We have a serious problem here...

And won't have time to be in the forseeable future, either. But it's not because of gturner, or gul, or anyone else on the board. It's because of RL.

What could possibly be more important than arguing on the internet?

@Asyncritus must have found some real ornery bastards to argue with in Madagascar. Who knew!

That's no excuse. Aren't there like eight hundred of you running around?

waitaminit

This means that you and I are both Async duals... and that also means Anc, Gul, Castle and gturner are also Asyncritters.

Let that one sink in for a moment.

Also, we're all @Soma's duals.

Indeed:

You eat shit for breaksfast?

Laughing at a joke no one made.

This is why your own side regularlly calls you an idiot and a dummy.

Were I to be acting like they shouldn't have a voice, I'd have been a drama queen campaigning for their demise.

The only real reason I still bother is the misperception that not wanting to endure the persistent bleating of assholes constitutes "running away"

The reality is that I still engage the debate where there is any evidence that debate can be productive and reasonably civil. I withdraw from it when the opposition reduces itself to a metaphorical crotch-grabbing "suck my dick you losers!! Trump won you hillary bitches!!" like that fool on the Delta flight.

My only point in participating for a moment in the circular firing squad y'all got going is to affirm the genuineness of the instinct that the Asshole Nazi Brigade might be alienating potential participants. Whether or not it SHOULD, it most certainly DOES.

One of the things I find remarkable in the last decade or so is the persistent mythology around here that there is a left-wing equivilant to Dayton and gturner in existence here (or Flashy or Ramen or Volpone or whoever).

I remember well enough the time when I regularly disagreed with the liberal views posted here, and the only one I can remember off-hand (that is still in any way active) dismissing as irrationally arrogant in their liberal views is Liet. Disagree though I might have with gul or Anc or whoever, they presented more rational and engaging discussion in any one given thread that gturner has contributed to the Red Room in his entire career here.

You and TR, and Lanz, and Paladin, and several others represent a resolute conservative view that discusses disagreements, which os much needed and valuable in any forum like this. Anc and gul and John and Anna markb and several others bring the same value from the left.

gturner and Ramen and Flashy and a few others represent the piles of shit on the ground that thoughtful posters try to avoid stepping in while we engage on the field of ideas.

you err in both sentences.

I miss him too but he didn't bail over "issues" - life just got too busy which, good on anyone who has a life so full

I disagree with the assumption that because a shitstorm ensued that it proves a board without gturner is by definition worse than a board with him. This places does nothing so well as wage shitstorms.

That said, I don't advocate that he remain banned. I defend the right of management to do so, I agree with the conclusion that wading through his shit was a detriment to the quality of content, but there's always someone here who can be defined thus so fine, let him back, let Castle back or Ted or whomever. IDGAK.

If there was any mistake, it would only be if they banned him without anticipating a shitstorm would ensue and thinking everything would be fine. Anyone who's been here long should know that particular price would have to be paid.

remind me again, because I've lost count, how many "Wordforge is dying!" threads have you posted over the years?

about half of'em

It's super to see you go to bat for the rights of the unpopular and persecuted in such a big way, Nova. "I don't advocate him remaining banned, but I support the management's right to do so and I wish they hadn't been so incompetent in the way they did it." Stay classy.

This post answered something for me I had suspected. Apparently I can post "Ramen is God" and Ramen can't resist rating it :dumb: (which, ironically, in that case he'd be correct)

I'm not sure what goal he seeks to accomplish with this waste of his time but I'm reasonably sure he's failing.

one of these days, you'll have to send me a snow globe from Madagascar (guessing you're still doing the humanitarian stuff there?)

Raoul represented the left in a manner that never lost a shred of my respect.

Any random left wing nut post accumulates a handful of "agrees" etc. even when mindless, ridiculous, or an obvious distortion of reality or truth. Reads like an idiot echo chamber if you have clear eyes, or at least centrist.

markb can muster an occasional thought amidst lots and lots of flames. Never original content. Regardless, it's quite possible he's never participated in a heated disagreement without flinging something (I skip past it, but the gist is a putdown of some creation).

Anna recently mockingly accused me of agreeing with or at least supporting a bombing of a mosque - I know she's an ignorant cuntrag, but that's no excuse for such unwarranted incivility, imo.

gul and anc, well, see if you can draw down some of the data from General Chang's database and see if he doesn't recall your current depiction of them slightly differently.

You mentioned liet (poor fella, MIA without a peep of drama since Nov 8) but forgot most prolific dinner (the "shitstain," as he likes to be called). I think Ted Lubak and a handful of others I could chronicle if pressed are lefties with little to not original content or anything unique or interesting to add most of the time. You're right, though, actormike, dendroica, eccentric stranger, marktok's sweetheart, and a long of list of spazzes have gone (cass has mellowed like a gazillion notches).

Of course there's the infrequent 02C on the right, and a few like christopher, quest and mburtonk on the left with always civil discourse. And oldfella sure got uppity lately, even a few short years ago you couldn't get a rise out of him even if you screamed "motherfucking asshole" in his face, practically. But paladin pretty much alone carries on a dialogue with the policy-paper-liberal-elites-that-have-a-bigger-government-solution-for-every-single-social-engineering-idea-you-can-think-of-and-then-some-except-LBGTQ&etc.

And John fuckin Allen? C'mon, now. Became active in the RR as civil and good hearted a person as you might encounter online, but has become as nasty as a pampered tennis pro. I went through the same transition, over a decade ago, now. But never do I consider myself polite when pushed, often I'm a prick or at least misunderstood wiseass.

You and I, meanwhile, what, over 12 years and probably have never exchanged a heated or insulting set of words from Chang to Nova, as I recall anyway. But you're nuts, so, FWIW.

Glad you enjoyed it. Conversely, glad to see the conservative/libertarian "I'll do whatever the fuck I want with what's mine!!!!!" crowd invest so much energy in trying to berate owners of a private enterprise to conform to their point of view.

Are you boycotting Kellogs too?

That's exactly the resource from which I drew that particular comment.

Dinner is an exception in my mind in that he has the rare ability to piss off everyone else in a bipartisan fashion, the left hates him as much as the right .

I don't really calculate "original content" as a qualifying factor here.

Here's the way I see it. Take Federal Farmer for an example, while I find some of his views hapless, I can't recall much if any of his content being framed in the "okay all you liberal crying snowflake twatstains, let me tell you why are you such fucking useless cunts..."

So I don't mind him. Pretty much at all. Hell, despite my earlier quote, Dayton has never particularly bothered me regardless of whether I thought the view he presented was sane. On the outer fringes of that one might find, for example, Zombie, who for some reason can't resist beginning the majority of his posts expressing disagreement with "You're an idiot" - I find that unnecessary but not intolerable because what follows is at least a somewhat sane presentation of an alternative point of view.

If I had my druthers, no one on either side would feel the need to frame their views in the most hateful insulting middle-school bullshit language they could come up with, but maybe I'm getting old. I always said I came here to the exclusion of other places because I KNEW (inasmuch as one can know the people they only cross paths with online) and generally liked most of the people here - at least a great enough plurality to put up with the ones I find distasteful. That math is growing weaker over the years, for a number of reasons - but my conception of this place is of a community, one in which I can imagine myself having lunch with Dayton or FF or you or gul or Anc or evenflow or Anna or garamet whomever and much enjoying their company - and from that I now find it harder and harder to tolerate the people who view this place as a vehicle to come around every day and deliberately fuck with people.

It's kinda like there's this bar that everyone in the neighborhood comes too. We might debate politics or religion or whatever, even heatedly, but for the most part we're neighbors. But then this dude starts showing up every night with a boombox blasting Kanye West at high volume, and another shows up every night and gets piss drunk and pukes on the pool table and so forth. Get enough of those guys and eventually people find that the bar is a less enjoyable place to get a drink. You can defend the right of the West fan to enjoy himself all you want, but the folks who find their evening ruined are not going to come listen because they affirm the principle that dude has the right to blast it.

Indeed. I agree on all this.

I've no beef with Paladin of course. Though often disagree.

And that's as it should be. I grow weary of the deliberate attempts on the part of many to be hostile. Disagreement is good, needed lest we become an echo chamber, but I'm exhausted with the "Lets see who we can fuck with next" routine.

You're an idiot.

You talk too much.

It would make for the major course change Paladin said he wanted to see plus it would it would show Gul's giant sized ego was no longer able to abuse other posters by banning them arbitrarially.

Gul stepping down as a mod and owner is clearly the best course of action.

You're missing a golden opportunity here. Invite gturner to join your board. Make him an admin. Hell, make him co-owner. Bet that would class up the place.

Bring back paladin!!!

Obligatory "I made a list! "

My venom is directed at a select few, though it seems like more because those select few tend to post in abundance. I don't like being nasty, and I'd rather make a friend than yet another enemy, but my tolerance for stupidity has reached the very end of its rope. I was so patient for so long, and I saw that being patient only allowed the opportunity for greater stupidity, and while they have a right to be stupid, that right stops when they advocate stupidity into the social, economic, or political sphere.

You, for example, are most assuredly a smartass. There is no question. Sometimes you're a smartass, and I laugh. Sometimes you're a smartass, and I roll my eyes. Regardless, at the very least I know you're a smartass, but you're being a genuine smartass. The same applies to Dayton's inability to comprehend basic concepts beyond his sphere of understanding. Even though he makes me roll my eyes so much I fear permanent damage to my optic nerve, I know I'm talking to Dayton. That goes for Ron Paul (most of the time), and many others. Posters like Flashlight, and gturner, aren't real people. They're not here to shoot the shit, joke around, or get involved in actual discussion. They're here to bother everyone, and to do it to their own entertainment. I have no problem eviscerating them with my words, even though I know it's often ineffective because that's exactly what they want. I've been working harder to control my tongue (or fingertips if you prefer), because I know it's in vain to even bother with those two.

Some posters are just better at getting my ire up, not because they're good at it, but because they dig right into what matters the most and tear away until they get a response. It's because they don't see other posters as human, they see them as constructs to tear down and play with. So even if I get mad at you, which happens a lot because we're polar opposites on many issues, I still respect you, and I still come back around later. It's why even when I get irate with Paladin, I highly respect him, and know that when he discusses something, he's actually put thought into it.

The last thing I want is for this place to become an echo chamber. When one gets too comfortable with their own opinions, those opinions like to become irrefutable facts. It makes for lazy thinking. What I don't like, however, are provocateurs doing nothing more than stinking up the place for their own personal amusement. One could do this back when Wordforge was new, but we live in a very connected world today, and things like that tend to follow you around.

On the plus side, I've now put those people on ignore, and while it's not a perfect solution by any stretch, it helps me avoid their stupidity, and focus instead on how very wrong the rest of you are for disagreeing with me.

When does something go from disagreement to deliberate provocation?

Flashlight would be an excellent example, as would gturner. They exist solely to provoke, and not to engage thought, but to belittle, stir shit, disrupt. They don't actually believe what they say, they say it only to invoke anger or confusion.