Mitt's lies, topic #1 - 99!

Something the Dog Said wrote: I can not help that the conservatives here can not find any way to support their candidate and chose not to post or continue to discuss, other than Fred and Renegade.

And I've seen conservatives complain of the same exact thing of liberals. Not saying that this is what you do, but my general observation is that, as I said above, people don't listen, try to understand, rationally debate, and come to common ground and solutions. As I've heard over and over, it gets tiring feeling like you are yelling in the wind, or the other side is just screaming back and not addressing your question/points, and that discourages posters from continuing to try, or from starting in the first place.

I do note that the those threads had picked up steam at the time that they were consolidated.

I'm curious that you saw that the threads were "picking up steam" - only one of the 5 was being posted in that day, the other 4 hadn't been touched since 3:44pm, 3:48pm, 8:57pm, and 9:23pm the day before? There weren't that many people logged on this morning so there weren't going to be many comments added, but that's probably an observation that only I would make as I unofficially track how many people are on, see who is in the Courthouse, and if they are a regular participator or just a reader.

These were not spamming, as I stayed away from the drive by cut and paste and provided my own thoughts and opinions.

Yes you did add your own opinions, and I see your point. However, from the other side of the coin, you started the 2nd thread 2 minutes before the first one was done, the 4th 16 minutes after the 3rd; if you really wanted good debate then you should've given people time to respond rather than throwing multiple topics at them - that's what makes it look like spam. And I get that there's a subtlety to "how to post" and you didn't intend it that way at all, but that's how it looked to those reading the board. As Hoot Owl said, if you looked in Active Topics (which is how I navigate the board myself), you had totally taken over which isn't fair to other members - it makes people feel "shouted down" or shut out and makes them leave.

I get it, but perhaps you should make it clear in the terms of service that if a certain number of posts have not occurred in a thread within a certain time period, that those threads will be consolidated. Respectfully, I am curious as to why threads are not allowed to live or die on their own merits, but need to be consolidated? Is there a financial cost associated with allowing threads to continue without consolidation into other threads? Is there a cost with having numerous threads going on? Not being contrary, but am genuinely curious.

Here's the thing, once you set hard and fast rules, people only try to find a way around them or to pin you to the wall for not following them exactly to the letter. PC had (has?) a rule that no one poster was allowed to start more than 2 threads/day in the Study. When I joined, I thought that was ridiculously limiting and silly rule but abided by it and had no idea of the history behind the decision. Today, I understand it to be the result of laziness - they got frustrated with people taking over the forum when they got upset and rather than spend the time trying to decide which threads warranted merging and which didn't and then merging them, logging it, PM'ing the OPs about the change, etc, or PM'ing posters to work with them about why they can't do what they did, they just set a rule, and as soon as a poster breaks it, they delete the extra thread and warn the person, telling them to "go study the TOS", and if it's a repeat infraction they suspend or ban the person. Makes life a lot simpler for mods, but is crappy customer service and feels restrictive to newcomers.

There's also no way to pin an exact financial cost to each thread or forum for that matter. It's more of an "are we active enough", "do we have a good variety of participation", "are people going to keep coming back" question - we have many guests who find the site, search it for a few minutes, then leave and don't come back - it would be nice to capture more of those and have a greater number of opinions represented here. There's no doubt that the Courthouse is a draw for posters, but it's not the be-all, end-all of the board either. Metrics are hard to apply to value, but when multiple posters are complaining about the same thing, one has to figure that there are many more silent members/guests feeling the same way.

We take the whole pulse of the board, if there are lots of complaints about several too-similar threads then we get a little more on top of it otherwise we leave things be. It's not a science but an art to moderating and not everything can be done exactly the same every time. Since the forum wasn't as active early this week as it has been recently (Monday was a weird day for sure), the multiple threads you started were going to hang around a while, otherwise usually leaving them to drop off is fine. Again, it's taking multiple variables into account and each situation is unique.

Something the Dog Said wrote: I am not being belligerent and am not questioning the right of the owner to do with the forums as they see fit. It is my decision to post here and engage in discussions and accept the restrictions placed on the my ability to post.

Thanks for clarifying and for responding, it is much appreciated! :thumbsup: I for one hope you continue to bring up thoughtful points and engage others. :thumbsup: