As per the policy of keeping quotes to a minimum, I only partially quoted you. Since you have not bothered to tell me which part of which quote you are referring to and how I misrepresented you, I will now attempt to guess. I will provide the rest of the context of your quotes if it makes you happy:
quote1. Yes I DO believe that eliminating ALL circular threads will encourage more participation because it would make the forum appear less elitist and off-putting. But I think we have arrived instead at a fair compromise.
All this adds are your reasons for eliminating circular threads. My opinion that eliminating discussion does not draw people in and is contrary to the goals of this forum still stand. You then talk about the 'compromise' you made, which is a discussion I am not a part of, and doesn't matter to me. I am judging the ideas by their own worth, not in relation to other people's ideas of how the forum should be run.
If you are talking about this part of your post:
quote2. As for moderator assisted self-moderation, I actually addressed that pages ago! lol It was one of the ways I SUGGESTED that threads that statistically remained mired in quicksand could become LESS circular and more forward moving. That also was completely ignored by everyone but robotbear and my fellow mods. Although in your defense as well as STG's, I understand why. You guys came to the discussion a little later and I certainly understand why you would NOT want to read all the walls-o-text pages leading up to it. So, I think it is a great idea. Yes, to answer your question, that could easily SAVE threads from extinction! I mean look at the abortion thread. It is an absolute abomination of two or three people pontificating their party lines. There is NO DISCUSSION going on, NONE. So if you guys want to do what STG, yourself, and me are suggesting, try it on that thread! See if you can get people to turn around their behavior in it and move the discussions FORWARD! Succeed and guess what? I will tank the thread at 30 or so pages and start a new one. Nobody will be happier than me! The same is true for all the currently closed threads on God, atheism, afterlife, scriptural proof, and so on. But I caution you: Good luck getting "born again Christians" and "born again atheists" to stop going round and round! Because short of banning people for it, which I really do think would be draconian (though I would LOVE TO lol!) it's a tough thing to do.
But God bless you guys if you can pull it off! I swear I will dedicate a heartfelt THANK YOU THREAD to you if you can!
You provide more reasoning for why you think so called 'circular' threads should be eliminated/restricted. I have not misrepresented that this is what you want to do, and my central point as stated above is still relevant.
You also talk of "moderator assisted self moderation". Since that is not the current policy I am not discussing that.
Perhaps you mean I misrepresented you by thinking that you disagreed with born again Christians and Atheists. I figured the quotes around the names meant you found both to be laughable, however if I was wrong about that I apologize and will remove it. That being said, my main argument had nothing to do with which side of the religion debate you fell on, my main point was that all moderators have an opinion and it is ludicrous to think that they will be able to keep their bias from coloring their decision of when a debate is circular or not.
If that is the misrepresentation you speak of, I will take it back, but my main argument still stands.
Here is the next post I take a quote from:
quoteYou bring up an interesting point, and I understand what you're saying. Let me bring up a flip-side to that point, though: Everyone in this forum already knows that there is a first post rule, well all the regulars do, at least. So it is understandable that someone new or who doesn't post a lot here might do a sort of drive-by thread creation like we are trying to avoid, right?
But here is the flip side: since the regs all know what the deal is, maybe it would be better to NOT POST in those threads until they are addressed by a mod. Maybe, instead, report the first post, and we can address it immediately BEFORE the discussion takes off. I mean the regulars in here have seen Wo, Curt, or me close a ton of threads for that reason, so why post at all knowing this is going to happen?
By the way, here is an interesting aside: IN EVERY instance except one that I have closed a thread because of a poor quality first post and asked the thread creator to edit the first post and add some of their own opinions, guess what happened? They did what I asked and I re-opened the thread! We are talking about maybe a dozen threads I have re-opened and am only now waiting on one which is closed now temporarily.
So perhaps the policy is working better than people think and the only reason this is getting so heated is because ONE THREAD and because it just happens to be the last one I temporarily closed?
(your quote of another user was removed from the above quotation)
You did advocate that people report opening posts that do not have a clear opinion on the subject and/or don't have some original material right? And you did advocate that no one should post in those threads until it is cleared with the moderator, right? If so, I don't see how I misrepresented your position.
Maybe you are talking about the bottom paragraph where you insist that this is all about only one thread (the Overpopulation thread). Well it's not, if you read my earlier post in this thread I also take issue with your closing of the Third Gender thread, and moreover I take issue with the idea of closing threads for these reasons in general.
Excuse me for excessive quotation, but I see no other way to address the idea that I took quotes out of context when you will not tell me how I misrepresented your opinion or which part of your quote I took out of context. I can keep guessing, or you can tell me where I misrepresented you and/or address my main points.
Edit: Aug 05, 11 5:00pm