Quote:
Originally Posted by mojiferous
And maybe that is the point - you know our mods are not strict and have let this fly for a long time. I'm sure a lot of them are operating in the spirit of free discourse - that you have the right to speak your mind and say what you want to say even if it strays into trollish behavior. And by constantly being right on the edge of acceptable and trollish you may be able to do three things to an urbanist forum:
1. Sow discord.
2. Be annoying enough to cause people to leave.
3. Cause enough digression and off-topic discussion to derail pro-growth organizing and discussion (have you noticed all of these trolls haaaate new construction and density? remember our old trolls who were banned for things like loving Pueblo too much?)
To be honest, we need less of whatever this is and more people like Take 5 - I may disagree with his data analysis and his opinion on the suburbs, but at least he keeps most of his posts relevant and has opinions about solutions and causes of issues. He posts often and debates his views without insulting everyone and everything.
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I would argue that one does not need to hurl insults in order to engage in trolling behavior, and that both of the forum members that you are discussing here are equally guilty of "being right on the edge of acceptable and trollish." Both of these forum members check all three boxes you mentioned, and both often succeed in derailing the pro-growth discussion.
Case and point - just look at the last page of discussion here. We have one forum member who repeatedly and successfully goads others into having to defend their (usually very well-reasoned) positions by offering up increasingly absurd statements to the contrary until they get exactly what they want - e.g. "
Nevermind, I don't want to have this conversation with you - you win"
There's a very good reason I choose not to engage with this person. A good devil's advocate can help foster conversation. Somebody who merely acts as an unceasing contrarian shuts good conversation down.