Verboten to rant?

The BBQ Pit
1

In reference to the thread currently appearing in my sig line. I am not peeved that it was closed, it just seems to me that there are some policy changes that must have taken place in order to support the moderator’s reasoning that the thread must be closed because somebody ranted in it.

First I would like to point out the obvious error in the statement “90% of this thread is [nothing but people ranting]”.

There are 27 posts to that thread. The 90% figure means that approx. 24 of the posts are rants. I don’t believe I am ranting in my OP, and I don’t consider Chronos’ post (to close the thread) a rant. That means that, out of the remaining 25 posts, only one qualifies as not being a rant. I wonder which one it is?

I also don’t see anybody calling their fellow Europeans or fellow Americans “evil”, with the possible exception of Tedster’s “anti-smoking nazi” remark (thanks a lot Ted for getting my thread closed), but I am sure I have seen the nazi reference come up in numerous other threads that did not get closed (at least not for the same reason).

Most of the thread is informative, most of the responses are a genuine attemts by respondents to answer some of my GQs in the OP. Perhaps the thread takes on an IMHO-ish flavor because many of the comments are anecdotal or opinionated, but then why not move it to IMHO?

Or why not just move it into the pit, if the thread was becoming a rant-fest? Or into IMHO if there were too many opinions and not enough facts? Are threads no longer being moved if, after some time, they seem to be wandering out of bounds for the forum they are in? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen threads moved into the pit because they became to ugly or rant-filled. Why the change of policy with this one?

I’m not really bothered, the thread seemed like it was running out of steam anyway and most of the GQs in the OP had been responded to either factually or anecdotally by various European correspondents.

So, mods: new policy? If one or two people begin to sort of rant in a thread does it immediately get closed? Do you all no longer tell people to cool it (like you used to) if they start making an off-topic fuss? Can I get a thread closed merely by posting a single mild rant in it?

2

Hello? Anybody there?

::taps microphone::

Is this thing on?

Do I need to go starting rants in random threads to get an answer?

3

Please don’t.
I do agree with you it was harmless if left open, and perhaps could have been moved, but they seem to do that less and close threads more, because moving takes a lot of time when the board is slow.

4

I thought the general rule was: Thou Shalt Keep Thy Rants in the Pit.

Makes sense to me.
[sub]Now where the hell did I put that stone tablet?[/sub]

5

Do tell me, how was I supposed to keep rants which are not mine from appearing in my thread? If I visit your eyebrow waxing thread in MPSIMS and start bitching about how people shouldn’t mutilate themselves because it’s an abomination against god, and one or two other posters chime in with half-hearted agreement, should your thread get closed because I didn’t post my rant in the right forum?

See, in the olden days of the previous century, mods used to simply pop into a thread like Samatha Stephens and say “cool it, guys” when people began to get off topic. Omniman’s point about moving threads being a pain because of board slowness might have something to do with it, but if this is the case that it’s quicker to lock a thread than move it, then why not go one better and do the quickest thing by posting a “cool it” notice instead of locking it?

And I am still of the opinion that the thread in question is 98% rant-free. The only poster who could possibly be seen as a ranting would probably be more accurately described as mildly perturbed.

So what about JillGat’s GQ thread THIS IS *NOT * IMHO where she says:

Doesn’t this apply to thread respondents as well as authors? So if a GQ-legal thread happens to get a few bad posts in it, does it get stomped on or do the offending posters get coached? Coaching remarks by mods in threads serve to educate. Mysterious thread closings just keep us scratching our heads & making the same mistakes over again.

6

Yeah, if people in an MPSIMS thread of mine decided to start ranting, then yes, the thread should be moved, or if bandwidth/speed concerns prevent that, it should be closed. Sure, it’s not my fault if people decide to post stuff that’s inappropriate for a particular forum, but it’s still inappropriate for that particular forum.

7

Great answers, and dead on.

Thread drift happens, and it in no way reflects on the OP. The other critical factor is the staggering amount of time it takes to move a thread when the board is running slowly anyway. (It isn’t just the move, either; it also means posting the fact in “moved threads” and emailing the mods in the new forum.) So moving a thread can be iffy; sometimes it’s just more sensible to close it and ask the topic to be reopened in another forum.

I think attrayant raises an interesting point about guiding a discussion to keep it within forum boundaries. Past practice has been to let discussions evolve as they will and let them seek their own home, so to speak. Since slow loading times limit thread movement among fora our solution has been to just have topics reopened in their new incarnations.

It’s a philosophical issue arising from logistical realities. Should threads be closed and reopened elsewhere as they change nature (when moving isn’t an option) or should the discussions be guided and contained? I doubt there’s any “perfect” answer to this one. My personal preference is to let discussions evolve along their own lines, even though closing and reopening is a bit clunky.

Threads do take on a life of their own.

Just a few observations.

Veb

8

Cool… does this mean I one could shut down any thread necessary with just a small rant?

Interesting.

9

Necessary? To whom?

Cool, to deliberately interject an inappropriate rant, solely for the purposes of getting a thread locked down? Sounds jerkish to me.

An overworked server and slow loading times are unfortunate realities. Exploiting that to sabotage threads one deems “necessary” wouldn’t–and won’t–be tolerated. Why should it be? Could we apply some common sense here? This isn’t Romper Room, with stern disciplinarians riding herd on rowdy toddlers. Sure, we can and do sprinkle individual warnings around when needed–and they’re so enthusiastically welcomed. ::eyes cross::

Here’s a fact: I just moved a thread from IMHO to GD. It was 11 p.m. CST and it took 6 minutes, start to finish, to complete all the steps. That was ONE THREAD, during non-peak hours. Simple logistical reality.

This place relies on the good sense of our posters. Mother o’ pearl, who the hell wants or has TIME to dink around with adolescent misbehaviour? Sure, we could tromp on people, issue more warnings, constrict discussions within their original fora, etc. Sounds godawful to me.

I want to believe there’s room–and respect–for reasonable compromise.

Veb

10

While the OP doesn’t have complete control over where the thread goes, I believe that they have an enormous amount of influence on at least where the topic starts (ya think?)

And in your OP, you posed 4 questions:

while the answers may in fact be factual, this seems more of a polling kind of question. Iffy, and as the answers demonstrated, yep, more of a poll “in Ireland we do this” “over in Spain this is what we do”.

Now, with words like “militant” and “crusades” , exactly what were you expecting? If you had intended a GQ question, perhaps it should have been like “since the same studies are available to the rest of the world, why do they seem to allow smoking in public”. But, even then, it’s not really a factual based question at all. It could easily be a debate, or a rant, or even Opinion, but clearly, I think, not a “GQ”

again, clearly, this is asking for opinions. Why people do things is a very difficult thing to ascertain on a factual basis.

While this is similar to #3, there may be some factual base attributable - for instance if there had been a study done on smoking behaviors before and after an ad campaign (“more Winstons were sold after the John Wayne ad”), so finally we may have something where there was actually a specific answer not opinion laced (even if you were able to show that more teens attibuted their starting to smoke, while their attributation was an opinion, the numbers making those statements would have been a fact).

So, in short, your OP was all over the SDMB map, but mostly not in the forum you chose. I personally wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the answers didn’t remain GQ and therefore, neither would the thread.

11

[[Doesn’t this apply to thread respondents as well as authors? So if a GQ-legal thread happens to get a few bad posts in it, does it get stomped on or do the offending posters get coached? Coaching remarks by mods in threads serve to educate. Mysterious thread closings just keep us scratching our heads & making the same mistakes over again.]]

I apologize to any OPs who have been offended or confused when I’ve closed or moved GQ-appropriate threads. Usually the question appears to have been fully answered, the thread has wandered from its original topic or has taken on characteristics more suited to other forums. Many of the reasons for doing this have been posted above. “General Questions” is an extremely busy forum and sometimes we move or close threads just to clean it up a bit. I admit to a bias against inaccurate or unproven medical advice appearing on our board. If a question appears to have been fully answered (and/or links to other helpful sites provided) and people are simply adding, “this herb/placebo/unproven remedy cures your disease,” I will probably close it. Of course people should know better than to take medical advice from an internet message board. But at least some of the people who post these questions are hoping to use SD in lieu of going to the doctor or seeking professional help. I would prefer not to “enable” them(in the Alcoholics Anonymous sense). Let’s just point em in the right direction and then encourage them to seek professional advice.

I realize and appreciate that message boards have taken the place of the neighbor-over-the-back-fence for many people. If you have a medical issue, it’s helpful to get feedback from others who have experienced it. In many cases, such threads belong in IMHO. I’m sorry that I can’t come up with hard and fast rules about this. Sometimes I’m more lax about anecdote-sharing in the midst of factual answers(ex.“I seem to get less colds since I started taking echinacea” “I feel calmer when I meditate and take kava kava” - notice these are personal opinions), but I clamp down when unproven remedies/practices are stated as fact(“L-lysine shortens herpes outbreaks” "eating too much protein causes insomnia). I’m probably not always completely 100% consistent about this. I have to go with my gut, so sue me. Wait. Strike that.
Jill

[Edited by JillGat on 04-06-2001 at 01:40 PM]

12

I’d try this, if I were you, and see if it works. I never knew it was an option- maybe it should be in the new FAQ.
(Sure, you didn’t actually post in the wrong forum, but I’d apologize anyway, just to make things less ambiguous.)

13

Apologize?? When it should be crystal clear to everybody that the Chinese were at fault??!!

Oh wait.

Yes I saw that comment. But as I already stated here, I was not really all that hot and bothered about it being closed. In fact, it took me a day or two before I felt that this thread would be helpful in guiding other posters as to why some threads get closed and others get moved.

Having been here quite a long time, I have learned from experience that there are:

  1. Threads that get closed because of fistfights or other obvious reasons.

  2. Threads that get moved because they were opened in the wrong forum or the discussion strayed out of the forum.

Up until recently, I had never seen any threads receive the action in #1 for the reason in #2. That was my main reason for this pit thread. I was confused big time. I see the “Where your thread went to” threads in each of the forums and think to myself “looks like mods are working hard to get threads moved into the right forums… good show”. Sure, I could have emailed a mod to get an answer as to why, but decided that a position statement made publicly would be of benefit to many of us, so I came here (you’re welcome, everybody).

What I’ve learned is that it’s a huge pain in the neck to move threads when the boards are slow. Okie dokie, didn’t know that before. Now I know:

  1. Threads get moved or closed, depending on which way the wind is blowing in Saskatchewan.*

Maybe if the closing remarks in the smoking thread had been something like “the GQs posed by the OP have been pretty much addressed and the thread is starting to wander into murky waters so I think I’ll close it now.” or something to that effect, then this pit thread wouldn’t have been necessary. Instead, now we’ll have dozens of people looking at that locked thread and seeing a moderator claiming that virtually everybody who posted to it was ranting and evil (both words used in the mod’s closing remarks). I think that is just going to confuse a lot of people who can’t see any evil people ranting in that thread, but what’s done is done.

It’s pretty well known that locked threads get looked at with morbid curiosity like a road accident. I feel that an informative closing statement like the one I suggested above would have gone to educate many posters about why threads might get locked.

*[sub]Not meaning to be a smart ass here- just meant that there are reasons that threads get closed and regular ordinary raggedy old members won’t necessarily be privy to the reasons why.[/sub]

14

I’m with Attrayant on this one. How the op’s are categorized has always been somewhat confusing to me. For instance, I don’t know why this thread should be in the pit.
It’s a reasonable discussion regarding SDMB policies - isn’t that the “About this Message Board” forum? Is anyone ranting? I rarely visit the pit because I have always perceived it as a forum where people go ballistic on one narrow subject dear to their hearts, and frequently use a lot of profanity, and frequently bash other posters. (I visited the pit this time only because it was linked in the moderator’s thread in GQ). One of my threads got moved from GQ to IMHO, apparently because it asked for opinions on the best places to move to in the south. I had thought the question “serious” enough and of probably wide-spread intesest, and therefore put it in GQ. Okay, I wasn’t upset it was moved, but now most of my questions I post in IMHO because they aren’t earth-shaking. BUT…I just visited GQ and a brief scan of the topics on the first page revealed at least three that I don’t consider “serious” or of much interest to but a few. “Getting to first base,” (for all the SDMB adolescents out there), “where to find a 4000 hour light bulb” and one asking where to find a particular link in a move web site – far less intesesting to me than Attrayant’s smoking thread. Speaking of which – I read that thread and there was one brief, four-line mini-rant directed at the previous poster.

15

According to the forum descriptions:

I didn’t really have any serious complaints (and still don’t), but thought that this would lead to an enlightening discussion as to why threads that seem to be deserving of a move get locked instead.

Yeah, and I almost didn’t post it here just because I wasn’t meaning to bitch & moan, just trying to educate myself & others. Looking at all of the other threads in the pit, this one doesn’t seem to fit in. Only if you look at the forum description does it qualify.

True, and quite a few that are legitimate questions, for example What’s the space between the privates and the bung called?. The correct answer (Perineum) came in on the second reply, but the thread was still allowed to degenerate into various opinions as to what people thought it should be called. It’s probably just life that some threads get caught and some manage to slip by unnoticed.

16

There’s no LAW that you can’t discuss things in GQ. I guess we’re just not gonna be completely consistent there, kids. If you see me close/move something and you strongly disagree with my thinking, email me and talk me into it.

There was a question on the board about whether “tit” referred to the whole breast or just the nipple. This started to look like an excuse for boys to say “tittie tittie tittie as much as I like” to me and there is no REAL answer to that question from my perspective. So I closed it. Then another guy started another thread just to give the etymology of the word “tit” (teat). Okay, so there’s a useful addition to that discussion (though it didn’t address the question about whether “tit” is the whole breast or just the nipple). So I reopened the thread and added that guy’s post. See how reasonable I am?

I think I’m going to go outside and work in the yard now. (Hope that wasn’t too MPSIMS for you.)

  • Jill
17

[[This started to look like an excuse for boys to say “tittie tittie tittie as much as I like” to me]]

I didn’t mean they wanted to say it to me, just that it looked to me like they wanted to say it.