, he might have been banned more quickly. After all, december’s posts were generally free of factual content.
In the not-to-distant past, prior to december’s banning, I actually posted an argument in his defense. Afterwards, I came to reconsider my stance. december was a jerk, and pretty clearly a troll as well, albeit a fairly sophisticated one. He often re-posted the same arguments but packaged them differently. His Bali thread is a good example; the last in a long line of threads whose basic theme was, “Those who oppose the invasion of Iraq support terrorism/the death of American soldiers/the enemies of America/Saddam Hussein/ etc.” It was always the same argument, even if the particular example selected to illustrate it was different. Regardless of how many times his argument was shown to be specious, next week he’d be back again, same argument, same underlying insinuation, different situation. That’s clearly trollish behavior.
It’s hard to argue that december wasn’t consciously seeking to provoke people here as well. He must certainly have known, after floating a given argument a time or two, that it would cause a strong reaction; that didn’t stop him from posting it again, even after it had been shown to be false, misleading, or specious – consider the whole “werewolf” episode as an example. He seemed completely immune to reasoned discourse; if he were still around, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest were he to suddenly refer to the “werewolves” in yet another thread, despite their relevance to Iraq having now been completely debunked.
I strongly disagree with Sam about the impact of december’s banning on the GD forum. december’s threads were almost invariably divisive, cleverly framed to reduce the debate to mere partisan bickering; in that regard they were admirably successful. They were seldom enlightening, on the other hand. And as Scylla noted earlier, those who self-identify as “conservative” here no longer have to be ashamed of having someone like december in their ranks. I suspect that if y’all over there on the right can simply drop the accusations of political bias on the part of the boards moderators, you’ll soon see less partisan pot-shots and more open debate in GD that you’ve seen in a while. As far as I’m concerned the absence of ideologues can only lead to a overall increase in the quality of the discourse here at the SDMB, and I think the mods were wise to ban him.
Good heavens, even a not-really-political dumbass such as myself can see that Dex just wasn’t acting based on his political beliefs here.
Dex outright called december a troll. I personally have had no off-board contact with december, but I’ve read enough of his stuff to make my eyes bleed. And I know this much…if an admin bans you for* trolling*, they just aren’t wrong. They do NOT come by those decisions easily, especially in the case of someone like december. Someone who’d been around a LONG freaking time, and while he may have been aggravating, did NOT break any clearly-stated SDMB rules until recently.
But Dex called him a troll. **Dex. ** Called december a troll. ADMINISTRATION stating PUBLICALLY that a long-time member was guilty of *trolling, * after repeated warnings.
It just doesn’t get any clearer than that. december was guilty of trolling, and that is against the SDMB rules.
I leave it to the admins to determine who else needs banning. But when it comes to **december, ** I cannot argue. I can’t.
grienspace
Is that lefties and centerists combined? Left or right compared to who, exactly?
Are you assuming that Reeder got less complaints because he’s not right wing?
When you are assuming you make an ass out of “u” and “ming”, and Ming is pretty merciless about that sort of thing.
We had a Prime Minister down here once named Robert Menzies whose nickname was “Ming”.
A veritible Churchillian wit. He was once heckled at a political rally - “Tell us everything you know Ming… it won’t take long…”
To which he replied…
“Well sir, if I tell us everything we BOTH know, it won’t take any longer…”
Closed at the request of the OP.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to hunt Republicans with my pinko flaming liberal buddies. We’re planning on killing them with an especially designed tofu-catapult.