A couple of days ago Snoopy accused me of hijacking a thread.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but since I know there has been some restructuring and rule changes lately and the comment was from a moderator I wanted some clarification. I don’t want to break any rules, unwritten or otherwise.

To be honest at first I thought Snoop was referring to the thread in which he made the comment, the “Torture” thread. I looked it over and didn’t see any evidence of me hijacking it so I searched other recent threads I had responded to. It didn’t take long, since I’d only been posting for a few days, to figure out he must have been referring to one of his own threads, the “Millions More What?” thread.

I had missed it the day he started it so when I first discovered it there were already 29 comments. I’ve always enjoyed your threads Snoop so I started reading it from the beginning, replying to comments as I went along. It took me about 50 minutes to get through it and I had made 9 consecutive comments all in direct response to other comments, and none of them trying to change the topic in any way. In fact I think race is a topic we should discuss more often. I’ll admit that some of them may be considered poor attempts at humor but I assure you they were aimed at stimulating the discussion, not hijacking it.

A couple nights ago Sman and I did a similar thing in the “Torture” thread. Ironically we actually did change the topic from torture to race.

I’m not trying to make a big deal out of this but to me neither of those instances should be considered to be hijacking a thread and I would like your opinions on the subject.

I don't think thread hijacking is a big deal on a forum of this size. We don't have enough traffic to justify starting different threads on every minutia of topic that comes to mind. It'd be more clutter with a bunch of threads with few or any responses.

There's not many threads here that don't go off into a tangent and it's never been a problem. And if it does bother somebody, they usually bring it back around on topic.

Thanks, that's kinda what I thought too and frankly I meant to state in the beginning of my post that I wasn't sure if Snoopy's comment was tonge-in-cheek or not, hence the reason for my delay in asking for clarification.

Snoops not a mod anymore. Sides,who cares what he says! I havn't seen a topic yet that didn't get "jacked" around here. I wouldn't worry about it myself Iddy.

You're right, I'm not a mod anymore. Been demoted for heinous crimes against the forums -- asking questions about what the rules are, daring to question authority, stuff like that. No biggie, since I woulda quit anyway based on the responses -- or rather lack thereof -- that I got from the bigwigs at the HM, who are apparently either beyond question, rude, or simply cowards as all but one did not even offer the courtesy of a reply. Besides, I can afford the pay cut.

Idiot posted about 9-12 times in a row in a thread, and I made the remark he hijacked the thread because I believe Sheash or Phish (or one of those lib crybabies ) had once had a cow and pitched a hissy because I had posted 2 or three times in a row in a thread once. It ain't no big deal to me, but I thought Idiot overdid it. JMO -- which obviusly don't matter much anyway.

You got booted from being a moderator, Snoop????

I'm sorry to hear that Snoopy. I thought you were a very good moderator.

Seriously, no BS.

Snoopy's not mod anymore? Gosh. I go out of town for a couple of days and look what happens?

Don't take it too hard, Snoopy. Look around... this place just isn't worth getting upset over.

Well, if you wanna be technical about it...yes.

I didn't like the idea that WVD was "asked" to modify a post in the "coach furnishes alcohol" thread based on the idea that some still unnamed "editor" got involved and pressured Webbie. Despite asking who and why, these questions remain unanswered.

Then another still unnamed "higher up" at the HM apparently pressured Webbie to delete the whole thread related to NBC25 and their website. The excuse given was because we don't allow advertising, which is insulting our intelligence.

So, figuring that Webbie was just following orders and couldn't question things further lest she lose her job, I sent a letter to several higher-ups at the HM asking the people in the background making these decisions to "identify themselves and explain the reasoning behind these decisions, and give clear instructions so that in the future moderators will know and understand what constitutes acceptable vs. unacceptable posts on the forums". I said if no one was willing to do this, I would resign as a mod. I figured I'd give them a week to answer. I in no way criticized Webbie or any mods, quite the opposite. I copied Yoss, Heather, and Webbie.

Well, that went over like the proverbial lead balloon, a couple folks here on the forums got reeeealy pissed at me, and my mod status was immediately terminated.

The only reply I got from HM "higher-ups" was from Bob Maginnis who said it wasn't him who made these calls and he felt we should have clear rules to go by. No one else gave me the courtesy of a reply. Tells me much about the alleged "integrity and credibility" of the Herald-Mail staff that HM editor Linda Duffield boasted about in a recent article -- she, BTW, was one who refused to answer my letter. Ain't talk cheap???

So, I'm adjusting to the pay cut and otherwise haven't lost any sleep over it. I still wonder though, who really knows the forum rules and why they are so top secret.

A thread about hijacking is now being hijacked.

Some forums take hijacking very seriously, others don't. Some people take it seriously, others don't. As in the case with Romulus. We had a previous discussion about hijacking a looong time ago and he said he stopped posting here as much as he'd like because of the constant hijacking.

We're just so small and tight knit that it's hard to expect hijacking not to flourish. But when we get pissed at each other or want to crack on each other, we start slinging accusations of "off topic!" at each other.

ain't that what crazy,disfunctional families do?