The Human Car

I'm curious what others think, overly quiet this week or finally some decent decorum around here?

Keep in mind that I am NOT hinting that HH or JF be given the freedom to do and say whatever they want but so far I think this forum is lacking a certain "entertainment" value that it had. So I find myself thinking (out loud) it might be interesting to allow these guys one week a month to stir things up but not too much time to drag things into the ground. Well that's my random thought for the day,

genec

Well I think that at least HH brought some ideas to the table... granted some may be a bit over the top, but he provoked discussion.

I'm not so sure about JF... he seems to be pretty curmudgeonly about his responses... I find it rather telling that he keeps pulling out "bikeways" as an over all negative comment, not willing to "entertain" that indeed there is a difference between bike paths, bike lanes and sidepaths.

AlmostTrick

When did this happen and how long are the bannings for?

cooker

Wait, John Forester is banned from BF?

Ed Holland

Yes, for a week I understand.

https://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...5&postcount=24

And HH, apparently forever! (though the date of this post is April 1)

https://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...9&postcount=20


Ed

CommuterRun

If those two are gone there's a couple others that need to be. Fair is fair.

genec

https://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...9&postcount=20
Helmet Head, permanent ban, chronic inability to be a beneficial member of the Bike Forums community.

https://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...5&postcount=24
John Forester, trolling insulting other members. 1 week.

The Human Car

I'll start off with a joke:

Two guys are sitting in a plane and one asks the other "What time is it?" and the other responds "No you can't marry my daughter." The first guy is like WTF? and the other explains that if he tells him the time they will start chatting and become friends. And with being friends he will eventually be invited to the house where he'll meet his beautiful daughter, fall in love and will ask for her hand in marriage. So to simplify things he just answered the critical part of the line of questioning.

For JF I think his decades of experience has lead him to this kind of reasoning, it may very well be that the process of answering a question eventually comes down to bike lanes (No you can't marry my daughter) but even so that does not make "No you can't marry my daughter" (bike lanes) a valid response to "What time is it?" There is a more appropriate place and response to interrupt this process then jumping to the "heart" of the matter.

With JF I remain pessimistic that he can provide an appropriate response for the discussion at hand without some giant leap in logic (positive spin) or trolling his anti-bikeway agenda (negative spin.)

And sort of bouncing of Gene's post if I had to pick one or the other I too would prefer HH over JF and the fact that next week is going to be the opposite is ... well something to think about.

The Human Car

+1

dobber

Wow, you can get baned for RickRolling. What has the world come to?

Ed Holland

Well, for one, I was hoping never to hear of Mr Astley ever again... it was bad enough first time around.

Allister

I'm betting that the people that were put off from A&S primarily due to the 'antagonism' will gradually return (there's been a couple already), and with them more traffic. I remember this place pre-Serge, and I'm pretty sure it can be like that again. I don't miss him one iota.

Personally, I'm kinda surprised that Forester got banned. I never thought he was that bad, and he at least contains himself to the VC forum, and is an intermittent poster at the most.

Apart from that, if I know the internets, there's little doubt that sooner or later someone else will turn up to 'entertain' us.

DCCommuter

I have to say I agree with that sentiment.

I never found those two to be among the most objectionable members. I don't agree with a lot of their ideas, but I generally believe that honest disagreement about ideas is a healthy thing, and I feel that they have been scapegoated mostly for having unpopular ideas. There are a few members of A&S who never learned to disagree respectfully with others, who feel to denigrate and attack personally those who disagree with them, mischaracterize the position of their opponents, and generally engage in ad hominem and straw-man attacks.

I'm bothered by the notion that VC has become a taboo topic for A&S. I never believed that the topic was the problem, rather the problem was that certain members were incapable of disagreeing with others in a respectful manner. And that problem was not isolated to one side of the debate.

There's a simple rule for respectful discourse: attacking a person's ideas is constructive, attacking a person himself is not. I wish that the moderators would apply that simple rule.

closetbiker

can't I get banned for all my helmet stuff?

A lot of people don't like it

derath

+1,000,000

BarracksSi

I'm surprised that I didn't get banned for some of the stuff I've posted (and got edited out by mods later).

derath

that has to be the lamest ban explanation I have ever seen. I fail to see how this breaks any forum guidelines. There are plenty of people who server no benefit on these boards. Most of us actually.

I didn't always agree with HH. He can tend to post the same argument ad nauseum. But unlike many who disagreed with him (who constantly belittled him etc) he was far more civil.

pathetic

-D

Kurt Erlenbach

derath is correct. HH was overly verbose, but made good arguments. To say he had a "chronic inability to be a beneficial memeber of the Bike Forums community" is absolutely nuts.

maddyfish

+2

maddyfish

If this means he was long winded, but had useful things to say, then I agree.

ghettocruiser

I agreed with maybe 5% of those user's comments.

If there was a petition to un-ban them, I would sign it.

HoustonB

Metrics aside, "inability to be a beneficial member" is apparently grounds for a permanent ban, who would of guessed.

Can someone point to the "rule" that says membership here needs to be beneficial? And while we are at it, who gets to decide the definition of beneficial and who the benefactor is? Who does the measuring? How do they measure it? This has to be the most piss poor reason I've ever encountered for a permanent ban!

I'm guessing the true benefactors are the people at the top - and all the hackneyed cliches by Internet Brands, will do little to change that truth.

Corporate spin and main-stream-media style manipulation - this place is fast becoming truly sick.

-=(8)=-

BF has grown from Joes original community type board to a business venture, like it or not.
To have people who harangue other people and insult them (As HH did to me at first) and
bombard them with PMs critiquing every post ( yes, this was done too) is not in a business
persons best interest. Shortly you become aware that HH is a harmless wack and JF a
bloated windbag but I believe their presence was disruptive due to the items I mentioned
and the inability to not be able to rationally take part in any conversation and stay on
topic. 4,0000,00,0000000,00000 bytes on every thread to tell people they dont know what
they are talking about wont be missed by me.

Kurt Erlenbach

Yeah, but that shouldn't get you banned.

making

P&R turned out to be a happier place after a few bannings. I dunno, I would like to see everyone be able to stay but a lot of people, dare I say most people, dont like what feels like personal attacks when they first start posting on the forum, probably lose a lot more people than BF gains. stopping the disruption is for the greater good, and P&R is more fun. It seems the mods are doing well, at least for now.