Can you possibly argue that talking about rackets, political contributions and magnificent systems :smack: isn’t both poisoning the well and asking for opinions?
The responses are factual refutations of the OP. To which I reply: so what? It was made totally clear in the other thread that the factual nature of responses don’t matter at all. Only the tone of the OP does.
So why has this thread been given different treatment?
Why were certain organizations exempted from the plan? Because of political influence?
Why were two groups of workers exempted from Social Security?
Now, he does ladle his OP with plenty of political slant. It’s arguable that his tone is more suited to GD than GQ. But he actually asked questions for factual answers.
That thread isn’t supposed to be a debate over whether it is a racket or system, it’s looking for the reasons that the exemptions were included.
Seems to be moot now, as the thread is closed. However, I will opine that while “Because of political influence?” does ultimately have a factual answer, we’re not going to see it, because only the actual people in power who crafted the deal know for sure, and they’re unlikely to post an answer even if they read the Dope. Anyone else answering would be expressing an opinion, and thus not factual.
Similarly, the thread about the Equal Rights Amendment was allowed to stay in GQ, even though it was speculation about political motivations from beginning to end (and yes, I reported it at the time).
Look again. The actual questions asked in each of the threads differs in content. This thread asked factual questions with political swipes thrown in. The other thread asked questions about the researchers’ mindset and abilities.
Now I grant you the political swipes in this thread weren’t really suited to GQ, so closing it makes sense. But there is still a fundamental difference in content of the two posts, which justifies different action by the mods.