I find this difficult to parse. How am I supposed to talk about hijacks in a thread, without giving what are examples of hijacks, in my view, and why they’re bad?
Velocity’s repeated comments about how jolly it would be start WWIII by pouring gobs of weapons into Ukraine, and how simple it is to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb, are repeated hijacks to a breaking news thread. I was so pleased to see the thread ban earlier today, and said “Finally! It took a year, but finally!” It’s been a consistent hijack.
I’m another person who’s gotten really confused about the “breaking news” threads–how much discussion is allowed, and when are folks gonna get cut off for too much?
So here’s an idea:
Threads with “breaking news only” IN THE TITLE get strictly modded.
The ONLY posts in the thread should be links to news stories, with a brief summary of the story.
Back-and-forth conversation is not allowed, except to correct a news story with a new one. I can’t comment on the story you posted.
The OP is strongly encouraged to link in their first post to a discussion thread; if that doesn’t happen, someone else can start a discussion thread and link to it.
Although this may look, at first blush, like an obnoxiously complicated set of rules that would lead to a ton of modding, I actually think it’d make things a lot simpler. It’d be very clear what could go in the BNO thread, and once folks got the hang of it, I think there’d be a lot fewer hijacks. Even if someone didn’t read the rules carefully, the posts in the thread would be so specific that most folks could pick up on the vibe.
Posting anything critical of the US policy in this war is a total non-starter. You will be ostracized. You will be sent to the pit. But a poster can literally advocate for escalation of war, for months, in a way that I can only describe as deranged, and it will need further consideration as to whether or not he is a decent poster. Dude is a nut his avatar is an Israeli flag mixed with a Kurdish flag. Pretty sure he doesnt belong to either group. He gets off on proxy wars
This is itself a hijack to this thread so I won’t pursue it, but I will just say that this is totally outright wrong. This board is not a platform for promoting US policy, it’s a platform for the stated mission of fighting ignorance. And policy WRT Ukraine is not “US policy” anyway, but largely a unified NATO policy.
The poster who’s caused legitimate problems in that thread that led to their thread-banning was persistently posting ignorant bullshit – propaganda that was provably false. Those posts are now old enough that their falsity can be verified.
I am genuinely unsure of which thread you mean. In my experience, people critical of current US policy have a hard time here. ETA yeah this is a hijack. I think this thread is probably a poor place for the discussion, but then again, what forum is appropriate?
Sorry, I was referring to the Ukraine invasion thread.
The majority of posters on this board have had, and continue to have, healthy opposition to US policy where it’s appropriate so I don’t see your point at all or where you get the evidence for this bizarre conclusion. And your comments here are a hijack to this thread, so I’m done.
I agree with both of these posts. Without getting into specifics, I support the position that a hard line should be maintained in the thread (as in all news-type threads), and that posters who have proven themselves unable to maintain appropriate discipline and respect the established contextual rules should be removed.
Fourthed, or whatever we’re up to. “Should” comments seem to be the source of many hijacks in news threads.
I tighter rein on FQ would be nice, too. Nobody cares what your mom did in nineteen fifty whatever. That thread is 80% pointless clutter by posters who just cannot resist the urge to treat FQ like an IMHO poll. It took 11 hours for a mod to show up and ask if the hijackers should be rewarded for their efforts, then the next day for another to finally ask that it stay on topic.
I mean, I come to the boards for the pointless clutter. I enjoy reading conversations, not news tickers.
If the Ukraine thread became two threads, one with only news stories (and troop videos and whatever) but no discussion, and then a second discussion thread, I wouldn’t even read the news-only one.
I’m usually lurking, but I go to the Ukraine thread to read news AND discussion about the news.
As I understand the issue, the problem is proposing sending US-bombers to the Russian front or calling other posters wankers, neither of which is news, nor discussion of the news. I have no problems with the modding as long as the news can be discussed.
First, I have no problem with the Velocity ruling.
The problem is what the mods think is acceptable as “news”. As I’ve pointed out before, there must be dozens of twitter videos linked to in that thread that are simply rah rah Ukraine videos with no provenance behind them. Those are never modded as propaganda and just assumed to be exactly as they are presented.
The one posted the other day as Wagner mercenaries beating their commander to death with a shovel was presented as actual news. Problem was, watching the crappy quality edited video told us nothing. It wasn’t even possible to make out which country the troops are from, much less that they were Wagner troops specifically and that there was a general in the clip. Other than a couple of us asking for more info, it stood as the real thing.
Russia has done so many things that are illegal and barbaric in that war that’s well documented, there is no reason for posters to just keep linking to every video of a war zone and attaching a bad Russian story to it.
I glance at the twitter stuff, I don’t click on most of it. If you see one you think shouldn’t be there, you would need to flag it. I would probably at least add a staff note that the information in the post was unverified.
You have to understand, I have not reviewed all 12000 posts in those threads and generally only modded stuff that stood out or was flagged. I keep up with the thread and generally read in multiple times per day but that is not the same as reviewing all links. No one would have time for that.
Also, I don’t think this is remotely on-topic for a hijacks thread, so if you want to continue, please spin this off to a new thread.
But take the latest post in the Ukraine thread: “I’ll say it once again - Russia cannot win this war. Ukraine will retake all of its territory, including Crimea, eventually.” I’m honestly not sure whether I’m allowed to reply in kind to that there, or whether I have to shrug and figure that speculation about the future can be asserted but the opposite can’t, or — what?
Except that post is based on a very detailed, linked article, which supports that conclusion. It’s discussion about a news article, not a poster just putting out their own opinions, unsupported by any sort of news or background. That seems to me to be discussion on the news.
But that just pushes my uncertainty back a step: it’s the work of a moment for me to find multiple articles that say Putin might use a nuclear weapon if conventional warfare keeps not getting the job done — and I genuinely don’t know whether I’m allowed to post such a link there and, uh, discuss it, or whether that could draw a warning.