“Needs”… no, but everyone has that option and their reasons are their own.
I think the way GD is being run now is good enough, where the Diogeneses and the Der Trihses run free, though I stand by my earlier suggestion of a religion-specific forum.
From previous experience I can tell you that a shitstorm would ensue from those that would insist that their thread was factual, spiritual or stemming from personal beliefs, not religious.
Well, at the very least, it’ll be entertaining. Religious structures have held and continue to hold a great deal of a power, so one small internet venue where its dogma and histories can be picked apart won’t hurt it any. That would be far better, I figure, than taking steps to protect it by adding new rules to GD, lest a believer be offended.
Besides, a storm of shit is relatively mild compared to some of the stuff in the Old Testament.
I have to go away for a while, a few months, maybe. If it means anything, I hope GD’s pretty much the same when I get back.
No pointless posts.
“My question is you suck” is not a debate point. “Republicans are evil” is fine but a post that says only that is not. If you think republicans are evil, fine, tell us but also tell us why and be ready to substantiate your opinion.
Other than that, I want to agree on the matter of somehow keeping theistic and atheistic arguments where it is clear they don’t belong. One one hand and as said before, if the OP is “Should the Holy Trinity be changed to a Holy Duet?”, then nobody should be allowed to jump in and say “It’s all fantasy anyways”.
OTOH, if the debate is “Should gun licenses be denied to the left-handed who don’t have special left-handed guns?”, nobody should be allowed to jump in and say “Odin says nobody should have guns” unless the OP specifically made it somehow clear that he is considering the religious aspect.
My other gripes with GD are probably beyond the reach of any moderation or regulation.
There is some people who will turn any debate into the debate they have always argued and delude themselves they know how to win. Those turn every thread into Gun Control, Abortion, Free Market, Existence of God or whatever it is they are used to solving with one liners. To top that, those are popular and polarizing topics and only a couple posts are all it takes to effectively take over the thread.
The other gripe is the multisplit quote. If you need to break someone’s post into more than 17 parts, you should stop and read it again. Try to catch the point of it and respond to that, not to every independent paragraph, sentence, clause or syllable.
I would like a return to the idea that Private Mail is private and not to be quoted at the SDMB unless someone is being harassed or verbally abused. Then the matter should be taken up with a Moderator or Administrator.
I thought that the Pit was for insults, while GD was for debates, including the rough and tumble sort. I’m not sure where I land on this issue. I certainly would have to adjust my posts if mocking arguments or delivering broadside characterizations against conservatives were disallowed. But I could do that.
In theory we could set up a child forum within Great Debates with tighter restrictions. I fear for the masochist who volunteers to moderate it though.
I see that there have been 19 threads with the word “Fundie” in the title since 2000. Not all were hostile, eg “Gift idea for the fundie in your life”, “Help my friend-a fundie”, “What exactly is a fundie” and “Are You A Fundie Test”. I plan on continuing to use it, as I consider it slang and not a 50 megaton derogatory expression.
Sometimes a sledgehammer is necessary… or is it?
I’ve been known to mock Der Trihs’ arguments in GD, partly for reasons outlined.
From time to time I will also make strong, insulting value judgments of groups, which I’ll typically precede or follow with qualifications. Softeners typically make for a stronger argument.
There are satellite boards with looser moderation than the SDMB. There is also a satellite board where its members strive to treat each other with an enhanced degree of respect. As a result, the forum has more of the feel of a living room, while GD is akin to the town square.
There are alternatives to moderator action. Thread launchers can make appeals and can try to keep the subject on track. Those who make tired arguments can be addressed with pre-emptive dismissals and pasted boilerplate.
I’ve got very bad news for you, I agree with this strongly. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind being verbally abused, as long as I could then block that person. That way I can continue to engage him on his own terms or simply have nothing to do with him.
By the way, does anyone know if you can block PMs from a specific poster?
Here’s an idea I think would help foster better debate: don’t allow a mob to form by the people in a debate employing “we”/“us”. As in, “We don’t think that makes sense…” or “You haven’t convinced us…”. This tactic is often employed in debates where on side greatly outnumbers the other. Yes, I have been on the receiving end of this, and I’ve also seen it done to others. It adds zero to the debate, does not help the validity of anyone’s position (except by a fallacious Appeal to the Masses), and tends to close minds. There is really no upside to it, other than it allows the weak of mind or chickenshit posters who can’t cut it on their own over confident. On the downside, it tends to quash unpopular views.
Yes, this would be an excellent improvement.
I would propose a change to GD that I believe would strengthen the rest f the board. Just as witnessing is directed to GD, I would like to see evangelical atheism also directed to GD.
For example, in a current thread about the perennial topic of whether to tell the spouse of a cheater, in which the OP mentioned a pastor known to all parties in the situation, one poster made aggressively anti-religion comments about the pastor.
If the cheating scenario had come up in a purely secular context, and a religious poster had recommended turning the problem over to Jesus in prayer as a solution, they would rightly have been directed to take their witnessing elsewhere.
In short, I recommend all evangelism, defined as promoting one’s beliefs about religion, be directed to GD.
Did you report this post to a Moderator?
I could get behind this. Someone posts a four sentence response in a thread. Someone else comes along and responds with four sentences to each of those sentences. The first person comes along and posts three or four sentences to each of those. It’s unwieldy and doesn’t really advance the discussion.
Has anyone used Google Wave? I figured it would be excellent for this type of discussion. We use it in a small development group and we insist that every topic get its own wave and that we all reply to it. It just makes sure no ends are loose and nothing is just being repeated 47 times.
It would be all kinds of awesome if some forum software worked like that.
LOL YOU would hold this opinion as most of your posts are merely pithy sarcasm.
Thank you for answering my question-much appreciated.
I couldn’t agree with this more. It would be annoying as hell if it wasn’t so comical.
I missed the edit window, but I do want to be clear that I don’t want a rule against the ‘we’ people. They are too fun to watch. Hell, sometimes they even say it when it is clear that there are plenty people disagreeing with them. But I just meant, I know exactly what magellan01 is talking about.
I would like to see a rule (at least in GD) that forbids the practice of leaving off a substantial part of a sentence that the poster is putting within quotation marks, for the purpose of changing the meaning of what was actually said by another poster.
That happened to me in a recent discussion. Not only were the relevant words lopped off, but no elipses were used to indicate that part of the sentence was missing.
That left “the guilty party” free to argue with a point that I had never made.
Example:
-
“Women should never marry before they are twenty-five.”
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“Women should never marry.”
Changing sentence #1 into sentence #2 should be against the rules.
But if sentence #2 is going to be allowed, then at least require elipses to show that words were left out:
- “Women should never marry…”
That is standard literary practice even if it doesn’t do much for improving communication.