2014wallcalendar

Just from reading this I know you'd make a great politician

I think the original reason that people were told to not 'restart threads on this topic' was to stop flame wars spilling into other threads and give people a chance to cool off. It made a kind of sense. The topic wasn't banned, just not discussed until people had calmed down.
That said, it shouldn't be forgotten that the real problem is not the topic, but the posters in it. Having a site moderator pretty much say that an entire topic of conversation (and a pretty arbitrary one at that) is banned from any discussion on the site whatsoever is bizarre.
As I say, you may as well preemptively ban any controversial subject, which would mean you'd have to close the P&R forum and lose a bunch of the site traffic.
Abortion? Death penalty? Guns? You know people will kick off, why allow it?
Seems to me that there is too much ego in a lot of recent moderation decisions. But there you go, VJ doesn't moderate on the basis of good practice. You pick a bunch of people with a jobsworth mindset and this is what happens.

So I bow in the presence of such a deft cunning linguist!

That's why I cunningly misspelt the islands as the Sentakus to avoid the islands apparent filter of doom.

My take is that VJ is run by the Chinese secret service on a server stuck under some bureaucrat's desk in an old nondescript building in Beijing and discussing the islands 'that must not be named' irks someone high up in the Central Committee.

Maybe the mod in question has a territorial claim to the Sentakus themselves?

That's a non-answer. This isn't the bloody oracle at Delphi. It's a message board.

I should also note that if a Moderator suddenly declares a topic verboten, how will the membership even know? Once the locked thread slips a few pages, many people will become unaware.
Is there going to a list of banned topics somewhere in the forums?

This notion that certain topics are off limits is inappropriate and in violation of the Terms of Service. If there are users making racist statements or other issues, they can be thread banned. But to ban an entire topic for users following the rules seems to be interfering with the enjoyment of the forum by regular users.

Why are we not allowed to discuss the Senkakus?

Here's the official answer from TBone in the site-related forum:

Hope that clears it up for you.

Why is this thread continuing but others have been locked? Is there something different about this one? hmmmmm

Either logic now holds sway, or this thread hasn't been seen yet.

Having not really kept up with this place in recent months I was not aware that all things senkakus was out of bounds.. What is the thinking behind that?

By the mod's computers. Replace 'people to kill' with 'topics to ban'.

It's weird to ban an entire topic of discussion because people can't behave. By that rationale, topics on abortion, capital punishment, guns and Obama should be similarly banned.
They aren't. Why?

Understanding is not required. Compliance is. You will be assimilated. You will...serve...US.

Why would it be locked?
Is it suddenly against the TOS to discuss a current world event?

I also do not understand.

I am baffled as well... Considering how much baiting posts are vomited on VJ on a daily basis, this one strikes me as odd, to be considered tabu...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101628594
Ari Rubenstein, co-founder and CEO of Global Trading Systems
Mary Jo White confirmed what everyone on Wall Street has been saying for weeks: Michael Lewis is dead wrong. Responding to a question about Mr. Lewis' controversial book, "Flash Boys," the SEC Chair told Congress: "The markets are not rigged … [they] are the strongest and most reliable in the world."
....
Suddenly, however, important market participants have begun to speak up and voice their opinions on high-frequency trading, and many have come to its defense. For instance, Clifford Asness and Michael Mendelson, both principals at AQR — the kind of institutional investor Mr. Lewis claims high frequency traders are cheating — wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "How do we feel about high-frequency trading? We think it helps us." Dozens of diverse industry voices, from commodities trader Dennis Gartman to prominent market researcher and strategist Larry Tabb, have agreed.
Wall Street is a data-driven industry, which is a problem for Mr. Lewis, because he provides almost no data in "Flash Boys" to back up his incendiary claims. The result has been a groundswell of opinion rarely seen on the Street, which brings me to the second reason I'm grateful for the publication of "Flash Boys." Now that many of us have banded together, the industry can talk about something that really matters to the financial markets: stability.
The modern market is far from rigged, but it's also far from perfect. Today, virtually all trading is electronic — a fact that not many everyday investors fully appreciate. In this all-digital marketplace, human error and technical meltdowns are a real concern. Incidents like the "flash crash" of 2010 (which the SEC determined was caused by human rather than machine error), the botched Facebook IPO, and Knight Capital's implosion, while rare, demonstrate the need for regulations that strengthen the marketplace and prevent these sorts of shocks and stresses.

birds of a feather...

It's funny how you demonize the woman but use proper wording for man whose clearly a hateful human being. I guess it makes sense. I get caught being a class A douche bag, so since I can't be racist on my personal time, I'm going after everyone else, rather than work on my own personal failings.

I have no clue what the deal is, but if there is a S Pot to be stirred , I want in

Curious as to how this situation differs (if at all) from the likes of Gibraltar and the Falklands. It's easier to maintain your claim if several generations of your people have lived there.