Why was my thread closed?

Without explanation even.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=829692

There are plenty of other threads like this in GQ, none of which are getting shut. I didn’t even get the courtesy of a mod attaching his/her name.

Um, no, there are not.

For starters, you picked the wrong forum. The question is best suited for MPSIMS–it’s about as pointless as humanly possible.

Why it wasn’t moved is a good question. Although it’s almost too pointless to be on this board at all. I suspect you should be thankful that it was merely closed, instead of being disappeared. Why in the world you would think that posting such a thing would be a good idea, is beyond me. If it weren’t so coherent and free of spelling errors, I would suspect you of being drunk or high when you posted that.

There are two other threads like yours, one of which was closed. The other one got the OP banned. I reported it to be closed, too. They all seem to be some kind of overreaction to dude robert’s threads.

I would argue this is an IMHO thread. Yeah, it’s pointless, but it’s also asking for opinions. It’s basically a poll. A silly poll, but a poll nonetheless.

ISTM the mods were sleeping at the switch a bit as dude robert posted silly hypothetical after silly hypothetical in GQ. In no sense were any of those questions admitting of a factual answer. Then a few regulars decided to join the silly thread-starting party.

So now that the mods have woken up, they’re wielding their terrible swift sword with abandon. Albeit without formal warnings. Both of which suit me just fine.

In fact I came to ATMB and found this thread this morning after noticing that newbie Lamplighter was banned. I was expecting to see a banning announcement about dude for socking. I thought wrong about that.

They should have given an explanation.

Which ones are you thinking of?

That thread should have been moved to Great Debates because I would have argued that since the ants can walk up on people then Napoleans men should be able to stomp on the ants as well as bite them.

I guess I agree. ** dude-robert** isn’t a sock, and wouldn’t understand what’s required to do it properly anyway. Few do. Basically we get crappy, unskilled socks here, pissed off over getting banned and ready to get even by sneaking the same agenda back into the dope under a different name. EZ to spot.

But, IMHO, the dude is innocent of any malicious intentions. He’s just** the dude.**

Anything in particular that inspires this confidence?

He lacks an anti-board agenda and a few other things. Now, if he posts a thread about not vaccinating his declawed, circumcised, cat I might change my mind.

I think a factual answer could be provided based on known science. Without looking it up I can say confidently that most of Napoleon’s army would be capable of killing an army any with one bite. It would take at least hundreds of army ant bites to even incapacitate a soldier. So the ants are either totally ineffective in the unlikely event they take on the human army one on one, and if they were to have any success most of them would be occupied with just a few French soldiers where they could easily be bitten to death one by one by the remaining uninfested soldiers. Napoleon being a master logician probably even accounted for the possibility of this circumstance in his war preparations. So the thread in question should be re-opened in order to resolve this issue. Unless it’s homework of course.

I think it was an unfair premise since it stipulated equal numbers of Napoleonic soldiers and army ants. To even the balance, I think the French soldiers should have only been able to use their teeth to attack, while the army ants would be able to use cannons and ride horses.

Could this change your mind?

I’m pretty disappointed the thread was closed, TBH.

But it was really because we have been getting a number of random and pointless OPs that border on (perceived) trolling.

Not at all. No more than a blind squirrel finding a nut occasionally.

Okay, I get it. I should have posted elsewhere. I just got silly in the spirit of those other threads. An explanation wouldn’t have hurt though.

It’s somewhat unfair that you got caught up in that. I mean, we’ve had very successful threads of this nature, like ''How many eight-year-olds would it take to bring down a full grown man?" There was another good one about an average joe taking on a medieval combat warrior.

I guess the mods just got silly in the spirit of those other threads.

The silly hypotheticals are getting out of hand and I for one support shutting that crap down.

Or as I said in a pit thread, let’s just go straight to: Which would win? A moldy tomato or the entire world’s nuclear arsenals?

How big is the tomato?