Additional Straight Dope Forum Suggestion

[moi]

What Fenris just said.

I expect Great Debates to be about topics, issues. How people feel about transexuals, transgendered folk, anything of that nature would be relevant.

Having personal knowledge of a Doper’s personal life and appearance aren’t relevant. I’ve gone to Dopefests and never worried myself over how this would change my interactions on the board, e.g. posting about hair dyes, only to have a snarky poster respond, “Yeah, but moi’s dye job is crappy” or posting about exercise to hear “Yer butt sure could use it.” That’s being a jerk.

[Miller]

Originally posted by Ace of Spades
Would it surprise you that I am compassionate in a hospital?

Yes.

[The_Ace_of_Swords]

*Originally posted by Giraffe *
This observation was hurtful, and completely irrelevant to the point being made

Various people have debated that relevancy, so it can not be completely irrelevant. Of arguable relevance, certainly.

Everyone has thoughts and opinions that would be hurtful if they were expressed. Not everyone feels duty bound to express them.

Hello! Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

Is it not the purpose of the Great Debates to express the truth and/or GET the truth on things you normally wouldn’t receive or express? Is not the act of posting in GD a statement that burn away all the society-imposed fuzzy blankets and give me the fucking Straight Dope, no bullshit information? Do we want that or don’t we?

Hello? Isn’t that why we post to GQ and GD? To get to the offensive, fascinating, wonderful truth of the matters?

If your only contribution to a discussion is to vocalize a negative opinion about people in the thread, then you shouldn’t participate in that discussion, regardless of whether or not the Board rules expressly forbid or allow you to.

So you’re in favor of all the people with negative opinion of me in this thread – being chastized, banned? Or did you mean in GD, where we already have express rules against this?

Expressing certain thoughts makes you an asshole. Even if by objective standards, they are accurate. It’s just a fact of living in a decent society.

Whoa! Even if they aren’t hate speech? So aren’t we generating assholes by the dozens in GD? Folks saying truthful yet normally unsaid thoughts? Hell, this could apply to any thread – we’ve had threads on anti-war propoganda, how dumb is Dubya, anal intercourse, the correct way to give head!

All of these are things we cannot express in polite society, yet we express them here all the damn time! Define for me, then, what makes an “asshole thought” different from any of the thoughts in these threads!

[Mockingbird]

*Originally posted by The Ace of Swords *
**While I’m not about to waste a “report this post to a moderator” chit on it, please don’t break the law in my thread (especially since it was just mentioned in the last post to Fenris), I feel responsible for my guests, even if they’re charmingly geeky ones. **

Wow. And with that post, Ass of Shovels officially gets his picture next to the dictionary definition of hypocrite.

Congratulations.

Truly, you are a poster to look up to with great respect and reverance.

[The_Ace_of_Swords]

*Originally posted by Fenris *
Um…what “law” did he break? The term “flamebait” isn’t forbidden, IIRC.

Specific term aren’t forbidden, it’s the concept of calling anyone a troll, as you know. I’m sure they’re many synonyms that would be looked upon as “loophole-surfing” at best.

Oh, and by the way: newsflash! It isn’t “your” thread.

Sure it is. Community standards have the OP try to keep the thread on the discussion track, up the signal-to-noise ratio, and keep it free from hijacks.

Like this one. Ah, well.

[Miller]

Is it not the purpose of the Great Debates to express the truth and/or GET the truth on things you normally wouldn’t receive or express? Is not the act of posting in GD a statement that burn away all the society-imposed fuzzy blankets and give me the fucking Straight Dope, no bullshit information? Do we want that or don’t we?

This would be a valid point if anybody on the planet gave a shit that JD thinks Eve looks like a guy. This is not an eternal verity. This is JD’s unsolicitied and entirely inappropriate opinion. The only time it would be appropriate to express that opinion would in an IMHO thread, started by Eve herself, entitled “Who here thinks I look like a guy?” In ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCE it is entirely beyond the bounds of reasonable, polite society to say such a thing. And no, polite society doesn’t end at the keyboard, which lesson I dearly hope you fail to learn, as it can only eventually lead to your re-banning. Amid, I am sure, tumultuous cheers and hearfelt sighs of relief.

And if you had the brains God gave the common intestinal parasite, you’d be able to figure that out on your own.

[Giraffe]

Ace, I have very little interest in sorting through and debating your nitpicks. As I see it, you’re asking for a specific, detailed explanation of how to behave like a decent human being. This is hard to explain, since most people have an innate sense of how to do it. It’s especially hard to explain to someone who has no interest in acting like a decent human being, but who instead just wants to play semantic games to somehow prove the nobility of their twisted worldview.

[d_redguy]

*Originally posted by The Ace of Swords *
**While I’m not about to waste a “report this post to a moderator” chit on it, please don’t break the law in my thread (especially since it was just mentioned in the last post to Fenris), I feel responsible for my guests, even if they’re charmingly geeky ones. **

Though being called “charmingly geeky” does flatter me, I am curious as to how exactly, in your mind, I violated the “law”. I was stating in a charming, geeky way that I think that your OP is flamebait. I think you came in to the pit and posted that because you knew that you would garner responses exactly like the ones you did. This is called “flamebait”. But you knew that. If we had mod points on this board, I would’ve modded you down. We don’t, so I stated that in my own charming little way as well. That “breaks the law” how?

On preview:

I did not call you a troll or imply that you were a troll. That would look like this:

Additional Straight Dope Forum Suggestion (-1, Troll)

[The_Ace_of_Swords]

Add: While they aren’t strictly synonyms, we tend to use them here as such, while on Slashdot they don’t. In any event, neither word (troll, or flamebait) correctly characterizes my clearly intended satirical peice.

Sarcasm covered in facetiousness was ok, though.

[Mockingbird]

*Originally posted by The Ace of Swords *
**Add: While they aren’t strictly synonyms, we tend to use them here as such, while on Slashdot they don’t. In any event, neither word (troll, or flamebait) correctly characterizes my clearly intended satirical peice.

Sarcasm covered in facetiousness was ok, though. **

Facetious or facile?

I’ll go with the latter.

So… AGAIN: what is the point of this, oh intellectual midget?

[Una_Persson]

*Originally posted by gobear *
**Dopers (in unison): Are we not men? **

Where is this set of lines from, anyhow? And why is it that the only line I can think of after it is “We are Devo!”

[The_Ace_of_Swords]

*Originally posted by Miller *
This would be a valid point if anybody on the planet gave a shit that JD

Oy. Nobody wants to rehash that, I promise you. If you think that I made a valid point in the preceeding paragraph, (about GD being where we burn through the treacle) why not answer the question or expound on the point, instead of harping on an example which you brandish to refuse to answer the question?

It makes you look a little, hmm… angry, perhaps?

Take a deep breath first – try to act with the same or better courtesy as people show you. Look up and down the thread including your own posts, and you’ll note that that’s what I do.

[RexDart]

You know what? I think people should just post their honestly held opinions, especially in GD. The basis of a free society is that opinions, of themselves, are not harmful until acted upon. Freedom to hold and express an opinion is fundamental to our liberties. IMHO, the expression of any honestly held opinion should be OK.

Check out the thread I started today about the ridiculously untactful Christian Guy I met in Texas. I could have gotten in a huff and been personally offended and expressed my outrage at this offense to him. But I didn’t. I just came on SDMB and pointed out how stupid and illogical his opinion was. To be sure, I would be the first to jump up in anger if he ever acted on his opinion, if he ever discriminated against me in the workplace due to my lack of religious faith. But he hasn’t, he didn’t, and he won’t, because I will never be working with this guy. And this guy will probably, from what I know of him, never be in a position where he can act upon his opinions of atheists.

Being offended that someone holds a viewpoint, and expresses it on an internet message board, where you can easily ignore it, and where it will have ZERO actual impact on your life…well, getting in a huff over that seems like a crummy and depressing way to live life. The vitriol that is spewed against people who express their honest opinions on here is just as embarassing to humanity as the monstrously ignorant opinions that started the fire.

It looks like this started as spillover from the transgendered issues thread in GD. Alot of people are uncomfortable around the transgendered people. Alot of people reject the postmodernist notion that gender is 100% socially constructed and thus can be self-defined (myself included, and I’m far from being hateful towards people for their sexuality). Alot of people would be very disturbed to discover that their long-term romantic partner had concealed something as fundamental about their experiences as a sex-alteration. Alot of people think birth gender matters. (The old hypothetical about getting an awesome BJ in the dark and then finding out you were wrong about the person’s gender comes to mind.) If you get offended everytime someone expresses their honest opinion on these issues, on an internet message board, then you’re going to spend alot of your time being offended, and less of your time enjoying life.

What we have here is yet another chapter in the endless cycle here on SDMB. Insensitive behaviour leads to disproportionate hate-filled response leads to reactionary hostility and defensiveness leads to more vitriol on all sides, leading ultimately to half a dozen Pit threads from everybody involved impugning everybody else involved.

If someone honestly expresses an opinion that you find colossally insensitive and stupid, just smile and recognize the childlike ignorance of the opinion, take pleasure in your intellectual superiority, recognize that the ignorant person is in no position whatsoever to harm you with any actions stemming from their opinions, chill out and have a beer. I get worked up about stuff sometimes, but not nearly as much as I used to, and that’s what I do.

And hey, if you’re just one of those people who needs to go off on somebody once and awhile, you should be glad that there are people on SDMB who will give you something to be angry about once and awhile. If you shut them up, you won’t have anything to be angry about.

[Green_Bean]

*Originally posted by Giraffe *
**Ace, … As I see it, you’re asking for a specific, detailed explanation of how to behave like a decent human being. … It’s especially hard to explain to someone who has no interest in acting like a decent human being, but who instead just wants to play semantic games to somehow prove the nobility of their twisted worldview. **

Okay, that’s exactly what I wanted to say earlier, but I couldn’t figure out what to say! Thanks, Giraffe!

[The_Ace_of_Swords]

*Originally posted by Giraffe *
**Ace, I have very little interest in sorting through and debating your nitpicks. As I see it, you’re asking for a specific, detailed explanation of how to behave like a decent human being. This is hard to explain, since most people have an innate sense of how to do it. It’s especially hard to explain to someone who has no interest in acting like a decent human being, but who instead just wants to play semantic games to somehow prove the nobility of their twisted worldview. **

You speak of semantics, and then attempt to categorize what is clearly the crux of the argument as mere “nitpicks”. I’m not at all asking for a detailed explanation:

I’m asking for a coherent one.

[gobear]

*Originally posted by Anthracite *
**Where is this set of lines from, anyhow? And why is it that the only line I can think of after it is “We are Devo!” **

It’s from the 1933 film, “Island of Lost Souls,” an adapation of the H.G. Wells novel, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” in which Dr, Moreau, played by Charles Laughton, creates animal/human hybrids through vivisection. He attempts to inculcate a code of behavior assisted by one of his creatures, the Sayer of the Law, a wolf hybrid played by Bela Lugosi.

[Mockingbird]

*Originally posted by Anthracite *
**Where is this set of lines from, anyhow? And why is it that the only line I can think of after it is “We are Devo!” **

The movie “The Island of Lost Souls.”

[The_Ace_of_Swords]

Thank you for the thoughtful post, Rexdart.

I’m sacking out in 10 minutes, so if you want me to respond to something before bedtime, take your shot. Of course, if you wanted to post something without risking responding fire, wait 10 minutes.

I’ll take it back up at 10 EST.

Wrapping up:

People we’d still like to hear much more from: Giraffe
People we’d still like to hear more from: Miller and Fenris
People we’d like to hear much less from: Mockingbird
People who should have been thanked earlier: Road Rash
Opinions still being solicited on: Was I referring to Billdo?

Random wraps:

Greenbean: Your answer is Giraffe’s answer, then.
Scylla: My, my swingline, no. Burn them all, I will.
Sterra: Or she was just conforming to our norm of convivial bar-drinking. I don’t discuss politics at Thanksgiving, should I never discuss politics?

[Ferrous]

Originally posted by The Ace of Swords
We’re discussing the meaning of community standards here. If you can’t keep on topic, please open up a new thread where you can get your rant on.

Oh, bull-fucking-shit. You post an OP just dripping with scorn and sarcasm, and then when people respond in kind, telling you what a dick you are (responses which you expected, hoped for, and specifically elicited, I have no doubt), you get all prim and proper, saying you were just trying to debate an important issue.

What crap. If you legitimately wanted to debate the issue of truth vs. compassion, you could have opened a GD thread, and worded it in a way designed to elicit useful responses. Instead, you opened a Pit thread designed to provoke anger so you could pretend to be the high-minded defender of truth.

Feh.

Giraffe said all that needed to be said in respone to this crap in one of the first few responses to this thread:

**Ace, you’re an asshole. I know you like to think of yourself as a noble crusader for truth, one of the few people brave enough to be accurate to the point of bluntness, but you’re not. You’re just an asshole. **

Word.

[Mockingbird]

*Originally posted by The Ace of Swords *
**
People we’d like to hear much less from: Mockingbird
**

Is it because of my cogent questions or because of your amazing lack of answers?