Is it just me or does anyone else get hot when Tuba gets snarky?
So what do you do when some jerk wants to have involuntary human relations with you? If you get rid of the state and its ability to coerce assholes into being civil, and the jerk is bigger than you, I guess you are going to get fucked.
I love Libs threads they go all over the place but somehow always end up back to Libertarians, hey maybe Lib should change his name to Libertarian…
What luc said.
I chuckle and/or roll my eyes at Lib’s weirdly obsessive digressions and sporadically infuriating deliberate hijacks about as often as I pause with pursed lips at Tuba’s periodically ill-considered displays of prickly and sometimes high-handed snark. But here’s the thing: Both of you are people, with complicated and occasionally contradictory depths, and both of you contribute something ineffable to the SDMB experience. Even though I may sometimes scroll past Lib’s incomprehensibly long-winded bloviating on matters of absolute triviality, or likewise shake my head and sigh whenever Tuba hisses at somebody with hackles raised, I would not choose to eliminate either individual’s contributions, or indeed suggest that either should change in any significant way. This is a community, and one of its greatest qualities, perhaps even the greatest, is that it permits such a wide range of conflicting personalities to coexist and interact with a minimum of hostility and outright venom. It’s like a rumbling, boiling cauldron of absurdly incompatible viewpoints, and yet somehow it works.
When, during the recent controversy, there were some tentative suggestions about finding ourselves a new home, I hoped against hope that were this to come to pass, most everybody on the SDMB would migrate, and that the current experience would be transplanted mostly intact to an alternate location. And as much as I might sometimes wish for Lib to rein in his irritating impulse to commandeer perfectly valid discussions for the purpose of grinding some personal axe, or for Tuba to take a deep breath and react without the apparently instinctual defensiveness, I know that both of these qualities make them who they are, and I would much rather they bring themselves and all their baggage to some hypothetical new home than not.
In this particular instance, Lib is clearly reaching for an opportunity to wax critical on a long-held position, rather than reacting specifically to immediate circumstances. He may or may not be familiar with this new Alex D’s MO, but the guy is basically a dipshit who talks more than he listens and who is unlikely to last very long here; in my view he deserves a lot more, and harsher, administrative lashings than Tuba’s very mild quoted examples. Lib is clearly off base in complaining about this incident, but if you look at this as stretching to find an excuse to talk about something broader, it makes more sense.
And what of the “paying customer” argument Lib and others have made, in suggesting that corrective action should be calm, professional, and objective in all cases? I’m also going to disagree with that to some extent, and appeal to a more general argument about board tone. The SDMB has always been characterized by a small degree of underlying sarcasm, as established by Cecil the Great and Terrible (all hail, all hail). This is not an academic journal; a carefully modulated dollop of good-humored derision for dumb ideas and bad argumentation has always been part and parcel of the Straight Dope experience. While a dipshit like Alex D may be personally offended to find himself on the receiving end of some well-earned mockery, and while he may, as a paying customer, have some standing to argue for more professional treatment, I must remind the panel that all of the rest of us are also paying customers, and as such appreciate the efforts of the moderators and administrators not just to curb unwelcome behavior by fringe participants but to do so in an entertaining fashion.
In short, Lib, there is an argument to be made here for what I think you’re getting at, but with all due respect, you ain’t making it.
I realize you’re just being a douchebag, but you are actually correct. Sophistry and Illusion’s comment made the same point without seeming as tightly wound as the OP. Cunt.
Yes, we’re paying customers. But TubaDiva is still an administrator. She still has to moderate and administer this message board, and yes, that will sometimes mean snarking at the paying customers.
If I’m running a store, and some customers are being disruptive, I have a responsibility to all of my customers to get them to knock it off. I’m not running a store to provide a venue for disruptive people to do whatever the hell they damn well please, I’m running store to provide a venue for customers to purchase my goods and services. That means sometimes I will have a duty to be harsh with customer A, if they’re disrupting things for customers B, C, and D.
TubaDiva apparently thought Alex_Dubinsky was being disruptive. Snark at him was TubaDiva doing her damned job. Yes, we’re paying customers. So the fuck what? “Paying customers” isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card.
TubaDiva did nothing wrong here. Quit your bitching.
Agreed.
I would add further that a firm, unequivocal instruction like she gave leaves no room for weaseling around on the part of the offender and/or onlookers and it makes clear that such behavior will not be tolerated. This in turn keeps the miscreants 
from weaseling around trying to test the boundaries and it serves, IMO, as a deterrent to others who may be tempted to try similar behavior in the future. It also serves to lighten the policing duties the mods are (reluctantly I’m sure) called upon to perform.
No one likes to be publicly spanked (well, some might but that’s for another thread) and I know from personal experience that it can be an embarrassing and irritating way to be dealt with, but I understand the motivations behind the mods’ admonitions and the way they are expressed.
Well, all right then. Since you people love me […blush…], how could I possibly hold a grudge. She and our family used to be decent friends anyway, and have helped one another in times of various needs. I thought I explained myself pretty well. Nobody got overly pissed off at me. Pretty mild responses to me for the Pit especially. So what the hell. Let’s just drop it and go on.
I like ol’ Lib. Always have. 
Frequently. Mostly. Not always.
Kind of like me, you.
He’s a crank, but he’s *our * crank, dammit.
Pardone moi, mayhaps I wasn’t clear enough. I wasn’t speaking of the direct Pitting of Tuba (with whom, if I’ve exchanged pleasantries or not, I cannot recall), but rather the overall tenor of his post. In said sense is my agreement.
IOW, like elsewhere in life, some people are not fit to be in positions of authority for they’ll invariably abuse them. And I also added the fact that due to the (yes, again, nominal) fee we PTP, we are, in fact, costumers, and as such, we shouldn’t get patronizing/demeaning BS for warnings. Then again, if the offense is as harsh as your post suggests, period, end of story – use the ban-stick and it’s over.
Wich is simply the same point I made in my prior post.
Speak for yourself.
I have nothing to do with the costumes.
From unseemly to a class act in a page and a half. Well done.
Was trying to, but obviously, words failed me.
Screw it. Blame the keyboard.
I had rather see “Do Not Do That” in boldface, double-sized and underscored than to have a Moderator tell me “Knock it off.” You just don’t say the second one to people where I am from unless they are truly your subordinates and you want them to recognize themselves as subordinates and grovel.
Most of us here voluntarily cooporate with the requests of the Administrators and Moderators because we want to be a part of SDMB. Some of the Mods might want to consider cultural differences upon occasion. Your way is not “the way” all of the time.
Liberal, the suggestion to be civil was “motherly”? If Giraffe had said it, would you have found it “fatherly”? Give me a break! (Glad you’re cool now!) 
In the banner thread I mentioned TubaDiva should ‘fuck off’ for her comment about the ads…but this? Meh, gathering up her past misdeeds (which has been done before ad nauseam) or even pointing to her recent statements during the whole ‘banner ad scare’ as mhendo did would have been far more effective.
In short a misdirected pit over nothing when a little better aim might have gotten a few more on your side.
This of course is rhetorical bullshit; you’re like Bill O’Reilly calling his show a “spin free zone,” simply because he has a private definition of spin.
Libertarianism is, in practice, a rightwing philosophy. All this rhetoric about “coercion” is utter bullshit, because Libertarianism is practical social Darwinism: might makes right; the politics of coercion. Whoever’s got the biggest stick makes the rules. This is what infuriates me so much about Libertarians; the hypocrisy of their “coercion” bullshit.
Considering how little provocation it took to get him to “unseemly,” I think we can expect a repeat pretty soon.
Nonsense. It doesn’t map well onto the stereotypical left-right poltical spectrum, but it’s hardly neutral, and is as vulnerable to extremist corruption as any other political philosophy.