Anything the two of you would like to discuss in detail, you can do so here without having to worry about anyone minding that their thread got hijacked.
As a serious suggestion, though …
You might consider opening a new thread on the specific issue the two of you choose to debate rather than completely hijacking an existing thread that had other directions of discussion running. Caj indicated that he would appreciate not having what the two of you have now done to the cold war thread happen. It would be more polite of you, as soon as you realize that you’ve gone at it again, to excuse yourselves from the general thread and set up a thread where you could do this kind of thing without wearing out the patience of other members of the board.
If you review the Cold War thread, my first contribution was a response to someone suggesting that the threat of a nuclear war was no longer a concern. I posted a relevant response that included evidence from a reputable source. The response to my post was an attack for my views. If the thread was hijacked, don’t blame me.
This whole scenario of now being accused for hijacking threads and having shrill arguments etc. reminds me of a scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie where he came across a man beating a woman in front of a house. He decided to rescue the woman and tried to pull the man off of her. When the man started directing his rage towards our hero, Chaplin was surprised to discover that the woman was also joining in on the assault against him. After the man and woman finished beating Chaplin they went back into the house arm-in-arm.
I’m presenting this as a no fault proposition, not as a criticism of anyone for posting this or that.
If you notice that any discussion seems to be getting into an intensive dialog between one or two people, regardless of how it started, it might be a reasonable thing for those parties to consider voluntarily moving the discussion onto its own thread.
You might have noticed that someone started a “Doom” thread with a quote I had posted in the cold war thread. I didn’t have much more to say about the topic, so I didn’t move my comments over there, but if I had anticipated or found unexpectedly that it was going to take over the cold war thread, and especially if I was beginning to get clues that it wasn’t what some of the people on the first thread had wanted to discuss, I would have been happy to move the climate discussion over to the doom thread.
Anyway, you can do as you like. It’s just a suggestion, and it may not even be a good suggestion. Just thinking aloud.
Actually, I understand and appreciate what you’re saying. I don’t understand why my responses to things said on the board result in such visceral attacks and innuendo. If I was as tactful as Bloomfield I suppose I could find a way to ignore their attacks, but I’m compelled to defend my positions. I just wish people would research their comments better and resist attacking people just because they have different opinions. I would like to see discussions that talk about issues rationally and add to everyone’s awareness. Unfortunately, some folks find facts to be quite threatening.
The outrage will only be found when they start telling us the truth. If you don’t want the truth, that’s your prerogative. As they say – ignorance is bliss.
If you notice that any discussion seems to be getting into an intensive dialog between one or two people, regardless of how it started, it might be a reasonable thing for those parties to consider voluntarily moving the discussion onto its own thread.
You might have noticed that someone started a “Doom” thread with a quote I had posted in the cold war thread. I didn’t have much more to say about the topic, so I didn’t move my comments over there, but if I had anticipated or found unexpectedly that it was going to take over the cold war thread, and especially if I was beginning to get clues that it wasn’t what some of the people on the first thread had wanted to discuss, I would have been happy to move the climate discussion over to the doom thread.
I disagree. In the real world, conversations don’t stay on topic forever. People post digressions, and other people start talking about that, instead. That’s organic, and it’s way more interesting.
If you don’t like the turn a conversation has taken, post something to bring it back to a track you prefer.
A conversation which remains on a single topic forever gets boring, FAST, and if your sole contribution is to yell at other posters for talking about somethign you don’t wanna talk about, then you haven’t done anything to make it more interesting.
I think it’s rampant control-freakery to insist that every post to a thread MUST follow the guidelines laid down by the original post. If that’s what you want, start up a blog.
One day when I have nothing better to do I’m gonna collect all my bringing-it-back-on topic posts that got completely ignored. I’m gonna publish them in a book called: Give Up the Love: Wombat’s Collected Unrequited C&F Posts It’ll probably be the follow up to You Must be Kidding: Collected Rejection Letters and Referee’s Reports wherein you’ll find all my scholarly and literary rejection letters together with the detailed reasons.
Once upon a time you had to die before stuff like this came out but today’s post modern university wants results NOW.
