BH was being an annoying poster mostly via his “style” not necessarily his content. He repeated the same points, posted the same video more than once, and did not really “engage” in discussion. While I imagine that there are alternatives to giving such a poster a short timeout, I think it was okay in this case.
BTW I don’t think catfacemeowmers is correct on his Sabo timeline, but that is secondary at this point.
What should happen when somebody pops into the forum and drops a steaming Fox News or Russian propaganda turd into a thread? Do you have a solution other than yelling at them until the go away or containing them or banning them? This is a weird week to be advocating for appeasement policies!
I don’t disagree with your points about BH but I think banning someone is not the correct precedent.
I also think the specific criticisms you are levying on BH could almost perfectly be applied to your posts in the Crypto Thread.
How should a poster with dumb views be addressed, if it is not to have several people disagree with him?
This is a falsehood. He substantively replied to several posters and did so in a calm and factual manner (despite sometimes being insulted). Yes, he linked the video a few times, but that’s not all he did, and he certainly didn’t ignore the arguments coming his way. I don’t necessarily agree with his arguments but they’re pretty standard realpolitik positions and they’re not remotely worthy of a ban
Ban obv.
Ignore them, it’s really easy
You can say your piece without obsessively always needing to have the last word, which just perpetuates the endless back and forth between guys like churchill and guys like you and CN.
For example, just upthread, CN posted this:
But at least in what I was responding to, the argument was about Russia specifically, rather than the USSR:
But rather than continue to argue, I was like “you know what, nobody cares about this, I’ll drop it”. You and CN basically never do that, you go on and on and on as long as the other person continues to argue with you. If you’ve said your piece, you don’t need to continue to engage.
It’s bad enough when this is on subjects people actually know a lot about, but here we are banning BillHaywood for his opinion on Eastern European geopolitical strategy, a subject that none of us ITT right now, myself included, have better than a high school understanding of.
This is the short version.
wait so if I respond to this ludicrous pedantry is that wrong?
It’s OK man you already got the last word here. You won!
I stopped responding to Bill as soon as he posted that stupid video again, but it sure seems like a poor strategy to reprimand the people wanting to get the last word in against dumb posts rather than the person posting dumb shit who also has to get the last word in.
This, by the way, is the same thing he does seemingly every time he comes around in the political threads. I forget if the last time was here or on Exiled or on 2p2, but he comes around, posts some contrarian takes, gets a bunch of in depth good faith responses debating his claims, then more or less ignores them and posts the same contrarian takes and the same videos or whatever. Then he gets another round of substantive, but slightly more annoyed responses, then he does it again. Maybe now and then he substantively responds to stuff he has a comeback for, but he ignores the strongest arguments against his position that he cannot refute and doubles down on the original stuff. It’s extremely bad for the quality of discussion, and extremely annoying to those debating him. Four hours off for that seems like no big deal, maybe he posts better for it in the future.
I didn’t go back and look but I’m pretty sure he’s got a history of being a Putin/Russia apologist, too, regarding the election interference stuff.
Since this thread seems active - I have no idea what you guys are arguing about, nor do I really care.
I’d like to make a point though - the Ukraine thread is the first thread since I joined these forums in which I have not trolled. Perhaps that could clue you all in to the gravity of the situation.
GOP insanity thread is approaching 10k. Who wants to lock it and start a new one?
@JonnyA first person ever approved unanimously to become a mod I think. What a time to be alive!
He’s actually the great unifier that Biden claims to be. Please send him to DC to negotiate with Moscow Mitch please.
What is your basis for this statement - “made by someone who almost certainly didn’t have direct knowledge of the situation.” I will fully admit that I had no prior clue who John Norris was or even who Strobe Talbot was. That said, just reading the Chomsky link NBZ shared he described Norris’s view as a “very authoritative comment on that from the highest level of Clinton administration,” so unless you have some good reason for your statement dismissing Norris out of hand as a “nobody”, I’m sticking to my original position on your posts.
Again, if you want to argue with the substance of what Micro posted from Norris, feel free, but if you’re going to allege Micro is positing in bad faith by googling for contrarian POVs and posting the opinion of a “nobody,” posts like that are going to be scrutinized and potentially moderated.
Finally, your subsequent post challenging Micro to name the person who currently holds the position is trolling - whether you can name the current holder of the position is pretty irrelevant to the importance of that position (I’m pretty sure I couldn’t name a single Deputy Secretary of State, but that doesn’t mean Talbott should be dismissed as a nobody regarding Kosovo).
Posting this in the About Moderation in case others mods or posters feel I’m off base here. If that is the consensus, I’ll reconsider my view on this type of posting.
Look I don’t have the energy for the tired internet bullshit today. If you wanted to pm me instead of pushing off whatever dramabomb this will be I’d have been happy to talk further.
Hey it’s PC. I only meant to check in with the trans thread when I heard what was going on there, so maybe it’s unfair for me to sort of drive-by participate in any other discussions here, but… I really felt like it might possibly be helpful to a nonzero number of y’all to say that a large number of you seem to have lost any touch with reality you once had. Hopefully somehow some of you find a come to Jesus moment somewhere along the way in terms of the way war has currently got you going in some extremely nasty, dangerous directions
I’m not talking to Victor. He is mostly right, and y’all are seriously losing it