What happens when a thread is closed (usually for

in the face of increasingly hostile reception until they are closed, since I try only to reply or to elucidate and not to throw another log on the fire in my replies I can only assume it is the vitriol being thrown my way that gets them closed.

Only one was closed after only 2 posts and that was the one where you complained that I had resurrected a thread when I had found a new and newly published article to quote from on the Plame Game, which had information that I had never seen before. That one was immediately locked despite that new information. I make no suggestion as to why it was locked, but I think the ones that ran longer were locked because of the intemperate remarks of others. Dragon was nice enough to point out that he had seen a moderation in my combattiveness, and I think generally I have been pretty good. There is a qualitative difference between referring to someone as "Rot" for example, or some of the other "attractive" epithets that have been thrown my way by the erstwhile conservatives here, and a reference to Eris which is at least half way intelligent, requires more than an IQ of 70 to understand and is an oblique rather than a direct attack.

And yes, at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Eris, the only one of the Gods not invited to the party did throw the Golden Apple of Discord labelled "To the Fairest" because she was insulted and angry at the snub, and for which all the Goddesses competed. Aphrodite cheated and promised Paris, son of Priam of Troy, a bride as beautiful as she, Aphrodite, was. Hence the seduction and abduction of Helen, wife of Menelaus of Argos. But none of this would have happened if the competition for Helen originally had not been so heated that all the suitors for Helen were bound into a compact to defend the winner of the competition for her hand against anyone who abducted her, hence everybody ganging up on Troy. And thus you can see that you can learn something even from an incident you may consider unpleasant.

Rob

And please let's not play the my-IQ-is-higher-than-yours game.

What IQ is required to remember which topic you "resurrected" with "new information"? Or to recognize that COMEDY acts at a WH Correspondent's dinner is just not newsworthy except to air a few funny lines? What IQ is required to recognize that Colbert just wasn't funny that night?

I referred to you as Rot jokingly to prove a point AFTER your attack. I'm sorry your self-supposed intellectually superior mind can't wrap its little self around that. You OTOH attacked with intended animus. I suppose you think you should get points for being "cleverer"?

is to ignore Rob entirely because he seems unable to post without attacking someone or being crude, offensive or all of the above.

I am not in favor of banning anyone anyway, I don't understand how he manages not to get banned when others have been. I've decided he is to be "sent to Coventry", at least as far as I am concerned.

Not suggesting anyone else do it.

than this poster appears to have been.

that said I have not read any of his posts, but have of the ones who were eventually banned.

Oh, never mind.

... how can you possibly compare???

Rob lacks the anti-semetic streak and propensity for simultaneous MPD of some of the old trolls, but his vitriol and rhetoric is on the same level of toxicity. To the degree that he is able to insert it into just about each and every post, day in and day out, one might even say he's in a class by himself.

.... you know, the "It's everyone elses' fault. I didn't do anything!"

Sorry, Rob, but you deserved that one. Kelton may not use such big words as you just did, but it boils down to the same thing.

Accept your responsiblity and move on. Everyone else needs to do the same. You cannot change anyone else here, but you can work on your self. (and that goes for anyone else that might need to work on their own backyard before complaining about the neighbors', same as Rob.)

.

>>>Well Marcia, this is what I consider an average post of mine
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6130-0.html?forumID=50&threadID=174717&messageID=1922979 and it doesn't involve name calling or President bashing or anything else, but I expect it will generate a screaming match anyway and suggestions that I am the Anti-Christ.

I really don't understand why a fairly simple statement of beliefs generates a whirlwind of personal vituperation, but I admit that if prodded I snap back. >>>>>

If I wanted to read a book, I would buy one. Your posts are hardly anything that could be considered to be a 'simple statement of beliefs' and more resembles a bill being pushed through the House and Senate with all the pork attached to it. Kind of hard to find the real stuff when you have to wade through the garbage that isn't to the point.

Most of your posts are so overfilled with information that it almost feels like a flaunting of your intelligence or a case of 'if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull'

Do you ever have anything to say that can take a couple of sentences instead of a dissertation or an essay?

TONI

this comment, Rob:
''...but I expect it will generate a screaming match anyway...''

You want to hide behind the idea of being intelligent and educated, but you also present yourself as the poster child for the old saying of ''kill the messenger.''

It's not the WHAT that you post that generates the heat, so much as the HOW and WHY you choose to post what you do so often.

After you have gone through your ''PMS cycle'' of posting, getting heated replies, getting a thread locked, posting a similar topic, getting heated replies, getting a thread locked, etc., etc.; you then start posting about how you, and those who agree with you, are mistreated here in SE. You use ''big words,'' and beg to be understood in your ''innocence'' in regard to the need for Lee's message being bumped again.

Don't pretend to be one of those people that are ''really, really book smart,'' but dumber than a bag of hammers when it comes to social skills. I truly don't think that you are, but you come across that way when you do this.

My opinion on ''why,'' - you are bored and the interactions here in SE provide a type of entertainment and stimulation that is gratifying.

Take care, Rob, and take what I have said above with a grain of salt if you wish. I have no need to argue at all. I have WAY too much else going on in my life to find that enjoyable. Especially with someone that I care about.

--Marcia


.

...a WHOLE BUNCH more of life experience than you have.

You have no more formal education than many more of us here on this forum.

I gave you some words on a VERY IMPORTANT attribute of an extensive formal education, which you have obviously ignored...and that alone doesnt't say much for the effectiveness of your education.

First and probably the least important is you use words that go way over the head of many of our members on this forum...that is , if you want to effectively communicate with every member of this audience, you're going to have write at a much lower level. AND second, most of your posts are rife with jargon...a very ineffective method of effecttive communication.

AND last, as I have said to you before, the MOST IMPORTANT element of higher formal education is the revelation of just how ignorant one really is. The more you know, the more you have the ability to realize how much you don't know. I have seen no evidence that you have realized this.

the way I talk. I don't put on airs for anybody, and I don't dumb down my conversation for anybody either, I'm not running for political office, and I have 40 years of work experience both at the higher and at the lowest levels in 3 separate countries. You say you have more Life experience, great, but I don't see how that impacts or negates my life experience or the fact that people are too lazy to learn normal speech, I certainly don't speak any differently than I did in High School, but I was well brought up. I am unaware of any jargon I use except perhaps some I might have picked up on the news. If I am speaking about medical stuff I have experience with, I use the correct terminology, because that is what it takes to convey my meaning accurately.

I was always baffled in England that my work mates read The Sun, when there was The Guardian and The Independent or even The Times available. Apparently they thought that to do so was to put on airs, to aspire to something above their class, even though they were capable of reading at a higher level, I was just concerned with more factual, less biased, and better written news. Judging by the preferred news souces here, the same reverse snobbery may be at work. Predigested opinion from F@#News, or NewsMax, or TownHall.org. The best of the sources is the National Review, but you're still not going to hear something disturbing or of another opinion there.

But if it makes you happy...

Rob

while I was in the military where I wrote operating procedures and drafted Regulations. A major command editor advised me that although everyone in the USAF had a high school education, the policy was to write at the eight grade level and to tone it down to that level. Ever since then, I try to write as simple and in detail so it can be understood by almost anyone, however my grammar, spelling, and punctuation is not that good (no secretary). When I was heavily involved in the 'Help' forums, I received several good comments that my explanations were more clear than most of the techs, as techs assumed others knew as much basic as them.
Perhaps you need to write simple.

seems to me its bs

not that it will do any good.

I thought I was allowed to post in any thread on any subject.

... he reposts on the same topic as a locked thread. See New Thread of Locked Thread.

This isn't the first time, and the Mods have let it go far too many times.

Tip for Rob: It's not "new information" if its just another editorial take on an old story. If the original thread had not been locked, you would have added this "new information" to that thread (or should have). So if you can't add it to the appropriate thread, don't start a new one.

when meaningful discussion has given way to continual insults from both sides, or the thread is more about personalities than issues. Our take then is that "everyone has had their say," and the thread isn't worth the time and effort required to clean it up -- especially because at that point experience shows that once reopened, the insults would pick up again almost immediately. Similarly, an immediate restart of the same thread under another root will almost instantly return to the insults, with little rational discussion.

OTOH, a new thread, started with a somewhat new take (usually a fresh news story with new information) on the same subject weeks to months later will typically follow the same pattern -- some meaningful discussion on the merits, before the thread again devolves into the mindless knee-jerk insults that got the first one locked.

So just because one thread on global warming or socialism got locked doesn't mean that a new one is verboten when some new information on the topic hits the media. Incidentally, one of the major factors in how fast a thread "goes downhill" is the language in the initial post. A thread started by a root post with a calm title and logical discussion typically generates the same sort of response, while one whose basic message is "Members of the opposite party are all Communists/fascists" goes downhill very quickly!

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

... it's obvious this wasn't the case. AND, he has done this many times before.

Speaking of locking threads, what's your position of opening locked threads to get your last say in?

being called Rot and being insulted then you should quit slinging mud!

If someone refered to you as "Glanda" would you feel compelled to change yourself so they'd use your name "Glenda" instead, or would the wrong be theirs instead?

My post was a deliberate attempt to give Rob a dose of his own putrid medicine for referring to me as Eris.

I would never in a million years refer to any member like that here if it weren't to fire back. In his defense, Rob claims that oblique insults, that the lower intelligence (by his estimation) membership of SE wasn't even capable of deciphering, are appropriate.

Bringing up that play on Glenda's name shows just how very small you can be