Charles Anthony

Guys, Stop nagging. Stop the personal banter too. If you do not like something, Report it, ignore it and move on.

FACEPALM We made it very clear that we make exceptions for the fun threads. Lighten up.

Folks, Stay on topic. A bunch of posts were moved out and dumped into the Fear Trump -- Canadian Edition thread.

Guys, Please avoid trolling. I took down some posts. If your recent posts are missing, then you were trolling.

Yes. That is what your choice of browser-company wants you to experience. Nothing has changed in the forum software.

Folks, Stop the thread drift.

Guys, Avoid thread drift.

Folks, Please avoid thread drift. A handful of posts were taken down because they were thread drift.

My question and observation concern real life conversation. Was that unclear in my writing?

In real life conversation with real men, a Jr/Sr reference is usually a term of endearment --- in my experience. Can you think of a real life example where this has happened to you? and where you took offense? I can not. I have been called MyDadJr and I have called other men Jr/Sr all of the time to their faces. Old men have called me Son and I have called them Pops and nobody takes offense.

Guys, Avoid thread drift. Copy them if you want to keep them but soon, off topic posts will be deleted. Tick, tock.

We can make an exception. I am not disputing that some folks are taking offense. I am just curious to see if any of this offense comes close to real life. Why take offense?

Question: if somebody called your son "MSJr" would you take offense? Would you expect your son to take offense?? My experience in real life is that men call other men Jr and Sr all of the time when they want to distinguish sons from fathers. Nobody asks for permission and nobody takes offense. I do it. Most men I know do it across all cultures ---- immigrants and natives. First names do not matter when a son looks exactly like his father.

To? Uh... no. You do not get it. I did not say our goal is to reduce moderator workload. Our goal is to lead folks towards civil and fruitful discussion. That is it, that is all. Maintaining civil and fruitful discussion just happens to reduce our workload when folks refrain from responding to posts they want deleted. Hence, the advice to avoid giving us more work than necessary in that case. If you reject/misunderstand our motives and or our goals, that is cool. Just focus on reducing our workload if you want us to delete a post and all will be well.

A few posts have been taken down because they are off topic thread drift. If your post is missing, then you are culpable of thread drift. Good because you do not get it. We rely upon the membership to define specific instances of trolling. The membership is directed to identify instances of trolling by reporting them and ignoring them. If the presumed-trolling is reported and the reporter responds to that which he has reported, then the reporter is a problem. We do not agree with all members but when members respond to what they themselves define as trolling then the responders-to-trolling perpetuate their own problems. SHORT VERSION: If 99% of the members Report you as trolling and they all ignore you and then you continue on with that-which-the-99%-deems-to-be-trolling, then we tend to side with the 99% and nix you. If those conditions are not met, then the members need to learn to ignore you and move on. CAVEAT: Sometimes the 99% are wrong, in our opinion. In those instances where we are confident that you, the 1%, are correct/not trolling, then we will side with you and tell the 99% to ignore you and move on or to politely ask you to explain so that you may enlighten the 99% crowd. You are not being disallowed. Your civil notice/explanation does NOT need a separate post of its own. It is that simple. Most people parse their posts as instructed. Thus, if everybody posted notices as you wish to do, the forum would be a mess. You have the freedom to deliver the same message in different ways: 1) place the notice in your signature; 2) place the notice in your AboutMe section of your Profile page; 3) include your notice as part of a reply which continues the discussion, for example: 4) send the members a Personal Message explaining so. Incidentally, you just responded to my parsed post and you parsed your reply. Thanks. There are no answers to your question. There are no distinct teams. I am constantly pleasantly surprized by each 1 of you. As a reader, I am like the old-time snarky theater critic who goes to shows and says out loud what I predict the actors will say. I am often mistaken. Every 1 of you posts something that makes me say to myself: "I did not see that coming. I did not expect him to hold that political view." Great movie. Instead of changing your avatar, turn your camera around or get a color television. You see things too much in black or white. No. The mods have not begged for help with "workflow" ---- re-quoting yourself, your term. Rather, the mods beg for clarity among complaints. If you want us to do something, then tell us what you want us to do. If you want us to do something but you refuse to tell us what you want us to do, then we consider the Report to be trolling ---- if we do not agree with the allegation of trolling, that is. We tend to ignore it and move on. What teams? Here is a challenge: Define the "teams" as you see fit. I can only speak for myself: I do not see any tidy teams along political discussion lines. I find it difficult to take anybody seriously who perceives distinct political teams. All I see is a potpourri of many different spices. That is the beauty of this place. You see circles and I see spheres. I do not know how to take claims/questions of partisanship seriously because they are metaphysical concepts that do not exist in any objective manner. If folks formed their own teams and then self-identified as members of their created teams, then MAYBE I can begin to take your question seriously but I am NOT going to pigeon-hole anybody into any man-made/exist-only-in-our-minds camps. I challenge anybody to start a thread whereby folks self-identify into groups. Call it Which Is Your Team? Red or Blue --- Canadian Edition if you will. I bet you 3 cases of beer that you will never get 2 distinct camps. Here are some teams that I can see: Folks Who Want To Have A Discussion Folks Who Are On A Game Show Writing To Impress An Audience Who Are NOT Engaged In A Discussion or Folks Who Write As If They Are Free To Leave Folks Who Write As If They Are Trapped Here or Folks Who Write As If Their Wives Are Reading Over Their Shoulders Folks Who Write As If They Would NEVER Let Their Wives Read Over Their Shoulders or Folks Who Want Censorship Folks Who Want Free Speech or Folks Who Respond To Posts They Claim They Want Deleted Folks Who Do Not Respond To Posts They Want Deleted or Folks Who Are Polite Folks Who Are Rude

I believe it is off topic and thread drift....sorry for the parse....but we are encouraged to trim our posts to reduce clutter.Correct. Trim Your Posts and Quotes --- 2006 The reason why somebody ignores a post does not matter. Announcing "I am not responding to your post because..." is clutter that invites more clutter and adds nothing to any discussion. If everbody did that, the forum would be a mess. Put your notice as a re-joinder to a post that furthers the discussion but making a separate post every time is clutter. You do not have to defend your reason. Feel free to ignore any post you want. If you want folks to know out of courtesy, use less real estate by putting that explanation in your signature or your profile page. No. That is not the reason the thread was temporarily closed. The thread was temporarily closed with the intention of reopening it after we decide how to intervene because the thread degraded into a mess that was no longer on topic. We could do that but we prefer to avoid censorship as a 1st course of action. We prefer that folks stop disruptive behavior. We are more concerned about effecting change of future behavior rather than revising past bahavior. That is why we tell folks to report AND ignore it ---- whatever "it" happens to be. You are repeatedly misrpresenting our directives. Ignoring a behavior isolates the behavior from an observational perspective. Isolation of a behavior is the precursor to making it go away. After isolation, the behavior goes away 1 of 2 ways: the poster stops or we stop the poster. We can not read minds. Every time you respond to that which you perceive to be trolling, we deem your response to be a public statement that says: "This post is worthy of a response!" Are we supposed to take the stand that we are smarter than all of you? We could but we would rather not. We would rather you told-us-through-the-Report-function that "This post is worthy of deletion!" and proved that assertion by ignoring it. None of you should think your responses-to-whatever-you-believe-is-trolling are distinguishable from your responses to anything else. SHORT VERSION: The power is in your hands. You get that power by following directives.

Folks, Please avoid thread drift.

Folks, This thread is temporarily locked. In the mean time, please avoid thread drift and personal attacks. None of you are the topic of this discussion.

Folks, Please avoid thread drift. If your post was taken down, it was deemed to be thread drift.

Folks, This thread is locked due to incessant feeding of thread drift and trolling. Anybody is free to re-start a thread on the "Iran's election: Early polls -- Take 2" topic or start a new thread on any other topic.

Maybe it is easier just to forget about it, move on and let it go. That is why mod interventions may appear inconsistent. Sometimes we leave clutter up and sometimes we take clutter down ---- based on the same perspective you share. Our tolerance may differ from yours but we agree with the spirit of all that you wrote here. If a disinterested reader would get distracted/bogged down by the clutter, we nix it. If a disinterested reader would tolerate/appreciate some of the clutter, we let it slide. Then make a suggestion. What do you want us to do? We can treat it as a spelling mistake. I have not counted but my gut tells me the use of his old name appears maybe 3 times so far apart from the discussion of its moderation. I am confident that most of the membership ignored it and moved on enough in the discussions. What difference, at this point, does it make? Truth? LOL Keep the jokes coming! You can add this to your flow chart: We are expecting more from 1st replies than we do from nth replies. ...without a loud bang. I know. You can now scrap a lot of this thread and your charts by replacing them with this guideline: Do not give us more work than necessary. Once you start asking us to do more**work than necessary, the jokes are no longer funny. ** more work on the count of you refusing to follow the guideline of "Report and ignore."

We disagree. We take the polar opposite view. We believe embedding the entire video image is distracting --- particularly when folks re-quote them. No worries. We will convert them into text-links if we encounter them. How about no ruling? You do not need a ruling from us. If you encounter a post that you believe should be censored, report it and ignore it. If everybody ignores it, then there is no need for moderator intervention. If nobody ignores it, then MAYBE folks think the name is fine. If nobody ignores it and turns the discussion of the thread into the name, then it is thread drift and a potential need for moderator intervention may arise ---- for thread drift. There is no need for a technical ruling. I like the old army chick. Send him a PM asking him. Stop right there. You are misinterpreting and or misrepresenting what is going on. Nobody is being censored. We are asking folks to change their image links to text links. You are over-thinking things and your expectations are unrealistic. Just stick to ignoring what you believe is trolling and move on. Before even contemplating the answer to your question, you should answer mine: What would you have us do with/to all of the members who quoted/fed what they believe should be censored??? Somebody quoted the offensive post to which others responded. Eventually, 1 of the responses re-directed the discussion back on topic. For that reason, the initial offending post was left up. Once it was clear that the thread would continue going downhill, the thread was locked.

Folks, This thread is locked because of too much trolling. If anybody wants to try again and re-start the topic, go ahead. Hopefully you all will avoid trolling in the next attempt.

--- because it is usually light-hearted-enough in those sub-forums that it does litle to derail discussions. That is purely an observation.

I apologize to CyberComa for my rash and poor judgement upon this his post: He was unfairly penalized with a suspension when his post should have been ignored. The situation was a mild tit-for-tat that would better have been resolved by asking the members to tone it down.