I respectfully disagree with this. I have a hard time believing that people being mean to you (general you, not you specifically) on this board effects the quality of one’s life in any significant way.
Also, when we did allow this sort of thing, there were never any shortage of posters defending the mod when a mod was being pitted.
In short, I think a thick skin should be a requirement for this job.
Yes, Peter Morris, sorry not to have got back to you, I’ve been on the road with limited online time. Anyhow, there were two things going on:
(1) The personal insults, for which you were warned
That didn’t take much for review, since it was clearly an infraction. However, when you were warned, there was a comment included about your posting status being under review.
(2) Closing your complaint thread.
That was to give us time to review your posting status. It became very clear that there was no need for that; the mod who made the comment had confused the time-frame since your last warnings and suspension. I thought I told you that “review” was an erroneous statement, and was quickly tossed out the proverbial window.
Since the complaint about “reviewing your posting status” was now moot (since your posting status was NOT under review), I left the complaint thread closed.
OK?
“clearly an infraction”
Have you looked at the responseto the warning? Most people do not see an infraction there.
I have a case to state, but you and Tuba are refusing to even hear it. You have your mionds firmly made up , and you are refusing even to look at what I have to say.
“the mod who made the comment had confused the time-frame since your last warnings and suspension.”
That could well be part of the problem. If she had not had this wrong idea in her head, then maybe she wouldn’t have perceived my comment as an insult. Is that possible? Something to think about, anyway.
As for closing someone’s thread to “give us time to review your posting status” Don’t you see how wrong that is? Someone under threat should be allowed to state his case for staying.
Okay, since you insist on having this discussion in public.
The Warning stands.
Upon discussion we got the record straight – you have ONE recent Warning. Since your suspension you have been better behaved. On those grounds we decided banning was not required here.
There’s a bit of a contradiction between those two statements.
The first one is obviously not accurate. If we get moderated wrongly, we are NOT permitted to say something about it.
Kindly revise your statement.
You’ve said about it. You’re still saying about it. I don’t see your issue here.
If you had made that post in the Pit, nothing would have been said, you can be rude to other posters in the Pit. You’re supposed to be civil in About This Message Board.
No, I have not said about it. I tried to say about it, and you shut me down. I get the feeling you will ding me again if try to say why you are wrong. That is why I haven’t said about it. I WANT to set out the reasons why you are wrong, but you won’t let me.
And there was nothing rude or uincivil about my post. Most people can see that.
Sorry, but this is just plain wrong.
(1) You made a joke of another poster’s name, deliberately twisting it in a nasty way. That’s been considered an insult for a long, long time on these boards. That alone merits a warning.
(2) You say that same poster “constantly belittles” others. That’s not being critical of a post but of the person.
(3) You say he sneers. Ditto.
(4) You say he snarks. In another context, that’s about the post, not the poster. But since your intro (and your conclusion) are about his “constant” behaviors, you’re clearly talking about the poster here.
(5) You accuse him of a “years-long pattern of misbehavior.” Again, that’s a straightforward insult.
So, yes, there is no case to state. If you want to re-open it, we could consider giving four additional warnings for that post if that’s really what you want. 
You crossed the line, you were reprimanded, end of story. You complained, we reviewed and agreed that the reprimand holds (and agreed that there your posting ability was not at issue.) It’s done.
Am I allowed to reply?
Quibble/Question–it’s certainly out of bounds for ATMB, no question, but I didn’t think it was out of line for other forums. The reason I say this is I remember TVeblen way back when specifically saying that she was making an exception to the rules to protect Liberal(tarian) from having his name messed with, but it was a clear special protection outside of the regular rules. I don’t recall any other instances where this was a problem (outside of ATMB).
I’m not debating the ruling at all. IMO, Morris’s post was certainly outside of ATMB rules. I’m just curious about this specific point.
Changing a username in a way intended to insult a poster simply falls under the “no insults” rule. There’s no need for any special rule against modifying usernames.
You got shut down once, for your own good, and now Tubadiva has said that if you want to have the conversation in the open, it can be in the open. All signs point to yes.
I would agree, except that it needed a special rule in the past. Remember Cecil’s column on “The exception that proves the rule”? 
Oh, aqnd what about your own post? Personally, I find your use of my surname without “Mr” to be pretty rude in itself.
… didn’t happen.
Calling Liberal by his former name, Libertarian, was intended to annoy him, but in itself wasn’t insulting (unless you consider being called a Libertarian an insult). That’s why this was different from the “no insults” rule. There is no general rule against changing a username.
You meant calling him “Sarcasm” as a compliment?
As far as I can tell, it did. Let’s look at the post in question:
First of all, if you didn’t mean for it to poke/needle someone, then why use the different spelling at all? That’s not how his name is spelled.
Even if your next point is “it’s how it’s pronounced”, you still clearly meant to draw attention to it because you put it in italics. There would be no reason to put it in italics unless you wanted it to be noticed.
It’s pretty much just like THIS case not too long ago was, where it was decided you can’t call Half Man Half Wit “half wit”, even though that’s his name. Name or not, using it in a way that can be a shot at someone falls under insults easily.
Claiming you didn’t mean it as a little dig on him is pretty ridiculous.
Oh, Jeez.
Look, it’s very simple.
The name Czarcasm is a pun. Obviously. It sounds like “sarcasm”. It is meant to. That is a deliberate joke that he is making. He *wants *you to look at his name and think “Sarcasm.” It is intended to be amusing.
Changing Czarcasm to Sarcasm is not mocking his name. It is the *entire point *of his name. All I did was point to his own joke. How can this be an insult?
And the reason I did it was to make a point about his posting style. His posts frequently are full of sarcasm. His chosen username is a big clue to his style. I deliberately drew attention to the pun in order to emphasize the point.
No mockery, no nastiness, no button pushing. No insult intended. It never occurred to me that it might be read as such.
One of those rare situations where the right move was to use the **C **word.
Just to clarify (repeating what others have said, and what I said back above:
Simply misspelling or shortening someone’s name is not in itself an insult, it’s only an insult if is done in an insulting (nasty) way. The two examples given were special cases:
And a lot of it is context. Calling “Peter Morris” simply “Peter” is probably a simple, friendly shortening. If the P were lower case, however, it could well be insulting. Depends on context, as do most things. In this case, with the use of italics to call attention to it, and with the context that followed, it very clearly wasn’t a simple typo, nor was it a friendly shortening, it was intended as an insult and was read that way. It is a little awkward claim that you really didn’t mean that – that’s what you said, and that switcheroo is the very thing thing you were accusing Czarcasm of, isn’t it? Hmmm? Bit of a double standard there?
Meanwhile, this thread is about something different, so this is a long hijack, but there’s not much help for it – reopening your prior complaint thread would mean we’d also have to move all these posts there, and that’s more work than i want to do now.