I hesitate to post here, lest I be accused of circling the wagons (can you circle the wagons if there are only two of them? The black family did it with only one in Blazing Saddles, so I guess so…) – but I have some sympathy for Dex here.
The administration decided to change Pit rules. Outrage ensued. At the time, the question was raised, “Will anything we say change this decision?” The answer was no. Things calmed down, eventually.
Now, the question is raised again: “We still don’t like the new rules, let’s bitch about it some more.” Dex responds, fairly calmly, “No, the rules are the same, and your commentary still won’t change anything.”
At which point … y’all keep posting and posting and posting.
I don’t blame Dex for seeing that as an effort to piss him off.
Look, the new rules – like 'em or not, logical or not, reasonable or not, etc. – are still in place and aren’t being reconsidered.
Don’t you have something better to do than continue to jump up and down on the rotting corpse of that particular dead horse?
twicks, who was not a mod at the time of the rule change, and who doesn’t post much in the Pit, and definitely doesn’t moderate there, thank god
The rules change obviously still chafes at a number of us - I’m surprised the debate resurfaced, but it’s a sentiment I share. I basically don’t go in the Pit anymore - maybe on or two responses since the rules change - because it’s been neutered in a deeply illogical fashion.
I hope the debate on this issue continues to surface again and again, from now until the rule is changed back or the board is shut down.
I mean no offense at all, but the “don’t you have something better to do” argument in general is a bad one. I can’t speak for anyone else, but my life really doesn’t revolve around a rule on a messageboard. I have plenty of better things to do - and I do them. There’s time enough to post a few times. In the grand scheme of things, this is inconsequential, but hey, i’ve got enough spare time to spend on inconsequential things.
As for your main argument - I suppose the general idea is that if it’s possible that the moderators might change their minds on an issue, it’s also possible they might change their minds on whether the issue is an open one. Too, it’s important to provide a general understanding of how the board will react to issues - if there had been no complaints, if posters had held their tongue, then moderators might well have assumed from the lack of a reaction that the new rule was welcomed (or at least, not disliked) and more so that perhaps further rules alone the same lines might be acceptable, and accepted, too. And in terms of understanding one another, these aren’t all just bare complaints, but questions, an interest in clarifications, not just of how the rule works in practice but what the intent is behind it. Beyond that, the purpose of the board is fighting ignorance. It’s pretty natural for both posters and moderators to want to explain and inform opposing parties if they think they’re wrong.
To have all this possibility behind it and to simply go with the conclusion that posters are just attempting to bait and troll seems simplistic. And given that saying so is against the rules itself, it also seems rather odd.
We post about things that interest us, and obviously the rule changes still interest us. The horse might be dead to the people who made the rule changes and the people who agree with them, but it is less dead to people who still think they were some of the worst decisions this board has seen.
But that doesn’t really mean people can’t have an opinion on the matter, nor does it mean they should not voice that opinion, does it?
Besides, I don’t think this thread has really been about the new rules for the better part of the last two pages or so, but rather about the response people received when they brought up their opinion about them, essentially being told to go fuck ourselves, in everything but that exact wording, if we can’t avoid telling people to go fuck themselves.
I, for one, don’t really give a damn whether or not I’m allowed to use certain ‘bad’ words (which doesn’t preclude me from thinking this rule arbitrary, stupid, and absolutely ineffectual); however, I do give a damn whether or not I feel that I (as a user of this board) am treated with respect.
At the risk of repeating myself . . . his first post in the thread implied the OP’s request was comparable to wanting to use a heinous racial slur.
I’ve never cared about the language restrictions in the Pit – hell, I wouldn’t particularly care if you did away with the Pit altogether – but I found that comment to be pretty inflammatory.
With great respect, I don’t think many people will buy into this revision of history. First “the administration” consisted solely of Ed. And the decision was abrupt, with responses about protests amounting to “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” And a lot of people left the board. At least two major — well, okay a major and a semi-major — boards sprang up, populated with former Dopers, some of whom still posted here, but angrily. (Or in some cases snarkily, or wittily, or pleadingly). But this issue has never died.
See, you started out by saying that you sympathize with Dex. But that’s not sympathy; it’s bias. We “bitch”, and he “responds, fairly calmly”.
Just to remind, that’s why we’re here. We post and post.
Obviously, you don’t. But you go way too far. Not just that we pissed him off, but that we *made an effort *to piss him off. That’s trolling. You are the second official, aside from Dex himself, to accuse us of trolling. That should not be an accusation that you just toss around lightly. In fact, if we’re trolling, you should warn and/or suspend and/or ban us, as appropriate.
We are NOT making a effort to piss Dex off. We are making an effort to reason with Dex. Being pissed off is a decision he makes. He doesn’t have to rescind the rules to show that he’s reasonable. He needs only to admit that his argument is flawed — which it clearly is. If the intended purpose is to raise the tenor of the Pit, then “fuck Mary Jo Kopechne in the ass with a crucifix” is not morally superior to “fuck you”. As a matter of fact, “you’re a blister on a rat’s ass” is not morally superior to “fuck you”.
Logical or not? Reasonable or not? Wow. Logic and reason are tools we use in the fight against ignorance. If the board’s mission has changed, you should update it. Maybe something like, “Fighting logic and reason since 2008.”
Yanno, Lib, it’s interesting to me that you were all up in arms about people “goading” poor mswas, but you don’t have a problem with a group of people continuing to ask Dex the same question repeatedly after he’s told them the answer is “no.”
Well, you’ve made your point cogently, and I really cannot in good conscience deny anything you’ve said, MrDibble. So, I will concede that your argument is superior. […snip…] A tip of the hat to you for arguing so well and so convincingly.
Using the tools of logic and reason, he changed my mind. You apparently didn’t keep up.
To what end? As you rightly say, the rule change was Ed’s baby and, although Dex clearly supports it, it isn’t going to be changed back even if Dex reads one of the posts here and has a sudden Damascene conversion due to the sheer brilliance and impeccable logic of the argument.
Ed is the guy to convince and there is no way that will happen as I have a feeling that he’s said all that he’s going to say on the matter. (To be fair to him he did spend a considerable amount of time on the boards explaining the policy change and answering questions concerning it.)
In short, piling on Dex is a little pointless, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it mod-baiting I do think that some people are simply taking their frustrations out on the nearest mod to hand.
To a large number of people on the board, this is clearly not the case, as evidenced by the fact that we don’t see any “Why can’t we call each other n*****s” threads.
The thing is, how we rank the relative offensiveness of the words is irrelevant to my point. Regardless of how you rank them, racism and sexism are two different things. No one was saying anything remotely racist, and to just start comparing people to racists out of the blue serves no purpose other than to needlessly inflame. And frankly, as one of the many who think that those two words aren’t equivalent, I thought it was kind of offensive.
Just so no one gets the wrong idea: I don’t use either word, and am not advocating for either to be allowed on this board.
Do you really, REALLY need to call another poster a “cunt”? Because that is what this thread is about.
Yes, the argument isn’t the greatest, but it’s an attempt.
So, I can see an argument that the tactics aren’t the best, and other tactics would be better, but that’s part of another thread. THIS thread is about being able to call other posters “cunts”*- which is something I really don’t think the “new improved Liberal” is about. Why join with the that side?
Let us start a new thread about **“if” **we should try and change the tenor of the PIT and *if so, how best to do it. *
or in many cases it’s an attempt to bait the mods.
Eh, i’d say that moderators are likely to have more of Ed’s regard (or at least, of his ear). I imagine my opinion, or the opinion of any individual poster, is probably not much of an influence, but the opinions of a mod (or even an admin) might well be more likely to get a positive reception.
Would it be possible for you to name the people you mean? If i’m one of the people you see as just taking out my frustrations, then I have no way to know I need to change my behaviour or if it’s not my problem.
Why should you think it a problem? Belaboring a point which has been answered ten times over and ten times over again isn’t against the rules, and perhaps you believe that repeated posts will eventually break Dex’s resolve.
But do you really believe that, and if you don’t aren’t you simply venting?
Because if other people see it as a problem, regardless of whether I think i’m right, then i’m not likely to be listened to. On this, or if in the future someone sees my name above a post and thinks “Ah, it’s just that rabble-rouser again”.
Beyond that, I don’t think my posts are solely the same point made over and over again with no changes or different thoughts. I’d like to think that, even though we disagree, you don’t feel that i’m not actually responding to your posts. If I had one argument, made one way, then saying it once would pretty much be enough. I’m not simply trying for so many posts and so much jabbing away that resolve will be broken; really, i’d imagine it would be difficult to be a mod at all if you could be broken by sheer annoyedness. Also, i’m not a jerk.
I believe it’s possible that Dex’s (and** Ed’s**) minds might be changed as to this rule. Likewise I could be convinced i’m wrong.
Okay, well, couple of things. One, I not only do not need to call anyone a “cunt”, but I had promised Zoe some time ago that I would never again use the term. And I’ve kept my promise. (Obviously, with the exception of clinical conversations like this, but I don’t think Zoe meant that.) And two, that really isn’t what this thread is about. You’re going only by the title of the thread, but the OP was in general asking for Ed to rescind his overall forbidden word list — which, I mean, the whole idea of banned words is so perilously close to the idea of banned books that it should be cause for pause, if nothing else.
What the thread has become about (having morphed as threads tend to do) is the reasoning behind banning words like “cunt”. The reasoning given by Dex has been so weak as to be laughable, and when called on it, he resorted to calling us trolls and mod baiters. I am neither a troll nor a mod baiter. He went, in my mind, from looking silly to looking mentally unstable. And hey, I’ve been there. I used to get all flummoxed when ten people piled on me, and I lashed out. So I understand the frame of mind.
Well, you can do that, and I will participate. I think it might be best, however, if Dex holds off a bit until he recovers or drops this whole troll-think business. As I said, trolling is a serious charge, and he is bandying it about. And now his mods are beginning to do the same. So, let’s hash this out as members, and let the powers just sit back and wait. These are only words on a screen. No one is threatened by them. And no one should get his hackles up just because they’re there.
I really don’t get the opposition to “cunt” at all, but I would get it if we were instructed never to call anyone a “troll” ever again, or even imply that someone is trolling. I would prefer, whenever you think someone is posting sheerly to be provocative, that you report it to a Mod, where your complaint would be considered appropriately. To my mind there’s altogether too many recreational accusations of trolling, and it adds very little to a discussion (and hijacks the thread usually.) It also IMO leads to far more rancorous, uncivil discussion than “cunt” ever did. Call me a “cunt” and I laugh at you, but call me a “troll” and I want to know exactly why you think so, where’s your evidence, etc. Of course, many choose simply to call me both a cunt and a troll.