Yeah, my stance is 100% that BOBA was not civil nor informed in the vast majority of his discourse that I saw. Obviously I cannot say
any, since there's plenty I likely never saw considering how much he posts, but I would describe his posts as a nuisance more than anything. Typically uninformed or willfully ignorant of certain details or nuance to particular matters and then firmly entrenched in that position with no indication that he desired to have a healthy debate, but rather to do anything and everything to support whatever his stance was. That's not my definition of civil discourse, it's just unnecessary noise. I stopped paying attention to anything he wrote in a thread or anyone foolish enough to respond to him a long time ago, so whether he's banned or not doesn't really bother me.
I'm sure knowing him outside of the board shades your opinion on this and I'm willing to bet he's probably a cool dude to grab a drink with or shoot the shit in a different venue/forum. Even so, I viewed him more as a pest on the board that causes flare-ups from time to time. Posters such as yourself aren't similar to BOBA in any form or degree from my viewpoint and there's a difference in having contrarian views and simply being a contrarian. One is a legitimate and necessary part of healthy discourse and the other is one of the pitfalls that need to be avoided during said discourse. I'll even stick up for
@jshorn as well. I think he can be a jackass a lot of times and may lack sound judgment on what is/isn't a solid time and place to air certain thoughts or opinions, but I don't think that's a banworthy set of characteristics. I'm sure I've come off like a jackass plenty of times over the course of the 13 or 14 years I've been a member here. I've enjoyed several discussions I've had with
@jshorn, yet had others with him where I thought he could use a good punch in the mouth. To me, that's a solid sign that the individual is a good overall poster. I think you and I had a good time lampooning season 2 of TD once we saw the railings coming off by the 4th or 5th episode which wasn't a real popular opinion on the TD threads, but we both laid out numerous reasons why we thought the thing was turning into a shit sandwich. It wasn't just to be difficult.
Maybe BOBA has engaged in discussions in the past where he was actually serious about whatever was being discussed, but I never saw it and his attempts at humor were always juvenile and lacked any subtlety or, well, humor. I completely understand sticking up for him if he's your buddy as I would do the same, but I always viewed him as having all of the bad things a guy like echeese has without any of the good.