It is my opinion that the BBQ Pit is an unnecessary forum and more detrimental to the SDMB than beneficial.
The menu for the boards refers to the Pit as such: “If you gotta flame, do it here. This is the place for all complaints and other discussion regarding administration of the SDMB.”
The Pit is used primarily for three reasons:
To discuss or rant about moderator decisions.
To call out another user personally and rant about his/her words/behavior/opinions.
To rant about external issues such as crappy customer service or bad drivers.
Because this board has a “don’t be a jerk” policy, there shouldn’t be a forum where attacks on moderators or other users is acceptable. If a user wants to rationally discuss a board issue, that should be able to occur on ATMB. An example of this would be matt_mcl’s respectful thread, “Moderator behaviour (not by a newbie)”. I think if attacks aren’t tolerated, these kinds of threads won’t degenerate into name-calling, insult-throwing screamfests (not that that one has). They’ll remain rational and respectful and will stand a better chance of being constructive. If a thread like this does turn ugly, it should be closed or deleted and the offending user given a warning.
Rants directed at another user should not be tolerated at all. If someone has a personal problem with someone’s behavior or opinions, it should be taken to email. Otherwise, it should be discussed politely within the context of the original thread.
Rants that are in reference to some external event should be made in MPSIMS or GD and the current rules for that forum as far as language should apply. Very often, external rants in the Pit are only debates or complaints that would fit into these other forums quite well except for the language they contain.
I think the existence of the Pit is often used as an excuse to rant against users and moderators and be downright insulting & rude. The public airing of these complaints harms the overall “mission” of this board. Attacks, name-calling, and insults are inherently ignorant. They hurt people’s feelings, put people on the defensive, and cause friction within our community. They very rarely result in a constructive outcome. If the Pit didn’t exist, issues that effect the board as a whole would be discussed either privately by email or in a positive manner in ATMB. Personal issues between users could be kept personal and private between those two people.
The indulgence in “Pit-like” behavior, I think, harms the overall credibility of otherwise intelligent, eloquent posters. I think as mature adults (and some very mature non-adults), we should be able to function without this outlet.
This is not a rant, but a discussion. Do you all agree? Disagree? Could this be taken into consideration by the moderators and administrators?
I disagree. The Pit serves also as a place to vent and rant and we don’t need this overspilling into other forums. It’s better to have one forum to air out differences.
As much as we’d like to think that abolishing the pit would abolish public ill will among posters, I think we all know its not true.
Arguements, at times, get ugly, and the most harrowing fights I’ve seen in here are spill over from OTHER forums, and I think that’s great. It gives us the option of either sticking with the spirit of the OP in the original forum, or jumping into the fiery fray over here.
At the risk of sounding like a parent or a controversial rock star, if you don’t like the pit…don’t go there!
I think you are being too optimistic. On a board where politics, religion, abortion, sex and telemarketers are discussed, you’ve got to believe that nerves are going to be touched, and to ask every to pretend that their perfectly comfortable with EVERYONE’S opinions on EVERYTHING is unrealistic, IMHO.
Don’t you ever rant or vent in real life? I hope so…bottled up rage can lead to back pain.
I see the Pit as the SDMB’s red-light district; the vice is isolated here so that the pious are not forced to gaze upon the raw expression of the heathens’ sordid desires.
Although I of course make every effort to maintain an Olympian perspective, sometimes ya gotta let the snakes out, eh? Nudge, nudge, wink wink, say no more…
In any event, I’m sure one of the mods will be along eventually to explain once again why the Pit’s continued existence is justified.
There’s a lot of fun stuff we don’t need. I’ve never been much of a Pitizen but I certainly enjoy watching the fireworks - and I presume the participants are having a good time of it as well. Well, most of them, most of the time.
Perhaps - but why let that get in the way of a good time ? Some posters occasionally need a damn good thrashing and this is where they get it. Some benefit from it, some leave in a huff, some - well, some just never learn.
If you think it possible to enforce good will towards everyone by insisting on proper manners, you probably are. People will insist on disliking each other no matter what. This forum keeps the personal debates out of the other forums.
I could say the same about a great deal of “MPSIMS-like” behavior. How come nobody ever advocates its abolishment?
Anyway, a handful of people have suggested we get rid of the Pit before (mostly by people who rarely enter the Pit). so I’ll just give you my summarized version of why we keep it.
Both MPSIMS and the Pit are here due to the side effects of having thousands of active posters. Inevitably a community develops and with that comes a lot of baggage. That why the Pit is here. But even the Pit has limits to the behavior we tolerate. If you look at the Pit threads that are active right know you will see mostly intelligent threads, very few of which are directed at other posters. We have people ranting about Ken Burns, Strom Thurmond, and Bush’s Cabinet, etc. They’re not being jerks, their ranting about things that show a gread deal of knowledge.
In fact, perusing the front page I don’t see any threads calling other posters out. And even whan that occasionally happens, they’re not initiated as gratuitous name calling festivals. They are usually triggered by a poster’s racist comments, or mind-numbingly chaotic debate style. People don’t open thread just to say that another poster is ugly and their mothers dress them funny.
Ultimately, I think MPSIMS and the Pit are window dressing on a board that offers a more knowledge and insightful dialogue than any other place on the web. And I’d much rather read why cultured folk are upset at Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary or why politically-aware folk are concerned about nepotism in South Carolina than read another post count party.
I definitely agree with you on this, Alphagene, I just think that these types of subjects already have a place in GD.
How about this…keep the Pit, keep the bad language, disallow personal attacks just like in the other forums?
C3, I unserstand where you’re coming from. But I’ve been in too many unmoderated boards over the years to fail to appreciate the BBQ Pit. People are going to flame; it sucks donkey, but it will happen. I have never seen or heard of an electronic forum that tried to abolish all flames and remained healthy and growing. And never one that succeeded.
The Christian boards I read are not immune. Hell, the Hello Kitty boards are not immune.
So, I believe that flaming is inevitable. YMMV.
With that belief in mind, I would much prefer to have a dedicated area to shove most of the flame into. That way, there is still a valve in place, but it’s not spewing out all over GQ or Comments.
Ummmm . . . well, I have. Unfortunately, my above argument holds true even for MPSIMS, replacing “flame” with “AOL-esque yapping.”
I disagree. Where’s the debate? I doubt that anyone who is truly familiar with Jazz would debate that a show that aims to be a complete story of jazz should gloss over Thelonius Monk. Wouldn’t you rather bitch abut the Pepsi girl than attempt to make her the subject of a debate?
It is rare that a rant can be phrased like a Great Debate, and I think it would be better not to clog up GD with half-assed attempts.
Just dropping by to thank everyone for the kind comments about the Burns thread, and to invite Alphagene over to MPSIMS…somebody’s started the “What’s Your Porn Star Name?” thread for the one-hundreth time, and we though you’d like to celebrate the anniversary with us.
Search brought up 39 threads in the Pit with the word “Pit” in their titles, most of them discussing the Pit. Talk about self-referential.
The Pit is a star, baby, and that’s what stars do, is talk about themselves.
C3, some people enjoy “name-calling, insult-throwing screamfests”, difficult though it may be to believe. If we all had to mind our manners every single moment and had no outlet for our honest emotions, most people would leave the boards. You say that might not be a bad thing? Yeah, but just think how bored the rest of you would be, if flamethrowers like Byzantine left. You’d have nothing to talk about. Darwinian Selection would mean that the remaining SDMB population would be only the mealy-mouthed po-faced hypocrites, who didn’t dare post what they really thought, or who took so long composing a post so as not to offend anybody that they sucked all the juice right out of it, and who never had any differences of opinions strong enough to demand the use of the word “asshole”. How dull.
And besides, where else could I post a “fuck you, George Lucas” thread? There’s no polite way to say that in MPSIMS. It’s gotta be the good old Anglo-Saxon f-word, to do the job properly.
Adult discussion does not mean passionless discussion, and passionate discussions can become heated. Part of engaging in an open forum is the understanding that your positions may be challenged, vigorously challenged, challenged to the inclusion of questioning the character of one who could espouse such positions.
I rarely post flames, and I don’t recall ever starting a flame thread, but if I see a poster behaving in an outrageous manner I am happy that I have the option of making my displeasure clear in a manner which makes it very clear that I think the poster has lost any claim to a polite response. Part of being an adult is both risking and expressing condemnation. I see only four ways for me to handle outrage at another poster:
I can do so within the thread, which interrupts the discussion and risks destroying any hope of further reasoned/friendly discussion on the OP.
I can complain to the moderators, which places me in the infantile position of one unable to cope with my own problems and risks overloading the moderators with whiny complaints and the personal bugaboos of a thousand posters.
I can supress my outrage, which is bad for my blood pressure and creates a false impression that personal criticism is improper in a free exchange of ideas. [sub]corollary: no opinion is so outrageous as to deserve strong criticism[/sub]
I can express my outrage in a new thread dedicated to just such a purpose. In other words, “take it to the PIT”.
