This is exactly the sort of thing that is unbecoming for a moderator. In that entire thread, I’m not sure there was a more leg-gnawing post than the one that immediately preceded this moderation: your own I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I? post.
I appreciate that you want to hold GD to a higher standard than in the past. If this is how you post, I don’t think you’re the right person to do it. If you cannot behave better than this, you are not in a position to criticize other people for not behaving better than this.
Yeah. I initially opened that reply to smack his hands for derailing the thread with one more bit of hyper-partisan blather, then decided the point would be better made by humorously noting the irony of his comment. (I notice you carefully deleted the smiley I included.)
Then I re-scanned the equally hyper-partisan responses and decided to tell everyone to get back on the subject.
In retrospect I see where it looked like I was just engaging in the same sort of off-topic nonsense to which I objected.
First, the removal of the smiley was entirely accidental. I’ve never done quote-within-a-quote before, and I had to cut&paste since I was quoting in another thread, and somehow the smiley got removed. I apologize, I guess–frankly I don’t see that the smiley makes much of a difference in the gnawing-on-people’s-legs quotient of the post.
Second, if it’s possible for you to make such an apparently content-free post while thinking that you’re making a subtle clever point, is it possible that other people are doing precisely the same thing?
I think you’d be better off either not attempting humor in making your points, or else giving wider latitude to other people who do the same.
This is twice now in as many weeks that **tomndebb **has responded flippantly as a poster, then read more of the thread and responded as a mod, rebuking others for poor behavior he just demonstrated.
Seems that every week there are threads about **tomndebb’s **bias, posting as poster vs mod, closing threads, etc.
Clearly it’s just the same few posters who “have it in for him” and not his poor behavior. :rolleyes:
There is always something that makes it different when he does it. And there is no possible explanation for not seeing it besides deliberate malice. That’s why you deliberately deleted the smiley that made the whole of tomndebb’s post so brilliant and content-laden.
Of course the rest of us can add smilies to our digs at other posters until our fingers bleed, and that won’t stop him from modding against it, but for him, it’s different.
When someone else uses the generic “you”, it was meant as a personal insult. When he uses the specific “you”, it’s subtle humor.
This is not exactly a new development, if you don’t mind my pointing it out.
Except that it’s usually the same relatively small handful of posters who continually bitch about moderators, especially tomndebb. It’s pretty clear that at least a few people have an ax to grind.
Heavens, yes - Left Hand of Dorkness is constantly complaining about the mods. He must have started at least one thread about it during his stay on the SDMB.
Guy joins a monastery where one can only say one thing every ten years.
Ten years later, he says his thing. “The food here is terrible”.
Ten years go by. He has his second chance. “The beds are pretty hard.”
Ten more years. He says, “I’m leaving.”
“I’m not surprised”, says the head abbot. “Ever since you got here, it’s been bitch, bitch, bitch.”