Official "Lasciate ogne speranza" whinge-thread

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Cheesehead... With the greatest of serenity, it would do you good to try to take everything a little less seriously.

Most of us here are very serious; but somehow we still enjoy humor.

Explain to me the humor involved in not only banishing this sincere on-topic post (minus the sarcastic title) from the thread in which I posted it, but also falsely accusing me of "hyperpartisanship" and having posted "the most contorted and blatant spin job I've seen in quite a while", plus falsely attributing to me numerous ideas (e.g., "you credit Obama with the reduced spending", "your 'Obama the frugal' label") that I never expressed ... all without anyone's having posted evidence that there was any factual error in the article I linked and quoted.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by garo

Though I am sure a certain individual would be here defending this latest outrage.

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Please tell us who that certain individual is.

I'm about 80% sure he meant you, cheesehead. The subsequent humour involving Dick Cheney made me smile a bit, but the general misrepresentation of your views is not in the least bit funny. I find that ugly and distasteful despite the fact that I am not personally affected by it. You are affected by it, and I find your obvious annoyance understandable.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

I'm about 80% sure he meant you, cheesehead. The subsequent humour involving Dick Cheney made me smile a bit, but the general misrepresentation of your views is not in the least bit funny. I find that ugly and distasteful despite the fact that I am not personally affected by it. You are affected by it, and I find your obvious annoyance understandable.

I'm about to start a new thread for discussion of such matters.

[cheesehead]

[OT]

Administrators:

I don't mind, and indeed expect, that my post #77 will and should be moved to a separate thread, on grounds of off-topicness for this one ... as long as other, relatedly-off-topic preceding posts, and relatedly-off-topic comments within some otherwise on-topic posts, are also moved along with it.

By "relatedly-off-topic" I mean comments and posts directed in a non-friendly^* manner toward individual forum posters rather than toward third parties outside this forum.

Example: though this thread's title and OP's main statements of topic refer to Obama administration actions, the OP included one off-topic sentence ("Though I am sure a certain individual would be here defending this latest outrage.") apparently directed at me, falsely insinuating, without any supporting evidence, that _I_ would defend the just-revealed "latest outrage".

That is as off-topic as my post #77, and I expect it to be given the same banishing-to-a-separate-thread treatment as given to my post #77, because the same principle applies: it's about another forum participant (in a non-friendly manner) rather than about the topic of Obama administration misdeeds.

For administrators' assistance, here's a partial list (I may have overlooked some) of other relatedly-off-topic posts in this thread, which I expect to be given the same treatment as my post #77:

posts #10 (Note that garo did not apply his "zero-tolerance on off-topic crap" to his own sentence in post #1), #15, #63-64, #67, #69-70, #72-73, #75 and #78-79 ... and this one, of course.

I'm only asking for fair treatment here.

- - -

^* For instance, posts #55-61 are friendly.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

though this thread's title and OP's main statements of topic refer to Obama administration actions, the OP included one off-topic sentence ("Though I am sure a certain individual would be here defending this latest outrage.") apparently directed at me, falsely insinuating, without any supporting evidence, that _I_ would defend the just-revealed "latest outrage".

It's called "sarcasm" - learning to recognize and deal with appropriately is as much a part of the normal life and becoming-an-adult experience as recognition/appreciation of humor, which you also appear to be utterly incapable of. Now, these things may genuinely be symptoms of some genuine medical condition which is beyond your control, but as your cognitive functioning appears to be unimpaired, surely you must recognize by now that your repeated infliction of whiny, self-centered, discussion-minutiae-obsessed ramblings on every thread whose tenor is not to your liking is not welcome. And couching it in I-was-wronged/woe-is-me silliness like "I expect these incredibly valuable posts of mine to be moved by the evildoers running the show here" doesn't mitigate it.

If you have nothing positive/informative (the latter in the sense that it's not all about you and your accumulated mountain of perceived slights) to contribute, you have the option of just reading and even of doing other things with your oh-so-valuable time.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

It's called "sarcasm"

Yes, but it's as off-topic as the other posts I listed.

Sarcasm is a poor way to usefully communicate justifiable grievances. I would have appreciated your (and garo's, where applicable) honest, straightforward explanations of your actual objections to some of my posts ... IF you had ever offered such a thing. But your (uncontrollable??) resort to sarcasm does nothing to actually solve the problem. Instead, I've learned important aspects of your real objections only through conversations with another moderator who spoke honestly to me.

I can tell when a comment is sarcastic -- what I can't necessarily figure out right away is the real motive for directing sarcasm to me.

If you'd adopt a habit of posting honest, non-evasive, non-sarcastic objections to posts you don't like (at least, before or in addition to the evasion and sarcasm, but be careful about intermixing), it'd be much easier and faster for the poster to figure out how not to raise your ire in the future -- that is, _if_ your real motive is to persuade the poster to stop doing what irritates you.

which you also appear to be utterly incapable of.

... for which accusation you offer no supporting evidence, as usual.

Now, these things may genuinely be symptoms of some genuine medical condition which is beyond your control, but as your cognitive functioning appears to be unimpaired, surely you must recognize by now that your repeated infliction of whiny, self-centered, discussion-minutiae-obsessed ramblings on every thread whose tenor is not to your liking is not welcome.

You've often conflated separate issues that merit different types of response:

1) that my criterion for forum posting differs from yours, but does not violate any posted requirements visible to participants, and indeed is more consonant with Xyzzy's expressed desire for diversity than your desire for conformity,

2) that after I point out your logic flaws or lack of evidence you tend to respond by turning up your sarcasm about me instead of honestly explaining your irritation, pointing out anything I wrote that's actually incorrect, or admitting/correcting your mistake in that instance, and

3) that I sometimes (often when, yes, some genuine medical condition -- over which I may have exercised less control than I ought to have exercised -- occurs to impair my overall awareness of focus) do get into a tunnel-vision, "minutiae-obsessed" mood. I have publicly asked other participants to help me in this regard by alerting me to possible instances where this may be occurring, and now I'm repeating that request.

You need to learn to tolerate #1, without hurling stuff like "extreme political bias".

If your real motive is to persuade me to change my behavior, you need to replace your habit #2 with straightforwardness.

You need to stop using #3 as an excuse to hide your real objections to #1 and #2.

And couching it in I-was-wronged/woe-is-me silliness

By continuing to conflate those separate issues, you mistakenly and wrongly attribute my complaints to an incorrect motive (#3, or some other irrelevancy), and thus deflect readers' attention to issues #1 and #2 above. Are you doing that consciously?

like "I expect these incredibly valuable posts of mine to be moved by the evildoers running the show here"

You did it in May of last year, and again more recently. Why not now? (This isn't going to be a regular chore, now that I've finally figured out what's going on here and will adjust my posting habits accordingly.)

In accordance with my announcement of starting a new separate thread for discussion of issues related to personal criticism of me, I hereby also declare that:

From now on, I will strive to avoid littering your (and garo's, and others') threads with the sort of off-topic responses to off-topic unfriendly personal remarks that so irk you (and others).

The main reason I haven't done this earlier is that I had not yet sufficiently analyzed your conflations to determine your real motives. Your conflations, evasions and refusals to honestly say what you've meant haven't helped me do that.

If you have nothing positive/informative (the latter in the sense that it's not all about you and your accumulated mountain of perceived slights) to contribute, you have the option of just reading and even of doing other things with your oh-so-valuable time.

If you:

continue to mislead your readers about the actual separate issues #1 and #2 above, and/or

disguise your objections to them by couching them as though they referred to issue #3 or some other irrelevancy, and/or

use phrases such as "Beats trying to have any kind of rational discussion with Herr Käsekopf, don't it?" without having first tried to have such rational discussion without dishonesty, evasion and sarcasm,

then I will continue pointing out your deceptions and evasions in whatever part of the forum is available to me, but without inserting such remarks into threads where they'd be off-topic. (This is my goal. I may occasionally forget and make such an off-topic post, but I will appreciate having that mistake promptly pointed out to me.)

- - -

Ernst,

I've long admired and respected your mountain of positive contribution to this forum, especially about economics, and still do. Your excursions into improper criticism of me tarnish that record, but are correctable.

[cheesehead]

Ernst,

Another way of looking at this is: What are your honest motives?

Have you actually wanted me to stop certain posting habits that irritated you, such as repeatedly posting about politics in your "Mystery Economic Theater" threads? I've been told that is something that irritates you, but IIRC you've never straightforwardly expressed that to me. I had to learn it from someone else. If you had honestly explained that to me when it first started irritating you, I could have stopped doing that years ago, and found a different way of linking my political posts to economics.

Or have you really wanted me to continue the irritating habit, so that you could derive some kind of pleasure from endless noninformative, nonproductive bitching and bitching? Let me point out that this alternative -- like any other dishonest alternative -- has the drawback of misleading or confusing your readers. Do you _want_ or _intend_ to mislead or confuse your readers?

- -

As to the so-called "nanoquoting": if you'd plainly explained what you or George meant by that, I could have tried some alternatives that irritated you less. (Again, I had to find out from someone else what you meant.)

Did you get so much self-pleasure from using that term without defining it that you couldn't bring yourself to be more straightforward to me? Was that self-pleasure worth whatever confusion and misdirection it might have caused your readers?

Do you get a kick out of perpetuating a "Nyah, nyah, I know what I mean by that term, but you don't" situation so that you can feel superior?

- -

About our differences in criteria for posting --

I never knew until just a few days ago that:

a) you've always intended to specifically and consistently criticize the current administration regardless of which party was in power,

b) you consider that alternation to be "bipartisan" (I'd call it "alternatingly anti-partisan" or something else along that line -- it's certainly not consistent with the common usage of "bipartisan" such as in "Today, Senators reached bipartisan agreement on Bill 9999."), and

c) you think so very, very highly of the particular criterion you've chosen for deciding what to post that you feel justified in endlessly needling someone else just because their criterion for deciding what to post is not the same as yours (but without your ever honestly revealing that motive). How conceited.

Have you ever stopped to consider that diversity in this forum, stated to be a chief goal by Xyzzy, is not furthered by harassing someone else until they use the same posting-choice criteria that you use?

Is not my own criterion of specializing in posting certain topics that were not being addressed by anyone else, and avoiding "me, too"s, consistent with a forum goal of diversity?

[Brian-E]

Moderator note:
The foregoing posts have been moved from the thread "Obama administration snooping on citizens (just in case)".

Cheesehead: my apologies for not doing the same with other off topic posts in that thread as you suggested. My main motivation is to keep the original thread from being diverted and to allow people to continue with the original topic there, so I am biased when it comes to lengthy diversions. My action may be over-ruled or altered by supermods who see it differently from me.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

Cheesehead: my apologies for not doing the same with other off topic posts in that thread as you suggested. My main motivation is to keep the original thread from being diverted and to allow people to continue with the original topic there, so I am biased when it comes to lengthy diversions.

Why only the "lengthy" diversions?

chalsall's posts #15, #69 and #75 are completely off-topic. Why are they allowed to stay?

My post #72 and xilman's #73 are off-topic. Why are they allowed to stay?

Each of those five posts also diverts the thread from its original topic!

None of those five posts contributes a relevant idea to the on-topic discussion!

Removal of those five posts would not deprive the on-topic discussion of a single relevant idea.

How does your expressed motivation, "to keep the original thread from being diverted and to allow people to continue with the original topic there" fail to apply to #15, 69, 72, 73 and 75 also? (Why would length or word count have anything to do with that? Diversion is diversion.)

In particular, by leaving #15, #69 and #75 you leave in off-topic digs at me without allowing all my responses to be in the same thread so readers can get a fair picture of what went on. My response #72 is no more on-topic than the post #69 to which it replied, nor was xilman's #73. Putting them all in this thread would bring together these related posts, for less confusion of future readers.

I'm not insisting that every itty-bitty off-topic post be removed from all forum threads. I'm just concerned with the incomplete and unfair treatment in this particular thread. The five posts I list here are all connected to the same reason for off-topicness as the posts you _did_ move, so should be treated the same!

[chalsall]

Cheesehead... Your slip is showing....

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Cheesehead... Your slip is showing....

Why do you post with such low S/N ratios?