It occurs to me that in this thread, I’ve been accusing a poster of trolling. However, I only started doing so after the poster:
Admitted to posting a deceptive OP
Admitted to doing so in order to tweak his political opponents; and
Started a second thread to discuss the deceptive OP after the first one had been closed.
This brings up my question: is accusing someone of meeting the definition of a troll verboten in such a case? If so, my apologies to the admins. I’m wondering, however, if what we’re really supposed to avoid is accusing someone of #1 and #2 – that is, we shouldn’t dismiss someone’s post by suggesting it’s a deceptive post designed to tweak other board members.
In other words: does forbearing from accusations of, “You’re trolling!” apply even after a poster says (in essence), “I lied to you, and you fell for it”?
I don’t quite understand the need for the rule about the ignore list. Should I ever choose to use the ignore list, and should somebody call me on why I have repeatedly not answered an ignored Doper’s question, I would not know how to respond without at least implying the ignore list.
Personally, if somebody was ignoring me I would rather be told that than to sit around for days/weeks waiting for an answer.
I know that not everybody agrees with me, so I am sensitive to the concerns that some people wouldn’t want to be told. Is there a way to compromise?
OK, Rhum Runner, you’re off my shit list…for now. But seriously, the reason I don’t want people just posting jokes in a Pit thread is because it will VERY quickly devolve into a contest to see who can post the grossest/most tasteless joke. If a joke can’t be posted in MPSIMS, then we probably don’t want it on the Straight Dope Message Board, period.
As for moving threads out of the Pit, usually I do it when someone has obviously meant for it to be placed in another forum. Once a thread is here, though, usually someone comes along and says that there’s not enough swear words in it, and proceeds to add some in. Then I generally don’t feel that the thread can be moved to another forum.
Lynn, this thread is titled, “Discussion of Pit rules”.
It goes without saying that anyone who simply wants to know and follow the Pit rules, and has no inclination to discuss them, will go straight to the much shorter “Pit Rules” thread, read the rules, and go away believing they know what they have to do to stay on the good side of the mods and admins.
Apparently, however, additional rules are being stated in this thread (and possibly others, for all I know).
It would do the SDMB community a service if those things we should know when we post in this forum are set down in the “Pit Rules” thread itself.
If new rules pop up, and then become not-so-new rules, so that the mods and admins believe they’re old news that everyone knows - but there’s no good way for people to find out what those rules are, if they haven’t gotten the memo - then you’ve created a ‘gotcha’ situation, especially when accompanied by abrupt enforcement of the invisible rules. That’s not a good situation.
I agree entirely. What may seem obvious and overstated to a mod might pass completely by the notice of a regular member who doesn’t have to read every thread on the boards. If there are to be rules that are beyond the standard “don’t be a jerk”, especially if there’s a central repository for rules, all such rules should be in the central repository.
I know I’ve been cautioned twice for breaking rules that don’t appear in any rules-list, here or in ATMB. It’s a little vexing for someone like me who tries to obey rules to find out that they’ve broken a rule anyway.
Enforce 'em, sure. Just make sure that they’re in a reasonable place where members can find them.
Specifically, the following should (IMHO, natch) be added to the Pit Rules:
Do not, on another messageboard, provide a link to a pit thread about that messageboard or its philosophy or members.
Do not use the Pit for non-pit purposes (that is, fake-angry OPs).
and under general rules, the following should be added:
Do not publicly accuse a person of being a sock monkey.
I agree, Shodan. I didn’t know there was a no-joke threads ban until yesterday, when Ilsa_Lund was suspended. I’m sure Esprix didn’t know either, and it’s unfair to enforce rules without even making them known to everyone via an announcement or sticky update. I haven’t read any threads where this was even mentioned until yesterday.
Another scary thing being that I have been guilty of starting joke threads myself, when I Pitted Tamerlane.
Was it serious? Of course not - Tamerlane is one of our gentler, more knowledgeable posters - sort of like Collounsbury without the assholery. But I was never warned, and most of the participants took it in the light-hearted spirit it was intended, including Tamerlane. (Demostyles didn’t get it - oh well.)
I honestly don’t think I was transgressing against the Prime Directive of the SDMB. I was careful to make my insults in the thread as ridiculous as possible, and no offense was intended or (I think) received.
It would make a lot more sense (and be much more enforceable, seeing the difficulty in enforcing behaviour outside the SDMB) to say “Do not, on this messageboard, pit another messageboard or its philosophy or members.” In fact, I believe this rule is closer to what is currently being enforced.
I speak as someone with slight personal interest in the matter.
Fred, that’d make perfect sense to me. My own involvement came when another board was being pitted; I went over to that board and got involved in the discussion there. As a matter of fair play (so I thought), I told the other messageboard how I’d found them and linked back to the pit thread about them – I figured it was only fair for them to know why all these new messageboard members were suddenly showing up.
That’s when I found out there was a rule against such behavior, and got threatened with banning for it.
The rule you suggest would be fine by me, but I’m not sure how it’s being enforced now.
Well, the only problem with the rule as you suggested it is that often there’s no way of telling who is who on another message board. You were certainly under no obligation to keep the same username or in any other way disclose your SDMB “identity”.
Too true – which points out another problem with the rule, namely, it’ll only be folks who AREN’T deliberately stirring up shit who’ll get caught. Folks who are trying to start a board war will be savvy enough to hide their identity.
Board wars are incredibly stupid, as I learned to my chagrin during that debacle; it’d probably be easiest to have the rule as you suggest (i.e., don’t link to another board in a denigrating fashion).
my understanding of the word “stalking” when applied to message boards would refer to some one who deliberately sought out posts by another poster in order to harras/insult etc them. that is, instead of joining in the actual thread content, their posts are simply responding to the same poster over and over again.
which would be pretty obviously (IMHO) jerk - like behavior. purpose of threads is general conversations about the topic in the OP, not ‘how idiotic is thatposterthere being yet again’
