And if they allow a political jab from the left, they’ll have to then deal with someone else making one from the right. They have no reason to play favorites.
At least, that’s what I assume you are insinuating, as you are being rather coy about it.
Regarding that particular post, I fail to see why you are using it to imply political bias on the part of the moderators in making decisions. The post criticized politicians in general, not any party in particular. It was inappropriate because it used inflammatory language - “whores selling out to special interests” - to express an opinion that did not serve to address the original question. As such, it was the kind of remark that might spark a hijack of the thread. I would have probably ordinarily made that a note instead of a warning, but the poster in question had received a note on the same issue just the day before so I chose to make the reminder more memorable.
For the record, what I “don’t like” is posters dragging political bullshit into GQ. I don’t care if it’s from the left or the right. Either way, it’s likely to cause a hijack, which is what the “no political jabs” rule is intended to prevent.
The factual aspects of the question were pretty much answered before I closed the thread. Since you seem to be interested in political aspects of the term, if you want to discuss it further probably the best thing would be to open a thread in Great Debates. Then you can make all the political commentary you like.
You can “don’t like” anything you want to … what I’d like to see are rules that are spelled out beyond “political jab”.
If no politics of any kind … directly or indirectly… is the rule then fine. Spell it out and stick to it.
Yestersday I asked some GQ’s in another thread…someone else made it more political than it needed to be, and it got moved.
An inappropriate political remark. It’s one of those I-know-it-when-I-see-it type of things. It’s hard to define, easy to recognize.
We’re not going to do that.
If you can’t figure out how to abide by the rule, then it’s probably best for you not to make any political commentary in GQ. The vast majority of posters don’t have any problems.
Why not?
On the other hand, why don’t you simply adopt that as the Straight Dope’s motto?:
“We’re not going to do that” since 1973-- has a certain ring to it. Even “Being completely unresponsive to reasonable requests from our customers since 1973,” while wordy, states your position loud and clear.
This board has long stated that they are not going to try to define 20 million specific rules, and draw those hard and fast lines. There are cases where mentioning politics in a GQ thread are on target. There are comments that can be made in that thread that wouldn’t draw a mod action. Hell, the point he made was on topic, it was just stated in too inflammatory a manner. Instead, this board chooses to rely on the human* judgement of the board mods to make these calls. The calls are subject to peer review and to board member commentary and criticism, but the leeway and gray area is for the mods to sort out, not to point to rule 356a, paragraph 12, line 27.
So is your complaint that the person didn’t draw a warning in that case, or that someone else got your thread moved?
- And one wombat.
Primarily that it got moved before my questions got answered… but I can’t help to think that the other poster might have had his hand slapped if the circumstances were a little different.
OK… I’ll do my very best not to “jab” any more:D
Let’s be clear… this is a very liberal board, the mods clearly reflect that and they like their leeway.