Why was the thread "40% of GOP thinks Gates implanting chips in people" closed?

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

@Johnny_Bravo

As far as I’m concerned this is just another facet of the effort to raise the level of discourse on the boards.

My only suggestion would be a sticky called “How to create a thread in Great Debates” or something to that effect, since the guidelines are different than elsewhere.

FWIW, I closed many a thread in MPSIMS that were only a link and a word or two. No one wants to just click on link because some op said to, without much or any context. And it wasn’t just the mod opinion- they would get reported all the time.

[Do_Not_Taunt]

@BigT

What Colibri says appears to be the case–that you just close all such threads. But I would argue that he is mistaken in one way. While recently the rule has been enforced strictly, this was not always so. If a discussion broke out from a bad OP, often the thread would be allowed to continue. The OP would just get a Note telling them not to do it again. Only when a poster had a history of such posts would their threads automatically be shut down, regardless of everyone else.

And, even in those cases, many of us continue to argue that this punishes everyone, not just the OP. Now that you have new moderation tools to use, I would like to request that you use them in such cases. You could temporarily ban a user from starting threads if they keep making these types of OPs.

I think that would be a better tool than shutting down a thread that actively has a discussion going. While you can start a new thread in theory, in practice, the conversation usually dies, having lost all its momentum. It takes someone with something really important to say to want to start a thread, but there is much less inertia to continuing a conversation.

After reading this, I was under the impression that this thread had had some interesting discussion and then got shut down. I was curious. So I clicked on thread, and wasn’t I surprised! You either completely misrepresented the thread in question, or decided to make some abstract argument about other hypothetical threads. What happened here is straightforward: Bijou Drains posted a crappy OP, drew one reply, and got shut down. I don’t know man - looks like good moderation to me.

[RTFirefly]

@Jonathan_Chance

I’ve been telling people to use their words for a while, now.

Since your kids were toddlers, right?

Oh, you mean here.

[septimus]

@Jackmannii

There is a little grain of fact behind this conspiracy theory. The Gates Foundation has contributed funding toward an MIT research project that began in 2016, designed to see if an invisible ink injected at the time of vaccination could be used to track who’s been immunized. This was aimed at facilitating vaccination programs in developing countries, and had nothing to do with Covid-19.

Gates was interviewed a few months back and mentioned something about the potential usefulness of “digital certificates” to facilitate identification of who’s recovered from the coronavirus, who’s been tested, and eventually who’s been vaccinated.

Nothing to do with implanting microchips or tracking people’s movements, but it’s easy to see how fuzzy-thinkers and loons who see Gates as Bill of the Beast 666 would inflate it into a conspiracy to do that.

Thank you. This is the sort of informed context I’d hope for Dopers to provide in the shut-down thread. I’m glad I started this one, so I could read responses like yours. (Perhaps the Mods could move this thread to a more appropriate forum? E.g. Politics & Elections ? )

@Do_Not_Taunt

After reading this, I was under the impression that this thread had had some interesting discussion and then got shut down… What happened here is straightforward: Bijou Drains posted a crappy OP, drew one reply, and got shut down. I don’t know man - looks like good moderation to me.

After reading your post, I wondered if Bijou Drain’s post had been up for hours and Dopers declined to participate because of the poor OP… Instead what happened is straightforward: The thread was closed after barely an hour.

[Do_Not_Taunt]

@septimus

After reading your post, I wondered if Bijou Drain’s post had been up for hours and Dopers declined to participate because of the poor OP… Instead what happened is straightforward: The thread was closed after barely an hour.

You did? I reread my post, and this strikes me as a you-problem and not a me-problem. But thanks for the feedback!

[DrDeth]

@Bijou_Drains

I’ve posted other threads with the exact same format. I make one comment and then a link. There are 2 right now like that in elections section.

Put some effort into it, eh?

[Jonathan_Chance]

@RTFirefly

Since your kids were toddlers, right?

Oh, you mean here.

You’ve met them. My kids were quoting Kant and Aristotle in preschool. It’s been the bane of my life.

[Telemark]

I would have thought they were quoting Bane, while adding an odd cant to your life.

Oh, you think darkness is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but BLINDING! The shadows betray you, because they belong to me! I will show you where I have made my home while preparing to bring justice. Then I will break you.

[UltraVires]

That has been the rule forever. If you start a GD thread, you cannot just post a link and say “Have at it boys!”

The rule has always been that the OP must frame the debate, state his or her opinion, and then try to steer it.

It seems as if the OP of that thread was simply trying to say that “Gee, Republicans are just stupid sonsofbitches” which is not a worthy debating topic, more like a Pit thread.

[digs]

… and not even a good Pit thread.
Gotta say, though it’s hard to admit, that I agree with UltraVires.

What made the OP even more frustrating is that Bijou D’s been asked dozens of times to PLEASE give us some context, opinion, anything besides just a “Hoo boy, lookit dis!”.

It’s like when Rick kept posting headlines from a decade ago: “OMG! The President referred to his grandmother as black! How can Trump do that?!?” “Umm, Rick, that was Obama, from five years ago.” “Oops…”