Sorry to take up a whole post on the forums with this, but it seems things have degraded somewhat since I stopped visiting regularly.

Just want to say that nest0r - if you read this, I'd like to keep in touch regardless of connection to the forums. You can email me through my profile link if you'd like.

p.s. I can provide journal access

I second that - her posts are among those that have been most helpful to me and that I've most appreciated... .

I personally think that it might be wiser to simply close a thread for further posting when things seem to get too hot instead of banning these strong contributor or "semi-banning" them with suggestions that they "take a break", which can really hurt people's feelings and push them away. I realize it's not easy to administer a forum, but excluding people (directly or indirectly) doesn't necessarily solve the problem of threads getting hot (I don't think that banning people helps the ones who get banned to actually learn anything about how to express themselves in a more productive way - and the loss of those people can represent a big loss for the overall group... .

@monjaisshin:

nobody's been banned, if nest0r's left, it's of his own free will.

other people have got temporary bans before and haven't reacted so childishly. He might just be taking a break anyway.

It's Fabrice's forum, and i don't think he does a bad job of administrating, so...

that doesn't mean i like every decision, but, yknow.

i like nest0rs research posts too, but i hate his style of arguing and hammering down any opinion different to his without even considering the merits of other points of view, so, imo, whatever. i also find rarely find him witty as others seem to, it just comes across as plain rude to me. so, i'm 50/50 on the subject. maybe a break will do him good and bring back the nest0r that only posts interesting research for a while.

I wonder how is he in real life

Nestor had way to much leisure time here that he may have forgotten who runs this website and the purpose of the forums,it was for his own good. He was a good contributor and nothing more so I for one am glad he left once he snapped back into reality, realizing his epeen was nothing more than a delusion. The same goes for blood (who cares how its spelled). Now the forums can return with variety of fresh discussions/new faces without the fear of the mongers defending untested methods.

nest0r, please contact me.

MonjaIsshin Wrote:I personally think that it might be wiser to simply close a thread for further posting when things seem to get too hot instead of banning these strong contributor or "semi-banning" them with suggestions that they "take a break"

The problem is, Fabrice did close the problem thread, and bodhi and nest0r just continued the party by necroing a separate, semi-related thread. (Well, to be accurate, bodhi necroed the thread, and nest0r resumed ripping into the detractors as soon as they showed up). How many threads have to be closed before punitive action is justified, in your opinion?
Also, nest0r was threatened with a ban, but was never banned, even temporarily, because s/he stopped posting after the ban threat.
Make sure to get your facts straight.

i think he/she left in order to further pursue a romance with khatsumoto

dtcamero Wrote:i think he/she left in order to further pursue a romance with khatsumoto

We don't need any trolling, thanks.

Maybe s/he left to get some actual experience studying Japanese rather than just acting like an expert on it all the time...

S/he was actively posting on this forum for 4 years plus without any indication of having reached a particularly advanced level but despite this would rudely dismiss anyone who would dare disagree with him/her.

the sheer volume of posting would lead one to think s/he was either a)not working b)not studying japanese or c)not sleeping

(a metaphorical analysis of the situation re mr. moto :

)

nest0r has an amazing ability of being able to write a whole lot of words without actually saying anything.

nadiatims Wrote:Maybe s/he left to get some actual experience studying Japanese rather than just acting like an expert on it all the time...

S/he was actively posting on this forum for 4 years plus without any indication of having reached a particularly advanced level but despite this would rudely dismiss anyone who would dare disagree with him/her.

I have no idea what nestor's level is, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:Maybe s/he left to get some actual experience studying Japanese rather than just acting like an expert on it all the time...

S/he was actively posting on this forum for 4 years plus without any indication of having reached a particularly advanced level but despite this would rudely dismiss anyone who would dare disagree with him/her.

I have no idea what nestor's level is, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

haha

dtcamero Wrote:i think he/she left in order to further pursue a romance with khatsumoto

conspiracy theories

JimmySeal Wrote:The problem is, Fabrice did close the problem thread, and bodhi and nest0r just continued the party by necroing a separate, semi-related thread. (Well, to be accurate, bodhi necroed the thread, and nest0r resumed ripping into the detractors as soon as they showed up). How many threads have to be closed before punitive action is justified, in your opinion?
Also, nest0r was threatened with a ban, but was never banned, even temporarily, because s/he stopped posting after the ban threat.
Make sure to get your facts straight.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=682&page=58

bodhi suggests closing pro-goats in addition to anti-goats to avoid arguments, though he does slip in a jab in the second post.

you can see nest0r just wants to close the thread too to avoid personal attacks.

then you see a little civil(!) debate going on before admin appears to take a side on an insulting post towards bodhi/nest0r, though tokyostyle/dtcamero are not implicated for being pro-goat.

nadiatims Wrote:S/he was actively posting on this forum for 4 years plus without any indication of having reached a particularly advanced level but despite this would rudely dismiss anyone who would dare disagree with him/her.

i don't think she ever personally attacked someone though, and would usually give a mound of evidence for her own viewpoint; very valuable compared to the mostly anecdotal evidence that we swap around.



i somehow doubt nest0r will be back. we assume that she took a break, though i do question that it is simply just a break. were i disrespected and told to take a break for "circlejerking to my method," i probably wouldn't be back.

talking to nestor was like telling a joke to a potato.

everyone on every side of this argument had their points and their jabs... and admin didn't really seem to mind. the real problem was incessantly posting huge nested quotations without the slightest attempt at saying anything humorous... just mean-spirited bile and rancor.

This is degenerating into a mean-spirited thread; I don't see the need to take pot-shots at posters who aren't here (by choice or not) to defend themselves.

yudantaiteki Wrote:This is degenerating into a mean-spirited thread; I don't see the need to take pot-shots at posters who aren't here (by choice or not) to defend themselves.

I agree. Feel free to say something nice about the absent, though.

I haven't read the problem thread but...

kainzero Wrote:i don't think she ever personally attacked someone though, and would usually give a mound of evidence for her own viewpoint; very valuable compared to the mostly anecdotal evidence that we swap around.

I generally agree with this. I generally enjoyed nest0r's posts, and often learned from what he said. I think he has a strong, academic mind, and his arguments were mostly based on sound reasoning, and said in way that exhibited facility with the English language. This is something that I laud rather than make fun of. I'd read his posts arguing with someone, and the other party would look like they didn't even understand English sentence construction. And he does have a sense of humor, just not the cheap kind.

He/she (does anyone know for sure??) would sometimes succumb to his prejudices and throw some quick cheap shots, but I don't think those outnumber his reasonable posts. And who doesn't have prejudices? I am far more annoyed by mean-spirited people on this forum.

kainzero Wrote:bodhi suggests closing pro-goats in addition to anti-goats to avoid arguments, though he does slip in a jab in the second post.

Get real. bodhi's comment was a passive agressive jab at the admin for closing the SS hatefest. His last sentence in that post is clearly laden with sarcasm:

Quote:Otherwise, some troll might want to give equal time to alternate views.

Do you honestly think he was making an altruistic attempt at preventing arguments?

kainzero Wrote:admin appears to take a side on an insulting post towards bodhi/nest0r

Of course the admin agreed with that poster. That poster was telling them to stop their obsessive attacks on AJATT and just let it go, which is exactly what the admin said when he closed the SS thread.


You seem to have a very distorted view of events.

Seamoby Wrote:He/she (does anyone know for sure??)

nest0r, as a forum persona, was a genderqueer; as far as I remember, she never answered objectively what his gender is when questioned about it, only gave hints to both sides. Take a look at this post, for example.

Nest0r is/was one of the few people who would usually try/usually tries to give as objective recommendations as possible to people who ask about learning strategies,etc. instead of going purely by personal experience which most posters do. Personal experience can be a valuable source of information of course, but relying on it completely can make you forget that just because something worked or didn't work for you, that doesn't mean it will be the same for others. Moreover, the style of reasoning that Nest0r propagated is something that in the long run leads to a more progressive knowledge base that has a structure and some logic to it. This makes it easier to attain a more in-depth understanding of the learning processes and also to compound that knowledge base and put "new" learning methods in a context/recognize what earlier learning methods they are either a simple variation of or very similar to.

What we often get otherwise are new generations of learners cropping up with some 'new' "visions" that they claim to be THE thing, ignoring most of the long, long history of the area (eg "language learning", or more specifically "Japanese learning"). In each generation there is usually people who tapped into the pre-existing knowledge base, which is good, but are more focused on conveying an image of 'I did this, aren't I great?" than they are on relating the knowledge they spread to others' work and admitting that what they've done is only a small part of something much larger. This is why summarizing break-throughs/findings/ideas in a way that is as easy to understand/simple and short as possible and explaining how it fits into the knowledge base is so important in the long run. There is plenty to read about any area, not the least learning/pedagogy, and unless there is continous filtering of information the knowledge base becomes harder to get an overview of because it is bloated by long texts/speeches etc. that say the same thing except for a few things. So you have to wade through a lot of info that you've already acquired and must do the connections between the concepts etc. on your own, which tends to be made more difficult by all the (actual and self-proclaimed) 'experts' using different terminology for the same things. This sometimes means you start reading an article and once you're half-way through you realize that it's saying the exact same thing as something you've read before, only with different words, meaning that other than the repetition you got the time you spent reading was basically wasted.

I hope this post was worth a read and helped you understand just how valuable people like Nest0r can be.

yudantaiteki Wrote:This is degenerating into a mean-spirited thread; I don't see the need to take pot-shots at posters who aren't here (by choice or not) to defend themselves.

So just like the (now-locked) SilverSpoon thread then?

JimmySeal Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:admin appears to take a side on an insulting post towards bodhi/nest0r

Of course the admin agreed with that poster. That poster was telling them to stop their obsessive attacks on goats and just let it go, which is exactly what the admin said when he closed the goats thread.

there's a difference between telling someone to stop and telling someone harshly to stop. telling bodhi/nest0r to stop circle-jerking is akin to telling pro-goat supporters to get their mouths off of the dick of the guy who runs the premier goat website.

plus, why is their a difference between obsessive attacks on goats and obsessive defenses of goats? there isn't.

JimmySeal Wrote:You seem to have a very distorted view of events.

i do. i'm biased. i'm not going to hide it either.

regardless of their views on study methods i found both bodhi and nest0r to have entertaining posts. that's probably why i'm still here, because i find this place entertaining, a place to relax and reflect on studying, and to express the inherent silliness and madness that goes on with all of us self-studiers. =)

this community is great. i remember lots of good things coming out of it.
off the top of my head i remember zorlee's story about how she went to the story, a japanese person pointed at him and said "外人" to which he repsonded "日本人！" and the person ran away.
aijin saying she loves ice cream, and someone making a modified version of her avatar to show her eating IceCream's avatar.
meeting gingerninja on not one but two other messageboards that as far as i know have almost nothing to do with each other.

and come on, look at this great thread! the first page alone is gold!
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4263&page=1

that is why when i see petty stuff like whether goats are good or not leads to members leaving, i don't like it. i think it could've been avoided here. i don't want to blame anyone, whether they want to target goats or defend their goats.

(and quite frankly i didn't even think it was out of control to begin with. it could've spiraled on endlessly and there would still be good stuff to learn on both sides of the discussion.)

Surreal Wrote:Nest0r is/was one of the few people who would usually try/usually tries to give as objective recommendations as possible to people who ask about learning strategies,etc. instead of going purely by personal experience which most posters do.

The problem with nest0r was their frequent inability to actually explain their ideas with any clarity or brevity. So much of what Nest0r wrote was overly verbose, longwinded and ultimately vague. And constantly pointing people to go read articles written by other people during debates strikes me as intellectually lazy. It's really annoying arguing with people who don't even understand their own ideas well enough to explain them to others. Pretty much anytime I've disagreed with nest0r I've basically been told: "you're wrong, go read this, this and this." And then when I do make the mistake of reading his links, I get the impression s/he hasn't even read them, has misunderstood something or is erroneously linking to irrelevant or dubious studies. Nest0r liked to parade around as scientifically minded and objective but was so often closed to the possibility of being wrong about anything.

I find anecdotal experiences posted by other users a lot more useful than most of the theorising posted by nest0r to be honest.

re: banning. Was it a mistake? maybe, I can't be bothered rereading that train-wreck of a thread, but it's Fabrice's forum, so it was his call to make.