blankflag (userID=51201) you have been silenced for a month for continuing to make multiple threads for your news after being asked numerous times to keep it to one thread by multiple moderators.

-WebDip Admin

Praise be to the Mods!

Arafat made it a joke for sure, if it wasn't already one.

+1 "jimo"

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Give jmo the Nobel

"Arafat made it a joke for sure, if it wasn't already one."

Yeah, the guy who surrendered 78% of his country to a foreign invader in exchange for a peace treaty didn't do anything deserving of the peace prize, unlike the Droner in Chief, the pied piper, or an architect of the deaths of millions.

"blankflag (userID=51201) you have been silenced for a month"

... and there was much rejoicing.

And while I find blankflag nearly as annoying as everyone else does, this month-long silencing reeks of selective enforcement. He has been silenced for having unpopular views and poor grammar - not for having more than one thread. If people were silenced for having more than one thread at a time, this forum would be dead.

@Tolstoy,
I think the violation was using multiple threads to promote an external website he runs. Admittedly, I couldn't find any policy specific to using the forum for self-promotion or solicitation, but it's very different from just having multiple threads going.

Wow... A whole month...

Tolstoy: Blankflag wasn't (or isn't? In what way was he silenced?) just annoying. He only talks about the same thing over and over and over again. And even if it's selective enforcement, so what? As long as they pick out the annoying ones I like it.

And he had warnings, therefore no question his last few threads were violations.

I don't see how this thread relates to any of blankflag's "news". All I can see is a person trying to start a normal conversation, but he is already labeled by the mods as a person of ill repute.

@Tolstoy, in his first 8 days here he had 10 threads. Since then he's averaged a thread a day. He was asked to keep his threads in his news thread (just like the Daily Bible thread) when he had 8 threads on the front page. After he continued making new threads despite being warned he was silenced for 1 day. After that silence was over he immediately made 2 new threads. We let those go, but after a few more he was silenced again. After that silence I ignored a few more threads before it got absurd.

That doesn't even cover the several threads where he posted 5+ replies in a row, all irrelevant to the OP.

"7. Do not spam the forum or private messaging system
You are welcome and indeed encouraged to join in with the community but be sensible. Try to keep replies relevant to the conversation and don't start too many threads at once. Before posting a question relating to the software please read the FAQ."

Ignoring 4 moderator requests to stay in one thread and continuing to spam the forum after 2 short silences is not "sensible" and it is the worst offense of spamming I've seen in my 4 years here aside from the case Kestas personally dealt with.

@Hecks, see rule 7.

kestas deserves the Nobel for rule 7 IMO.

@tolstoy: just because the other three also made it a joke, doesn't mean that Arafat didn't also make it one. He was the leader of the PLO for chissakes! No matter what you think of the conflict in Israel, the father of Islamic terrorism certainly made a joke out of the peace prize.

Considering the number of Christian members in leadership positions of the PLO during the '70s and '80s (until they were all assassinated by Israel), I think describing the PLO as an organization of "Islamic Terrorism" says a lot more about your bigoted perspective than it does the actual historical facts, philcore. Anyhoo, Menachem Begin - the father of modern terrorism and the leader of Irgun - was awarded with a Nobel Peace Prize 15 years before Arafat. If a Zionist terrorist who engineered the murders of thousands so he could steal Palestinian lands can get a Nobel prize for negotiating a peace treaty with a neighboring country, why not Arafat - whose goal was merely the return of stolen lands to their rightful owners - for negotiating a humiliating peace with the very people who had stolen the land in the first place? Especially when you consider that Arafat made himself a real target in a literal sense for other Palestinians (or 'Islamic Terrorists', if you prefer) who subsequently viewed him as a sellout for giving up so much at Oslo?

Ok, but we can agree that the peace prize is a joke, right? I think you've proved it with better examples than Arafat, and to me he was proof enough.

President Theodore Roosevelt earned the Medal of Honor *and* the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Prize is a joke - we are all agreed. Huzzah!

I'm quite surprised and unhappy to see this silencing. There is a difference between starting too many threads and keeping it all in one thread. Nobody should have to do the latter just because he is unpopular on the forum, or has fringe views. This particular thread was a relatively interesting, even if controversial, question.

The mods do a really superb job in general, but I can't say I'm pleased to see this line of action. Perhaps I've missed something.

+1 semck.

Lots of people start slightly more than a thread a day (myself, at times, included). No one has ever been silenced for it. As someone who is frequently denounced for (among other things) being a "conspiracy theorist" myself, I can't help but wonder if I will be next. I can only hope blankflag's sloppy punctuation and lack of capitalization was the real reason he was silenced, in which case I think (hope?) I'm relatively safe.

I think it's cause he does start anywhere from 2-4 threads a day.

As I say, CF, I can see putting some limit on him for awhile. Say 2 threads a day. But telling him to put everything in one thread is highly excessive, imho. And this is the only thread he started today. This seems just completely unjustified to me.

The first time blank flag starts a truly interesting thread that isn't just his "spamming" and he gets silenced for a month; I suppose that's life for you.

I completely agree with those saying the silence was unjustified. It was justified when be was filling the front page with threads, not so much when he only had two on the front page. And being asked to keep things in one thread is only reasonable if they are all similar, like his news. This isn't it is separate enough to deserve its own thread. Oh well just another moderator decision I disagree with. What can you do.

blankflag has been warned several times, it's his fault he got silenced.

Nobel prizes are mostly reflecting the zeitgeist, not some objectively measured "accomplishments". Not a difficult concept really. And it doesn't apply only to Peace prizes btw, it's just that it's the easiest one to poke fun at by people who lack expertise in the other fields where the Prizes are awarded. Drunkards in a pub can "solve" the issue of Palestine but they surely can't solve the issue of cancer.

" blankflag has been warned several times, it's his fault he got silenced."

He's been warned not to create interesting conversation threads that aren't related to his news site?

The more I think about it, the more unbelievable and out of the spirit of the forum this decision seems. I can only hope the mods will have the decency to apologize and retract. We all make mistakes.

semck83/Tolstoy, I share your sentiment, but I don't think you're being practical here.

It's hard to justify silencing blank, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. There's little that they can do to change his behaviour, he's been warned multiple times. And he can still play diplomacy. This is a private chat room essentially, and the moderators have the right to mute people who are ruining it. They (graciously) allow free speech and even foul language and people insulting each other/the mods, but they do have limits.

Blankflag has pushed the limits, deliberately either annoying people or being oblivious to how annoying he actually is, despite being warned. Maybe you're right about this particular silencing decision/reason, but I don't think it sets any precedent about fringe views. Take krellin, for example.

Overall, his sentence structure, baffling threads, failure to engage in conversation, multiple threads about the same subject every day, all became one reason to mute him. He's incredibly annoying and people who come home from work to play on this website etc dont deserve to have to deal with him.

EDIT: wait, what am I saying? Those users could have just muted him individually. There was no need to silence him.

"He's been warned not to create interesting conversation threads that aren't related to his news site?"

Just because you deem this thread "interesting" doesn't mean its nature is different from all his other threads.