When it is poster vs Liberal,. I think there is a chance. This place makes rules around the guy.
The only agreement I have actually expressed in this thread, (twice), was that you were correct that Liberal’s logic was flawed regarding it not being possible for a Jew to be an anti-semite. I have expressed no comment regarding Liberal’s position on the interaction between you two. So it now seems that you are simply looking for reasons to pick fights with other posters which was the reason that I interrupted the other thread.
I will also note that I never gave any order for you to withdraw from the thread–I did tell you to drop that particular hijack, since you were not even clear about what your problem was while violating forum rules to express it. (You never did really make your actual point clear in either thread until you simply accepted Sapo’s guess at your intent.) Since your objection was already out where everyone could see it and since the point is not central to the discussion, there was no need for you to continue a hijack.
If you feel some deep-seated need to establish your point clearly in that thread, as long as you refrain from breaking the rules, I am not going to stop you. I would leave it up to Liberal to decide whether he wants to hijack his own discussion with a sidebar discussion or simply accept your correction and continue with the thrust of his primary conversation with MrDibble, PBear42, and others.
“We?” You aren’t a member now and neither is he yet. However, you left out over 95% of my post to him which included a welcome to the SDMB, a response to his declarative sentence observation, and a century old poem chosen especially for his user name.
Now stay on task or you shan’t have recess.
Now I’ve forgotten what is a hijack and what is not. I did think that Tomndebb’s ruling was fair on Liberal’s thread * especially considering the work that has gone into the building of the series of threads.*
Fenris, I think that most Christians are proud of the Judaic heritage of Christianity. I know that I’m not going to change your minds about these early followers. I have to look at it from your point of view and understand that Jesus was not the Messiah that the Jews have had in mind.
But fair is fair. Look at it from the Christian point of view also. For some Jews, this was a point of transition. I love that Jesus was a Jew, that the Bible teaches that he was of the house of David, that he talked with older men in the Temple when he was still only twelve, that he celebrated Passover. I know that I don’t know much, but I know enough to know about some of your history and the meaning of the remnant. I’ve even mentioned on the Dope the Star of David that I used to wear.
These things are of value to me. Again, I don’t expect for you to accept my viewpoint. Don’t force yours on me as The truth. It was a turning point that we see differently.
Can’t they have this one series of five threads that is not shredded to pieces to talk things through? You don’t have to remain voiceless. You can continue to raise objections here. We need something of substance in the Pit anyway!
Is your assumption with your mod-hat on or off? Because I have two very, very different responses, depending.
Come to think of it, I don’t know what parts of this post are with your mod hat on and off, so I guess I’ll assume mod-hat on for everything and just let most of it pass.
True. You only told me that I wasn’t allowed to discuss the point that the OP made in that thread. How could I have ever come to the idea that I was to stay out of the thread regarding an aspect of the discussion that the OP started? :smack: Others seem to have gotten the same impression. We’ll all need to work harder to understand your moderator points in the future.
And yet, it was central enough that the OP made the comment in the first place and then after you forbade me to not continue that line of discussion, it was important enough that he went back and addressed it again.
I’d very much appreciate if you’d give us a general rule beyond “I’ll know it when I see it” to help me understand when comments that an OP makes are to be considered “central” to the discussion? I certainly don’t want to fall afoul of this new standard you’ve just now invented.
Strange, others here, elsewhere and two friends I showed the thread to all seem to have gotten it. Dio certainly seemed to grasp the thrust of what I was getting at. As has Zoe and Shodan.
That said, I apologize that my argument so thoroughly baffled you and wasn’t at a level you personally could understand. Should this happen again, please do let me know and I’ll try to rephrase my arguments in such a way that you’ll have no effort grasping it.
I appreciate you reversing your decision to silence me in that thread.
All that said, I appreciate the level of civility you’ve shown throughout this disagreement. As always, it seems to me your talent for understanding other viewpoints, trying to moderate without your personal biases towards posters and points of view affecting your decisions, your thoughtful, deliberate decision-making and your character have shown through yet again.
Zoe, I’d love to discuss this with you–Dex has asked that this thread not be hijacked by a discussion about these issues so either you or I could start a thread on here in IMHO (I’d prefer not to discuss this in GD in case my arguments don’t make sense or aren’t clear to Tomndebb. I wouldn’t want to upset him futher) or on Giraffe or Domebo if the IMHO mods don’t want it there. You raise some valid points and I’d like to comment on some of what you wrote above. There’s an interesting decision to be had.
Aargh–“decision” should be “discussion”. Stupid spell-checker.
You’re smarter than that. Read the thread again. His whole “John is not anti-semitic” was an aside. No point that he made following that statement was based on it being true or false. That pretty much takes it out of the realm of “central.”
I understood that you considered the “couldn’t be anti-semitic” comment to be wrong. So did I, as I posted once in that thread and twice here. What I do not understand and, even with Sapo’s intervention, still don’t think makes any sense, is why you think that Lib’s error is any great calumny against Jews or Judaism. That is the point that you never expressed in the other thread and only got around to sort of saying “I agree with him” in this thread. A simple note–without all the emotional claims of “lying” and insults–that “A claim that a person might be a member of group A is no guarantee that the person cannot hold a position inimical to group A” would have rebutted Liberal’s statement without drawing my attention in any way.
I don’t know that I would contribute much to that topic, but I would be willing to at least read your opinions if you or someone else starts one up in IMHO.
To me the important thing is not to misrepresent another faith, another group or another individual. Yet we may interpret differently. The difference is subtle.
What the fuck is this all about? If you’re registered on the board you’re a member. The whole guest/member/charter member thing means fuck all when it comes to membership, it’s just a distinction in how exactly you’re paying for the ability to post.
Noob.
What is this crap? Who are you to decide who “We” are and how “We” should treat new (or any) members? Are you suggesting that only current paid members’ opinions matter? There are those who have been on these boards much longer than you. They may have let their memberships lapse or opted out but they respected and tolerated you until you learned the ropes.
Get off your high horse and lose the kindergarten teacher’s tone!
Yeah, like when they suspended me.
That was protective custody.
Well, apology accepted.
OK, that remark is out of line and is pretty much a personal insult, not permitted here. If you have a complaint about the way that a poster is handled by the mods, start a separate thread in ATMB to discuss it, but leave the personal insults out. And in this case, that’s a total hijack.
I have reviewed this ridiculous mess, and have discussed with tomndebb. That’s the review process. Here’s my summary, as briefly as possible:
(1) The OP [Liberal] for the thread had specifically asked that the thread be devoted to definitions and not go astray. The topic is one that is easily subjected to tangents, and the poster wanted things to stay on track. That is a legitimate request when made in the OP.
(2) The OP made an aside that was irrelevant to the main thrust of the thread and that contained an incorrect (even fallacious) statement. Someone else [Fenris] picked up on that aside and tried to make it into a major issue. tomndebb answered, agreeing with the incorrectness of the statement but also saying that it was tangential and a side track.
(3) Things went all to hell.
OK, so here’s my rulings:
(a) We generally allow threads to follow their path, even if the OP isn’t happy with it. However, this is not absolute, on two levels:
- We have allowed, in certain threads, for the OP to request (in the first post)adherence to one topic and not to wander. This has been limited (for instance, in an obit thread about a celebrity or politician, the OP can’t ask that all comments about the deceased be praise and positive; if someone wants to say negative things, that’s OK.) However, in a topic such as the one in question, where it’s easy to go off on many tangents, the OP can ask to limit comments to the subject at hand.
- If the request to stay in one direction isn’t in the first post, the the OP can’t call for a halt to a tangential discussion later.
- One or two posters going off on a side issue does NOT mean that a thread has followed a different path. There is a difference between a poster bringing up a tangent that is taken on by many posters, and a single poster trying to hijack.
- This isn’t a rule, it’s a tradition, and it can vary by circumstances (as can most of our rules.)
(b) Moderators need to be careful to separate their moderating from their opinions as posters. Sometimes that’s difficult, as in this case: how does a moderator say that some comments are asides and tangential “hijacks” without describing why? And once the mod starts describing why, he/she is offering his opinion as a poster.
When the line between comments-as-moderator and comments-as-poster are blurred, it’s difficult for other posters to respond or complain: cant’ complain about mod action in the Pit, can’t complain about poster action in ATMB. So, the best approach is for the mods to try to avoid causing that awkwardness. (Note that when the situation does come up, we’ll be pretty tolerant of the ATMB complaint.)
(c) PERSONAL INSULTS DIRECTED AT OTHER POSTERS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THIS FORUM. (Yes, I’m yelling.)
(d) This particular situation seems to be resolved. Others (including the OP) seemed to want to discuss the tangent, so the moderator’s earlier decision on hijacking is rendered irrelevant by the passage of time and the other posters.
(e) Since this situation has been resolved, and since this thread has started dripping with personal insults in a totally different direction, I declare this thread closed.
Yes, I know that we don’t want to close ATMB complaint threads prematurely, and I agree with that, but this one seems to me to be resolved, with nothing further constructive to say.