Do you speak English as your native language, Silverstreak? Your grammar doesn’t quite seem American. In fact, it’s quite similar to my friends in East Asia who picked up English on their own. (Though, at least, you know how to spell and punctuate.)
Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds a lot like someone using a Chinese to English translator…
I have taken Marley’s jackboots. He will get them back when he convinces me he has become less mature.
That George Takei joke was mature?
It was not immature enough. You know you can better.
I’ve never canned very well, in fact. You might say I’m uncanny.
Really, I think you need to try playing something other than the martyr card all the time. There is a thread discussing evolution in GD. If you’re interested in discussion, I don’t think you’ll be shut down for taking part in it.
The reason you ran into problems in the other one is that people did not feel you were observing the stipulations set out by the OP.
But really, all this posturing about how you’re being repressed is getting tiresome, for a couple of reasons:
[ul]
[li]When people disagree with you, and say so, that does not mean they’re trying to silence you.[/li][li]If the mods wanted rid of you, you’d be gone - banning someone on a message board is a couple of mouse clicks - yet you’re still here - therefore there is no big conspiracy to silence you, or if there is, it’s a terribly inept conspiracy.[/li][/ul]
IMO, you’re avoiding the debate for reasons you have not yet stated.
:eek:
:slow golf clap rising in intensity and fervor:
Come on, Skald! He’s EARNED those boots back!
May a balrog attack you with fierce beats of its wings!
(If it has any.)
Silverstreak Wonder, it seems to me much of the problem is your lack of familiarity with this board and all the rules and the culture.
For example, in the thread you just cited about views on “immortal spirits”, that was posted in IMHO - In My Humble Opinion. That forum is for discussing opinions and polling. The header says
The thread topic was essentiall a poll on belief in an “eternal spirit”, with perhaps some discussion on what those terms mean to clarify what the answer should be. During the course of that thread, the topic of “What constitutes self-awareness? Can computers be self-aware? Are computers intelligent? Are animals intelligent?” came up. That steps beyond the discussion of points of view on a spirit and, especially, crosses into topic material better suited for a different forum - Great Debates.
See right there, it explains that debates - and especially religious debates - belong in this forum. Talking about self-awareness and how computers fit is suitable to this forum, not IMHO.
So Czarcasm, acting as moderator, tried to enforce the rule that debates go in a different place, and told everyone to take the topic elsewhere. Now he could have been more specific, but most of the posters are long-timers and who know the rules enough to already know what I am explaining. When his politely worded “plea” was not followed, he then came down more strict.
Once again, it wasn’t done do stifle discussion, it was done because the topic was in the wrong forum and was distracting from the thread topic in question. Taking the discussion to a new thread in Great Debates would solve the issue and allow the interesting topic to continue.
The original situation was a little murkier, where you were singled out from the thread discussing personal understanding of Evolution. Basically, you ran afoul of a pattern of posting that has been witnessed here frequently where topics and discussions have been hijacked by a particular viewpoint to the extent that it stifled the original conversations. Ergo, tomndebb was responding to the pattern your posting as it matched prior incidents from other people. tomndebb did not ban you from the board. He did not tell you you cannot post anywhere else. He did not tell you you cannot post on the topic of what you think is wrong with evolution. He told you not argue that topic in a thread devoted to understanding what evolution says. Some people have commented they disagree with his action, that your posting was within the broad spirit of the thread. But the intent wasn’t to shut you out, only to allow the flow of conversation to flow along a certain path.
In both cases, the problem is not what you are saying, the problem is where you are saying it. You need to find the appropriate location for the topics in question - whether that is the appropriate forum or the appropriate thread.
My suggestion would be that you read a bit more in each of the fora (maybe 3 or 4 threads longer than 2 pages in each forum) before posting to familiarize yourself with what is expected behavior and why things are done the way they are. Otherwise, you will continue to encounter things where rules are enforced in ways puzzling to you because of your lack of familiarity.
Note this is merely a suggestion. Alternately, you could continue posting as before, but when a moderator gives a direction in a thread that you don’t understand, send a PM to that mod asking for clarification, or start a thread here in ATMB and ask for clarification. Again, merely a suggestion to ease your interactions.
But as Mangetout said, the martyr card is tiring. We have enough of that flowing around we don’t need more.
Irish, the computer thing wasn’t even my post, I was asked if I thought they can have it and we got to talking. Shutting down a peaceful discussion was pointless, no one posted again for hours and the thread is dead, so just what good is that on a discussion board? Who benefited?
I would agree if a point is being talked about and then some other point interrupts that, then maybe yes say make a new thread, but only if the thread is busy for pete sake. One little post and the mod was ready to hand out warnings for a discussion the people there wanted to have, that is nonsense. The thread died right away.
The original one was made a big deal of when I had not posted for many many hours, how can I be disruptive??? They said i was not listening when I wasn’t even posting, in fact wasn’t at the machine most of that time, hadn’t planned to post that night and did not even see it then.
The others were not told they were wrong to go right on talking about origin of life like I was, and they did. Later several said they were trying to now tie evolution into the origin, and my crime was not knowing it ever left. Just my beliefs were not allowed, and he said I was done, not that I could post within his psychic vision of what he claims the OP wanted.
By the way the OP said he did not want that, and then he says well he knows better than the OP thru some kind of visions he gets. Yes there was plenty to object to, but I did not open this thread, please remember that. Of course I will participate in a thread ABOUT ME after all.
Oh I am ready to end it but if I get questions I don’t want to be told again that it is me keeping it going, I have not posted here all day and wasn’t going to. I am not the OP, but I do thank him for discussing it here.
Silverstreak Wonder, I think Irishman is right: you’d have a smoother time here if you were a little more familiar with how things work in different forums. Maybe read a few threads just to get a sense of what the tone is usually like.
Silverstreak, you need to read **Irishman’**s response again, because he has really hit the nail on the head with regard to a lot of the problems you have been having. Really, he is trying very hard to help you. Please, think again about what he has said.
ETA Simulpost!
Fine. I’ve teleported him the boots back. But I’m keeping the cattle prod.
Silverstreak Wonder said:
Right, you were one of several posters who were engaged in that discussion, several of whom failed to follow the moderator’s instructions to take the discussion elsewhere. You were not singled out, the hijack of the thread was singled out and all posters contributing were put on notice. It is just you are less familiar with the rules, so you don’t understand what was being violated.
It’s kinda more of a principle thing. The different forums are created for different kinds of discussions. This is intended to help posters find content they want vs. content they do not, but it requires people to help make sure things are kept on track - moderators. With a participation this large, it is expected that conversations will get off track and off topic and wander into content that this board has reserved for other forums. When that happens, it is the moderator’s duty to tell the posters what is wrong and fix the issue.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting a new thread - even in a different forum - to continue a discussion that was sparked by a comment but diverged from the original point. It is a frequent occurrence here. It is, in fact, the appropriate behavior. In fact, it is less disruptive for posters to do that themselves rather than have a moderator intervene in the thread. It allows new discussions to spawn without interfering with the old ones.
Now for the thread in question, I can’t speak as to why discussion ended there - I haven’t reread it. Maybe in this case moderator action did stifle posting. If so, that is a shame. But the rules of the board were established for a reason, and the moderators are only doing their job by enforcing the rules, and getting heavy-handed if that is required. In this case, it was off-topic and it was content more appropriate on a different forum.
One other thing to consider is that IMHO is more about opinions than in-depth discussion of beliefs. I’m not sure what the intention of the OP was posting in IMHO instead of GD, but can only assume it was more for a poll of positions than a discussion of why those positions are believed. But that’s just my guess based upon the intent behind the forum designations.
Because not all posters contribute at the same time. The conversation is effectively timeless because anyone can log on at any time and recreate the conversation as necessary to get caught up. Therefore, new people were coming online and reading your comments afresh, and for them it was as if you had just posted them. So those people got spun up and replied to remarks you had already made, and continued the perceived hijack of the thread. That is how it is disruptive. You don’t have to be currently present for your past remarks to continue to have an impact.
With regards to the Evolution thread, I think it was something of a judgement call as to whether what you were doing was a hijack/interruption or a fair discussion from a different perspective. The OP didn’t feel it was an interruption and thought it had positive value to people participating, but I’m sure some of the respondents felt like the moderator, that arguing (yet again for the millionth time on this board) against blatant misrepresentations of what Evolution says by someone who does not appear to be listening to the responses is detracting from the flow of the original purpose of the thread, and that a new thread on that topic would be a better place for that discussion.
And yes, he did kick you out of the thread completely rather than just tell you to stop posting that topic in that thread. That is because he felt that any other posts you would make in that thread would result in the same conditions - a hijack about a misconception and a failure to consider the replies.
The problem was as much the manner in which you were posting as the topic you were posting about.
As for the moderator’s opinion of the topic of the thread vs. the OP, again it comes back to what I said about a judgement call about the manner of your participation as much as the content. With any human endeavor there is legitimate differences of understanding about what is going on. The OP and the moderator apparently have a different understanding of what was occurring.
I assume this comment is in response to remarks about “the martyr card”. When I said that, it was not in response to you participating in this thread, it was in response to your attitude conveyed in your responses. You seem to think you have been singled out on this board, and have two instances of moderator action against you. One is the evolution thread, the other is the poll on beliefs in a spirit. Several of your comments suggest you think people are out to get you, or opposed to your beliefs so trying to shut you up. This is not an accurate reflection of the situations presented, so it indicates that your perspective is warped. I have attempted to explain what was occurring in those cases, and why the actions were taken, and why they do not mean what you take them to mean. I hope my explanations have been helpful to you.
It is true there are many participants on this board who do not share your beliefs, and are even hostile to your beliefs. Some of them might even be moderators. But the instances shown have alternate reasons for the actions that were taken, and are motivated not by shutting you up but by managing the flow of content on this board under the guidelines everyone has to follow. If you can learn the guidelines and operate within them, you will have a more pleasant experience.
Thanks for your thoughtful post. I might be convinced except then I go read threads and see sometimes 5 joke posts or other side issue posts all the time here and not even a note. I think mods ought to stay out of such censorship and let people discuss issues related, if they must interfere, let it be on totally of the wall posts in a thread and not something related to a thread subject. Especially if several want to discuss it, this is supposed to be a discussion board.
Self awareness sure is related to a spirituality/soul issue, just because mods hate religion they need not censor it, and that is why they do I think. On the older thread, if origin of life was so far off track you still don’t say why it was allowed for all others, that sure shows a bias to me pretty clearly. Yes in the other one everyone was run away, I agree. It indeed was not related just to me, but to censor the discussion at hand, also bad and not wanted. Let them go check for malware and spam and leave active discussions alone.
Again, thanks for your comments.
You are entitled to hold that opinion, but this board does not work that way. The board, and the mods, are not going to adapt to you. It’s up to you to adapt to the board, and that includes following board rules and moderator instructions.
Since I told you to stop your off-topic hijack, there have been more than 70 posts over the course of four days without a single reference to abiogenesis. All of the previous references to abiogenesis by other posters were merely (fairly futile) attempts to correct your persistent error.
The thread is addressing exactly what the OP hoped: issues of understanding and misunderstanding regarding evolution including matters of natural selection, genetic drift, founder effect, paraphylesis, cladistics, and other efforts to understand the progression of species.
If this were a cocktail party or the message board was simply a clearing house for a number of linked chat rooms where any time a group wanted to discuss something on their own, they could simply remove themselves, physically, from the main conversation, that might make sense. However, when there are multiple discussions occurring in a single thread and a new conversation comes to dominate the original one, then the posters who wished to engage in the original discussion find themselves having to wade through an excessive number of irrelevant posts just to find the conversation they originally thought to have, which is unfair to them.
Our solution–the very solution to which I pointed you–is to recommend that the off-topic discussions be continued in a new and separate thread. That way, all the posters interested in the new topic could read and post their thoughts with similarly interested posters on that topic while those interested in the original topic, (who might include many of the same posters), can continue that discussion without interruptions.
I have never seen a Mod censor religion or discussion of religion. There are Mods who are not believers and Mods who are believers and we all work together pretty well. The Mod who has been the most active in the forum with the most religious discussion over the last few years is an active member of his church.
tomndebb has already responded, but I will, too.
Silverstreak Wonder said:
This is yet another example of your lack of familiarity with the culture of this board. In general, joke comments are allowed when they spawn from the topic because usually they do not detract from the overall topic, and add levity and fun. Side issues can sometimes be explored within threads depending upon how related to the topic they are and if they fit within the confines of the forum in which they are posted. What gets strong moderator attention are either topics that diverge from the limits of the forum (e.g. starting a political discussion in a General Questions thread), or discussions that diverge from the main discussion in such a way to interrupt the main discussion and act to bury the main discussion in an irrelevant, unrelated, or otherwise intrusive sideline.
As I said before, sometimes this is a judgment call, based upon past history of threads and discussions.
One case listed was violating the constraints on the forum. The mod was appropriate in enforcing the forum constraints. The other was a judgment call about the type of side discussion, how it related to the main thread, how much of a diversion it was proving to be, and how it fit a previous pattern (from other posters) of hijacking discussions.
This board has always had strong moderating. That is one of the things that keeps this board one of the more pleasant places on the net to converse. The downside is occassionally something gets cut off because it gets off track or the people get out of hand, or else a topic gets moved/told to leave a thread for the sake of the overall function of the board.
As already mentioned, some of the mods here are actively religious. I realize there is a large and vocal non-religious crowd, and some of them can be actively anti-religion, but moderation of this board is not run by that viewpoint, regardless of what individual moderators believe about religion. If it were, we would get protests from some of those moderators, or they would quit.
Hear friggin hear. I stay away from GD anymore because moderators have heretofore seemed to consider this kind of engaged moderation beyond their brief, and would stand idly by and let a thread–most GD threads–devolve into a oneupsmanship of ignorance and intransigence.
Let’s hope this kind of enforced minimum standard of good-faith engagement is the wave of the future.