326. Jim Furtado Posted: January 11, 2019 at 03:07 PM (#5804757)
OK, I just read the thread. YR has been banned. Although I only vaguely remember seeing the YR handle (usually if someone is a real problem personality I know their handle), if baseball chick says, “yr has been out of the closet with his racism for years”, that’s sufficient justification for me. She and I have interacted quite a bit here and outside the site and I very much respect her judgement.
I’m also closing this thread so I don’t have to deal with it any more. Hopefully this will give me a little time to work on myself. :p
Site is going through an adjustment period. Unfortunately this is the only way unless the site is overhauled from scratch. Twitter, you name it, have had to resort to bannings against long-time users to scrub the site and get the larger user population to understand that the new rules of engagement really do apply. And the owner here has been pretty patient because most sites just get a target list and ban users with past history of serious non-compliance right away once the new ROE are announced to avoid having to waste time with warnings. Warnings are pointless. But really credit the action taken because it’s not easy and some remaining users will complain. And if the site dies it dies right? Nature will decide.
I mean, come on. the guy’s a real self-appointed gunslinger-of-truth who is sometimes pretty tiresome, but his main antagonists are two of the biggest blowhards on the site, and an unrecondite reactionary, all of whom go on and on and on in their fathomless pomposities and who have turned into snowflakes. they’ve done as much damage to BBTF as anyone. frankly, i appreciate his barbs.
i get it. his schtick—aside from the budshovik routine, which i actually agree with on some levels but yes like everybody else i get tired of hearing it—has always been to be contrarian about a certain set of shibboleths on the site. our main problem with him has been his southern white male overcompensating. he has never missed an opportunity to point out the failings of celebrated persons of color as a means to attack what he perceives as a certain kind of liberal hypocrisy in race matters. fair enough. frankly i don’t see the point of hijacking a thread about muhammad ali to point out that the man had some unsavory attachments to african american racists. it struck me as being a bit uncalled for. i don’t think he quite sees that punching up is not the same thing as punching down. but you can’t accuse him of dishonesty. his arguments are closely formulated and i think a lot of the discomfort the community has with him has to do with his savage intellect. and i’ll admit, i did not like having my head handed to me when i made a mistake in an exchange with him a while back.
i’m sorry, folks. he hurt my fee fees, but i don’t want him nuked over it. he’s no rickey! ... he’s one of the funniest and quickest posters on the site. he hasn’t gotten shrill and his remarks have not been nearly as personal as sam or the late (un)lamented joey b or kehoskie or kevin. i just don’t think he’s been particularly odious in his comments, just obnoxious and overbearing. if that’s too fine a distinction, chalk it up to my poor rhetorical skills.
i also want to say that, while i don’t agree with his comments towards blastin in the trevor bauer thread—his characterization of blastin expressing an unruly frustration with white people as a ‘racist comment’ is unfair—it’s part of his idea that he’s a lone ranger of some sort.
but let me add something else. if he’s going to get banned for criticizing organized religions and liberal hypocrisy where he sees it, then i want those other three guys banned. they drag the site down too. i realize that’s not going to happen, but if people are asking for other people to be banned, then i want to submit my requests. i go back to before registration, i only want to mention that in case anyone wants to suggest i haven’t seen the worst of YR because i’m new or something.
Jim, if you’re only vaguely aware of YR’s shtick, then you really need to find a partner or two to run the site. Some active moderation could’ve reined this [stuff] in much, much sooner.
Phredbird, I think you are giving him way too much credit. There weren’t arguments or criticisms behind his shtick. It was pure trolling and the targets were whoever would take the bait.
phredbird and others: Pretty sure the new terms of use said to keep politics out of non politics discussions. Think you could make a pretty clear case that the poster posted about politics at every opportunity. Which means this poster violated the terms defined by the site. Just sharing FWIW.
Nate, MotH, oh for gosh sakes. terms of service? really? YR is the only offender?
i’m sorry, but if you go back and look at his body of work, i think you’ll find he resists getting personal except to attack weak arguments, not people. the two institutions he holds the most contempt for are catholicism and revenue sharing. and really, in the case of catholicism it’s to attack the fact that the church has manifestly proven itself unable to deal with its scandals, which diminishes its standing as a protector of morals. i’m not a friend of his, by the way. he and i have had our differences over his curious utterances about race and liberal hypocrisy, which have apparently been the catalyst for his banning. i read the trevor bauer thread, and i didn’t like his comments, but, again, i don’t think they rose to the level of being banned.
i’ll admit my politics and world view are much more in alignment with YR (except the race thing) than the other posters i referred to earlier. so i guess i’m not that offended by him. i wasn’t clutching my pearls and asking for joey B or kevin to be banned back in the day, and they were easily worse than YR, and even rickey! ... well, maybe not rickey! towards the end.
look, i don’t really care. my participation in the site has dwindled to lurking a bit and making live comments during in-game omnichatters. ultimately, it’s jim’s site to regulate, and he can do what he wants, for sure.
i’ve had my say on this subject, happy trails all.
Nate, MotH, oh for gosh sakes. terms of service? really? YR is the only offender?
i’m sorry, but if you go back and look at his body of work, i think you’ll find he resists getting personal except to attack weak arguments, not people. the two institutions he holds the most contempt for are catholicism and revenue sharing. and really, in the case of catholicism it’s to attack the fact that the church has manifestly proven itself unable to deal with its scandals, which diminishes its standing as a protector of morals. i’m not a friend of his, by the way. he and i have had our differences over his curious utterances about race and liberal hypocrisy, which have apparently been the catalyst for his banning. i read the trevor bauer thread, and i didn’t like his comments, but, again, i don’t think they rose to the level of being banned.
i’ll admit my politics and world view are much more in alignment with YR (except the race thing) than the other posters i referred to earlier. so i guess i’m not that offended by him. i wasn’t clutching my pearls and asking for joey B or kevin to be banned back in the day, and they were easily worse than YR, and even rickey! ... well, maybe not rickey! towards the end.
look, i don’t really care. my participation in the site has dwindled to lurking a bit and making live comments during in-game omnichatters. ultimately, it’s jim’s site to regulate, and he can do what he wants, for sure.
i’ve had my say on this subject, happy trails all.
phredster if you still check back in—I was not tracking every thread 24/7 but that YR poster repeatedly shot in, dropped some WTF political bomb and then dashed. That happened all the time since the owner wiped away the political thread. And in the threads I saw he was the only one. And he got feedback that this was BS from different posters and still did it. I am not 100 percent up on the rules but based on my understanding those actions were violations and repeated violations. Other sites that is more than enough cause for whatever admin to take action. Thanks for reading if you stop by
My take on YR—if it was my site, I wouldn’t have banned him. He did make some valuable contributions to the site and his shtick was allowed to go on for so long that banning as a first step towards tamping it down seemed over-the-top. But I would have suspended him (as I believe was done to Andy once in the past), or given him a pretty specific warning that another infraction would result in permanent banning. If that was already done in the past then I agree with the banning.
The fact is, he dropped off-topic political bombs even after the OTP thread was banished from the Newsblog. He repeatedly would come out of nowhere with religious attacks on snapper in threads that had nothing to do with religion. Even if you don’t like snapper, comments like that, if unchallenged, will drive away other Catholic readers (and if challenged they completely derail discussions, as happened in the Bauer thread). The comments to Blastin’ were just the straw that broke the camel’s back here.
Lest someone accuse me of being a conservative Christian snowflake, I’m a liberal and (I believe) a member of the same religion as YR.
Incorrigible trolls are the symptom, not the disease. Jim initiated a discussion about sustainable changes to the site, and there hasn’t been any progress in that discussion in a month now…
Incorrigible trolls are the symptom, not the disease. Jim initiated a discussion about sustainable changes to the site, and there hasn’t been any progress in that discussion in a month now…
I thought adhering to the newly defined site rules of engagement was a kind of progress since he branded the place a no politics zone and the posters zapped crossed that line. But I get where you are coming from
Based on others claiming that traffic sucks and with no data available either historic or current I will share just today all the baseball specific threads with traffic (excluding culture discussion and nba discussion)
This is a variety of topics which seems like a good sign, right? And that Hall of Merit place is busy all the time. Or seems like it. And that Cubs specific discussion is ongoing as they try to find a way to destroy the Stearns Deathstar currently under construction.
Just noticed and thought I would share.
Newsblog: Thibs’ Hall of Fame Tracker
Hall of Merit: Evaluating Relievers
Newsblog: The Best Ever to Never Claim an MVP Award
Newsblog: Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-17-2019
Newsblog: Texas Rangers Hall of Fame pitcher John Wetteland arrested on child sex abuse charge
Newsblog: The Phillies are very much in on Bryce Harper, Manny Machado but won’t sign both
Gonfalon Cubs: Now what?
Newsblog: Bob Costas Says He’s Done With NBC After 40 Years
Newsblog: Two Mets ranked on MLB Network’s Top 10 Second Basemen list
Newsblog: MLB Trade Rumors: Phillies Frontrunners To Sign Bryce Harper
Newsblog: Source: White Sox offer to Manny Machado ‘was for less than 8 years’
Newsblog: How Giants’ park dimensions, location can help free agent recruiting
Newsblog: Pirates great Steve Blass to stop broadcasting after 2019 season
