NationStates Jolt Archive

I was just wondering why "Ask a..." threads were banned? I'm sure it's covered elsewhere, but as a newbie, I don't know where that might be! The recent ones seemed to me to be more productive than a lot of the "religious" threads on here which are little more than assertion and name-calling in that they were an opportunity to ask questions and get answers about different faiths - I'd have thought we'd be all for promoting understanding and tolerance?

Incidentally, if you are going to close one, you ought to close the other.

It's because they were cropping up in what appeared to be a fad, and not as serious threads that could really contribute anything, if I recall properly.

Yeah, there were all kinds of stupid ones popping up. Shame really, because threads like Klonors Ask A Jew were actually good. I think it should go on a case-by-case as opposed to locking all of them.

It seems to have been case by case, Ask a Jew was locked, Ask a Muslim is still open...

(Yes, I know it was just oversight and not a policy! Don't hurt me. :))

Few possibilities.
1) Maybe Ask A Muslim hasn't been done yet, so they've kept it open.
2) Maybe the mods haven't seen it yet and will do when they see it.

I should stress right now I'm not asking for it to be closed - but I do wonder at the closing of the other one.

When "Ask a Jew" became a topic about "what time is it in Scotland?", it became spam and was locked. I also locked the newly created "Ask a White Sox fan" for similar reasons. I did not lock "Ask a Muslim" because it appeared to be staying on topic.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of these threads - it's just that the spammers and copycatters can't seem to resist making stupider and stupider clones of them. We've spent so much time cleaning out spam and locking threads that we made a mod decision to simply outlaw the damn things. Come up with a different title that adequately expresses your goal, and maybe we can leave them open.

By the way, the original thread that spawned this problem was "Ask a Jew". There have been at least four incarnations of it, with the longest reaching several hundred posts. As someone said in the second post, "It's been done".

When "Ask a Jew" became a topic about "what time is it in Scotland?", it became spam and was locked. I also locked the newly created "Ask a White Sox fan" for similar reasons. I did not lock "Ask a Muslim" because it appeared to be staying on topic.

Would it not have been more sensible to delete that question - that single question - and to tell me off for having answered it in the first place? By leaving one and closing the other (for such a minor infraction) seems like bias. Especially as other threads are as bad and worse for that kind of thing, your ruling is very imperfectly applied.

By the way, the original thread that spawned this problem was "Ask a Jew". There have been at least four incarnations of it, with the longest reaching several hundred posts. As someone said in the second post, "It's been done".

Where are these other ones then? Surely the "it's been done" argument could be made for about fifty current threads on Europe vs USA or Liberal vs Conservative etc?

Every topic on the General forum has been done to death. Every. Single. One. Of all of them, only the copycat "Ask a ..." threads have required the imposition of at least THREE temporary stickies to get them to stop clogging up the forum.

You lack the history to see the necesssity, and to you it looks like bias. To us, it looks like sensible moderation. I'm sorry that you, as a new member, have to be saddled with the baggage of the past, despite having been no part of it ... but that's the way it is.

Request denied.