Ukraine Thread Closure Reported - No Discussion Allowed?

[PeroK]

The Mentors could "Thread Ban" you from that thread. It won't keep you from seeing it, but it will get rid of the temptation to post in it. Just let us know...

Thanks. I spent the afternoon watching news and other items and I changed my mind. I just watched an interview with Kaja Kallas, the Prime Minister of Estonia. Her mother was deported to Siberia when she was only six months old (along with her grandmother and great-grandmother). I can at least argue their case against the members on here who would claim a moral equivalence between the Russians and the West.

 

[StevieTNZ]

Please close that thread once and for all.

Stop posting in the thread if you're all for its closure. I see you have multiple times since posting the above. plane @ simple

 

[berkeman]

Stop posting in the thread if you're all for its closure. I see you have multiple times since posting the above. plane @ simple

He just said he changed his mind...

 

[StevieTNZ]

He just said he changed his mind...

Good. Stick to it. I hope he stops with the 'close this thread' narrative.

 

[pinball1970]

Good. Stick to it. I hope he stops with the 'close this thread' narrative.

Perhaps he is affected by the thread more than you and I? He has also been open about not liking the thread but also being drawn to it's development as the situation moves on. Very human and honest.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

Yuck, a facefull of worms would definitely be bad.

In any case, please feel free to start a PM conversation with me if there are issues that you would like to discuss. You are a valued member and Advisor here, and I'm hardly anonymous (see my Mentor Bio).

Thank you for your response, it is appreciated. I also appreciate it that you yourself are, indeed, not anonymous.

My main reason for being surprised and irritated by the ongoing thread about the war in Ukraine is that since long before the start of that war, I came to agree with the OP in this thread, hence also with this earlier post here. And there is no denying that the Ukraine thread is inherently political.

The question then becomes: Is the subject of the Ukraine thread sufficiently important to warrant an exception? There is no objective way to answer that question. So, in that sense any answer is arbitrary. And in this case, I think rules should prevail. Even more so because there are many other places online and offline where this topic is discussed with more expertise, by known participants with track records that are indicative for the value of their opinions.

(Finally, and I am a bit irritated that I feel compelled to write this, I am not arguing against the Ukraine thread because I would sympathize with the current Russian regime or its actions in the Ukraine. On the contrary, already since July 2014 (but still late) it is my wish that the clique responsible for all of this depravity is stopped by any means necessary, now. But the previous sentence is just as easy to type as many posts in the Ukraine thread itself, and it makes just as little difference.)

 

[Mike S.]

In the Ukraine thread, first they told me not to post about ancient history of Ukraine and the East-West schism; then they told me not to post a news story about unencrypted Russian communications because "this isn't Facebook" (?). I stopped trying to contribute after that. I peeked in now again and didn't see much worth reading after that either. They might as well leave it locked ... not for lack of "moderators" but because it's not worth figuring out what they want.

A bigger issue is all the routine locked physics threads on this forum - and the fact that they seem featured rather prominently - and that the lock isn't visible unless you log in. Twice I've found myself starting to work out a response to a thread only to be told it was locked when I went to start replying.

The inability to help users to handle open access to unfiltered content or even accept that they want to - the ever-higher prioritization of "moderation" over creation - this is at the root of the decline of Russia and most other countries around the world today. Every forum on the internet is declining, and most of the best ones are already destroyed.