I’m not banning the phrase “Keeeeed”. It is often the appropriate response. I doubt Keeed disagrees.

As I said, I will try it.

From what I can tell your views are largely driven by what will antagonize us by being slightly contrarian to the sub. I am pretty sure that is the definition of a troll. But carry on good sir.

Flattered that i got to you so hard a few weeks ago that you feel the need to post a reply to almost everything I post.

You could let it go man. It would be good for you.

The fact that expressing views slightly contrarian to the mainstream of the forum is interpreted by many in this forum as "trolling" says a lot more about those taking offense than these alleged "trolls".

I agree with the forum 98% of the time. That is some impressive 4D trolling on my part.

I have 15,000 posts and my political view has been constant for all of them. That is not trolling. It is having a (very slightly) different opinion on a few specific issues than you.

This is the echo chamber problem. This forum is loathe to allow even minor variation from the norm.

How am I a troll?

This is a fools errand. There is zero chance any amount of modding is going to save the forum.

This is Mason's single example of the kind of nasty post he wants to put a stop to. Good ****ing luck guys.

I was actually encouraged when I read Mason's post and jman's responses on the changes in moderation.

I actually still do come - almost daily - to 2+2 politics even though I stopped posting. The information is actually good. It's a nice distillation. I just stopped posting because every post I made, I was responded with absolute vitriol. Indeed, this is why we have an echo chamber in this forum to this day, because I'm sure rara and seattlelou and others were just tired of things like the below.

Here's one of my last posts in October when I was reading the Presidential thread and someone brought up Trump's lobby and the bar tab so I figured I'd dip my toes back in.

re: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: No smocking guns.

ScreaminAsian
awval attended a trump rally, bought a $13 cocktail at the trump international hotel, and then voted for him. wtf lol i'll never trust a pharmacist again

Trolly McTrollson
There’s no way he paid less than $20 for that cocktail.

awval999
It was in the mid-teens, but I'm sure with tax and tip it was $40 for two.
You are paying for the ambiance of the lobby and the atmosphere.
The lobby is gorgeous.

Clovis8
**** off nazi. Go crawl back under your hood. You are loathed by everyone itt.

BOIDS
i think part of the revulsion is because gold plating now brings to mind things like family separations and klan rallies. you've got to remember that awval doesn't mind that stuff, so adjust the aesthetics upward from his perspective

dth123451
**** you Awval

awval999
Good God, guys.
You act like I compared it to the inside of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the Eiffel Tower at twilight on a warm summer's evening, or the birth of your first child.
Would you prefer the following instead -- It's an interesting place to have an overpriced drink in a nice looking hotel lobby on a trip to Washington DC.

Jiggymike
Good god guys I only cried when I voted in a fascist racist President, you act like he wore a tan suit!

Paul D
You would've said the same thing about the Berghof in the 30s

awval, do you regret voting for Trump? would you vote for him again?

Will,

The Management of this site has threatened to close this forum on several occasions over the past decade and a half. If everyone tones it down a bit it will be fine.

Regards,

—jman220

I get it if there are posters that want to put me on ignore for a drunk "We took our country back" on election night. And not all of the posts were vitriol in that post series, there was a nice discussion of chandeliers and arches.

I would like to be able to post about tax rates and ending the goverment shutdown and wall or no wall, but why bother when the debate isn't about why those ideas are wrong or close to being right or hey we can all get aboard that idea, but the responses would have been... "get out of here nazi".

We had a baby last year, in a different time or place I would have posted that in the LC thread, but I decided not to, because I didn't want several quotes about having an Aryan baby, Heil Hitler.

I thought about responding and saying I'd create a new OP for the Trump 2.0 thread, but decided against it.

So I will try to post again in the mega thread and see if jman's moderation changes will change the trajectory of the forum.

My response to you avwal should have gotten me a temp ban. For that I apologize. We all often use you as a cipher for our frustration with today’s politics because you started the thread.

I will say it is very odd you have not posted any type of regret to date.

I'd suggest temp-banning and putting them in for an exile, that will limit the ATF threads which raise the visibility of the forum in ways we don't want.

I disagree. As someone who can go on and on a bit a short one word response to a ridiculous argument is often as effective as a wall of text. Context matters, it is more likely to be effective if it is by someone who has been active in the conversation than as the first response to a post.

Me regretting or not regretting won't change the outcome. I have been blessed with many great things since his election, but I'm not naive enough to think that his election was the cause of that. Or that I wouldn't have the same things if Clinton was President.

I personally hope he does not run in 2020, so I am not faced with that choice.

Nah, that's a misread. Clovis is more of a how-do-you-fellow-kids type, say a conservative Dem if he were American. Wants to parlay assumed cred from his war stories of the Battle for Seattle into support for like, innovation-friendly tax regimes and whatnot. Nowhere near a troll or even a contrarian.

Question for the mods: I include the bolded as a test case. I think it's a fairly representative example of a way in which I might describe another poster (not necessarily Clovis) while in conversation, with them or others. Is that now considered over the line?

Haha so Mason basically is trump at this point? Just smile and nod along to his babbling then carry on as normal and hope he gets distracted by a shiny object?

Yeah, this is what I’ll do now that I understand how the exile system works.

I agree, the underlying assumption that everyone's view is sacred and deserves respect is just not true and has demonstrably led us to the current situation where pseudo-scientific crack pot theories are given legitimacy because "every view deserves respect." And it gets trickier when it starts getting hidden in things like voter ID, where everyone knows it's to suppress POC's votes and yet you can still argue for it because "it just makes sense that you positively id the person voting" even if the solution to the problem costs millions of dollars and stops an insignificant amount of fraudulent votes.

How is it any worse than those posters making one sentence or one paragraph posts saying the post is wrong. I'd rather scroll through a dozen words than a dozen paragraphs showing disdain for a post.

You just don't have any idea what the actual time requests you are making on the mods are.

Despite my posting of 'lol' I am pretty certain I have never been infracted in politics for any attacks or anything ever. I fear the wrong words will have Mason snap banning me though.

So maybe stop @ing Mason then? Don’t poke the angry bear!

That's true. How long would it take to add the details of the infraction and a link to the post to a running list like Elliot used to update? I think it would only take a minute or two but what am I missing?