Did your grandpa look at the posts that people made on his threads and actually learn from them, develop his way of thinking further, and make an effort to have his ideas challenged in hopes he might learn something new? Did he bring new, varied topics every now and again, going into different trains of thought? If he did any 1 of those things, he did many times more than B-Cell ever did.
No, I wouldn't say that he did. He was 95, it gets more difficult to change the older you get. He didn't really understand why they rejected his posts. I understand that you would really like my grandpa to have been better than B-Cell so you don't feel as uncomfortable about saying what you are about to say, but he wasn't really (I mean, he wasn't sexist or racist though). Don't get me wrong, he was a great grandfather, a hard worker, generous, and kind, but he wasn't eloquent nor open to changing his beliefs. Would the other people on the forums have preferred not to read his rambling, semi-coherent posts? Probably. But did reading and posting on the site make him happy and help give his life purpose? Definitely.
I don't lose anything by letting B-Cell post his threads. I can just ignore them if I choose. But B-Cell might have gotten more out of the experience than the rest of the community gains by having him gone.
Like Houseman, I think it was death by a thousand cuts. The mods saw B-Cell making these threads for YEARS on the V1 forum, and he never once changed his opinions or changed his format in any way. He just swapped out some words, changed the title, changed the topic, but otherwise the thread could be note for note copy-pastes from his previous ones. It got to the point here where it would devolve into bashing (In which I admit I took part in) because many of us wanted him so deeply to evolve even just a tiny bit. But I think it became clear that even years down the line he was still spouting the same copy-pasted nonsense that the threads ended up not being remotely about his "discussion" topic, and the mods felt it better to cut him out.
Frankly, this would be an absurd way to apply moderation and I'm glad that it turned out that he was banned for different reasons. Who decides what evolution is, or how frequently it needs to occur? You? How could something like that be mandated? When is it decided that someone has changed
enough to be worthy of continued posting?
There's a clear attitude I get from the rules and leadership here that you have to be open to other people's opinions, and be ready to develop from the discussion and hopefully change and grow along with it, rather than just come here to spout one's opinion and refuse to budge even the tiniest inch, because that defeats the purpose of the discussion. If everyone else' opinions don't matter, then like I said before, the forum's just being used as a sounding board for one's opinion and nothing more. It's fine to have our values and opinions and hold them close. But unless we're here to actually be challenged and learn new things and hear new opinions, then why bother making a "discussion" post in the first place?
There are many people here, who have been here for around a decade that regularly make it clear that they are, in fact, not open to other's opinions. And again, who's opinions? Yours? How about Houseman's? Were you open to Houseman's opinions and ready and willing to change and grow along with them? No, of course not. It's absurd. Nobody is open to all opinions. Many people just want to give their opinions and don't care if people disagree with them.
Several people including myself tried to teach him, help him improve his topics and discussions, broaden his perspective, and so on. We genuinely wanted better topics from him, we wanted him to improve. B-Cell made it clear he didn't post to "discuss" like he said, or to learn, or to change, and he kept that up for years. And that's what did him in. He was just filling empty space only for himself as far as we and the mods could tell. There's a reason he earned the nickname "Biased-Cell" among a few users
Well, how could he help but be enlightened by your tutelage? I'm sure he should have been falling over himself to sup upon your nuggets of wisdom, well if you hadn't been making fun of him along with everyone else, that is. Or perhaps he should have realized that you were bashing him for his own good because you only wanted him to learn to be a better poster. Or maybe not. Maybe people don't want unsolicited advice and badgering them about how they need to broaden their perspectives and help them improve themselves is one of the best ways cause them to close off.
Please, get down from your high horse before you fall off and hurt yourself.
