You realize that this is a strawman, right? Because no mod or admin has actually said that this is a rule. Lynn’s opinion was that the OP’s title was so blatantly misleading as to constitute trolling and that was the reason for the warning, because it violated the rule against trolling. If you disagree with that conclusion, then fine, argue that point. No one has said that every thread title that isn’t “100 percent factually accurate in all particulars” will automatically constitute trolling. No one is instituting and enforcing a super-secret rule here and it’s disingenuous to get all outraged about it.
Is it after 5PM? Do I have a Scotch in one hand while the other one scratches a dog’s head? Has Elizabeth Banks answered any of my letters? Then hell no I’m not happy!
You say “strawman” and I say “hyperbole”. ToMAto, ToMAHto. 
…
Fine, Lute. None of that is what *you *said. I was talking about what *you *said. That’s why I responded to *your *words.
See, here’s the issue: I don’t think you should have to take any abuse. I’d be totally fine with a rule against every cursing at the mods, so long as it’s appropriately publicized. What I find objectionable is Euthanist getting busted for breaking some “super-secret rule” that you can bitch out the moderators for their moderation only in a new Pit thread, but not in the Pit thread where the moderation you object to takes place.
In other words, I’m not saying “You should take unlimited shit from people”, I’m saying “You should make clear in advance how much shit is too much, before you start busting people for going over the line.”
But apparently heaping horrendous amounts of vitriol on people doesn’t count as being a jerk in the Pit. Unless it’s done to a mod in response to a moderator action, and only then if you don’t start a new thread on the subject.
The common sense definition of “being a jerk” includes swearing at people. Since that’s apparently not considered “being a jerk” in the Pit, you really ought to specify clearly what does constitute being a jerk in the Pit.
To reiterate: I’d personally be fine with it if you said “don’t swear at the mods”. Hell, I’d be fine with it if you said “Don’t swear at any other posters” (although it would greatly change the nature of the Pit.) I’m just saying you ought to make it clear what the rules are. It’s obviously not clear, since quite a few people were surprised to find that Euthanasiast was apparently over the line even for the Pit.
Where did I say “go fuck yourself” was the sole reason for the suspension?
To be clear, if you added the single line “Refrain from using abusive language when criticizing moderator actions” to the forum rules sticky of the Pit, it would pretty much entirely resolve my objection. But there doesn’t appear to be such a rule currently.
Suppose the moderators posted a sticky thread that said “here is a list of the rules we are enforcing strongly.” How would that be interpreted? Naturally the board would assume that the other written rules would not be enforced strongly.
Suppose the moderators made a “State of the Forums” post every 2 weeks, in order to keep the boards informed about recent changes in behavior. Would the forums then seem more dictatorial or less? Who would read such posts? Not I, for one.
Suppose that the moderators didn’t do the above, and instead in this case, they posted a nice polite message: “This thread title seems misleading to us and is a borderline case. This isn’t a warning, just a request. We’d like to see less of this in the future, please.” Who would notice it? I wouldn’t have seen it. When I saw what a trainwreck the thread was, I bailed, even before the mod warnings.
Suppose the moderators just issued a rule, “We haven’t been enforcing the thread title thing recently, so we’re throwing it away. Nobody listens anyway.” Will this have a positive effect?
What, in short, should the moderators have done instead? Nothing at all?
I’m having a hard time understanding what people expect of the mods.
Well, no, you didn’t say that. You’re too mealy-mouthed for that. But you did express surprise that I did not consider “go fuck yourself” to be the inflammatory kind of statement that she was talking about when she warned him, when we both knew she was talking about misleading titles, not cussing at a mod. Here’ I’ll post the relevant statements.
ME : She told him not to post inflammatory stuff, because that is trolling.
YOU : “Go fuck yourself” isn’t inflammatory?
You are either suggesting that “Go fuck yourself” is sufficient for a suspension under Lynn’s warning, or you are talking with a mouth full of mush. Your call. In light of the obvious fact that she was talking about a different category of inflammatory remarks altogether; i.e. misleading titles, it seems clear to me what the proper call is.
When I attempt to clarify the matter with this statement : It has never before been considered to be inflammatory in the sense that she used, which is as a definition of trolling. People have said far worse in the Pit on countless occasions without being warned for trolling. Do you think he was trolling by saying that to her?
You respond thusly :* He sure as hell wasn’t being nice.*
Notice how the topic in each exchange is the reason for his suspension? And how you change your definition of that reason every time your previous one is exposed as inaccurate?
Or I was suggesting that it got the ball rolling. Which it obviously did.
“[Lynn] built up a reputation for suspending people at the drop of a hat. Particularly when those people wouldn’t stop posting stuff after she told them not to post said stuff” was a reference to her banning people for posting joke pit threads after she instituted the new rule. That was right around the time you joined.
This all goes back to your statement of “What Euthanasisat did would at the very most have resulted in a warning in the days before the Great Server Changeover.” My point is that being summarily suspended isn’t anywhere near as new as you claim.
If it’s that implicit, why are we having these pages of discussion? If what Lynn and/or Ed says is inviolate, then why waste your time on debating the minutiae. They’ve spoken. Live with it, I understand you to say. But, yes, I expect due process rights, which I believe we’re carrying out here.
I don’t think it is the rules. I think it is the inconsistent and arbitrary nature of how the rules are enforced.
The problems are (AFAIK) that [ul][li]Euthanasiast was suspended, not because he was abusive to a moderator, but because he did not open a new thread and abused the moderator there. I have never seen such a rule enforced before (I grant you, I could have missed it) and I have been here eight years . At the very least, it is not common knowledge. [/li]
[li]The original warning was because the thread title was overly general, and therefore misleading and inflammatory. As has been pointed out, there are any number of threads whose titles are equally over-general, and therefore equally misleading and inflammatory. Yet, by and large, the originators of those threads incur no penalty at all. If you are going to start cracking down on thread titles, why this one and (to date) only this one?[/ul][/li]
Lynn has posted several times in the past that she was once an abortion clinic escort. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is fair to assume that this shows she has unusually strong feelings on the topic of abortion.
The position that “abortions should be freely available, to anyone, at any time, for any reason, and it is nobody else’s business, especially not the parents of underage girls” is practically mainstream thought on the SDMB. Further, the notion that 'Planned Parenthood is a wonderful organization" is also darn close to unanimous. There was a thread (started, IIRC by Shayna) about her work as a Planned Parenthood nurse, and it consisted of 90% unqualified praise for Planned Parenthood and everything connected to it.
These are not necessarily unreasonable positions. However -
If it turns out to be the case that the strong feelings of a moderator, and the strong feelings of the board in general, lead to applying a different standard to threads that might show Planned Parenthood in a less-than-flattering light than to threads about, say, Barack Obama or Wal-Mart, then that is an abuse of the moderator position.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is what happened here. Euthaniasiast’s thread title was no more unfair to Planned Parenthood than what gets said about Bush or Republicans or the United Way or one of the other bete noirs of the SDMB twenty times a week. And yet he was warned for trolling, and none of those starting threads about anyone else was. Go figure.
I’m guessing the reason for this is that Lynn does not feel as defensive about the Bush administration (or the Christian church, or one of the other topics about which she feels strongly) as she does about PP. So the problem was not that the thread title was inflammatory. It was that the thread title was inflammatory to her.
And I suspect that you know as well as I do that if exactly the same sort of sting were performed on one of those pregnancy crisis counseling centers that try to talk women out of getting abortions, the Pit would fill up with threads all shouting “Pro-lifers Don’t Care About Raping Children!!!” And nothing would be done.
Because it isn’t “inflammatory” that is the problem. It’s “inflammatory to ME”. The stuff about “misleading” is all after the fact, to justify locking the thread and warning the OP.
I could be wrong about this, as Dennis Miller says, but I’m not.
I would really like it if the issues raised in this thread could be addressed by the moderation staff in a substantive way, and not simply ignored for the week of Euthanasiast’s suspension and then back to business as usual. I would also like a pony.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s bemusing that so many here apparently need such common-sense notions spelled out explicitly. Do you also find yourselves paralyzed at intersections, gazing intently at the word STOP while awaiting further instructions? If I were at a dinner party and the host told me not to throw my beer bottles in the trash, my first response would not be “go fuck yourself,” regardless of whether I’d seen others doing it unmolested. And if it were, I wouldn’t expect to be welcome for long.
But no, there’s something about online semi-anonymity that obviates the rules of civility. And this particular dust-up has something for everyone: the crusading antiauthoritarians, the creepy grudge-bearers stewing in their own stagnant bile, and hell, even the lockstep righties—staunch defenders of doctrinal fairness they—who’ve no personal issue with heavy-handed retribution, mind you, so long as it’s meted out in equal measure to Them as well.
I’m ambivalent about the moderation/administration of this board, but the amount of caterwauling, caviling nitpickery being exuded on this issue is really pathetic.
Wow. Google boy, you’ve got some serious issues.
You’re not very original, are you?
You’re sorta becoming what badchad was to Polycarp.
Kills me to post this, especially since I am one of the more extreme pro-abortion advocates on the SD (I think it should be mandatory, even for women who may not actually be pregnant) but I agree completely with Shodan’s entire post, except for the pony. (I have enough horseshit to deal with.)
Actually, I’m sure it kills him more swiftly than it does me, so that’s okay that I agree with him this one time.
I don’t know what that means.
I do know that calling someone a “cunt” because of her modding (and then bragging about “getting away with it” on another board) is completely despicable. I guess you disagree.
I also think his “explanation” suggests that that giant chip on his shoulder is not going anywhere anytime soon.
I’ve long thought the dope could use an ombudsman–someone appointed to act as a go-between to work out issues between the mods/admins and the proles.
I used to serve that role for another messageboard and it was pretty successful in curtailing some of this sort of thread.