Yeah. Probably a better solution than me endlessly shouting angry things and throwing angry gifs at windmills!
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Really, thatās the best bet - because we can easily cut out the hostile posts without affecting the conversation.
When, instead, you address those posts and continue the discussion in the same replies, it becomes progressively harder to remove the bad without taking the good with it (Iām sure as heck not going to start editing posts!)
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A whole thread on something Iām interested in that I missed because of time zones 
[quote=āMindysan33, post:50, topic:99309ā]
Iāve butted heads with them before to no good end.[/quote]
You and @petzl seem to be able to push one anotherās buttons in a way one usually doesnāt see outside of married couples and business partners. (I couldnāt see his posts in that thread, but Iāve seen the two of you tussle before.)
Honestly, though, it wasnāt that hard to read the thread and ignore the snippy bits, and I would say that while the topic did drift a bit from the articleās thesis, thatās not a terrible thing. Often the best way to get people involved in a discussion of something important but esoteric is to attach it to something controversial and superficially more concrete.
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That, basically, is many of the most societal episodes of Star Trek. 
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I think when we have been speaking about licensing in another thread, and how itās really normal for those professions to levy fines when people imply credentials they donāt have, to mostly dead interest. The topic of pop culture draws a lot more attention for people concerned about their own credibility in a subject.
I thought there were some very insightful comments in the exchanges that were made.
So did I, and if someone wants to split off and start again, have at it - but again, flag, donāt engage objectionable content!
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I donāt like that comparisonā¦ honestly I donāt fight much with my spouse and at this point, I have no business partner. He was saying some rather condescending things in that exchange though.
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I agree. We all run across academic papers on the net that baffle us for one reason or another, and insight on how to deal with it maturely is way more useful than discussing JTKās attributes. Iād say if it was OT, it was only a little.
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So, hereās what happened:
In looking at what the second person said, you can think: āOh, this person is a complete fascist!! He wants to criminalize political thought in America! How is that even possible?! What?ā
Or, you can think: āThatās obviously ridiculous. This a joke. Heās making a reference to Trumpās own proto-fascist tendencies in the same way the first person did. She was exaggerating, with respect to Trump; he took it to the next logical [fascist] conclusion.ā
Just how is this āgratuitously nastyā?
And really, I recognize other peoples usernames as āregularsā. I would think that others would recognize mine and not jump to the most sinister interpretation when given the choice between sarcasm and fascism.
How about indicating that your comment was being sarcastic in response to my obviously over the top comment (which I think has a grain of truth, given the endless harping on how evil the academy is in some political circles)? Given that the early comments on the thread was just basically a circle jerk on how terrible academics are, it really go my dander up and pissed me off. Maybe you could have recognized that and not actually added to that?
And if it was a joke, perhaps it wasnāt a good one or understood as a joke, and perhaps youāre partly to blame for that misunderstanding? Or perhaps I didnāt find it at all funny? Communication is always a 2 way medium, of course, so we also have to look at what we have said and maybe think a bit about how we communicated and if we failed to clearly communicate on our part (I mean myself in that too).
And give that you called me a him at one point, I donāt assume that you recognize me as a regular at all.
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While no one has ever accused me of being āMr sensitivityā (note her reaction to my post), timing is everything. That kind of comment was unnecessary when @anon61221983 was obviously not in a state for humor, feeling her field of study under fire and having already had a number of defensive posts. It appeared nasty, whether you really meant it or not. I think we all should try harder, and really think whether a post is furthering the conversation if a thread has already gotten contentious.
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I didnāt mean to imply that you were his spouse or business partner, only that you each seem to be reactive to the way the other frames responses in a particular way. I will tell you that as an outside observer neither @petzl nor @gellfex seem to me to be personally attacking you or your work, on the other hand I can completely see why you might feel that way on some of their posts.
In any event, the ripostes in the Trek thread seem really really mild to me compared to what Iāve seen in academics. There are fields where the dominant communication paradigm involves ripping others to shreds. A few years ago I accepted an invitation to speak at a big meeting in philosophy - not normally my field - and by the time my talk came around I was a little scared, as all the previous speakers had undergone what to me seemed like very nasty antagonistic grilling. Later that night all the main combatants were happily drinking together like best friends. (And in retrospect, this was nowhere near as nasty as the colloquiua in computational linguistics I used to attend regularly when I was a grad student working on a discipline-related project.) I donāt know if this is a healthy tradition, but it certainly exists in many fields, and I hope for your sake that yours (like my usual field, than goodness) is not among them.
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You both need to focus more on the topics and less on each other. Perhaps your can discuss it in private messages or email, but that thread was about star trek, this one is about moderation.
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His name was Robert Paulson.
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@orenwolf did the disappointed cunningstunt ask to have his name changed to gartsmirl in the texting debacle thread? I just noticed that and was curious. If it is something that isnāt shareable thatās fine and you can eat this post.
No. I changed it after explaining that the prior name was unacceptable. I offered a chance for them to pick a new name, but they did not, so I chose for them.
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Sir I owe you a beverage of choice for that! Well played.
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I was wondering what was up with that; kudos to you.
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Plz someone to make a .gif of Don Qixote throwing a .gif at a windmill for Mindy. I lack the necessary skills for gifception.
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Fine. However, I will note that almost out of the gate, the thread became about academics and what useless people we are. That happened long before I commented.
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