The Paterno thread hasn’t been a pitting of Paterno since November of last year. By the fourth page of that thing, it had already converted into a mob of posters calling Starving Artist names, and has continued on that course for nearly a year now. It is, in all regards except its name, a pitting of Starving Artist. Your thread did not add a new aspect to this discussion in any substantial way.
As a general policy, we do not close Pit threads at the request of the OP. I’m certainly not going to rearrange my personal schedule so that I can be online in time to meet your deadline for shutting down your thread.
In general, I never have a problem with someone wanting to pit Starving Artist for any reason. I do have a problem with having two threads on the same subject running concurrently. If you want to call him names over this, there’s a perfectly fine thread in the Pit already for you to do that. I see you’ve already posted to it forty-seven times, and without looking at individual posts, I’m guessing somewhere around forty-six of them involved calling SA names.
I can appreciate that there’s a certain amount of mixed signals involved in this situation, which is unfortunate. The instruction to open a new Pit thread was not the result of consultation and consensus among the moderation staff, but rather, an off-the-cuff response to an inappropriate posting in another forum. Moderation of the various forums on this board is somewhat compartmentalized. A moderator in IMHO isn’t necessarily going to be aware of everything that’s going on in the BBQ Pit, and vice versa. This is largely by design: this is a pretty big board, the staff here are all volunteers, and we generally don’t have time to be aware of everything that’s happening in every forum at any given moment. When someone starts airing their grievance with another poster in the wrong forum, telling them to start a Pit thread is a fairly standard response. I don’t expect the other moderators here to contact me to ask me if that’s okay first, or check the BBQ Pit to see if there’s already a pit thread on the subject. That level of coordination is more of a logistical headache than any of us are really prepared to deal with, especially given that 99% of the time, it’s not necessary. This particular subject is an outlier.
If this is something I have just invented on the spur of the moment, you should have no trouble finding plenty of instances where the OP requested that I close a thread, and I complied.
You said “we”, not “I”. “We” presumably means “pit mods” and I directed you to several instances of a pit mod closing a thread at the request of the OP.
So why keep it open if its both, misleading in title and a mob response? Personally I find it a place for SA to bloviate at will. Again, not exactly what I’d call it in the Pit nor is it an open pitting of him.
My thread was certainly on topic: a direct pitting of Starving Artist plus an attempt to debunk an specific claim of his. Namely the disgusting Paper Towel Tube bullshit experiment.
Come on, Miller, pardon me but that is a silly justification/quibble…so the thread stays open for a few hours/days more till you get to it. Big deal. Besides, note the disclaimer: “If there are no objections.” Meaning that I am hardly trying to Lord over it. Really don’t think it’s that hard to reach a majority consensus on that request. I’d also note that plenty of threads have been closed per the OPs request in the past – nothing unsual about that.
– bolding mine.
1-OK, either close that thread or give it the correct title – if it is, as you say a Piting of Starving Artist and NOT a thread about Paterno and Penn State, it’d be the right thing to do, no?
2-And you’d be completely wrong on your guess. Prior to the current clusterfuck – or up until that thread was on-topic, roughly December of last year – all of my twenty-seven posts were, surprisingly enough, strictly on topic.
In addition to that, your “47” number is not correct either as it now includes at least six posts from my merged Pit thread.
So when Miller posted about ‘what we do’ - present tense verb - you thought he was discussing the entire history of the Pit rather than the actions of the current Pit mods?
Highlighting this quote again for emphasis:
Nevermind you picked bunch of ridiculously out of date examples (from 2005 through 2007), finding individual instances where a thread was closed at the OP’s request wouldn’t prove your point anyway. Miller made a general statement and what he said is true: the staff here usually don’t close threads at the request of the OP. We do it sometimes, but not always. That’s particularly true in the Pit. It’s common for posters to ask that their Pit threads be closed if the thread does not go the way they hoped, and the mods usually tell them to take a hike because that’s how it goes with Pittings. In any case RedFury’s advance directive that the Pit mods close his thread after 72 hours was unique even in that regard because it was an arbitrary cutoff point.
I hereby request that in the even RedFury’s thread is unmerged or he is allowed to start a new Paterno-related thread to Pit me, that I be allowed to Pit him for what I believe are his specious motives in doing so, and also that I be allowed to start another thread to set the record straight as to my true view in the Paterno thread, my motives for posting in it, and why I’ve chosen to carry on the fight for as long as I have, which is a point many non-or-ex-Paterno thread posters are wrong about.
So Miller is saying this is a “general policy” which is why he’s refusing to entertain the idea of closing the thread in question after a given amount of time at the request of the OP. Examples of past thread closings were shown and then soundly ridiculed by both Miller and Marley.
Either its a policy or it isn’t. If it is, I’d appreciate the mods stating such. If it’s just a “general” policy, perhaps they shouldn’t direct so much scorn at the suggestion.
You apparently missed reading my response to the proposed closing:
Besides, this would hardly qualify *as a thread that backfires on the OP
– if anything, it was the opposite by a margin of something like 70 positives responses to one negative (and a suspect one at that) and the expected scroll by SA. And that was in less than three hours. Or the time it was allowed to stand on its own.
You and Miller are certainly digging your heels on a very thin ledge. Trust you are wearing really thick soles.
