Over at Aesop's place.
Weird, because I can't think of how I would have been abusive there. But his place, his rules. Whatevs. Maybe debate isn't his forte.
FYI[1]: I've only banned one person here, and it was my ex-wife who was posting nasty stuff on (for example) my post about my Father-In-Law's funeral. The ban took a court order to enforce. I actually apologized to everyone here, but was pretty covert. I should be more explicit: my ex-wife ("Mrs. Borepatch") intentionally tried to inflict emotional distress on The Queen Of The World (who had been nothing but nice to her), on the occasion of TQOTW's Father's funeral. It really sucks to have to get a court order. Aesop and I don't agree on some things, but he's never been abusive here to me or TQOTW. I really hope I don't have to ban anyone other than the ex, and with almost 40,000 comments here I think there's some hope that I might not have to.
FYI[2]: Aesop, you're not banned here. We don't always agree, but you're smart and passionate and that's something that adds to the discussion here.
FYI[3]: Maybe it's just a Blogger hiccup. I hope so.
UPDATE: Aesop stops by to say that I'm not banned, he's just shut down comments due to an infestation of morons. It makes me very grateful for the high caliber of the comments here.
I admire Aesop and respect his background and industry-fueled insights, but IMHO he's been quite shrill. Not so much about the dangers, but in disparaging those who might have a different opinion.
ReplyDeleteIn the (often mythical) bigger picture... what's the plan? Admittedly no plan survives contact with the enemy, but what's the landmarks we need to shoot for? Once we know that, we can work towards them.
It's not you, it's everyone. No comments allowed. The absolute purpose of blogging, having readers and comments, is lost when commenting is removed. I have allowed "View From The Porch" to stay on the blogroll because I understand what the writer's reasons to closing comments was. Other than that one special case, I don't retain blogs that haven't posted in a year or don't permitting commenting. I check the blogroll every couple of months and try to keep it pruned.
ReplyDeleteNo, Borepatch, you're not banned.
ReplyDeleteThere were only about 4 people on my blog that achieved that status in a decade-plus, and I'm pretty sure they knew who they were, and are.
Comments, however, are turned off there. Probably forever.
I have run out of time, patience, and inclination to wade through even moderated comments, and do diaper patrol on several dozen anonymous @$$holes hourly.
I have no problem with disagreement.
I will not put up with rude assholery and anonymous moron-level ad hominem, and that's what, by actual count, about 95% of what I was getting had devolved to.
I wish you better luck.
Kim DuToit requires registration, and moderates all comments on his new site.
Tam has had hers turned off for years.
I did moderated comments for several days, but after weeding out the knuckleheads, opened them up for a day, and the floodgates of stupidity were unleashed. No problem; no comments.
I don't expect I'll ever turn mine on again either, but who knows?
Bummer for the people who could be respectful and still disagree, let alone the ones who hadn't, but my life is too short to spend dealing with idiots I'm not getting paid to engage with, so I chose not to any further.
Nothing personal was intended nor implied.
I will sincerely miss the give-and-take with honest dealers I enjoyed formerly, not to mention no end of useful info and intel passed along in them, but the f**ktard hordes there are why we can't have nice things.
Call it another lockdown casualty.
@ Aesop, So how does one become a 'blog member' and regain the privilege of commenting?
DeleteASM,
ReplyDeleteI'll happily forward you the contents of my spam folder from Saturday, IIRC, if you'd like, minus the handles (where they weren't Anonymous), where I saved the final day's examples, and you can decide how many of them and similar you'd like to deal with every day here. 80 was over my limit.
Let me know.
If people want to pay me £1/post via PayPal, etc. for 5 minutes of abuse or argument in response, we can talk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpAvcGcEc0k
I have to laugh, because I understand why Aesop would react to comments by people who didn't really understand the points being made, and would not listen to an argument or even have the discussion, because I have felt the same way in some past posts and resulting comments.
ReplyDeleteI could not do what you do and deal with some of the people you do and still remain the same. I am glad to read and learn from all the blogs I read. Please keep up the good work.
Aesop,
ReplyDeleteI moderate the comments here. I try to be tolerant, but I am ruthless at eliminating them without reply when they are spam, in a foreign language, or otherwise offensive. I don't doubt that they reached a crescendo on your page and you decided to be done with them. However, I consider the give and take of commenting to be critical to what blogging is and think that even Tam's page is sharply diminished by their loss.
Let’s have some honesty around here Aesop. You can dish it out, but you can’t take it. Nor can you admit it when you’re wrong. Even Wirecutter is fed up with your shit. That should give you pause for thought.
ReplyDeleteIt’s too bad because even though you yourself are an intellectual write-off (California will do that to ya) - you did provoke some truly interesting and entertaining discussions. I wouldna thunk you were that much of a pussy until you banned me. Oh well, can’t blame a guy for having a sense of taste, HAR HAR HAR!
You should lighten up a bit. Just sayin.
And that is what passes for polite commentary, and "give and take", right ASM?
ReplyDeleteI only commented here today at all because Borepatch thought it was personal. It isn't.
But I no longer care to deal with such guttersnipes with the manners of baboons, here nor elsewhere, because the behavior noted isn't give and take, unless we want to bring back dueling.
I'll miss trading with asstards like this like I'd miss pulling leeches off my buttocks.
It's your blog, and what you chose to link to or not is your own affair.
Best wishes to you.
Aesop can be a little caustic sometimes. But he writes well, and I enjoy his posts. Thanks to him, I started stocking up, and now am enjoying relative comfort.
ReplyDeleteSome of the commentors though, not so much. He seems to have had a gamma infestation. These dudes will not let up, comparing chi-chis to see who's the smartboi. I don't think a one of them has taken the time to read through his writings before stepping into the mosh pit of idiocy.
I really enjoyed your back and forth on drug legalization. Problem was, you both were right. But his posts of dealing with the drug addled were some of his best. It's a world most of us don't see.
I've been reading his posts lately with the understanding that he's in the trenches with this, I am not. I don't do a 12 hour shift, then have to deal with idiots.
Aesop,
ReplyDeleteI didn't make it under the wire for the comment shut down on your blog,
so wanted to throw this up here. I don't disagree with anything you threw up,
but I can't come to the same conclusions from it. The reason why boils down to
the danger specialization, it can give you tunnel vision.
The economic side of the equation is important too, because it also lets people
stay alive, and provide safety, food, and other mandatory things for their families. Ignoring one side to elusively focus on the other isn't the right way and kills a lot of people.
That being said, the impression I got form the posts was it was coming from someone who needed to vent, and my all means vent. Do what you need to to to get through this healthy and sane.
I, for one, am upset that he had to turn off the comments. However, being there when it was all going down, the first time he turned them off was mainly due to one asshat copy/pasting a long rant that was nowhere near polite discussion. On the last day, after he had opened them back up completely, there was an astronomical surge of anonymous douchebaggery.
ReplyDeleteWhat most people don't take into consideration is that, from my perspective, he doesn't play nice with feckless morans. Its not that he can't be disagreed with or take criticism, but he unloads both barrels when some rando fuckwit comes in spouting abrasive bullshit that has been refuted in other posts, comments, etc.
I really miss the comments, it easily tripled the blog content with (mostly) good discourse.
No, sorry Aesop, I can't buy you statements.
ReplyDeleteYou vehemently and asininely fight with and insult those who disagree with your conclusions in your pronouncements of doom. You never accept that you might have been, nor are today, wrong. That your experience, while perhaps vast, is limited in breadth. That you have tunnel vision, or simply don't care enough to look beyond the procedures and inherent insularity of folks in our profession.
When you garner comments from folks that you have insulted, called children, idiots and morons simply because they disagree with you, then you cowardly shut down your comments.
Your blog, your choice. But that shows me that, since you can't explain your position (either because you simply don't know enough to explain to those who may not be as well educated in medicine as you, a nurse claim to be (odd how you also know so much more than all those doctors and professors, innit....they are also morons and idiots) or because your pronouncements didn't pan out, you would rather act like a child and simply silence dissenting voices to your diatribes.
There is now, and has been a pattern to your predictions of doom and your response to you critics for several "crisis".
BTW, Tam shut her blog off due to a stalker, not sue to comments like you have garnered. Don't compare your self-caused failure to her personal security issues.
B,
ReplyDelete1) I called no one any of those names for disagreeing with me. I called them that because of their behavior and commentary. The dearth of facts they brought to the table (that would be zero) is proof of the pudding. If you can't deal with that honestly, you prove the point.
2) Scroll back. I explained my position time after time, and dealt with an endless stream of Baby Ducks who just started noticing this five minutes ago. My posts and lengthy explanations go back to January. I've posted a number of explanations on your blog too, and you don't seem to have suffered any for it.
3) I've issued zero pronouncements. The fact that anyone cannot grasp that underlines why comments are closed. I've laid out the facts as known, and drawn rational conclusions based thereon. There is exactly zero prophecy contained on my blog, any where, any time, from inception to the current date. People too obtuse to differentiate rational fact-driven analysis from gypsy fortunetelling merely prove that Mr. Dunning and Mr. Kruger deserve a Nobel Prize in Medicine for psychology.
4) Feel free to go back to my 2014 Ebola posts, and note what I concluded was likely, and what the likes of Drs. Tony Fauci, and then-CDC head Dr. Tom Frieden et al said would never happen. One of us was 7-0, and one of us was 0-7, despite multiple university degrees, pedigrees, and government sinecures for life on one side, and simple IQ points on the other. I leave it to you to figure out who was who. That you likely won't do that, because it's both too hard and too humbling, will surprise me not a whit.
5) My response to critics is exactly as it is here: disdain for people who imagine themselves experts, without dint of bringing a single new fact to an argument. The technical word for that is "gainsaying". It is the stock-in-trade of thoroughgoing retards and smallwits, and I don't suffer fools gladly. Anyone who can bring more light to an argument, instead of more diaper spackle, or at least listen to those who do, is welcome by me anywhere and any time.
When my own blog comment section is overrun by the crybabies with a case of diaper rash and diarrhea, the time for wading through their dirty diapers, for me, is at an end, and my only regret is for those who can no longer share their intelligence with others in comments, because of a surplus of those merely delivering the contents of their spleens and underpants. I know the world is filled with retards; I work as a lifeguard in the shallow end of the gene pool. But I don't have to do it for free on my own time.
My apologies if that inconveniences anyone.
It is a shame that anyone has to shut off their comments due to an inability of people to follow the rules of decent conduct, especially in another's place. There is one blog that I frequent, and as a conservative,I know that my viewpoint is often totally at the opposite side of most of the majority of those who go there. And several times, I have offered the blog owner to stop commenting,if it was not welcome there. I never want to force my opinions on someone else,and especially not on another's dime, if you follow my point.
ReplyDeleteThe blog owner has always told me I and my opinions are welcome, as long as I remain polite, which I try to do.
If I only go and comment at places that agree with me, then neither I nor the others will either learn anything, nor will we learn how to explain our own opinions in a more clear, understandable way.
That Tam had to lock down her blog a long time ago is unfortunate, but understandable, and Aesop falls into the same category. I understand that it could get to be a pain in the ass to have to spend your own time, babysitting those who have no manners nor upbringing, to treat others with the same kindness that you would like to also be treated with.
pigpen51
Aesop: I wrote a really nice and long response here, but it seems to have disappeared, (but was too long anyway) so I will cut to the chase:
ReplyDelete1. Wrong. Disagreements to your statements and pronouncements have been insulted and slammed. You weren't nice at all, even when people had data that differed from yours. Perhaps you should go back and re-read what you wrote and look at it from the perspective of the rest of us. Sorry, but there were times where you were an ass because someone had a different, but just as valid opinion based upon a different set of data. And yes, people who are not nurses can understand the data, despite not being a certified nurse or doctor.
2. You weren't an ass on my blog, either. Your seem to fail to understand your behavior in your comments. You blog, your rules...but you made statements that were, frankly bullshit and when pressed to explain, you got shitty.
3. Your statements sure seemed like pronouncements. They fit the definition. Especially when you would brook no disagreement. Perhaps you did not mean to be perceived that way, but there you are. When you "This Shall Happen" that is a pronouncement. You've laid out that facts that you *think* are known, and made pronouncements based on those incomplete or partial facts. Then when people tried to point out some missing data, you got shitty. Not everyone is a dumb as you seem to think we are. I;m not a Doctor. It would appear that you are not one either. Nor certainly a statistician.
4. Your Ebola posts were, at first, fact filled and illuminating. Then, not so much.
You predicted a lot more cases, both worldwide and in the US. We had nowhere near the number of cases, and it was handles and that one case did not morph into thousands.
5. Your response here is a lot more polite, a lot more evenhanded and a lot less insulting than elsewhere. If you think that they are the same, then you need a reality check. Sorry, but that is the way it is. If you truly understand what you claim to know, you could explain it to nearly anyone, instead, you show the classic symptoms of insecurity and fall back on bluster and insult rather than calm explanation. Not saying you are incorrect in your statements, just that it appears that you use the excuse of disdain for folks who disagree rather than explanation or debate or any attempt to clarify.
Your last paragraph above is a perfect example of that which I speak.
Not meant to anger you, but there it is.
Feel free to contact me via my blog and I will take the time to continue with this via email if you care to. Or not, your call. I'd go on, but I am a guest here and have gone on too much in someone else's blog.
Respectfully
B
And our enemies cackle as we splinter, snipe, and otherwise fight in a burning house.
ReplyDelete