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Split from "Clean it up" Take 4

Bret Sabermetric Apr 26 2006 07:40 PM

Sure you don't want to split up the replies in the split-up thread? KC and Cooby might catch some of my cooties. This is a big job you're taking on here, segregating all my posts into their own hermetically sealed cells, Sheriff. I guess that's why you earn the big bucks.

duan Apr 26 2006 08:01 PM

Sal/Brett .... Look, you and I disagree about LOTS of baseball stuff. That's good and that's fine. And I've read what you say below and clearly you're claiming that you're going to act within the 'letter of the law' but not necessarily the spirt. However, as someone whose day to day work involves some level of supervision of discussion boards and websites I feel that an implicit threat to basically 'make life difficult' is both unnecessary, unwarranted and unfair to people who've set something up and have run it for the greater good. There's no money in this for Edgy or KC and for you to even imply that their might be is wrong. In fact, I'm sure it costs plenty, even if you don't allow for the man hours they both put in. As far as I'm concerned this isn't about the first amendment (and well, in my country we don't have it and libel and slander are judge on entirely different bases), but about the fundamental respect and human decency that I believe people should have when they discourse with each other. I think, even if you disagree with them, that they're entitled to respect for what they give. However if you feel what they've done is of no value and therefore do not respect it you should step back from engaging in a one man shouting match with both of them and either set up your own forum or post elsewhere. I hope that isn't the case, for while we disagree on baseball, I reckon we share a lot in terms of world view and I'm happy to have posted alongside you over a number of years and am 100% truthful when I say that this place has been FAR more enlightening than MOFO ever was. Anyway, I'm sure you can pick apart holes in my thoughts here, after all it's nearly 1 am here, I'm tired and heading for bed but I just thought I'd try and tell you how I fell you're coming across.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 26 2006 08:31 PM

I realize how I'm coming across, duan. And I would respectfully submit that well-meaning people like you, who only want some peace and quiet, don't seem to understand how hard I worked to make this a place where all sorts of voices can be heard, only to get removed from my administrative post from Edgy because I disagreed with him as to Piazza's productive future and then to have all sorts of personal attacks on me allowed by Edgy while any sort of response-in-kind from me was discouraged, first by Edgy then by his hatchetman KC. It just doesn't seem right to me that I should just get their message and fade quietly. If they could do this to me, someday they may decide to target you. These people are evil, and they're vindictive, and they want to run their world as they please without a word of criticism or dissent. I dissent from that. It's pretty simple. They can ban me, and I'm quite sure they will. What they can't do is force me to kowtow to their standards of mild and acceptable dissent. Sometimes the truth isn't pretty and isn't what you want to hear. But it doesn't stop being true just because you have the brute force to stifle it. You will be poorer the day my voice is silenced, and that day is coming soon.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 26 2006 08:52 PM

IOW, my leaving is exactly what Edgy is hoping for, so that his two dreams will come true: 1) I'm gone 2) the little sanctimonious shit-weasel will get to claim "Oh, golly, we hate to ban people--see how we declined to ban even that nasty prick Bret who called people things like "nasty prick,' if you can imagine that. Who ever uses such foul language, anyway, except that nasty prick? Oh, how we tried for a civil tone in our nice little friendly forum, but that asshole had to spoil the high-minded tone we so carefully established." And on and on. It's sort of like what he thought he'd get when he lost the whole Piazza discussion--instead of thinking "Hmmm, maybe my whole aproach to Sal--the bit about 'What entertains you about loudly saying hostile things that are clearly untrue when measured by any sound elementary logic?' in particular--was a little over-the-top, since every goddamned word the guy speculated about came through, right on the money (which I ended costing Ralph plenty of), so maybe I need to back off his ass for a little while, and concede that I might have been a tad defensive and hostile myself about Piazza's future," Edgy went in the opposite direction: "I'll marginalize Sal, in my passive-aggressive womanish way, and let other people insult him and get all personal and abusive to him, and then when he responds, I'll let them gang up on him, and when he asks them to take all the personal stuff to the Red Light Forum, I won't enforce shit, and eventually he'll go away and leave me alone." That didn't happen. All that happened was I lost my remaining motivation to treat him courteously. Don't you agree that my contempt for that little devious and sanctimonious shit-weasel is so much clearer now than it was a year ago? So I'm staying put right now. But I do hear your point, duan, and thank you for your civility. If you need a place to contact me (to send me the $30 baseball tome, perhaps?) try bretsabermetric@yahoo.com

old original jb Apr 26 2006 09:10 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: You will be poorer the day my voice is silenced, and that day is coming soon. I'll be sure to write to Amnesty International when it happens.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 26 2006 09:14 PM

I mean, just look at this bulldoody he's serving you up with a spoon: "We will do this as objectively as possible, and apply the same standard to all posters. Nonetheless, we will use our own judgment on a case-by-case basis." This is why I've come to hold this cretin in such low regard. If he would have the stones to say, "I'm banning Bret. I just hate the guy, and I want him gone," he wouldn't get a syllable of objection from the CPF. (Some people might regret it, but not enough to matter, and I'm sure they'd keep their regrets to themselves.) But he's far too eager to preserve his image as a decent, reasonable fellow to do that, so he tries to peddle this line of self-righteous pap to you, and you swallow it and beg for more.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 26 2006 09:20 PM

old original jb wrote: ="Bret Sabermetric"] You will be poorer the day my voice is silenced, and that day is coming soon. I'll be sure to write to Amnesty International when it happens. Good one, Herr Doktor. Be sure to see that all your patients are checked for fillings when they're removed from the crematoria.

martin Apr 26 2006 09:33 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: I mean, just look at this bulldoody he's serving you up with a spoon: "We will do this as objectively as possible, and apply the same standard to all posters. Nonetheless, we will use our own judgment on a case-by-case basis." This is why I've come to hold this cretin in such low regard. yunno, calling the dude a cretin doesnt help if you are trying to make it appear that you are being set-up for non-objective treatment. are you trying to win an contest or something? if so, try this: "i never call anyone names, fucker!"

Bret Sabermetric Apr 26 2006 09:36 PM

The way I figure, I've already won. No need for vulgar language, Martin. Tut, tut.

martin Apr 26 2006 09:44 PM

we are all winners. that was a good exchange, lets do it again sometime. i dunno what the phrase "tut tut" means, but i will research it.

old original jb Apr 26 2006 09:50 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: ="old original jb"] Bret Sabermetric wrote: You will be poorer the day my voice is silenced, and that day is coming soon. I'll be sure to write to Amnesty International when it happens. Good one, Herr Doktor. Be sure to see that all your patients are checked for fillings when they're removed from the crematoria. This just speaks for itself.

Nymr83 Apr 26 2006 09:59 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: ="old original jb"] Bret Sabermetric wrote: You will be poorer the day my voice is silenced, and that day is coming soon. I'll be sure to write to Amnesty International when it happens. Good one, Herr Doktor. Be sure to see that all your patients are checked for fillings when they're removed from the crematoria. you post shit like this and then wonder why people are offended by your behavior?

DocTee Apr 26 2006 10:04 PM

Personally, I find Bret's analysis insightful and his delivery humorous. I'd hate to see anyone-- particularly him, especially him-- silenced. If you are so caught up in what one poster says or does, the you're way too high-strung or lead far too easy of a life. Let Bret post. Let Bret curse. Let others fret and respond in kind. Let freedom ring!

Nymr83 Apr 26 2006 10:10 PM

]Let Bret post. Let Bret curse. Let others fret and respond in kind. I like when Bret posts about baseball I don't care when Bret curses I don't really mind when he curses at someone, even if it's me I DO mind when he jokes about the holocaust putting all personal attacks in the RLF is a good idea. Why don't we just leave it at that and get back to talking baseball?

old original jb Apr 26 2006 10:16 PM

DocTee wrote: Personally, I find Bret's analysis insightful and his delivery humorous. I'd hate to see anyone-- particularly him, especially him-- silenced. If you are so caught up in what one poster says or does, the you're way too high-strung or lead far too easy of a life. Let Bret post. Let Bret curse. Let others fret and respond in kind. Let freedom ring! I'm really, really hoping that you didn't have a chance yet to read what he posted just prior to your saying this. Personally, I think that when someone compares his suffering on an internet forum to the holocaust, maybe it is that person who is "too high strung" or has led "far too easy a life".

Nymr83 Apr 26 2006 10:24 PM

old original jb wrote: ="DocTee"]Personally, I find Bret's analysis insightful and his delivery humorous. I'd hate to see anyone-- particularly him, especially him-- silenced. If you are so caught up in what one poster says or does, the you're way too high-strung or lead far too easy of a life. Let Bret post. Let Bret curse. Let others fret and respond in kind. Let freedom ring! I'm really, really hoping that you didn't have a chance yet to read what he posted just prior to your saying this. Personally, I think that when someone compares his suffering on an internet forum to the holocaust, maybe it is that person who is "too high strung" or has led "far too easy a life". He also had Jesus carrying the cross as his avatar for awhile...

DocTee Apr 26 2006 10:55 PM

Clearly, I hope, I don't condone such statements. And trivializing the Holocaust is not appropriate for a baseball forum. I'm just saying that if we pay Bret-- or other (apparently) obnoxious posters-- no mind, (rather than get ourselves worked up over their posts) we would diffuse the situation. Getting into flamewars and ad hominem attacks only fuels the fire-- rather than respond to outlandish statements, chuckle, sigh, kick the cat-- but just ignore them, and they'll stop if they get no response. Ignore, don't censor.

Rotblatt Apr 27 2006 12:24 AM

]"I'll marginalize Sal, in my passive-aggressive womanish . . ." Or to paraphrase, "I'm not saying that Edgy should be barefoot and pregnant, but he has no place in the dugout." Shame on you, Sal. First archaic sexism, then anti-Seminitism? What's next? Anyway, I frankly like the idea of moving personal attacks to the red-light forum, and I entirely supported Edgy's initial post. Then I saw the red-light forum. I REALLY don't understand culling all of Sal's colorful screeds and moving them into their own, discreet RLF threads. As I understand it, the red light forum exists as a way for posters to air personal differences and move past them. Isolating Sal's posts, then ignoring them isn't doing anything aside from pissing Sal off. And I don't blame him. If you want to ban him, then ban him. If you have a personal beef with Sal, then hash it out with him the RLF. Starting a pissing contest solves nothing.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 27 2006 01:33 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Apr 27 2006 08:12 AM

Rotblatt wrote: [Shame on you, Sal. First archaic sexism, then anti-Seminitism? What's next? . Well, in my defense, I've been making more analogies to slavery, and lynching and racial bigotry than to the Holocaust or sexism, but really any context where someone is made into a dehumanized object of ridicule for the amusement of others who fail to see their oppresiveness while celebrating their own enlightened thinking, will do, for my purposes. The more tasteless, the better. The important part is that you understand that I feel fully alienated from Edgy and from KC for elevating our disagreements over baseball to a toxic level where we can no longer speak civilly to each other. I thought it would be interesting and lively to keep posting in a Mets forum after I no longer felt supportive of the Mets, I thought I was adding a little unusual perspective to the forum, but apparently they can't tolerate the so-called ill-will that my opinions generated in them, so they colluded to deny me the right to use bad words like "faeces" while allowing others to take a dump all over my posts and laugh about it. I understand that people don't care about this issue (and why should they, I agree) but I feel wounded and offended by this kind of pettiness and bitchery from people I once considered friends. The gentlemanly thing to do, I agree, would be to slink out of this Forum because I've offended my hosts,. but I think they've offended me much more. It's always Edgy's option, of course, to ignore me if he feels he can't deign to waste his time by responding to my questions and comments, but I find that sort of rude. Extended over a year or more, it's damned rude, and I made up my mind to stop behaving like that was okay with me, which I did for the first few months, figuring that he would get over his hissy-fit. You want to pretend to have some manners, you shallow fake? Well, I'm not playing that shit. If you want to silence me, then you can chop my posts into a thousand pieces and send them flying all over any Forum you choose, and you can make it unpleasant for me to post here, and you can ask your fellow admins to join you in ostrasizing me. You can even tell the world that you're merely enforcing some long-standing principle of the CPF in moving posts and sending them to the Red Light Forum, though I asked KC politely for weeks (even opened up threads there) to kindly discuss my personality flaws out of the Baseball forum. All you had to do to demonstrate genuine interest in keeping the Forum civil was to send one of his posts to the Red Light Forum. Did you do that? Of course not. How could KC ever get personal or insulting or digressive? KC's your buddy. I'm not sure anyone, even your most severely deluded follower, is buying the incredible series of flatout lies you posted in the first few paragraphs of this thread[OE: the sticky thread in the Baseball Forum, that is--got to keep up with all the Forum-switching around here now]--they are your monument to your own weakness as a writer and as a human being.I hope you keep that sticky up for everyone to marvel at. If you believe that bullshit yourself, then you're the only one here who does, whatever comforting assurances to the contrary people are telling you. But the only thing I won't do is stop posting. If you want to get rid of me, you're going to have to ban me for disagreeing with you over Mike Piazza's centrality to the 2004 Mets. You can call the ban anything you like--for foul language, for uncivil discourse, for wrecking baseball threads with personal invective, for trolling, for writing short posts or long ones, for spinning webs of rhetoric and words and lettters that confuse KC--I don't care what you claim it's for. I know, and you know, that this is completely about your humiliation over Piazza's's failure to bail you out in 2004. Rather than admit that I might have had a point, you preferred to escalate this disagreement to this extreme level and make up all sorts of deflective nonsense about what I've done to irritate you. What I did is speculate correctly about Piazza's future. I plead guilty to that. The rest is all you, however you want to spin it.

Rotblatt Apr 27 2006 07:55 AM

Rotblatt wrote: ]"I'll marginalize Sal, in my passive-aggressive womanish . . ." Or to paraphrase, "I'm not saying that Edgy should be barefoot and pregnant, but he has no place in the dugout." Shame on you, Sal. First archaic sexism, then anti-Seminitism? What's next? Anyway, I frankly like the idea of moving personal attacks to the red-light forum, and I entirely supported Edgy's initial post. Then I saw the red-light forum. I REALLY don't understand culling all of Sal's colorful screeds and moving them into their own, discreet RLF threads. As I understand it, the red light forum exists as a way for posters to air personal differences and move past them. Isolating Sal's posts, then ignoring them isn't doing anything aside from pissing Sal off. And I don't blame him. If you want to ban him, then ban him. If you have a personal beef with Sal, then hash it out with him the RLF. Starting a pissing contest solves nothing. And this post was a personal insult to someone because . . .

Bret Sabermetric Apr 27 2006 08:19 AM

On the possibility that you'll get no answer from the admins, I'll offer a now-deposed admin's guess: the innocent will have to suffer along with Bret. If you talk to him, and teacher catches you, you too will be sent to the Red Light Forum, a few posts at a time, until your posts and his, make zero sense out of context. Eventually, you'll learn not to talk with him. Of course, the alternative would be to send ONLY my posts over here, depriving them of context completely. It might even seem that I'm posting exclusively to and for myself. Under the Soviet Union, this used to be the preferential way to handle dissident writers: send 'em to a gulag for a few years and claim they're nuts. After a while, many of them will be, or at least appear to be so isolated that they've completely lost their social skills. For more information, ask jb. I'm sure he's aware of the evils to which psychiatric intervention can be used, and reasonable shrinks can appear to be neutral, even friendly, while collaborating in the most evil of policies.

Willets Point Apr 27 2006 09:20 AM

The Baseball Forum is the place for arguing about baseball. The Red Light Forum is the place for arguing about one another. Simple as that.

KC Apr 27 2006 09:24 AM

It is very simple, unless someone choses to complicate it. I prefer simple and uncomplicated.

Rotblatt Apr 27 2006 09:37 AM

="Willets Point"]The Baseball Forum is the place for arguing about baseball. The Red Light Forum is the place for arguing about one another. Simple as that. I see. So the appropriate forum to discuss my dissapointment with the admin's enforcement of their new policy is not in the thread where discussion of said policy is taking place, but in the Red Light Forum? I suppose I should have posted it in the bitch to the admins forum, but there was already discussion going on about the policy in the thread where I posted it. Let me be crystal clear here. I think you are all acting like babies. Figure your disagreement out privately between yourselves so the rest of us can get back to talking about baseball. If you don't want to talk to each other in this forum, pick up the phone or do it in person. Don't you all know each other anyway? I pity the hapless fellow who, excited about the Mets victory last night and looking for a community of intelligent Mets fans with whom to discuss said victory, stumbles across this site. edited for grammar.

metsmarathon Apr 27 2006 09:43 AM

Rotblatt wrote: I pity the hapless fellow who, excited about the Mets victory last night and looking for a community of intelligent Mets fans to discuss said victory with, stumbles across this site. hey, that's exaclty how i felt about my last internet home! also, its the most important point to consider.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 27 2006 09:58 AM

I agree that when Edgy decided to remove me from the people he was in communication with, I got to feeling like"Fuck it, then. I don't need to be polite to someone who's being blatently rude to me." Then I think KC started defending Edgy's decision, and then started following it, and then the two of them decided to make an example of bad posting etiquette out of me. Kind of risky, in my view. Better to have asked me to tone it down, when things were getting out of hand. Better to have conceded that not every position I'd taken was irrationally hateful. Better to have found some bridges we were willing to cross. Instead, Edgy decided to pretend I wasn't here, and that I wasn't saying anything of consequence. That's his privilege. I don't think this is working out quite as he masterminded this plan two years ago, though.

KC Apr 27 2006 10:11 AM

Take shit from Bret for three years, move a couple of threads, try something new for a fresh start, get called a baby. Nice.

Rotblatt Apr 27 2006 10:23 AM

KC wrote: Take shit from Bret for three years, move a couple of threads, try something new for a fresh start, get called a baby. Nice. A fresh start? Sticking with the baby analogy, you're hiding the soiled sheets under the bed every morning instead of trying to stop yourselves from pissing in it.

KC Apr 27 2006 10:47 AM

I can see your point, and I'm not opposed to people chiming in. I welcome it. Thanks.

abogdan Apr 27 2006 10:55 AM

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law]Godwin's Law[/url] ]As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Rotblatt Apr 27 2006 11:01 AM

KC wrote: I can see your point, and I'm not opposed to people chiming in. I welcome it. Thanks. I truely appreciate that, KC. I like this forum, and happen to think that Sal makes it a richer place. In my ideal world, the three of you would bury any hatchets and get back to arguing vehemently about baseball and the direction the Mets are taking. I personally feel that moving Sal's more hostile posts here, then not addressing them, makes that possibility less, not more, likely. That's the point I've been trying (and possibly failing) to make.

Nymr83 Apr 27 2006 11:25 AM

]I pity the hapless fellow who, excited about the Mets victory last night and looking for a community of intelligent Mets fans with whom to discuss said victory, stumbles across this site. this is precisely why non-baseball posts should get moved, besides the benefits to those who already read here

Rotblatt Apr 27 2006 11:42 AM

Nymr83 wrote: this is precisely why non-baseball posts should get moved, besides the benefits to those who already read here I hear you, Nymr, but IMO it's not solving the problem, it's just moving it a few feet away. Now, maybe I'm wrong, and everything will be civil & cordial from here on out, but I have a feeling that the next time the Mets make a major move there's some disagreement about, we'll be right back where we started. Edgy & I got into a heated discussion about a pinch hitting move yesterday, for God's sake, and I've no doubt that the current climate in the CPF turned up the heat a bit. I just don't see that getting better until the larger issue is resolved, either by getting Sal, Edge & KC to bury the hatchet or by banning Sal (an option I'm not a fan of).

duan Apr 27 2006 03:01 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: I realize how I'm coming across, duan. And I would respectfully submit that well-meaning people like you, who only want some peace and quiet, don't seem to understand how hard I worked to make this a place where all sorts of voices can be heard, only to get removed from my administrative post from Edgy because I disagreed with him as to Piazza's productive future and then to have all sorts of personal attacks on me allowed by Edgy while any sort of response-in-kind from me was discouraged, first by Edgy then by his hatchetman KC. Ok; I don't know when this happened, don't remember it happening nor do I think it's the kind of thing that I'd let myself get into this kind of state about it. You're genuinely getting a persecution complex about this and I don't think that it makes sense. Bret Sabermetric wrote: It just doesn't seem right to me that I should just get their message and fade quietly. If they could do this to me, someday they may decide to target you. These people are evil, and they're vindictive, and they want to run their world as they please without a word of criticism or dissent. I dissent from that. Y'see that's where you go off on one. Use of the word Evil, even if it's only for effect, is clearly wrong in this context. It's personally hurtful & insulting, not to mention entirely exaggerated. It's when you do this, that people find it hard to take you seriously or have any sympathy for someone who's trying to make themselves out to be a martyr. Lets not forget; this is a bulletin board, with about 100 or so active posters it isn't a minority community being denied to right to vote, assemble or live! Bret Sabermetric wrote: It's pretty simple. They can ban me, and I'm quite sure they will. What they can't do is force me to kowtow to their standards of mild and acceptable dissent. Sometimes the truth isn't pretty and isn't what you want to hear. But it doesn't stop being true just because you have the brute force to stifle it. I think people who voluntarily do something are entitled to be cut quite a lot of slack in relation to how they react to someone when they get personally abusive. As I said earlier, for me it's about respect and human decency. Bret Sabermetric wrote: You will be poorer the day my voice is silenced, and that day is coming soon. Well, you could just moderate it yourself rather then pressing a mute button. Sure, you don't have to but maybe, for everyone it'd be the best thing to do. .....