Right, you had the occasion to type what you thought was relevant to the topic as a poster, then as a matter of right as moderator you ensure that you got to say what you as a poster wanted to say and then prevent anyone else from saying what they think is relevant by sheer virtue of the fact you’re a moderator and they aren’t.
If the thread warranted closing for whatever reason, then you should have stuck with the moderator gig, closed and have been done with it. Instead, you get to add your two cents and then close it simply because you can.
Sorry. You appear to be posting a petulant “If nobody can fight in this thread, then you can’t say anything.” I see no rational reason to accept that claim.
Had I taken one side or another of the debate and then closed the thread, I could see the point you might think you are making. Instead, I simply posted a non-controversial fact with links supporting it in the interest of fighting ignorance. Are you really going to make the claim that there was a “relevant” response to my post that some poster was going to be dying to make? Were they going to challenge the cited facts I presented? Were they going to post a hijack regarding the separate uses to which Liberty and Victory ships were going to be put following WWII?
If you have a way to let posters submit “relevant” information while guaranteeing that they do not post more arguments or personal attacks, then provide it. Otherwise, you appear to be simply reacting to my username.
Then you’ve misread what I said. Other people have points of view and factual analyses that are at least as good as yours. But they don’t get to come in and “make a correction” and then close the thread ensuring their correction is final. You do. I’m sorry if you cannot see this.
This has nothing to do with taking a side or not. It has to do with the “I get the last word because I’m a moderator. Deal with it, so there.”
Of course, because if someone says something it naturally is only because of your username. It’s completely not possible that the thought actually has some actual merit to it. Nope. It simply has to be because of your username. For what it’s worth, I don’t care what your username is, or who you are. It’s the entitled “I’m the moderator and can thus say my piece on anything I’d like and then close the thread.” I’m not opposed necessarily to either moderators posting as posters, or moderators closing threads. I am opposed to your assertion that you get to get the last word as a poster, and then because you happen to simultaneously be a moderator, ensure that such is the case. And the argument that you didn’t want to give out a warning or whatever doesn’t seem reasonable.
One of the functions of a moderator, such as I’m told, is to, well, moderate a discussion. It isn’t moderation when you get to a.) state your opinion, or unassailable fact and b.) shut everyone else up by preventing them from having a discussion. If a couple of people are breaking the rules, then deal with those people without forcing the rest of the community to just lose out on a discussion having only your last thoughts be the sum conclusion of the conversation. Ya know, warning, they must be hard.
The suggestion: simply moderate; hand out infractions as they’re necessary. People will eventually settle down, or be banned. Either way, it shouldn’t be the first course to avoid moderating because you don’t want to moderate. If you don’t want to moderate, that’s fine, let someone else do it. It’s almost hard to imagine this idea of moderators moderating discussion by enforcing rules in the first instance, and closing a thread as a matter of recourse hasn’t already been figured out elsewhere.
This bit of deliberately missing the point is amusing.
You have now posted on this point multiple times without actually making a coherent argument.
There is no “last word” involved. The “last word” goes beyond implying to definitely denoting the “last word in an argument.” I did not contribute to the argument in any way. I added a bit of information that would have otherwise been lost. It was not a life-changing bit of information, but it was information that had been posted incorrectly.
I understand that you want to ensure that I never contribute as a poster while I am a moderator, but thus far you have failed to provide any actual argument that explains why, (hence my “username” comment that you chose to misread).
You strongly imply an event that never happened. I presented no opinion regarding the debate. In fact, I presented no opinion at all, just a fact regarding the building and naming of ships. There is no opinion involved and no discussion on that point that was closed. (If someone actually wanted to post some sort of “debate” about Liberty ships and Victory ships, there is no rule preventing them from opening a new thread, and such a “debate” would have been a hijack to that thread, thus deserving its own thread, anyway.)
Nope. Trainwrecks get closed. Part of “moderation” is keeping down the level of heat on the forum. I suppose I could simply wander about dispening Warnings like candy, but I prefer to recognize that a lot of posters are pretty passionate about different topics and I am not in the business of suppressing passionate expression.
The analogy I would use would be that you want a traffic cop while I would prefer to be a beat cop.
The traffic cop sits out on the highway simply giving tickets to speeder. It does not matter to him whether the speeder was recklessly disrtegarding the law for miles or accelerating for a mere hundred yards to change lanes to avoid a bad situation, (because the cop watching the radar gun is not going to see the actual highway situation–and then only for the quarter mile in his view). The cop has a list of speeds and simply hands out tickets when he seems them violated.
The beat cop knows the neighborhood and knows when to chase Billy home with a “suggestion” when he sees Billy handling the apples out in front of Sid’s fruit stand and when to run Joey in for shoplifting when Joey gets out of Fred’s market with a 40 ouncer under his shirt. Since Billy and Joey live in the neighborhood, he is also going to get to know when one of them is going to pick a fight and when he is just blustering–when to send them home and when to call “disturbing the peace” and pat them down for weapons.
Many, if not most, of the debates in this forum tend to be either repetitions of earlier debates or repetitions of themes from earlier debates. I have found from long experience that the simple act of closing a thread tends to break the ongoing hostility among posters. They need to start over in the (inevitable) next thread, beginning from a more or less neutral position, where, if they bring up old sins from earlier threads, I can point out that that statement has not ben expressed in the current thread in a way that I cannot move them away from a line of argumentation that is already in the same thread.
Folks who know how to work the rules tend to prefer the traffic cop situation, because when they tailgate someone into accelerating to change lanes, they get away with harrassing the other guy while the person they endangered with their driving gets the ticket.
Folks who prefer to live in a nice neighborhood prefer the beat cop, who will work with the situation to prevent all-out brawls from erupting, arresting real bad guys while keeping people who are simply riled up from going too far.
Apparently, you still have chosen not to read what I’ve typed. Was it confusing when I said I have no objection to you, or any moderator for that matter, posting as a posting and moderating? I don’t question that; I question the wisdom of your decision.
But since I’m the only person who’s brought it up, it’s clearly just me.
Since your wonderful argument is so cogently written, I now agree that your first course of action should always be to post some gem of wisdom and then close the thread. After all, that’s the best way to effectuate the stated goal of this board.
It’s not just you, ashman165. In my opinion, if a moderator thinks that a thread needs to be closed, there simply is no good reason to get in his “shot” at the subject before closing it. This is true regardless of how benign the non-moderator commentary is.
Either close it, explaining why, or leave it open and add the commentary you want, then offer if you feel it needs it a warning of what you won’t tolerate in the future in the thread.
Nah, I agree with him now; he should have the ability to do things in his capacity as a poster that no one else is entitled to have. It’s a perquisite of being a moderator, you know. He’s right at all times simply because his closing a thread is final; thus, no one can dispute his moderator qua poster comments because he’s free to turn around after saying something moderator qua poster and take action as moderator qua moderator. Seems fair to me.
So, points that are not directly bearing on the debate and take no sides in the discussion and have no snide aspect to them have now become “shots”? Interesting.
Why?
What is magical about closing a thread and barring it to Moderators when they are not tilting the discussion or taking sides in a debate?
We are not operating in real time. I am not hovering over each thread waiting with bated breath to pounce on any violation of rules.
What if I had posted one hour before I closed it? Should I go back and delete my last post? (That is not all that far-fetched. I had already composed my post on the ship classes without reading all the most recent posts. Before I submitted it, I went back and scanned the thread to make sure no one had already posted that information. While skimming the last posts, I noticed that the sniping had resumed and decided that I needed to break that cycle by closing the thread. What would have been the point of deleting my already written post? It took no sides in the issue and did not favor any poster or position. Do you really think that something would have been accomplished by my deleting my previously written text? Would something have been accomplished had I posted an hour earlier and then gone back and deleted it so that I would not have the last post in the thread? What would be the difference?
I am seriously asking this question. I see no point to what you are asking in this context. Certainly, posting that Mossad had threatened to harm LBJ’s beagles to get him to call off any investigation or posting that the Palestinians had bribed Boston to make his 36 year late “correction” to the record would have been far out of bounds when closing the thread–even if I actually had such information. However, nothing like that occurred and I really do not see the point of your position.
= = =
ashman165, you still need to work on your sarcasm.
It might not be sarcasm. I might have actually just finally capitulated to your estimation of your special rights as a poster because you’re a moderator as well.
What you don’t understand is that you should avoid the appearance of such conduct. But it’s of no moment since you’re the moderator and you can do what you damn well please. Screw the mere users if they happen to think that you’re taking particular advantage of your station as a moderator to ensure that if you want, you get to say whatever you want and then forever bar a response. It’s fine. It’s cool. You can do that if for no other reason to remind us that we mere users aren’t on equal footing with you. Joyful.
I claim no special rights. That is your invention. You have failed to even demonstrate where I might have used such rights.
I have actually never done anything resembling your accusation. That you have trumpeted the current situation into some sort of baseless claim hardly demonstrates any accuracy in your accusations.
No one has yet provided a reason why I should not post a neutral point of information prior to closing a thread. Were I actually taking sides or insulting other posters in such a situation, then I could see the issue. In this context, your claims are irrelevant. No one is being prohibited from “responding” to my post. Anyone who felt an overwhelming need to (erroneously) claim that the USS Liberty was actually a Liberty Ship cold easily open their own whole thread with their username at the top and everything, to challenge my facts. There was no statement that the matter was off-limits to discussion. For that matter, there was not even a claim that the feud raging in that thread was off-limits for further discussion, only that that particular thread had been sufficiently poisoned that I was closing it before I needed to start handing out Warnings.
As I have said, I can see that if I took sides or posted insults and closed the thread as the “final word,” I would be out of line. In this case, I see no such action. You are inventing transgressions and a motive to go along with them that have no correspondence to reality.
You know, you implied you were seriously asking why we think what we think. It seems that you aren’t actually curious as to why we think what we think so much you just want to make your case. Otherwise, I was leaving this thread alone.
I’ve already capitulated; you’re the moderator; you may do whatever you want in whatever fashion and the rest of us will just shut up and accept that you’re free to do so. Perhaps you should just reply and then close the thread, you know, since you can do that.
I was, at least from DSYoungEsq or any serious poster. You long ago made it clear in multiple threads that you are only participating in these discussions for the fun of making snide remarks. Nothing in your last three posts has given me reason to believe that your questions or comments are serious; you have refused to actually address anything I have said except to repeat your claims that I am “taking advantage” of my massive Mod powers. And while I was certainly asking “Why was that one post wrong?” I clearly never got an explanation from you, just more cheap shots.
I thought it only fair to give your posts the same consideration in response as you gave mine. Since you didn’t seem to think it was worthwhile to respond to what I actually said; indeed, completely reversing an entire theme, I didn’t consider that your platitudes warranted any greater respect.
tom, I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. You do yourself zero credit as a Moderator in engaging in back and forth snark. If you really don’t think the poster in question has anything valuable he/she is contributing, my suggestion is to simply drop the conversation.
And it has nothing to do with “taking advantage” in a bad sense. It’s simply the fact that you are taking advantage of the situation to get in the last word. Last wordism is a serious disease around here; many posters here succumb to it regularly (I’m included in that group). It should be fought when one feels one is falling into the trap. For a Moderator to get in the last word, and then to ensure it’s the last word by locking the thread, you are obtaining an advantage that will cause others to feel aggrieved, regardless of whether or not you intend by that combination to get in a “shot” that won’t be responded to.
A Moderator is like a referee. When I was the administrator of a referee program for the Bay Area for a well-known youth soccer organization, I advised the referees I trained/spoke to/came in contact with that they had to avoid trying to have the last word. Simply blow the whistle as need be, indicate the penalty, and move on. It forstalls bad feelings and the appearance of unfairness, because the referee won’t be visibly chided for any failings he/she may have, or bad acts they may engage in.
And think of it this way: you were closing the thread down in large part because you felt that the potential for positive contribution was significantly outweighed by the potential for continued jerkiness. Yet, you appear to assert that your own contribution as a poster was important enough to ensure it was posted, rather than simply forgoing the chance of doing so. It seems to me that, either the content of the post you made was an important contribution, in which case the potential for important contribution existed, mitigating the need for shutting the thread down, or the content of your post was of secondary nature, in which case simply swallowing what you had to say and shutting the thread down would hardly have caused you any great unhappiness.
I assert again: if for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of unfairness, and to keep from looking as if you are taking advantage of the situation, you should not post as a poster iimmediately before locking a thread. Either post and warn, or don’t post and close. It’s an easy rule to follow, won’t cause people to get bent out of shape, and certainly doesn’t infringe significantly on your ability to contribute here.
It’s really just the nature of GD. It’s mostly a complaint forum, like the Pit but with stricter rules regarding civility. There are complaints about politics. Complaints about religion. Complaints about court rulings, Creationism, and everything else under the sun. That, and witnessing.
Tom’s job is the most difficult of all the mods. His detractors seem to think that they were making the most important point in all the world, when suddenly he cut them off. And if he says anything other than “Thread closed,” there is a hissy fit that he got in the last word.
Now, it is true that some mods do this. (Mostly, they are admins.) They post their two cents worth about the thread topic and then close it. But that’s just not something Tom has ever done. Fair is fair. And I’m not sucking up. He has given me warnings and cautions for straying off-topic and such. He’s a pretty damn good mod. And if he were replaced, you might see a clamp-down in Great Debates that would have us all here again, only with much more protest and vitriol.
As **Liberal ** remarks above, Tom has the hardest row to hoe of all the mods and the closing of a thread in particular is always gong to prove contentious. If Tom had, after passionate engagement in the debate, posted one more thrust at the argument of his opponents and then locked the thread I could understand the resulting furore.
But he did no such thing. He corrected a simple error of fact (a correction which could have no impact on the debate itself) before closing the thread. The two actions were unconnected. Should he have closed the thread and let the error stand? To do so he would have been remiss in his duty, not as a moderator, but as a board member. I hope no Doper would ever see something on the board he knows to be factually wrong and let it stand uncorrected.
And I note that the correction and the closing were in two consecutive posts, clearly separating his actions as a poster and moderator.
