I believe that tea-partier would do the job.
Well, it hasn’t stopped several current posters. They only get modded for bringing their agenda into unrelated threads, but not for just expressing that *exact *opinion in relation to e.g. SubSaharan Africans in pertinent threads.
On an unrelated topic, I’m sure “libtard” is an equal-opportunity insult, I’m convinced I’ve seen it applied to libertarians as well as liberals (I think by Sam Stone to refer to some particularly bone-headed Libertarian belief on racism or something).
I’m with you. If they agree with me that is fine, if they say I have offended that is the call and I will respect it.
Yeah but then you’d be robbing people of the officially sanctioned insult against members most of the moderators disagree with politically.
As a part of my writer’s soul long term losing battle…
‘member of the tea party’ isn’t awkward in any way I can see. It even has the advantage of being utterly, entirely, and completely correct from a grammatical point of view. I’d certainly use it…and have, on occasion.
Seconded. We’ll nominate three liberal and three conservative posters who mostly participate in Great Debates, and three liberals and three conservative who mostly post in the Pit. I’m sure they’ll come up with something.
Things like “Tea Partier” and “Tea Party member” or “Tea Party groups” are brief enough that they won’t ruin your sentence structure or make your fingers fall off.
I am going to step in the other direction.
I see no value in a list of prohibited words, (even if the suggestion was facetious).
First, we have to have a committee to compile them–following which, we will have angry screams that the committee selection was packed or gerrymandered when one word or another that some poster finds personally offensive is omitted from the list, (or some favored derogatory not-quite-an-insult is placed on the list).
Note the Mod post that that prompted this thread. Marley noted that he was not sure whether to consider the word insulting or trolling. (I’d have voted trolling.) Context means a lot in these discussions. Each of code_grey’s posts using “libtard” were pretty much content free swipes at a group of people intended to raise the hackles of his targets. Stupid terms that mangle identifiers of (members of) any party or demographic, used casually in the course of a post, are rarely disruptive while having multiple ATMB threads to hash out whether “the Messiah” is more insulting than “Shrub” when referring to a U.S. president probably is disruptive in the long term.
I am quite willing to tell posters to back away from excessively hostile posts in order to keep threads from jumping the rails. I am not at all in favor of referring to some list to see whether their actual words are taboo.
(For the same reason, I do not hand out Warnings or Mod Notes based on a claim of “hate speech.” I am not going to get into a pointless round of altercations over whether a specific word, phrase, or sentiment is or is not “hate speech,” when it is much clearer to note that the expression was intended to raise hackles and, therefore, falls under the ban against trolling.)
IOW, Modding is a subjective art form, best left to sensitive, unbiased, supremely intelligent types such as you, and your word and your judgment should be respected universally and without question. Why does this not surprise me?
Just so everybody is 100 percent clear on this, I was making a joke about the budget cutting “supercommittee” in Congress. I’m not interested in getting a panel together to figure out which words are acceptable descriptions in GD and which ones aren’t. I don’t think that would be productive or sensible.
One reason I don’t like the phrase “Tea Party member” is its meaninglessness–there are a zillion groups calling themselves “Tea Party,” some of which recognize other TP members, others not. When you call someone a Democrat, they’ll deny it or confirm it, but there’s very little chance of vacillating. With a TPer, they’ll admit it on Monday, deny it on Tuesday, and be right both times. That’s why I like “Teabagger”–they chose it for themselves, and it doesn’t requires Party membership.
You could say the same about terms like liberal and progressive and conservative. There are lots of competing subgroups but the meanings of the terms are still recognizable, and so are the attitudes of the members.
Those are indeed “other words,” which appear not to relate in the slightest to anything he said. Unresolved backstory, I take it?
“Context means a lot in these discussions” translates pretty directly into “I’ll judge insults in the full context, and not obey petty arbitrary rules about which words were written, because words are objective, and deny me my Mod-given right to decide subjectively that ‘tea-bagger’ in a thread about Lipton-brewing is warnable if I’m a bad mood and ‘Nazi prick’ is jocular badinage if I’m in a good one.” A list of words would mean Mods had to, you know, be consistent or at least least strive for consistency. If words don’t apply, and context rules, then all a poster can know for sure is he’s always on very thin ice.
The we should refrain from issuing any warnings or moderator notes for words whose only purpose is to demonize the other side. Libtard, DEMONcrats, Regugs, Troglodytes, Tighty Righties. They are all the same, and cheapen GD considerably. But if some are allowed, and others not, then this board is indeed slanted in its moderating actions.
Same with thread shitting. Certain posters are allowed to thread shit with impunity in every thread about religion (or conservatives), making those threads just as bad as the ones about race or Africa, yet thread-shitters in those threads are often warned to stop.
That’s why the committee should be self-selected. Better yet, charge a reasonably fee, say $1 per week or $8 per year, plus misc surcharges. Remember it’s an advisory board: it should be granted credence proportionate to the task at hand.
You are essentially advocating a board of 44,000 rules. Here we have only one.
What if you want to distinguish the crazies from the mainstreamers? What if it’s 1967 and crazy lefties are in the mainstream?
Cold turkey on the libtard
I think some background is in order as well. Check out code_grey’s post history. Personally I like the guy but certain interventions are truly doing him a favor.
I am not sure you agree with me, but this is basically what I am saying: rather than create some arbitrary list that generates automatic Warnings–and then wrangle over what words are on the list–I would prefer to simply try to get posters to back off when their actions are liable to be disruptive. When their words result in them being ignored, they wind up muting themselves, as few posters pay them any attention.
Again, it is a matter of disruption. Most of the anti- (and fewer pro-) religion one-off posts are so stupid that they are simply ignored by the majority of posters. Similarly, the one-off comments on politics, (and there we have a similar number of posters attacking the Left and the Right with short, unsupportable nonsense), tend to be too stupid to warrant a response and are generally ignored.
The problem with that is that the board is overwhelmingly left-of-center. So one lone conservative throwing the phrase “libertard” around was enough to generate a mod note, because there’s a lot more people being offended by it than say, “tighty righty”, or “repugnican” or “teabagger” or whatever other term is popular on any given day.
So if disruptive is the standard, it makes sense that Der Trihs can get away with thread-shitting in every political or religious thread. While most of the board isn’t as over-the-top whacked out as his posts are, they’re nominally on his side. So while most of the reasonable leftie posters will roll their eyes at his over-the-top insults, they’re not going to get pissed and complain about it as a rule.
Bad standard but it explains a lot about why certain posters are allowed to get away with clear, obvious, rule-breaking.
It’s really not as hard as Tom pretends: you come up with a short list of objectionable terms (rightard(s), libtard(s), whatever), sticky that, then tell people who use them that they’re prohibited (see sticky), and as people use words that are not on your stickied list, just add those words to the list. Easy, clear, no-brainer: use one of the prohibited words and you get warned, use them repeatedly in violation of a Mod warning, and there’s deeper trouble.
Unless the problem isn’t actually the prohibited words. I suspect it’s not.
I sometimes wonder how people wallow in self-delusion, marveling at the depth and expanse of the chasm between what they think they know and what they actually know.
I’m pretty sure the people first using the term as an insult to their political opponents or comedy targets knew exactly what it meant.
What I find funny is when people become predisposed to believing their own misconceptions to the point of promulgating these delusions into other area of thought or discussion. It gets progressively worse, be careful.
From the Wiki:
The protester whose sign inspired the term as it is now colloquially used was not a tea pary party supporter. BTW, I am neither a Tea Party supporter or a Republican, FWIW - just a casual observer of human behavior.
Uh, that would be incorrect. See how the rumor spreads?
I can come up with 600 insulting terms for any particular group. I don’t think your “short list” would work at all. And as has been pointed out many times, attempts at comprehensive “tax code” style rules just lead to “I’m not touching her” style arguments. (“Mom! He’s putting his finger an inch from my eye!”)
The reason that “don’t be a jerk” has survived as the bedrock rule is that it has worked.