That's not the same sort of deep conversation. PG asks a lot about not getting into bickerfests, and that's certainly fair. On the other hand, gravitycop and I got into a discussion about artificial intelligence a day or two ago, which went on for quite a while. Since it's not a big center-of-discussions, all our posts remained at one or two points each.
In the end I don't think it matters much either way - the really fun conversations you do for the sake of talking, not for the karma. But this system still subtly discourages those sorts of exchanges, which is a pity.
But has he ever asked that in a case where it wasn't a heated argument? I got asked to stop because a guy was swearing and I was calling him pathetic, but that was because we were generating a flamefest. Do people get told off just for talking at length?
What he was replying to is deleted. But it doesn't matter what it was. pg objected to "filling up comment threads". I didn't know they could get full...
It looks to me like DarrenStuart was being overtly melodramatic and got asked to stop. "Filling up" refers to visual space as well; people looking for conversation would get diverted by nonsense like that. You're not making the best case: I'd rather PG try and stop stuff like that and encourage more rational discourse.
Aww, but they were going someplace good with that!
Out of curiosity, have you ever stopped a conversation just because it was getting exceptionally long? At a certain point does that mess up the table layout?
No, of course not. I sometimes ask people to stop when they reach the yes-i-did-no-you-didn't stage, but because it's wasting everyone's time, not because it's messing up the page.
So, you believe you should judge the quality of comments, and put a stop to the ones you deem to have low quality, even if the participants disagree with you. And further, you think it is your role to protect people from "wasting time" by voluntarily reading comments of their choosing.
You further ridicule the comments you disapprove of as "yes-i-did-no-you-didn't" style comments, knowing that isn't literally true in some cases.
PS YC and searchyc are both very slow for me. It's hard to find anything. If I could just search for posts by pg with certain keywords then I would give you better links, but I can't.
Because your response makes me want to respond in kind...tit for tat. And, it's apparent that you're in that mode, as well, having to have the last word with every reply from pg and others. Neither one of us is saying anything, at this point, except, "It is" or "No, it isn't".
That's the kind of thing that pg is talking about.
I agree with you that you are saying things without any serious content, and that you are in troll mode.
Please note that your accusations against me are covered under this, so can be safely disregarded.
No doubt you will complain that I am arguing pointlessly. But I think this is fun, and that my comment is true. It is logical that if you admit to posting badly, then your claims in that very post shouldn't be accepted.
Funny, but still a very opaque policy. As far as I could tell, qqq was for criticizing your comments related to Israel, and xlnt was either for what qqq did or for having a new account. Is that right?
It would have been because you used the same ip address as both curi and one or both of them.
Edit: Usually that's how the software catches multiple accounts belonging to the same person, but I went back and looked, and in this case you (as qqq) outed yourself as curi.
I'm a little confused. I did not reset my modem or anything when making this account. I don't see why it wouldn't have triggered the same thing. And also, wouldn't the accounts get banned right away, not at a random time later? Did my ISP one day just happen to give me the same IP I had months ago?
He has several times asked people to stop posting in deeply nested threads. e.g. a recent thread about parenting. And he has sometimes disabled accounts for participating in deeply nested threads he didn't like.
I don't think pg has ever disabled accounts for having a long discussion. I've also have never read the idea of long conversations being discouraged by anyone here.
God knows there are things about the pg-cult that irritate me, but the point of this site is that it has an opinion on what its culture should be. I'm the other half of the thread you're pointing to, and when the site's "curator" said "please stop", it didn't take much thought to figure out the right response.
What's weird is, why are you still thinking about this? It was weeks ago. Life is very short.
You are mixing up whether he did X, or not, with whether you agree with X or not. I said the former; you argued about the later. (Note also that I did stop posting in that thread, too, when he asked.)
I am not the only one who remembers some of these things. pg does too; he linked back to a time he punished me for having fun. Personally, I find it interesting, and I enjoyed this thread. I have an ongoing debate with a friend about how email lists should be moderated, and this stuff is relevant. And I got to see interesting attitudes like SwellJoe's. I didn't predict a reply like that.
