Action Notes v.0.1b

Post deletion

• "Is Richard Goldstone a liar, an antisemite and a biased hater?" — One post deleted for making no useful contribution to thread.

 

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Post deletion

• "Arrested for not Tipping" — One post deleted for unnecessary content. Three posts deleted; two for unnecessary content, one as off-topic. Warning issued.

 

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Thread merge

• "Thread "Dead man kills no more" merged into "Lakewood, Washington: Officers Down - Four Police Dead; Suspect Killed During Manhunt".

 

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Thread closure

• Thread "Being a Gentleman" closed. The discussion ran its course and settled into one-line, insulting bickering.

 

Closure and redirect

• Thread "Forum member S.A.M. just threatenened to chop my head off" closed and redirected to Cesspool.

Note to members: If you wish to accuse a member of misconduct—

(1) EM&J is not the place.
(2) Cite the offense.
(3) Be truthful.​

Easy enough? It should be.

Look, we have a report function for a reason. Yeah, it's a little button to the right-hand side of the screen, below the member name and above the post. That allows you to file a complaint directly with the relevant moderators of a given subforum. They can investigate your claim.

If you find that unsatisfactory, take it up directly with one of the moderators in the appropriate subforum via private message. Be sure to cite the post and explain your perception of the offense. They can investigate your claim.

If that is too ... difficult? ... subtle? ... you can always try your luck with an attack thread in AtM, but those often result in thread closure and muttered warnings to the topic poster. This is not an advisable course of action, and often puts you, and not the member you're annoyed at, on our radar.

Beyond all that, one of the things you simply should not do is go to another subforum and post an uncited attack thread. If you're lucky—or a moderator is in a generous mood toward your newbie status—the thread will merely be closed and swept away to The Cesspool.

This isn't rocket science, folks.

 

Post deletions, edit

• Thread "Owning a person" — Nine posts deleted: six as off-topic, three for responding exclusively to moderated content. One post edited to strike response to moderated content. One warning issued via private message.

 

Closure and redirect

• Thread "I was threatenened by S.A.M. , a forum member, he said he would chop my head off" — Closed and redirected.

Note: It should go without saying that when a moderator shuts down your attack thread, you don't go and post another.

 

Post deletions

• "The Gay Fray" — Five posts deleted as off-topic, one as entertaining but inappropriate.

Note: It's not that the story proposition was invalid, but it was quite the extraneous effort, and just a little too littered with insulting terminology. I did get a chuckle out of it, though.

 

Post edit

• "Chicago Police May Scrap Entrance Exam. Why? Not enough minorities pass" — One post edited for the appearance of insulting content. Three posts deleted; one for racism, two for responding to moderated content.

Note: It is inappropriate that we should be calling each other idiots around here. To the other, it would help greatly if people didn't actually go out of their way to be idiots. No, really. The fact that people aren't supposed to call you an idiot doesn't mean you aren't being one.

Additionally, I would like to note, for two people who had fine posts deleted, that I'm hardly offended by their responses, but when I edit or delete content, I also strike further references to that offending material. Sorry, guys. That's just the way it goes.

 

Closure and redirect

• "Beloved goat vanishes from Berkeley park" — Thread closed and redirected.

 

Closure, redirect

• "Should women be bred not to fart?" — Thread locked and redirected appropriately.

 

Closure

• "Gay Marriage" — Thread closed for being generally vapid and useless from the outset.

Note: Look, people, it's really not too much to ask that you write useful topic posts to open a discussion. I would call the zero-effort excrement that is that opening post "trolling", except I'm not sure what it trolls for. Instead, it's enough to say that it reminds me of when teenagers would try to surreptitiously get people to write their homework essays for them. And, well, we've always laughed at that, and somewhat contemptuously. Regardless of one's motivation, though, contempt is about the only thing to expect in response to zero-effort topic posts.

Easy enough?

Good.

Thank you.

 

Closure

• "Sexual Taboo: Adults and Minors" — Thread closed as clueless advocacy for sexual exploitation of minors.

Note: Look, it's not exceptionally difficult to write a topic post that isn't both a waste of time and space for Sciforums and also a ritual of self-denigration. I have a hard time believing that people are so ignorant as many topic posts around here might suggest. Obviously, there is something else afoot. People ought to make some effort to communicate what that something else is, or, at least, that they have even a basic understanding of the general shape of any given issue they post.

 

Post deletion

• "Abortion" — One post deleted; inappropriate content for purposes of the discussion.

 

Closure

• "Why shouldn't a ten year old be allowed to drive?" — Thread closed for general stupidity.

Note: Okay, look, most days I'm not going to be policing the quality of people's thoughts. Indeed, I'd pretty much prefer not to. But the thing about that is that any community will suffer its own brand of fools—the sort of people whose sole mission in life seems to be to rediscover for themselves every idea considered by those who came before, and all so they can pretend to feel smarter than everyon else. In other words, yes, we try to be inclusive around here, but yes, there is a limit to what stupidity we will endure.

 

Closure

• "Abortion — Thread closed. At over 1,100 posts rehashing the same, decades-old arguments, and finally moving on to chickens, I'm sticking a fork in that one.

Note: For the time being, at least—e.g., as long as people can keep it civil—there is another abortion thread already underway.

 

Closure

• "MSA Student Would Prefer Second Holocaust" — Thread closed for any number of reasons.

Note: If the above is vague, well, okay let us not pretend there is any "if" about it. I am out for a period, and do not intend to leave that mess for anyone else to deal with. I would suggest, as I did in the thread, that those who will attend this jurisdiction while I am gone are much more prone to suspend people over various complaints than I would be. And, in that context, the last time I withheld my paranoia for the sake of it being paranoia, it turned out I wasn't being paranoid. I would also note that the thread saw over 450 posts that weren't mine. It had a good run despite much of its content. Take care of yourselves; be good to one another; please don't make me feel like a parent surveying the aftermath of a high school kegger upon returning from holiday. (Yes, yes, paranoia. Indulge me on this count, please.)

 

Closure and redirect

• "Diversity is bad — Redirected to Cesspool after pathetic digression.

 

Post deletions

• "Why Americans are racists?" — Three posts deleted. One for general stupidity and trolling; two simply according to my policy of scrubbing all references to moderated content.

 

Closure

• "Live Baby thrown in Garbage at Abortion Clinic — Thread closed, as it has irreparably degraded into a circus.