Thread closing and reasons for it

[Camelopard]

I used to post in chit chat a lot and I enjoyed some of the discussions that I had, but the actions of a few xenophobic, right wing, red necks started making the experience very unpleasant. Coincidently that was about the same time that a certain person started posting regularly in chit chat. It seems to me that their posts never get edited, nor do they get sanctioned, so therefore it would seem that they have the support of certain moderators.

I told mark that I would love to be a moderator, maybe my perceived bias could even things out a bit.

Same thing with the rallying section, one obnoxious poster insists on making it an unpleasant place to be, so I just read and not post, giving the odd 'like' here and there. He is on 'ignore' but the problem is that others unfortunately quote him. He previously has threatened to leave and has done so, unfortunately he keeps coming back!


If anyone wants a refreshing change, I can suggest 'Piston Heads'.


P.S., where is Markabilly? At least he has a sense of humour and could take a joke and have a laugh!

[janvanvurpa]

I just went back through and read through the shootings thread again. I cant see the edits Starter made anymore but if he says they were insults than they were. Period. Case Closed.

So that only leaves the remaining posts and the only one I saw making implied insults was YOU.

Bull####,* you wade into something and cut and paste only whaty you want... Another Moderator who cannot understand language...

Simplistic. Hmmm lets see. I am gun carrying citizen of the United States of America, the second ammendment gives me the RIGHT to do so (no rant, just fact). So now I am simplistic (I take that to mean "simple minded" which is a euphemism for "dumb" or "stupid."

You, Moderator are looking to find offense.. Demerits for you acting offended.
The stuff written was in response virtually line by line to Starter..
And is IN RESPONSE to his comments.. Is that tooooooooooooooooo hard for you to follow? See the previous post where I asked "when somebody is slinging insults around, are we expected to answer all smiles and just say "like whatever"?

Go back and read Starters comments, and if you don't see his contempt expressed all over then i give up.

I won't even go there about terms like "whack jobs" (since I really don't believe you were calling people like me, so therefore me a whack job) and how people who have to repeat "cliches" because they other people don't listen before going off on a tangent of their own means that they are somehow disconnected or in your words "irrational".

Ah good, you understood that. Good, because it was a genuine wish and one I don't see how anybody could argue with.

We all know over 88% of all murders in the USA and pretty similar in the restt of the civilised world---even if it is rates mere fractions of a % of USA murder rates---are bummed out ex-husband, or ex-boyfriend killing a spouse, or ex , and too often, killing their kids, and only then killing themselves..
THAT is the typical murder and they can only be described as whack jobs. That small % that might kill strangers randomly--they're whacked in the head, too.
Sane people don't murder others.

SO lets set aside that I completely disagree with you on the argument. In just 1 post you have managed to insult me (in your defense- without knowing it) several times over.

Wrong, you, unfortunately suffer a common ailment in this country of "Looking to be offended".
All my comments were directed directly at Starters blatantly unevenhanded immoderate moderation, and leaving Reibe and Fousto--whatever the guy calls himself now, and a few others untouched when in a huge portion of their posts in Chit Chat, they suggest vile, hate filled sentiments, and Reibe in particular, every post an overt insult. Comments directly addressing, virtually line by line, in the thread "Another shooting of innocents in US" to STARTER's allegedly humorous No gun has ever killed anybody...: is not addressed to anybody but Starter.

Why are you offended at any exchange of somebody responding to his comments such as these, all dripping with contempt
"Nice over reaction ",
"it's too bad that most liberals in this country".
" have so much trouble in thinking clearly"
"short of a house to house search but I guess you would advocate that,"
" the Constitution just being a minor inconvenience of course. " in a thread

And in a thread about---right there in the title the innocents, this:
"As for accidental gun deaths, there is no way you can fix stupid " which infers victims are stupid in this context

Yet you're going to come here and whine

Now you use loaded terms

I thought this was a discussion about why Starter closes threads of those he disagrees with and leaves the insults of his spiritual brethren untouched..

But you have decided that --with the use of the phrase "come here and whine" that it's not..

Come on, take your Moderator hat off for a second and look at that choice of words...

It's just flat f#####g** odd that you American Moderators seem on the one hand primed to be offended and yet you use make accusations and use loaded inflammatory words yourselves.



And I though in this discussion I could help show how offense and offensive words are both overt and implicit and that "offense" is a point of view.


*dust
**freaking

And finally the thing edited away by starter was primarily HUMOUROUS. He had been as seen above talking about how "most Liberals" have problems thinking and "reality" etc and he MIS-USED the phrase "couldn't care less" saying "Criminal could care less"...now if you cannot see that the misuse means he isn't thinking about what his words mean, after just dissing somebody else intellect..

I posted a piccie off google images, a variation on the famous line from Tarrantino's "Pulp Fiction" which was "English ************! Do you speak it? Only it was nicer. It was--linkie at Google Images
http://i.qkme.me/5h6e.jpg

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And please, don't call me Shirley....

"Something terrible has happened in the cockpit!!! Come quickly"
"What's that?"

"Oh its a small room with lots of dials and....."

Was that really offensive? We'll never know... but you already decided without even seeing it that it was..
Sorry, I think you bother should turn in your badges.

In fact I think the easiest solution is to put no Americans into Moderator roles: they're too polarized and polarizing.

[slorydn1]

Bull####,* you.....
Sorry, I think you bother should turn in your badges.

In fact I think the easiest solution is to put no Americans into Moderator roles: they're too polarized and polarizing.

Let me start by saying I was quoting your whole post but had to chop it out so that my post would fit (darned 10000 character rule).....

I understand English perfectly well. I also do not sit around as you say "looking to be offended".

It appears it is you who do not get it, so I will clarify things for you, which usually, like Starter who is one of the fairest people I have met on this board in the last 10+ years I have been here (and I said and felt that before I became a Mod 2 years ago) I like to do by PM but since you like to make a habit of calling out moderators in public I will spell it out for you publicly.

1) You (and I) have the right to free speech and all that goes with that. That said, posting on this forum is a privilege, not a right.

2) You have the right to disagree with any member of this forum, moderators and administrators included.

3) You have the right to voice your opinion about any topic that comes up on this forum. That said, just like with free speech in life, exercising that right doesn't mean that there are not possible consequences to that. Say something that your boss at work doesn't like and see what happens. You have the right to say it, he has the right to show you the door.

4) You even have the right to question, privately, something a moderator does or doesn't do. Keep in mind that you don't have all the information at your disposal. How do you know that nothing happened because a post didn't get edited or someone got banned.
This forum has a points system, people can get sanctioned and you won't know a thing about it unless the person who got his hand slapped wants to tell you about it.

5) You do not have the right to publicly call out a moderator for the discipline that gets handed out (or not) to others. That's pretty much standard at every forum that I have ever belonged to, which is a few. In most places the violation for this is an instant ban. But since I can't seem to find the Forum rules page (I guess it didn't migrate with us to the new server somehow) I choose not to ban you right here and now (and not for your response to my post-I had some of that coming, more on that below). Now I can't guarantee someone else won't, but I won't, not now. Seeing that you have good taste in movies, anyway.

Those 5 points, although they are contained in a post directed at you janvanvurpa, are for EVERYBODY's benefit (hint, hint).

I do apologize for doing a horrible job in getting my point across in my previous post. Personally I couldn't care less what you think about me carrying guns and all that. It's not personal at all. In fact, even though you didn't seem understand what I was really trying to say, you kinda illustrated my point for me by saying that my post shows that I am "looking to be offended". I'm not "truly" offended by what you said about people being simplistic and the like. Unfortunately, there are people who are. I was only trying to illustrate what can happen in those instances and it looks pretty silly to see it when people are, doesn't it? Yet is that not exactly what one is doing when they complain about "implied insults"?

I don't know about other mods, but I don't usually go around sanctioning everyone for a sideways word here or a little nudge there. I kinda like reading some of it, brightens my day a little bit. One of my fav's is when someone says something, another person comes back and days something to the effect that "You're dead wrong about that" and the OP reports the response and cries "he insulted me, ban him for life, why won't you do something about him!!! (don't laugh I see that AT LEAST once a week around here). I usually go after people who cusses someone out (******'s included) or blatantly tells them to shut up, that they or their opinion are worthless, questions their ancestry and the like.

It looks even sillier, though, when a person reads that,then turns around and insults them farther. Nowhere in your post that I quoted to start this one did I see where the words idiot,moron, or stupid were directed at me, and props to you for that. However, if I wanted to be a little more of a butthole about it saying things like "is that tooooooooooooooooo hard for you to understand?" could be construed as going down that road. Try to be more careful please. One last thing. Keep the nationalistic insults to yourself. Another longstanding member got smoked for that in the not too distant past.

And yes, your post made me go back and read the whole other thread again. I shouldn't have used the word "only" when describing you and the insults. I was mainly scanning through looking at what Starter had to say since that was the whole point of this thread, and your interaction with him. And yes there were other issues in that thread and they have been dealt with by Mark himself and the thread has been locked. As I said above, you may not know it or be able to see it, but it has been. So I won't be dealing with that anymore.

Now all of you can see why I stay out of chit chat for the most part. Too many world views on what usually are local problems cause too many headaches, and what I as an American may feel is right someone in England or Finland may think is completely daft. This is http://www.motorsportforums.com and I come here to talk about motorsports, primarily NASCAR, Indy Car, and Formula 1. I choose to stay out of the political arena as much as possible and only mentioned my stance on guns to illustrate a point. I am neither Conservative or Liberal, and have voted for members of both major parties for various offices to include President. That does not mean that I don't have strongly held views on different topics, whether that be abortion, taxes, big or small government (etc). I just don't see where me talking about that helps much when I want to talk about racing.
I usually only end up in chit chat now-a-days when I am investigating a reported post and no other Mods seem to be around right that minute.

Now, about Starter himself. I meant what I said above. For those of you who haven't been around long, Starter had the unenviable task of moderating the Indy Car forum back when Champcar and the IRL were getting ready to merge back together. It was real ugly back then, made the Chit Chat forum look like a kindergarten playground. He had to ban many many people, then lead the remaining members into the combined Indy Car forum, where things run pretty smoothly now. Yep he has opinions, too. And although I don't agree with all of them I got his back. If y'all don't like that, I wish I could help you, but I can't, not with that deal. It has absolutely zero to do with the fact that we are Americans, either. Anyone who intimates that is dead wrong. Ask Pino and Mark, they will tell you that and last time I checked they live on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean.

I thought about locking this thread, but what good would it do, someone will only start another thread saying that I don't have the right to come to Starter's defense because I am a moderator and not entitled to my opinion and that I shouldn't have locked it to start with (etc, etc, etc). Am I wrong?

I will close by saying I apologize for any misspellings or missing letters in this post. I am smarter than I type, believe me. It has taken the better part of 2 hours to type this, much to my wife's chagrin so if it makes any of you feel better, she is now pissed at me.

[monadvspec]

I've been away for a couple of days and am just catching up, so apologies to all for going back to the beginning of this thread.

The poster below has accused me of acting in a biased manner. I'd just like to clear a couple things up. It is true that I did delete two things from one of his posts. Both were obscenities which are against forum rules (and using **** in a word where the word is still easily recognizable is still not allowed). Nothing else was edited from the content of the post including the insults directed toward me. I do not feel it appropriate for a Mod to take action against a member for something directed at him/her because of a discussion they are involved in. Nor did I use the report post function to have another Mod do my "dirty work" for me. There are none of the current Mods on this board who have ever used their authority against a member who they may have had personal issues with. If nothing else, Mark would boot us in a skinny minute for such a thing. That does not mean that I will give monadvspec, or anyone else, a pass if they violate the rules of the board.

Once more you are playing with the facts. If I go back to a couple of threads I can show you exactly where you allow some people to use the # in place of a word which is blatantly obvious. You just do not like my posts. Admit it.
You edited me this week by accusing me of calling an individual names. That is a bold faced lie or, you did not read what I said. Go back, look again and tell me where the insult is.
You have edited other posts by other members also and have allowed the more egregious comments to stand. In fact, one of those posters is here pontificating about how the administrator could get the forum to operate in a civilized manner.
Want me to point to the post? Mark (administrator) and Starter (moderator) the # is used in some of the most prestigious newspapers,magazines and the like. It is like a bleeped out word on TV. It is up to interpretation and it, no matter what this moderator says ###### is not a word.
Go to Speed.com, a TV website and look to Robin Miller a reporter. He used these symbols all the time. He still has a column. I would like to feel that he has to abide by more stringent rules.By the way, you completely removed my post which was not insulting to anyone, but, ironically, it contained facts and links to the subject at hand which was contrary to your opinion. You then left the post asking for those figures with insults and innuendo stay as it was and you sent me a PM saying you would not take it down or words to that effect.

[monadvspec]

And neither was the member in question in this case. The only action taken was to remove the offensive parts of the post. One was one sentence and the other was an attached image.

Generally, a PM warning would be sent for the first time and the post edited to remove it. Only on repeated behaviour would an infraction be made. With the exception of eggregious circumstances of course.

BDunnell, see how it is done. Starter referenced me and posted my comments. He stated I used # to mask a word.

Then you challenge him and state that you have done the same. His response is to say he edited the post and an image. That post he is referring to was by a participant on this page and only for the fact that I actually saw the post he is implying it was me. Smoke and mirrors and worse than any # one could use.

[monadvspec]

Let me start by saying I was quoting your whole post but had to chop it out so that my post would fit (darned 10000 character rule).....

I understand English perfectly well. I also do not sit around as you say "looking to be offended".

It appears it is you who do not get it, so I will clarify things for you, which usually, like Starter who is one of the fairest people I have met on this board in the last 10+ years I have been here (and I said and felt that before I became a Mod 2 years ago) I like to do by PM but since you like to make a habit of calling out moderators in public I will spell it out for you publicly.

1) You (and I) have the right to free speech and all that goes with that. That said, posting on this forum is a privilege, not a right.

2) You have the right to disagree with any member of this forum, moderators and administrators included.

3) You have the right to voice your opinion about any topic that comes up on this forum. That said, just like with free speech in life, exercising that right doesn't mean that there are not possible consequences to that. Say something that your boss at work doesn't like and see what happens. You have the right to say it, he has the right to show you the door.

4) You even have the right to question, privately, something a moderator does or doesn't do. Keep in mind that you don't have all the information at your disposal. How do you know that nothing happened because a post didn't get edited or someone got banned.
This forum has a points system, people can get sanctioned and you won't know a thing about it unless the person who got his hand slapped wants to tell you about it.

5) You do not have the right to publicly call out a moderator for the discipline that gets handed out (or not) to others. That's pretty much standard at every forum that I have ever belonged to, which is a few. In most places the violation for this is an instant ban. But since I can't seem to find the Forum rules page (I guess it didn't migrate with us to the new server somehow) I choose not to ban you right here and now (and not for your response to my post-I had some of that coming, more on that below). Now I can't guarantee someone else won't, but I won't, not now. Seeing that you have good taste in movies, anyway.

Those 5 points, although they are contained in a post directed at you janvanvurpa, are for EVERYBODY's benefit (hint, hint).

I do apologize for doing a horrible job in getting my point across in my previous post. Personally I couldn't care less what you think about me carrying guns and all that. It's not personal at all. In fact, even though you didn't seem understand what I was really trying to say, you kinda illustrated my point for me by saying that my post shows that I am "looking to be offended". I'm not "truly" offended by what you said about people being simplistic and the like. Unfortunately, there are people who are. I was only trying to illustrate what can happen in those instances and it looks pretty silly to see it when people are, doesn't it? Yet is that not exactly what one is doing when they complain about "implied insults"?

I don't know about other mods, but I don't usually go around sanctioning everyone for a sideways word here or a little nudge there. I kinda like reading some of it, brightens my day a little bit. One of my fav's is when someone says something, another person comes back and days something to the effect that "You're dead wrong about that" and the OP reports the response and cries "he insulted me, ban him for life, why won't you do something about him!!! (don't laugh I see that AT LEAST once a week around here). I usually go after people who cusses someone out (******'s included) or blatantly tells them to shut up, that they or their opinion are worthless, questions their ancestry and the like.

It looks even sillier, though, when a person reads that,then turns around and insults them farther. Nowhere in your post that I quoted to start this one did I see where the words idiot,moron, or stupid were directed at me, and props to you for that. However, if I wanted to be a little more of a butthole about it saying things like "is that tooooooooooooooooo hard for you to understand?" could be construed as going down that road. Try to be more careful please. One last thing. Keep the nationalistic insults to yourself. Another longstanding member got smoked for that in the not too distant past.

And yes, your post made me go back and read the whole other thread again. I shouldn't have used the word "only" when describing you and the insults. I was mainly scanning through looking at what Starter had to say since that was the whole point of this thread, and your interaction with him. And yes there were other issues in that thread and they have been dealt with by Mark himself and the thread has been locked. As I said above, you may not know it or be able to see it, but it has been. So I won't be dealing with that anymore.

Now all of you can see why I stay out of chit chat for the most part. Too many world views on what usually are local problems cause too many headaches, and what I as an American may feel is right someone in England or Finland may think is completely daft. This is http://www.motorsportforums.com and I come here to talk about motorsports, primarily NASCAR, Indy Car, and Formula 1. I choose to stay out of the political arena as much as possible and only mentioned my stance on guns to illustrate a point. I am neither Conservative or Liberal, and have voted for members of both major parties for various offices to include President. That does not mean that I don't have strongly held views on different topics, whether that be abortion, taxes, big or small government (etc). I just don't see where me talking about that helps much when I want to talk about racing.
I usually only end up in chit chat now-a-days when I am investigating a reported post and no other Mods seem to be around right that minute.

Now, about Starter himself. I meant what I said above. For those of you who haven't been around long, Starter had the unenviable task of moderating the Indy Car forum back when Champcar and the IRL were getting ready to merge back together. It was real ugly back then, made the Chit Chat forum look like a kindergarten playground. He had to ban many many people, then lead the remaining members into the combined Indy Car forum, where things run pretty smoothly now. Yep he has opinions, too. And although I don't agree with all of them I got his back. If y'all don't like that, I wish I could help you, but I can't, not with that deal. It has absolutely zero to do with the fact that we are Americans, either. Anyone who intimates that is dead wrong. Ask Pino and Mark, they will tell you that and last time I checked they live on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean.

I thought about locking this thread, but what good would it do, someone will only start another thread saying that I don't have the right to come to Starter's defense because I am a moderator and not entitled to my opinion and that I shouldn't have locked it to start with (etc, etc, etc). Am I wrong?

I will close by saying I apologize for any misspellings or missing letters in this post. I am smarter than I type, believe me. It has taken the better part of 2 hours to type this, much to my wife's chagrin so if it makes any of you feel better, she is now pissed at me.

Two things I'd like to ask you. 1/ since when is butthole allowed and not considered a vulgarity? See, you allow that by posting it but ban someone else for #.

In a previous post you stated that Starter was correct but you admitted that you had not seen the post. So how do you know he is correct?

[Mark]

Once more you are playing with the facts. If I go back to a couple of threads I can show you exactly where you allow some people to use the # in place of a word which is blatantly obvious. You just do not like my posts. Admit it.

Yet again, MODERATORS DO NOT READ OR APPROVE EVERY SINGLE POST - I'm not sure what I have to say here to get my point across. Just because someone 'gets away with it' once without sanction DOES NOT mean that it's perfectly ok.

As for the issue of starred out words, swearing is not allowed on this forum - which includes starring it out, as that still forms part of the sentence, I have trouble with that myself sometimes, but the rule stands. - And before some goes through the entire history of the forum and reports every *'d out word, please don't, it's boring

[Mark]

It does seem from this that some are unable to take a step back from the issues and subject of the thread and look at things objectively. I know the subject of gun law is an extremely emotive one, but from what I've read here it seems to be the main complaint against Starter is that he doesn't take the same view? Now it seems the only thing edited were some swear words, so what? All of this for a couple of swear words? Or is it the fact the swear words were removed by someone on the opposite side of the debate?

I'm all for strong opinions - but action needs to be taken when it dissolves into insults, but it also needs to be understood that it isn't a moderators job to read every single word of every single thread and take action against everything. So; you may get your insult removed, the person who insulted you may not - This is a fact of life.

[Mark]

It is good to see opinions and have diversity. With it moderators should keep their nose out of the comments. Why have people like Gluaist??? been banned, my comments edited and another's and then we are left with Riebe who does nothing but whine, moan call names and his comments never get edited and he is obviously, not banned?

Glauistean is the spelling you are looking for. Just to point out that banned members are not permitted to return without express permission from me. In your case this permission has not been granted - and probably won't be.

[janvanvurpa]

It does seem from this that some are unable to take a step back from the issues and subject of the thread and look at things objectively. I know the subject of gun law is an extremely emotive one, but from what I've read here it seems to be the main complaint against Starter is that he doesn't take the same view? Now it seems the only thing edited were some swear words, so what? All of this for a couple of swear words? Or is it the fact the swear words were removed by someone on the opposite side of the debate?

I'm all for strong opinions - but action needs to be taken when it dissolves into insults, but it also needs to be understood that it isn't a moderators job to read every single word of every single thread and take action against everything. So; you may get your insult removed, the person who insulted you may not - This is a fact of life.

No Mark they were not swear words, Starter is a flat liar. There was a poster i sent you a link, and made a comment "With Apologies to Tarantino's Pulp Fiction" The words were an elaborate avoidance of profanity. The Poster said "Fornicator of Matriarchs! The English language, do you understand its usage? " Followed my a joking use of the "######"s as in "well, ########" do you?" No well balanced person could take that in a serious manner so well known is the line from Pulp Fiction (itself an absurdist over the top movie, and the scene in which the imfamous line was taken from particularly crazy---I cannot help if these people you have empowered to ban people are so unaware of popular culture that they don't know what the poster was parodying. OTHERS did and thought it was funny as it was intended)



That is not a profanity--it is a exaggerated parody of saying things absurdly to avoid profanity..

So now you see that your Moderators lie, and this second American "Moderator" one comes in and announces in advance that "if Starter said it was profanity, that's all he needs to know.." and has given me a "warning" and a threat "it could have been a lot worse".
I must confess that i did not know using ###s in jest was an infraction.

is using *****s OK? <-------that is also a joke

Mark I suggested that both these "Moderators" might think about turning in their "badges" if they cannot treat those with whom they disagree fairly and those they agree with with given the warnings they deserve...

I am serious, perhaps you should have no American moderators. This country is riven with strongly polarised opinions and public dialog has become poisoned with one side being constantly outraged at people doing anything they personally don't like---and they feel entitled to do and say anything to justify their positions..

I generally take little on forums seriously, but I detest when people in power lie and accuse me of things I have not done, and when they do it with impunity, it is particularly unpalatable.