lol, Michael, first of all, I don't believe for a second that that was John Hindraker who wrote that post. It was far more likely someone who posts on SI and who wanted to correct my previous post but who was already banned from vfc. So he made up the John Hindraker alias and posted. Not a difficult thing to do.
Second, Epicure and Bill essentially have the same end in mind--neither of them wants a thread that runs through the same tired "debates" over and over again. They have slightly different modus operandi to accomplish that goal, with Epicure being less diplomatic and more public, but the goal is definitely the same. Bill warns people in a PM if he knows he doesn't want the person posting there, or on the thread publicly if he isn't sure, but he will still bring down the hammer if he decides to. Personally, I don't blame them for doing this, the arguments are, for the most part, tedious and silly, with, as I said in the previous post, each side believing that they other is duplicitous or blind or uneducated or informed or just making stuff up or whatever.
You see Sam, it's not about you or me, it's about the kind of culture SI should be.... It's the culture that has been allowed to degenerate over the years and accept, in some cases celebrate, nastiness on par with the old Yahoo boards.
Well, perhaps so, Michael. But the reality is, SI is a big, diverse place. There are many different kinds of threads, and if you don't find one that has the slant you want, you can just make one of your own, with rules to your liking. I did that with a thread on climate change, extreme weather events and how business might be affected. I set out some rules in the header, saying some of the things that would get people banned, and waddya know, a bozo comes around to say this: " "Climate change caused by humans ? You are a fool, Go ahead and ban me"--what a swell guy. I have no idea why this person did that or what (if anything) he said about me when he went back to whatever threads he frequents, and, really, I don't care. I did as he requested and that was that. If people want to debate CC, they can go to certain threads that do that. If they want to debate left-right issues with both RW and LW people, they can do that. If they want to talk about specific stocks or specific sectors, they can do that. It is all there, some threads have indeed degenerated into Yahoo-type threads, many others though haven't. And LB and Epicure's method of keeping their respective threads free of that stuff is one way of doing it ("two variations on one method" is perhaps a more accurate way of describing it).
Michael, I have to add here that I occasionally go to RW threads to see what they are talking about, and lo and behold I find you and others participating in trash talking someone who doesn't post on that thread and who, if she were to make even one post however "nice" it might be, would be immediately banned. Here you are talking:
Too funny watching the leading SI divider and hard core lefty loon go into panic mode and try and backtrack her way out of it. Sure, she was just warning him! LOL
Let's see, if someone were truly just warning a new member don't you think they would say something along the lines of "hey, thanks for posting, welcome to SI, just want to give you a bit of a warning regarding this being a loony left thread where only the most communist minded people are welcome to post regularly".
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Actually, she was "just warning him," but if it really had been John and he posted a second time on that thread, yes, he would have been banned. Just as I would be if I posted on Bill's thread. The trashy post you wrote was just one example, there are others that are even worse and more Yahoo-like. Is that the kind of culture that you are promoting here? Or perhaps you blame Epicure for provoking the people on that thread into making those observations? You just couldn't help yourselves? Does it make you feel good? Superior somehow? One of the gang?
I don't know why you do that. Especially almost immediately after lamenting that the culture on SI has degenerated, lol. I do know this though--if vfc had anywhere near as much trash talking as the "Politics for Conservatives" thread does, I wouldn't post there. |
