Also, absorbing insults does not make you the better person. Standing up for yourself does.

* Poof *

Gone.

Regardless, I wish you well and I hope you find a place where you’ll feel welcome.

I decline. I stand by my word choice. You have thrown phrases around to describe me “stooping” to SD3’s level and “say anything they want and not be questioned.” If those phrases are fair game, then so is “poor”, “lazy” and “hypocritical.” It’s your site and you can make the rules. You can setup the rules so that your distortions and insults are acceptable but distortions and insults that describe you are unacceptable. Let’s just be clear that this is what you are doing though, and of course I will play no part in a site that is governed with such double standards.

Also you’re new and you broke the rules. And so, when somebody else highlighted that fact, I reminded you of what they were. I was fully aware of the context of your comments and they were inappropriate.

Somebody else did not highlight any facts. Somebody else misquoted me, saying that something SD3 said was something I said. An example of someone else’s laziness and misrepresenting what someone says when they disagree with you.

As for what you deem inappropriate, you are wrong. I was insulted and responded in kind with insults. That is entirely appropriate. What is inappropriate is for you to setup a site that says that insults are not OK, but then selectively allow for insults to take place and then blame people for not absorbing insults. That is a failure of integrity and a lack of common sense.

Listen, let’s make this easy. If you think I’m such a bad editor, then it probably doesn’t make sense for you to comment here anymore. However, if you can appreciate how much work it takes to keep a site like this running, then maybe you can simply enjoy having discussions with other folks here and offer constructive criticisms instead. The choice is yours. But what I don’t want to do is have conversations with you questioning the quality of my editorial. Because we’ll both grow tired of those talks extremely quickly.

Sound good?

Aside from the false and arrogant dichotomy you present here, I agree with you. The fact that maintaining a site requires work does not imply that it is right for you to demand that your visitors absorb insults from other members, nor does it make it wrong for your visitors to react in kind to other visitors who are rude.

As for me not posting here anymore, that’s pretty much the way that I was leaning towards these past few days anyway. Once we’re done on this thread, I won’t be back.

Also, call it poor management if you want, but I’ve cautioned SD3 before and when I talked to you I was considering what I was going to do with him since telling him to stop in a comment (and even emailing him personally) wasn’t working. Also, he had never broken the rules to the extreme that he did to provoke your reaction. So yes, I told you to cool it without telling him to. But that’s because the next step for him was the nuclear option.

Listen, let’s make this easy. If you think I’m such a bad editor, then it probably doesn’t make sense for you to comment here anymore. However, if you can appreciate how much work it takes to keep a site like this running, then maybe you can simply enjoy having discussions with other folks here and offer constructive criticisms instead. The choice is yours. But what I don’t want to do is have conversations with you questioning the quality of my editorial. Because we’ll both grow tired of those talks extremely quickly.

Sound good?

I don’t know why people think they can come on a site and say anything they want and not be questioned. It doesn’t work that way.

I missed that the first time around. I challenge you to show me where I have ever said or implied that I say anything I want and that I expect not to be questioned. I never did and it’s very dishonest to make that accusation.

That being said, I just will not turn the other cheek as someone says “your GED is showing” and stuff like that. (For the record I’m a college graduate, so that comment was merely said to annoy me). I will generally not make the first insult, but I always do return fire when fired upon. Insults are highly common on blogs. Most of the time they take a subtler form than SD3’s ham-fisted insults. However, I would posit two things:

(1) Insults are aggravating

(2) If you resort to insults, then people are allowed to insult you

(3) If you aggravate others for no good reason, then you deserve to be aggravated.

I don’t just go SD3 on people when I feel like it. I go SD3 on people when they go SD3 on me.

With that being said, I think you can see that I’m not the leftie version of SD3, so I’ll just go back to reading and commenting on the blog as before.

Regards,
SJ

And you can think I’m a prima donna if you like, but I moderate the conversations because I own the site. Given that, I’m asking you to lose the insults. It shouldn’t be too hard to do. If you won’t, I respect that, but you have to respect the spirit of the site. I don’t know why people think they can come on a site and say anything they want and not be questioned. It doesn’t work that way.

However, I do have to thank you for one thing. I’ve reread a bunch of SD3’s commentary and I’m going to ban him. Because he’s way out of line and has been from nearly the very beginning. Don’t know if that’ll influence whether or not you stick around, but even if you leave I’ll see that as a silver lining.

In any case, I don’t need to shape up, and turning the other cheek isn’t being the “better person.” Someone insults you, you can insult them back. The fact that you are both doing insults doesn’t make you both the same, no moreso than the US and Al Qaeda are both the same since they both fight each other.

Basically, nobody’s forcing you to insult people. You can still be the better person. So do that instead of throwing around insults. Pretty easy.

But seriously, who do you think you are? I’ve had this site for 4 years, posted thousands of stories and moderated thousands more comments. And you breeze in here a couple weeks ago, start insulting people and you’re criticizing my credibility?

Good times.

@Justin I’ll lose the insults when others lose the insults. I’ll just stop posting here. I think that your credibility is poor since you only criticize my insults but not SD3’s. If you want to actually be fair about choosing whose insults to criticize then I will consider posting here again.

I can’t really follow all threads and read every comment, so unless I notice something really offensive I don’t get involved. Also, once somebody has a comment approved, most of their comments usually get through unmoderated (unless it has a black-listed word, url, etc.)

However, I do agree that Smooth Jazz needs to lose the insults.

So Smooth Jazz, please lose the insults. They only hurt your credibility here.

How is it possible that approving comments like (but not limited to) the one that starts as follows be within the posting goals you’ve stated on your website?

“Smooth Jazz Says:

March 26th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Ha! Ha1 Ha! Ha! Ha! New York City, huh? I’m floored………”

It’s mostly just a string of insults. Why allow it?
Jake

In a “private capital only” solution (eg. give the money to the banks in some form)….. corruption takes the form of gaming the system to the disproportionate advantage of the bank executives, employees, and shareholders and the politicians supporting the model and the disadvantage of the taxpayer and the economy.

In the “public capital” solution (eg. letting the banks go down and filling the void with a government banking alternative)….. corruption takes the form of self-interested action on the part of the government bureaucracy to the disproportionate advantage of employees of the bureaucracy and the politicians supporting the model and the disadvantage of the taxpayer and the economy.

In each case the drivers for the corruption are well known, even if the exact ways the players try to exploit the situation cannot always be completely predicted (but many of which are well known). Any such system….. to be successful…. has to adequately acknowledge the reality of the self-interested behaviour of the players, and deal with it. Each system can work, with a good approach….. there are many examples of each working well in the past….. and presently.

Those republicans who won’t acknowledge the positive examples of government intervention or the corruption failures of the market are not being realistic and are not being part of the solution.

Those democrats who refuse to understand the vital role that non-corrupt self-interested business activity can play in broadly distributed wealth creation and who refuse to acknowledge the debilitating effects of a corrupt bureaucracy are also not being realistic and are not part of the solution.

There has been an incredible event of corruption within the financial services companies. No amount of validating that corruption by unfairly rewarding it will fix this problem. Those who took big risks that failed need to pay the price. Going forward from here, it is in the best interest of society as a whole to proceed on a system which is well grounded, scrupulously anti-corrupt, and based above all else on the idea that wealth creation comes from creating stuff of value…. whether that is hard goods, quality of life, services, or some other form of real value that doesn’t neatly fit into one of those categories.

The fact that the “financial services” “sector” of the economy became the largest part of the economy while the goods and services producing part of the economy has been withering away tells us that we are looking at things unrealistically. We created a system where a large swath of the public is engaged in producing the valuable stuff of life while a very small wealthy elite has been scheming to find ways to hoard the financial proceeds of that activity almost entirely for themselves. Some would say that is just business as usual, but that is not true. It is an all too common form of corruption, but it’s not business.

I have no quarrel whatsover with genuinely productive business people devising ways to…… be productive…. and make a lot of other people be productive…. and be hugely rewarded for it. In fact, it is the magic that creates wealth for everyone.

But I do have a problem with corruption…. where those pretending to be productive business, and those masquerading as wealth creators…. are mostly just using their pre-existing finincial power to rig the system to have everything their way.

Our problem is corruption. The government needs to attack the corruption, and harness the power of real entrepreneurship and honest business to get the country on the right track again.

Make the banks and other financial services companies take their honest losses. If that means having to temporarily nationalize them…. with the necessary attention to potentially debillitating beauraucratic corruption (if left unattended)….. then do it, but put us on a solid footing….. get us out from under these self-serving “masters of the universe” so we can make an honest buck….. and keep it.