I can accept that might be a right wing tactic. But it’s only going to work in an environment controlled by people with a right wing agenda. In those cases, they can ensure that no counterbalancing views are allowed.
That’s not the case here. A single thread of positive gun news is not going to eliminate all of the other threads on gun control where opposing views are common.
No, generally most moderates and alleged left wingers will do so as well, in the name of “fairness” or whatever other version of the golden mean fallacy is popular in a particular medium.
Something the right wing is well aware of, that’s why they use buzzwords like that to push their propaganda; they can get their enemies to do the majority of the work in silencing their opposition.
So when the right wing does it, it proves the right wing is evil. And when the moderates or the left wing does it, it also proves the right wing is evil.
There are two separate issues here: 1) The use of SDMB as a platform for controlling contributions to your own thread, and 2) the validity of the content of a particular thread.
If you post in GQ, you are expected to stick to facts. If you post in GD, you are explicitly inviting competing views on a topic. If you post in IMHO, you are inviting whatever opinions people have. However, in MPSIM, it seems that the Moderators feel that you should be able to set the ground rules for discussion for your own thread. That is, you can start a thread that takes a position, and then declare that any post counter to that position is threadshitting. This last approach is so different than the other subforums that it throws people off. The spirit of most threads here is to allow open, respectful, and sometimes spirited and even blunt discussion, allowing an expression of all viewpoints. It’s hard to accept that any particular thread would disallow that, with the blessing of the mods.
PGNOTD is an attempt to prove a point through anecdotal evidence. This is not a scientifically valid method; it is an appeal to emotion and cheerleading. The thread has an underlying agenda of promoting or at least condoning unfettered gun ownership. Of *course *there are individual cases where a gun has saved lives. That is not an argument for the proliferation of guns, and that is why I for one find the thread disturbing.
I actually did understand his point. He was saying that the right wing manipulates non-conservatives into self-censoring themselves from telling the truth by appealing to their sense of fair play.
Personally I feel this is not the case. I feel that moderates and liberals are saying what they believe is true. But Der Trihs does not share their views on what’s true and does not want to concede that the problem may be that his view on what is true is not correct. So he invents a conspiracy that is concealing the truth from everyone. This allows him to rationalize his belief that he is right even when everyone else is saying something different.
This is pretty much the same thing Donald Trump does when he complains about the media posting Fake News about him and his administration.
By and large, I think deference should be given to an OP in terms of what direction he or she wants a thread to be steered in. That isn’t to say that people aren’t allowed to object, but rather, that if an OP starts a thread about “Let’s discuss French pastries” then it’s perfectly fair for the mods to intervene if someone wants to hijack the thread in favor of the cooking of beef steaks. The hijacker would have been perfectly free to start a steak-cooking thread elsewhere.
If you’re arguing that MPSIMS should have the same rules and play as IMHO, then what would make MPSIMS different than IMHO? It would just be a more trivial version of IMHO. It’s fair for different forums to have different rules and flavor/style.
So many of the posts there (not all, but many) not only rationalize but actually seem to *celebrate *killings, and their posters refuse to consider how any other resolution might have been possible or desirable. Do you see how it might not be clear to everyone that the word Positive is adequate?