2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

LOL - not sure if a "fix" was ever mentioned, Blatham - when I, for instance, moan about rent-an-insult, I vaguely hope that it may lessen, a tad, on any political threads I may open (it doesn't - we, as a species, are, in general, myopic to our own faults, while casting the gaze of an electron microscope upon those of others) the ritual invective. At least, I feel a little better for the moan.

Perhaps, over time, such complaints open our eyes a little to these things? Few of us will (as georgeob so engagingly admitted) admit our faults immediately - but many of us (me included, where i am not totally blind!) will slouch off, muttering bitter invective against our accurate accusers, while denying their accuracy, and quietly change a few things over the next little while.

or not....

Just who do you mean by "Cottonbottom" anyway?

I understand your points, Our Dear Wabbit, and empathize with you. It took me quite a while to achieve my personal state of rhetorical perfection . . .

lol!

Wot the bloody hell has happened to my thread????? Yoikes!

Don't feel too bad, Fishin', we haven't introduced sheep yet, so all is not lost . . .

Woolbottoms?

Hmmmm - well, Fishin', A2k seems to be going through a meta-debate debate, at present, which is spreading itself through several threads.

Or - were you referring to the sheep?

My point is simply this. I don't have much time, so I'll get to the heart of this matter. For me, name calling of people I believe to be criminal and who are hurting me is a vital part of my expression of frustration. I can make my point without it, but it's an issue of poetic license.

Just as Craven needed to say "playground" behavior, not because he couldn't have said it in a different way, but it was important to him, evidently, to use the more colorful word.

OK, gotta go now............Craven I'll get back to you on my "drunk" comment. But I will say that I'm surprised you were offended by it. more later. bye

Tartarin, it has nothing to do with left/right. It has to do with the simple premise that the private user forums were provided as a courtesy and were not to be used to denigrate other members.

You were one of the people using it as a platform to criticize other members. I'd talked to PDiddie a long time ago about making it public, and when it returns it will be.

It was closed due to your (and others') disrespect for the very simple criteria established with those groups, that they would be a place for civil conversation and that they were not a place to denigrate other members.

PUP and the Roundtable are about to change, they will be made public (as PDiddie and IO had discussed weeks ago) and will be given blogs and other tools to have focused political discussions.

My concern is that if people are using it as a staging ground for attacks on other members it will undermine the transition.

But that's not why it was closed, it was closed because the private forum is a courtesy that was extended with the very clearly delienated criteria that it not be used to attack other members.

The overwhelming majority of the PUP participants made it a very civil place that upheld this standard. You decided that it was a place for you to attack Timber and others continued in a similar vein.

For that reason it was temporarily closed, since the very beginning the understanding was clear that those forums existed under the condition that they not be used to denigrate A2K members.

It's a condition that was stipulated to both the Roundtable and PUP groups. I got to play the bad guy on the Roundtable as well.

It's not about "worry" or fun or left or right. It's a veritable pain in the ass of a task and has only the upholding of standards that they were established with.

The forum will re-open and it will serve as a showcase for the issues pertinent to the left, there will be a blog and such. But it's closed now because the private nature of the forum made a few spoilsports decide it was an enclave free of the site rules and a place to launch attacks on other members.

The creation of private forums was with the understanding that private forums could become divisive and fricticious points of contention pretty fast, and yourself and others there proved that point, despite the perfect behavior of the majority of the group.

So it will re-open, and be made public (to view, not to post) and those who do not respect that those forums are not a staging ground for personal attacks will not have access to those forums.

Well, there you have it . . .

Can i get a private forum for discussions about sheep, transporters, SUV's and Jew Bastards with horns?

Actually my exchange with you made me wonder about that. "Playground" was a word that I'd initially considered the most appropriate one. But after your post I replied and removed as many references to "playground" in case the word's "colorfulness" was undermining the point I was trying to make by being gratuitously abrasive.

Just as an aside, you mentioned somehwat of a "calling a spade a spade" argument. I agree with that and like I said, I don't have a problem with someone using ad hominems against politicians as icing on the cake. My qualm was with the use of icing with no cake and when it's done ad nauseum. It's just a quibble, the more pertinent point is that a call to start doing the same when addressing other A2K members is counter-productive.

"Sticking it" to a politician is one thing, to each other here is another. I don't indict the use of pejorative labels for politicians across the board, as you note it's inexorable from some of the emotions politics engenders. Heck in a satire on the Iraq war I wrote I called Bush "Shrub"(and altered the names of everyone in teh satire). I'd thought I'd invented the word and when I found out that it was one of the ad nauseum appelations I ceased to use it.

There is a relatively sound case that can be made that such tactics are needed in politics, but the case becomes weaker when it's presented with the notion that it's needed on A2K and weaker still when members start to advocate the same tactics when addressing each other.

Um... ROTFLMHAO, do ya have yer heart set on it Set?

I'm not so sure. I suspect Blatham is thinking about sheep.

LOL, <grinning> and occasionally <nodding> at dlowan, blatham, georgeob1, setanta, allaya ...

's really cool, how such a heated debate in the end just triggered the gentle-mooded, witty and perceptive in y'all!

sorry for having bored ya with the more rantive parts about how i was bored by .. etc .. meta indeed .. whoknows perhaps there'll be jus' the slightest little change - at the very least it should result in the admittedly long-lacking "sheep, transporters, SUV's and Jew Bastards with horns" forum.

Thank you for your support, Nihm, it is long overdue, and these are topics of the most profound sigficance . . . especailly the part about sheep . . . and i agree that BLatham probably is more concerned about the social issues of our ovine friends than are the rest of us . . .

<blinks at his own post> ... i specifically liked allaya's posts ... they were brilliant.

Yes, Setanta ... in fact, we should consider whether it would actually not be better to create four distinct new forums - or, three perhaps if you put the SUVs and transporters together in one.

This is discussion and debate at an excellent level. I'm proud to be a part of it. And I'm impressed, as is nimh with allaya's posts.

An interesting notion, opening PUP. One assumes that might mean wide open. Having it semi-open -- doing its exotic dance behind a translucent sheet -- seems... novel.

But the nanny approach is wrong, I think. As is your need for a whipping boy (so to speak!). The behaviors and styles in individual A2K threads are the result in large part of behaviors and styles which one finds in each discussion area when one enters, not often (in my observation) the result of individual posts. There are exceptions to this: there have been some weirdos whose whole purpose in life seems to be to play "gotcha" -- they seem to have gone away at least for the time being.

What you are asking for here is a kind of respect-for-the-institution which I don't think has been earned yet, in spite of the fact that so many of us appreciate the time and effort you've put into the technical side of keeping A2K going. Why don't you just take a rest from playing the Bad Guy, as you put it? Let the fray be the fray. Read through some of the less popular, more thoughtful political threads sometime. Except for occasional intrusions from the Gotcha Guys, they have been pretty neat.