Yes, the warning was for a personal insult. My point was that it was the same kind of comment (an extreme partisan remark) that people are complaining about here.
Leaving aside the fact that it’s a bit rich hearing someone who’s made the kind of misogynistic comments you’ve made about women attacking right-wingers for hating women, you seem to be saying here that you’re not going stop posting the way you’ve been mod-noted for because you’d see that as “lying” and you feel you have the right to express your opinions.
Is that correct, that you’re just going to keep posting the way you’ve been posting, drop it in that thread if you get mod-noted and then continue doing it a few days later in another thread or are you going to try and change your behavior?
The most amusing thing to me about DT is how religious he is in his attitudes. Data points won’t sway him, evidence won’t sway him, convincing arguments won’t sway him. He will hold onto his opinions. In that he is most like those he professes to hate. And I’m on his ‘side’ on practically every issue except economic ones.
Still doesn’t mean I think more action should be taken against him. When I was a lurker and a new poster, Dio’s posts in GD were the ones that pulled me in the most, and I was shocked when he was banned. I similarly enjoyed reading DT’s stuff. These days, I tend to glaze past most of his statements, because a) I know what they’ll contain and b) I know that it’ll be utterly pointless trying to engage him
Then the question remains. If it was the same kind of comment that people are complaining about here, why was he allowed to rack up a dozen or more mod notes for making the same kind of comment?
We all know that personal insults are against the rules. That’s fine. Let’s call the kind of thing Der Trihs posts repeatedly an “extreme partisan remark”. Using the term in that sense, Is an “extreme partisan remark” against the rules, or not?
[ul]
[li]If it is not against the rules, why has he been mod noted for doing it a dozen times or so?[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]If it is against the rules, why has he been allowed to ignore the mod notes and repeat the behavior as persistently as he has?[/li][/ul]
Regards,
Shodan
No. When it’s off-topic or done in a jerk-y way, it can get modded for that reason. But extreme partisanship or extreme opinions in general aren’t against the rules. We wouldn’t have GD otherwise.
Then why did you bring up his Warning as if it were relevant?
Regards,
Shodan
People complain that his comments about (for example) conservatives and religious people are insulting.
I’ve always felt that the ‘allowed group-based-insults’ policy was a bad one, but I’ve also never been able to come up with a workable model to fix it.
I admit though, now I’m curious… what if I posted “Everybody who disagrees with me on this issue is obviously a moron.” Kosher? Why, then, does it become fine if it becomes “These specific groups, to which Dopers belong, who disagree with me are obviously all morons.”
Okay, perhaps “fine” is the wrong word, but at what point does Der Trihs style group insults begin to cross the line?
Here’s my problem with Der Trihs’ posting/argument style:
Poster 1: I believe that life begins at conception.
Der Trihs: Anti-choice radicals only hate women, want to enslave them, and keep them in the kitchen.
Poster 1: I resent that. I am married and have 3 daughters. I don’t hate women. I have a moral/spiritual/ethical belief that life is sacred and shouldn’t be terminated in the womb.
Der Trihs: But anti-choicers hate their own wives and daughters because they want to make medical choices for them and make them cook dinner and serve them!
Now, this type of exchange occurs, and poster 1 has obviously been insulted and called a bunch of names. But the board rules state, and the moderators rule, that Der Trihs is simply attacking a belief and not an individual poster. IMHO, such a decision allows him to insult posters by veiling it as an attack against a group.
Further, his accusations are so over the top and outrageous that they shouldn’t be allowed against groups unless he has some proof to back them up. They are simply insults: insults that he knows are directed against posters. He contributes little to this board by such outrageous comments, and I would suggest that the mods enforce a “don’t be a jerk” type of rule against those type of posts.
I would suggest we ask for less moderation, not more. We’ve already seen the awful modding generated the last time people screamed “Somebody do something!”
OK, then they are not. So your mention of his Warning was irrelevant.
Again -
Regards,
Shodan
No. Not even close.
Because one is directed at other posters and the other is directed at a larger group of people which may include some posters.
But that is a hole large enough to drive a truck through. If the previous poster said that he’s a member of the Utah State Gardening Association, can I follow up with a post saying that I believe that members of the Utah State Gardening Association are a bunch of child molesters who beat their own mothers on her birthday?
Maybe being SO BRAVE is seen as excusing the jerkish behavior, in some way.
No. We try to apply some common sense there. And yes, it’s a potential loophole that calls for going over a post with a fine-toothed comb at times. It’s the best option for handling these kinds of comments in our opinion. Saying you can’t insult any group of people would stifle pretty much all discussion, and saying anything goes as long as you’re insulting any group would crap up a lot of discussions.
Yep, that’s what I figured, Glad we’re on the same page there.
Okay, but what about when we’re 100% sure that it includes some posters? I mean, “those who oppose abortion are [pejorative]”, “those who are Republicans are [pejorative]”, and so on. How does that differ at all? If I say “Those who disagree with me are morons” and that’s not allowed, why is “Those who support position X, which I disagree with, are morons.” okay? I mean, it’s pretty clear that there are people other than Dopers who disagree with me. Why is “people who disagree with me” any less of a broad class than “Republicans” or “religious people”, or what have you?
Is there any doubt in your mind, at all, that when Der says what he says, that he’s directing it both at the world at large and at the Dopers he’s arguing with? When he’s debating people who, for instance, tell him that they oppose abortion, and he says that all people who oppose abortion are assholes, or whatever… do you think he’s unaware that he’s talking to people who oppose abortion?
If you and I were arguing quantum mechanics and you said “The collapse of the state vector is an epiphenomenon” and I replied “people who think that the collapse state vector isn’t a real event in and of itself are dumbfucks”, that’d be moddable, right? Probably earn me a Warning to boot, yes? If Der is debating Dopers who are anti-Abortion and he says “People who think that abortion shouldn’t be legal are evil motherfuckers” (or whatever bit of comic book characterization he uses that day), why does it become okay? Isn’t he doing the same exact thing, and just as flagrantly?
How is that substantively different than “People who disagree with me on this issue are idiots”? After all, “Republicans” is Der’s shorthand for “People who disagree with me on this issue.” Isn’t it?
NM
I’m 100% sure that 99% of the groups talked about in Great Debates have members that post on the SDMB.
See my response to jtgain’s post. I’d rather not guess at your intention or state of mind unless I have to. This kind of comment does get modded at times when it’s phrased in a way that is particularly insulting to SDMB posters or if it’s off-topic, but we have to allow both positive and negative generalizations to allow any kind of discussion, and we’ve always distinguished between insults of posters and people who aren’t here.
Marley: I think you are missing the entire gist of this thread, which is pretty much summarized by my post #51 and Shodan’s post #71.
People like to feel that there is some general plan for how warnings are issued and that it isn’t simply at the whim of a moderator. The appearance is that the latter is often the case, in general, and definitely the case in this particular instance. But if there is some great mystery that we’re just not getting, then let us know.