This thread about the current presence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth was resurrected by the OP, donnie darko, two years after being last active, due to him having apparently a change of heart: he does no longer believe in aliens being here.
Shortly afterwards, it was closed by tomndebb, with the rationale that
This after BrainGlutton made a bunch of posts apparently without realizing that the thread is a zombie, nor having read to the end to see that the OP had in fact reopened the thread to announce his change of mind.
Now, I can see that this is a situation that may lead to confusion, but I also think that it’s an interesting opportunity to investigate what caused donnie darko to change his opinion; after all, in this whole ‘fighting ignorance’ game, this kind of amounts to a small victory, and I think the move by donnie darko to admit his prior error is something to be encouraged, not to be admonished.
Furthermore, I’m not sure it’s the moderators’ duty to ‘chase down odd responses’: if the thread had been left active, I’m sure everybody would have eventually realized the context, by gentle prodding of their fellow posters if necessary. I’m also not sure that the actions by donnie darko deserve to be called ‘nonsense’; if, for instance, he happened upon the thread for whatever reason and wished to set the record straight regarding his current beliefs, then I think he should be allowed to do so.
In fact, the tone with which tomndebb reacted makes me suspect that there’s some further context or history I’m missing; in any case, an explanation of the rationale for closing this thread would be greatly appreciated.
I think the point was that he should start a new thread and link back to the old one, explaining his change of heart in the OP because otherwise people would come into the zombie, mindlessly reply to the old posts, and it would be a three page long game of “hah! I rebutted your stupid points that you formerly believed!” “… Yes, yes you did. Good for you.” Where starting a new thread allows for exploring the interesting points (his change of heart) while eschewing the possibility of the thread getting derailed by people arguing with points nobody is making.
Possibly, but then tomndebb could simply have made that suggestion (with or without closing the thread). And as I said, it’s just possible that donnie darko wanted to prevent people chancing upon that thread and chalking him up as an ET kook, which I think should be his right to do.
Additionally, it seems to me that the worst thing that could happen is that people failing to read the thread before posting make themselves look like idiots, which I think ought to be their right.
It’s also happened IIRC in order to prevent zombie confusion that the mods have edited the OP to add a note to that effect; and in a recent zombie from 2001, Marley23 edited the resurrecting post to that effect, both of which I think is preferable to closing the thread, which should be restricted to threads in violation of the rules.
I thought the whole idea of letting people resurrect threads was to add to the discussion, not negate it. Re-opening the thread to basically say “whoops, I shouldn’t have opened this in the first place” is kind of pointless. Just leave it dead.
Well, if there’s no interest in any further discussion, the thread will just drop off the page by itself, and a closing wouldn’t be necessary. On the other hand, if it doesn’t do that, then obviously there was some interest, and closing it would be the wrong move.
Besides, I would not want to task the mods with having to decide for each zombie thread whether the resurrection adds something to the discussion or not.
Read the post that the OP made to bump his own thread. If you think it’s that interesting, start a new thread and reference the old one. That’s been SOP here for as long as I can remember. The mods like to discourage people from bumping their old threads unless there is a good reason. There was no good reason.
To me, anything that significantly alters the parameters of the old debate or introduces new elements would certainly qualify, and I can’t think of much that fits these criteria better than the OP changing views he formerly argued for. At the very least, I would be interested in what caused this change.
I certainly don’t think it’s the right course of action to try and shut down things like this; it seems to run counter to the spirit of these boards. You can’t fight ignorance if you don’t allow the ignorant to reform; then, all you’re doing is to mock ignorance, and pat one another on the shoulders for a job well done.
I’ve always been amazed at the condescension from some of the people on this board towards those who come on here looking for knowledge. I guess some of the “intellectual elite” feels you should be shamed if you don’t already come on this board with a certain level of intelligence.
Something more than “never mind”. We’re talking about GD here, not IMHO or MPSIMS.
“Never mind” is not a debate. And if anyone wants to continue the discussion he or she can start a new thread and reference the old one. Why don’t you do that if you’re so interested in the subject?
The guy most interested in that zombie, it would seem, was BrainGlutten. Perhaps he’s just too shy to start a new thread.
I agree that the thread shouldn’t have been shut down. Revisiting a topic where one previously displayed ignorance and reporting on changes in belief seems like something valuable to the board and in keeping with our mission statement. I can understand wanting the new discussion to take place in a new thread. That used to be SOP for all zombie threads, but with the recent acceptance of zombies, I don’t see why this type of zombie in particular is different. What I don’t understand is just closing the thread and berating the OP for reviving it with information that is both pertinent and of interest to the board community.
He said nothing more than that he had changed his mind. He made no reference to any reason why that was so. In the few hours it was revived, it attracted mostly sarcastic comments directed to him. That is the sort of behavior that used to prompt us to close all zombie threads. I saw no reason to let a thread that was already making a bad turn take up staff time Moderating when the OP was not going to stick around and explain himself.
I will re-open it just to see what happens, but I make no promise that it will not be closed again.
FWIW, I find it both pertinent and interesting that a longtime member of the board who once went out of his way to proclaim a belief in aliens now repudiates that belief. I don’t know whether additional pertinent or interesting information was forthcoming, but I expect the OP would have returned again if anyone had had time to ask for more information.
I concede that starting a new thread would have been more likely to produce fruitful discussion, and the thread as it stood may not have produced (and may not produce) anything more worthwhile. I agree that that thread is a paradigm case for why zombies used to be closed automatically, and would understand if you’d told the OP to start a new one. But given the current trend of allowing zombies, I don’t think the OP did anything remotely wrong by reviving the thread as he did, which I thought your post implied.
Anyway, I’m glad you agreed to reopen it, and I’m sorry for any extra headaches it ends up causing you!
Notice the Donnie Darko hasn’t revisited the thread in three days, although he came back to post on the board 24 hours after tom closed his original thread.
