[barmar]

Moved the "Looking for co-players" thread to the "Find a Partner" forum, and the "Bridge in Tokyo" thread to "Offline Bridge".

[inquiry]

Post that seem to belittle a religion, ethnic group, or race of people are obviously not allowed. One such post whose sole purpose was to state a certain race of people are lazy was deleted from an otherwise normal bridge thread.

[barmar]

Moved "A simple bidding problem at matchpoints" from Expert to Intermediate/Advanced

[32519]

Barmar: The thread in the Water Cooler has been locked. Two requests -
1. Who got you to lock it?
2. Kindly unlock it. These guys need to hear the truth and the truth will set them free.

[gwnn]

I don't really get it, you carefully document every time a thread has been moved from General Bridge Discussion to General BBO Discussion, but often remain silent when people would be actually interested in hearing a reason for closing a (for better or worse) popular and for most of us, fun thread. What's the point of this thread then?

[inquiry]

I locked the religious thread in the water cooler, not barmar. I entered a reason for that decision in this thread but apparently it didn't take... long story, but I was installing windows 8.1 (a 3+gb download) and my computer restarted itself without warning. So I must not have gotten the post to this thread inserted, so I will repeat the reason for my action here.

That thread has become heated with a lot of bashing of peoples views without progressing or changing anyones minds on the issues. So I locked it to allow the moderators (including barmar and myself) time to decide if it should stay locked, be deleted, or reopened. That is the current lock is temporary until a more permanent decision could be made. Barmar and I had a short exchange on the thread, where he asked me what I thought about the thread before I unilaterally decided to lock it pending a final decision. Perhaps I should have waited for a final decision on the topic before taking action. However, I thought a temporary closing of a thread might allow the posters in that thread to realize a more diplomatic approach to expressing their views in future post in the thread would be in the best interest of allowing them to continue to express their views without stomping on the views of others. (Stepping on others views probably could be allowed, but never stomping).

Anyway, feel free to express you views on the issue in this thread. I see a new thread has popped up on the same subject so both threads will be under consideration of closing or possibly deleting, As of right now, number two is open but it might not be for long. Should we leave number two open, we will merge the two threads. The one thing I am not going to do is go in an edit out the inappropriate content from each message. If the posting gets out of hand, the entire thread(s) will be locked and both may vanish.

[cherdano]

I didn't read the religious thread in detail, but from what I saw it seemed like a provocative but reasoned discussion with the exception of the contributions of one poster. But that poster has acted like a troll on many topics. So if you want to keep that kind of heated exchange off BBF, banning this particular poster seems more effective and justified than banning this religion as a topic or locking this thread.

[hrothgar]

cherdano, on 2013-October-19, 09:39, said:

I didn't read the religious thread in detail, but from what I saw it seemed like a provocative but reasoned discussion with the exception of the contributions of one poster. But that poster has acted like a troll on many topics. So if you want to keep that kind of heated exchange off BBF, banning this particular poster seems more effective and justified than banning this religion as a topic or locking this thread.

Arend made the precise point that I was planning to state.

It would seem much more productive to ban a small number of posters rather than repeated locking down threads...

[32519]

cherdano, on 2013-October-19, 09:39, said:

I didn't read the religious thread in detail, but from what I saw it seemed like a provocative but reasoned discussion with the exception of the contributions of one poster. But that poster has acted like a troll on many topics. So if you want to keep that kind of heated exchange off BBF, banning this particular poster seems more effective and justified than banning this religion as a topic or locking this thread.

hrothgar, on 2013-October-19, 13:32, said:

Arend made the precise point that I was planning to state.It would seem much more productive to ban a small number of posters rather than repeated locking down threads...

Barmar / Ben:
Have a look at these two posts. These guys have come directly to you to have me kicked out of these forums and they have given you a fake reason for doing so, much in the same way that the LHC team faked the reason why it has been switched off for the next two years. There is something hiding underneath this fake reason and I want to find out what it is.

So I am appealing to you to do just as Ben suggested:
1. Unlock the thread in the Water Cooler.
2. Merge the two threads.
3. Move this post and others related to the thread into the Water Cooler.
4. Allow the discussion to continue so that I can find out what is hiding underneath this fake reason.

Freedom of speech is part of the USA constitution. Let's call on that freedom and continue the discussion.

[barmar]

When we locked the thread, the intent wasn't to silence 32519. What bothered me was that everyone else was ganging up on him in response. As Inquiry said, the thread had ceased to be a productive dialogue. This is what always happens to religious debates.

Freedom of speech may be a guaranteed right, but that doesn't mean anyone has to provide the venue for it.

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2013-October-19, 22:31, said:

When we locked the thread, the intent wasn't to silence 32519. What bothered me was that everyone else was ganging up on him in response.

Have you considered that "everyone else ganging up" on someone is actually a valuable signal?
People are expressing that they don't want that individual around.

In my experience, this doesn't happen without good reason.

By short circuiting this process, all you're doing is ensuring that the whole distasteful episode is going to happen again and again and again.

Either do your job properly and start banning the individual trigger these incidents or keep out of the way...

[GreenMan]

hrothgar, on 2013-October-20, 04:09, said:

Have you considered that "everyone else ganging up" on someone is actually a valuable signal?

It's a signal that people don't know about the Ignore function, or are otherwise incapable of impulse control.

Someone Is Wrong On The Internet is a serious problem that afflicts many people who could be living normal lives. Please give to the SIWOTI Foundation today.

[cherdano]

barmar, on 2013-October-19, 22:31, said:

When we locked the thread, the intent wasn't to silence 32519. What bothered me was that everyone else was ganging up on him in response. As Inquiry said, the thread had ceased to be a productive dialogue. This is what always happens to religious debates.

Have you looked at 32519's posting history?
I mean, look at who upvoted my post above. Other than Richard, these aren't exactly posters known for ganging up in flamewars...

[32519]

cherdano, on 2013-October-20, 08:30, said:

Have you looked at 32519's posting history? I mean, look at who upvoted my post above. Other than Richard, these aren't exactly posters known for ganging up in flamewars...

Barry / Ben:

When I joined these forums on 22 December 2010, within a matter of months I could spot this clique that is doing its best to get me to leave the forums for good. All this time I have been wracking my brain as to the “glue” that keeps them together. After all they seem to be from so many different places around the world. On 19 December 2012 Phil started the first thread of this nature, BBF Religious Matrix 1, in which I was a frequent poster. The same ganging up took place there until the thread was locked. It was not me who started the thread, but I took note of the number of views that that thread had received at the point it was locked. It stood at just under 9000 views. At the time of me making this post, the current number of views stood at 21544. That thread has (so far) received more than double the number of views AFTER IT WAS LOCKED, than what it received while it was open. It just has to be obvious that things were said there which many keep returning to.

The thread, The Problem with Religious Moderation, was started by Winstomn on 7 October 2013. That thread was locked when the number of views stood at 3620. At the time of me making this post, the number of views (so far) stood at 3922. So it generated interest and people are still reading it. That thread (The Problem with Religious Moderation) has finally revealed to me the “glue” which keeps this clique together.

So they keep returning here to have me permanently kicked out of these forums.

The thread, BBF Religious Matrix 2, was started by myself.

[Antrax]

For the record, I'm one of those idiots who goes to see what the fuss was about after a thread is locked. So I guess one of those 21544 people is me

[Elianna]

cherdano, on 2013-October-20, 08:30, said:

Have you looked at 32519's posting history?
I mean, look at who upvoted my post above. Other than Richard, these aren't exactly posters known for ganging up in flamewars...

I like to flatter myself that Helene and I usually gang up (as in "agree") with each other.

I do agree with the sentiment that it's not "ganging up" if someone is trying to stir the pot, but I can also understand moderators not wanting that amount of stirring on their boards.

I also agree that the most effective way of stopping this seems to be banning religious discussion, but I would find that sad because sometimes there are interesting discussions. For example, the thread in question as it started was very interesting (about the relationship between "moderates" and "non-moderates"). But then one person veered completely off-topic. Perhaps a solution would be deleting all the off-topic conversation (and that would require participants to flag it instead of reply, and continue veering off-topic).

I agree with others that this does not seem to be the ideal way to solve the issue, but I understand where the moderators are coming from, and would hope that they are taking this reply (and others) as suggestions, not criticisms.

[BillHiggin]

It is impossible to scare a troll off by ganging up! They like it!
Do not feed the trolls.

[barmar]

hrothgar, on 2013-October-20, 04:09, said:

Either do your job properly and start banning the individual trigger these incidents or keep out of the way...

No, I'm not going to ban someone just because lots of other members disagree with what he has to say. I'll curtail a thread if it has turned into a useless argument, but I'm not kicking him out completely.

GreenMan, on 2013-October-20, 08:11, said:

It's a signal that people don't know about the Ignore function, or are otherwise incapable of impulse control.

Someone Is Wrong On The Internet is a serious problem that afflicts many people who could be living normal lives. Please give to the SIWOTI Foundation today.

Exactly -- DNFTT.

[barmar]

I just deleted an off-topic post by 32519 (a link to an off-site news article) in this thread.

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2013-October-20, 14:31, said:

No, I'm not going to ban someone just because lots of other members disagree with what he has to say. I'll curtail a thread if it has turned into a useless argument, but I'm not kicking him out completely.

No one is asking you to ban him because they disagree with what he says.

I'm am stating that he should be banned because he is a disruptive idiot who genuinely seems to delight in pissing all over people's conversations.

I can't recall a single instance where he ever contributed anything of value to a discussion.
However, I can point out dozens of occasions where he dragged a previously constructive conversation down into a useless rat hole.

I don't know if he's mentally unbalanced or simply a troll.
Either way, he adds nothing of value to the forums and makes things worse for the all the rest of us.

Ever wonder why most of the decent discussion about bridge has moved over the Bridgewinners?

The abject lack of community standards has a lot to do with it...