Don’t get me started on bastard! 
“Which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?”
While standards may differ from nation to nation and language to languge and dialect to dialect – I understand “shithead” is a compliment in Lower Slobbovia – please remember that a Warning is NOT a fine, imprisonment, or execution. It’s a warning by moderators not to continue a behavior. And the Lower Slobbovian will learn something about dialects, and not repeat the use of the term. The only times that warnings take on deeper significance is when a poster chalks up repeated warnings, for the same (or similar) offenses.
Well, maybe yours is but not mine!
I can cklearly now, the rain is gone …
I think that’s true in American English, too. I was going to post something similar, in that “prick” is a worse insult than “dick”. I can’t quite put my finger on it (don’t laugh), but it just seems like “prick” carries an added level of vitriol, based on a more irritating or obnoxious level of bad behavior.
However, both are insults, so it’s not really relevant to the warning issued.
I don’t see how anyone can see that post as anything but a deliberate insult.
It’s a comment exclusively that ralph124c consistently behaves a certain way. It’s directed at ralph124c, not his post. It has nothing to do with topic of the thread.
Clear, unambiguous rules violation.
“It was that bastard sitting at the table in the corner with those other bastards.”
I always thought it was that you can be a dick without intending to be a dick, but you have to intentionally work at it to be a prick.
TubaDiva, I have decided you hate me. I know “everyone else is jumping off the Empire State Building,” is not a valid excuse, but still…
I’m going to hold my breath until I turn blue.
Could the mods at least be consistent about labeling their warning posts? Gukumatz starts his post off with “[Mod Note]” but then says that it’s a warning. There’s enough confusion over understanding the difference between the two without further muddling it up.
Not to mention plumbing.
I think it’s a case that if you bother to take the effort to say “prick” you must really be worked up. Or maybe that’s just me. “Dick” is the word, and I have to think to say “prick”. YMMV.
That’s probably a good point. **Gukumatz **appears to have been indicating his post was an official Moderator action, but then called it a “Note” while giving a “Warning”. Since this board has been trying to keep these two terms separate for clarity, it would help for the moderators to be consistent.
I’m pretty sure there is only one poster who’s confused between the two.
Well, two. Little Nemo and apparently Gokumatz.
Actually, this is true. It was a brain fart on my side. I don’t hand out a lot of Warnings, but I do make a lot of Notes, so my fingers bypassed my brain and put it in. I’m editing it out as I type and I’ll leave in an explanation to avoid unwarranted confusion, as this really wasn’t a grey zone sort of thing.
As to the Warning itself, I read it as personally insulting towards the poster. There might be merit in a debate about relative strength of insults from their cultural backgrounds, but it would be painstaking and enormously difficult to police. For instance, I’m a Norwegian whose closest english-speaking cultural tie is the British, moderating an American message board in my second language and the poster in question appears to be Australian. That’s a lot of variables to codify into some sort of predictable, non-arbitrary ruleset. So as it is, we police things prima facie. If it looks like an insult, walks like an insult and talks like an insult, it’ll be policed as an insult. This might mean we occasionally miss a humorous referance the intended “victim” would get and take as a joke, but that’s a minor cost to pay.
(Irishman, I also moved your post from that thread to this ATMB thread for you. I guessed it was accidentally cross-posted, since my moderation wasn’t being discussed in the thread.)
Thanks.