I hope his isn't gone. The only good thing about it, is that that's 1 position higher I'd be in the yearly TGG pool.
There are two types of posters that make a board a lot less fun than it ought to be. 1. Nasty posters who specifically attack other posters as one of their main forms of communication. These guys are basically bullies and they're no more fun on a board like this than they were in the playground in 6th grade. The mods should probably be proactively banning these guys as they surface and make it clear that's their style. Can't play nice with others will get you thrown out of just about any establishment on earth and a BBS should be no exception to that reality. 2. Posters that are argumentative in the extreme and are incapable of dropping an argument when it has become clear that the two sides can't agree. These guys are bad because they make threads into unreadable streams of junk when you take the logical step of ignoring them. When Junc had 3 or 4 guys on the hook a thread could scroll for pages with no useful information (other than the fact that he had 3 or 4 guys by the nose) being imparted. It would be different if you could ignore a poster and all selective responses made to his posts, unfortunately that tech doesn't exist (I think.)
I really do not get the attitude of either....junc will be junc...or...and with all due respect..."people should know junc and not go down that path with him....he is still a great poster". Huh??? What does that even mean. Here's my stubborn take on him. I have done all I can over the past decade to be nice....ignore....confront...bend over...kid gloves....jackhammer...and with all that said? Screw him. I'm exhausted being the one that has to either want to bludgeon him or take one for the team and walk away. Most of us guys were brought up the same way...if you talk to me like I'm an asshole...the first time you might leave fully intact. Maybe even the 5th time. Sooner or later I'm going to go after you. So whos fault is that? MANY like me have seen a post of his and just shook our heads and walked away. That's fine. What some posters are missing is how you can't avoid him. He discretely? will hijack a thread you are involved in. Personally? He has taught me NOTHING. I HAVE LEARNED NOTHING FROM HIM. I have never ever come close to losing an argument to him and have felt I have never won one either...but winning arguments has NEVER been most everyone on this sites goal....ever. It's the single reason he gets up and signs on here everyday. Black is white....up is down...left is right ....I mean...this goes deeper than winning an argument for him. After all of these years, I'm tired of ignoring him. Good riddance and hope on June 26th he screws up quickly and leaves for good. After all of these years....he can go fuck himself.
I think the thing for the mods, is that it's hard to ban people who have been here over a decade, and with tens of thousands of posts. I mean I'm just guessing so I could be wrong, but after all it's just a message board right? It's not real life society. Personally I've never had a problem with the guy.
I've been on this board now 15 years and I've seen posters come and go. StatJeff comes back for the annual football pool. A lot of longtime posters just got worn down by all the years of either coming up short or losing outright. There was simply nothing left to talk about or debate. Sometimes life takes a person in a different direction and a lot of times, folks just don't have the time to post anymore. Sometimes folks just burn out. I'm pretty positive that should the Jets seriously become relevant again, you'll see some old names you haven't seen in a long, long, time. Sometimes, we can recognize a trouble maker after a few posts. Trust me, I've ghosted a lot of them but only after they've proven themselves as troublemakers. We worked very hard getting this site to level that it enjoys today and no one poster, no matter length of membership, is above the site. That goes for EVERYBODY including me. If Junc can change, and personally I don't think he can, he'll be welcomed back. If he starts with the endless arguing, he won't be around long. There are other sites he can bog down and I'm sure he's resourceful enough to find them.
I'm certainly not defending junc, just a broader idea that broad assortments of personalities, including assholes, isn't detrimental and adds to the liveliness of the discussion and board. junc is in another category than those two because it's hard to argue he is actually involved in any discussion when he simply ignores what is being argued in dispute of his position yet declares he has won the debate despite those disputes. he can't drop an argument when he isn't actually involved in an argument, which requires that the other party's position either be disputed or its validity acknowledged.
Champ's already been called out on his constant SB 3 derailments. I have a feeling that's why he doesn't post as often as he used to. Like I said, no one is above the board no matter how long they've been a member.
I don't want to spend too much time on this subject. As Cmman has said junc will be back, but probably not for long. If he stays it will be dependent on his changing his behavior, so in effect we already have come to an end of his particular approach to posting here. Jay's post here as well as Brad's before it set forth the critical principles of general application - as I well know putting such posters on ignore can greatly limit their ability to make the experience here less than it should be. But not entirely. There were two problems with junc that persisted even if you had him on ignore. One was the thread derailment problem. (I will get back to that.) The second, more subtle, was his effect on new posters. New posters not familiar with his "style", unfamiliar with his past history imo of being given too much leeway here, his post total count, were at risk of seeing him as one of the if you will leading posters here. Quite obviously those who did not want to become his kind of poster might not even see the option of putting him on ignore as the best one. If he was such a dominant poster here, they might as well leave instead. Which we know has probably happened. And that is a shame. In fact it seemed to me that new posters were often ones who unwittinglyl helped junc derail threads. Not being familiar with his MO, they would argue back, and then the next thing you knew you were coming on here with a thread with four or five new pages on a subject heading you find interesting, only to see if was junc "arguing" with some others about how great a Qb Mark Sanchez is. Or about how all other Jet fans than junc suck as fans. The main point, though, is that there are posters who do not really come here to discuss topics related to the Jets and football. The key word is "discuss" - what is a discussion? junc did not come here to engage in discussion. As such he was subverting the purpose of this board. What then should be done with such people? I remember studying Constitutional Law, specifically free speech, a highly relevant principle here. I remember being troubled by the line of cases that sought to limit free speech in certain cases, such as the Oliver Wendell Holmes opinion on yelling fire in a crowded theater. I remember thinking wouldn't it be great if we could instead rely on a simple principle, saying all speech should be allowed, whcih as a practical matter would mean you would not have to engage Holmes's point, and acknowledge that yes, yelling fire in a crowded theater is a problem, that it serves no valid purpose, that in fact it is not even speech in teh sense we want to protect as a form of political and social discourse. So in real life we do have to acknowledge from time to time that there is a complexity to issues of this sort. I wish it was a simple matter of supporting free speech. No one I think likes to resort to bans. I was banned from Jetsinsider myself when I argued against a mod named Warfish''s hypocrisy. But when a poster day after day consciously subverts the overall purpose of having discussions here, then a ban is not only appropriate, but necessary to maintain the board's overall purpose.
I'm sorry... am I gonna get banned for laughing at this post? I laughed so hard, my coffee spurted out of my nose.
Assholes are assholes. Most people go out of their way to avoid them. This type of board is a relatively confined space to play in. There really isn't any room for assholes on it. Everybody gets ticked off now and then and goes on a rant. I've done it myself. So have you. When that's your posting style, and we have a few posters in that neighborhood much of the time, it really is bad for the board and for the people who post here and those who might post but don't want to set themselves up to be confronted by an asshole.
Funny, but I forget for very long periods that there is an "Ignore" button. It does make life easier.
