Huh? Where did this concern come from? This “lawn chair” rule (much less the concern about it) is weird and silly. Part of the fun of the Pit is the voyeuristic aspect of rubber necking at doper, ego driven bumper car traffic accidents and meltdowns in progress, and the thrill having an audience for your ranting and raving. That’s kind of the the whole point of the Pit. Why does this irritate you? Is bandwidth that precious?
Lynn, I respect you a great deal and the SDMB is, bar none, one of my favorite places on the web, but the Pit (IMO) generally has a pretty good balance between the “spew whatever” boards and the “nanny’s watching” boards. If you are going to over regulate the Pit (and the lawn chair rule is edging up on this) it sort of defeats the whole point of having it as a place where people can let loose and call each other out.
These are fine and make good adminstrative sense. I thought the “hate speech” thing extended to all forums by default anyway.
I think that the hate speech thing means no saying “Fenris, while not regarding any of his wit or charm, is a pustulant shit for brains and is a burden to this board”. In the pit we attack other posters. But I think the idea is to attack what they say and not launch attacks at them personally.
I will also agree in saying that the lawnchair rule stops people from announcing they are in a thread and walking away. I find is bothersome when I open up a perfectly good insanely illogical ad hominem attack at one of our posters and the first four posts are “hey, let’s watch him tear this troll a new asshole!” If you know that they’re gonna get stomped on, chances are everyone else does too. Applaud the thread by giving it more hits in the views column, not by a dumb “me too” post.
And I was personally confused to hell when I saw FIVE threads sounding vaguely alike but never providing any attempt to let people in on the joke. Very bad form, guys! If you write something like “Esprix is a dirty ne’er-do-well” and you don’t link to a thread in MPSIMS that says “Esprix is a cleanly and fragrant smelling productive member of society”, people will jump on you. Just make the first response to the thread be the link.
All in all, Lynn, a wonderful and needed set of rules. Thanks!
But the whole “lawn chair” silliness neither contributes to the flame, nor the counter flame, nor is it constructive in any way towards or in opposition to the flame. It’s just a juvenile way to say “Woo - everyone look at me! See my post count soar!” Sorta like the “Let’s you and him fight” posts, which should have got a lot of people BANNED outright, IMO.
I feel that a person should either join in in support of the flame, or fight to oppose the flame, or…shit, just post something constructive and meaningful in some way - that’s what I feel the intent of the SDMB is.
And I think posted rules are good. The “don’t be a jerk” clause is the textbook definition of an arbitrary rule that can be interpreted differently by any person, in many different contexts. I guess a lawyer would say it is “un-Constitutionally vague”.
The SDMB puts Rules on a huge number of things that people can and cannot say, and can and cannot do. They simply are not, until very recently, posted all together in any manner.
Start a rant about file-sharing software in the Pit, or about how one is having trouble getting their Meth lab set up, and see how fast what you say is redacted and locked. Or try saying how you want to kill all lesbians, and see how fast you get BANNED. There has never been free speach here, and there never ever ever will be.
My point, not trying to be an ass, is that there are already a lot of rules in existence on what people say, and Lynn is simply codifying some of them here.
I think people need to ask themselves - what is the point of the Pit? And I don’t give a rat’s ass how it started out - what is the purpose and reason of being of a Pit in Year 2002 SDMB Land? And what should its purpose be?
It should be, I feel, for the legitimate airing of grievances over things in the World, for things and topics on the SDMB, for criticism of the Board and Administrative actions, and for criticism and flaming of other people on the SDMB. It should not be the place for silly and meaningless posts, post parties thinly disguised as “pulling up the lawnchair” parties, and nonsequiters like “How about them Bears?” Those are the things, ironically, that belong in MPSIMS or elsewhere on the Board.
This isn’t a pit-only rule, but what’s the deal with not being able to tell someone that they’re on your ignore list?
Is the ignore list concept so offensive that we can’t even talk about it? Is dropping the i-bomb* really that great a threat to the community? All of the other rules here make sense, but this one just seems totally arbitrary to me.
*Yes, I just made that up. Yes, I realize it’s not clever in any way. Yes, Jim Rome makes me want to puke, too.
How about threads where someone tries to enforce the DNFTT-quasi-rule by hijacking completely a troll’s thread? I remember Esprix doing this at one time or another, and there was a group of people around him who felt obligated to help him out by perpetuating the non-sequitur sub-thread.
If Esprix et al. tried that now, would they be On Notice?
I suppose I’d have to disagree. IIRC I’ve never been the direct subject of a Pit thread, so possibly I’m not as sensitive to this aspect of peanut galleryism by drive by lawn chair puller uppers as I might be otherwise, but I’m puzzled that people commenting on a BBQ Pit war dance by someone have to have some really meaningful contribution to make in order to post in the thread, other than a sardonic comment. The nature of the Pit is (IMO) to allow people to make smartassed comments and observations on the tussle in progress. It’s part of the fun.
Also, why get irked if people are just enjoying a good verbal donnybrook and drop into a thread to say so? I can appreciate this adds to the noise to information ratio somewhat, but it (IMO) is also one of the most amusing parts of the Pit culture, and takes some of the hot air out of the bloated “life or death” seriousness that some people approach a Pit argument with.
Just to play devil’s advocate…No. On second thought, I’m actually quite serious.
Why isn’t Eve’s William Pierce Thread overflowing with hate speech? I mean, I disagree with what the guy was all about just as much as anybody, but I can’t help but think that if the object of the thread had been Martin Luther King Jr, Elie Wiesel, or Bill Clinton, that thread would have been clipped immediately.
But because it’s the death of a “bad guy” everybody is rejoicing at, it’s ok? So the message I see is that “hate speech” is A-OK just as long as it’s pointed in a PC-Safe direction like a guy we’re all supposed to hate, or it’s posted by somebody we’re all supposed to like.
Right?
Frankly, I’m disgusted at the flow of venom coming from the self-proclaimed “enlightened” crowd, and they way they all seem to think “hate” is ok as long as it’s against a “hateful” person. The same way “Tolerance” is the word of the day around here, unless you’re faced with a person whose beliefs you call “Intolerant,” at which time it becomes ok to dictate what that person should think and believe. If all beliefs are to be respected, then so are “Intolerant” beliefs. If all hate speech is bad, then so is hate speech directed at bad people.
What’s the point of even having rules, if they only get enforced selectively and arbitrarily? Wouldn’t it be easier to have just one rule that says, “Make us like you, or else. -Mgmt”?
I can see how writing a parody without attribution can cause people to be royally pissed. Can you see how cursing people’s deities might cause them just a bit of consternation?
Well Joe, people like racinchikki and myself have been fighting to try and convince people that racial slurs are bad, hateful, evil, and sick, period, end of story, to a different crowd of people for some time now, but with little success - as racist terms are still often used against whites, under the guise and directive that “they deserve it”, “it’s payback”, “oh, the irony!”, or “they aren’t a minority, why are they complaining?”
Ignoring completely the fact that racism is one of the Great Evils left in the world - one which must be stamped out or educated out of existance forever.
It needs to be a bannable offence. Once you show that you must resort to racial slurs to make a point, you really have no point, nor are you ever likely to. And I don’t care if the Member has 8000 posts or 8 - they need to be shown the door, no second chance. The perfect analogy, in my mind, is Cecil giving a bigot a swift kick in the ass out of his office.
Hmm…my calendar says “Festivus” runs for about 6 months this year. Who knew?
astro? I see your point, and I understand what you’re saying. I still respectfully disagree, but hey, people do that sometimes.
Speaking as one who doesn’t have the time to read every single thread on a daily basis, I would like to buy Lynn a beer (or some chocolate yummies) in gratitude for coming down hard on the parody thang.
Yes, I was sucked into one, didn’t know what was going on, and I wasted my time composing a reply. Soon after posting, it became clear what was going on. Too late. As I could see no point in berating the OP for having suckered me, I chose to take the high road, and I just walked away (so to speak) after confessing to being “wooshed”… My time has some value to me, and I hate to see it pissed all over by someone trying to be “cute” while not letting me in on the joke.
“Lawnchair” remarks ought to be thread-killers, IMNSHO. They trigger the same reaction in me as when I hear “SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!!” whilst channel surfing.
So what about the people who feel obligated to say “fuck” in the pit, just because they can?
Yeah, Anthracite (haven’t seen you around much lately. Nice to bump into you again), once when I was working for Pizza Hut, I delivered a pizza to a Navajo man in a motel. He paid for it, started to hand me a $5 bill, then put it back in his pocket and said “I was going to tip you, but I have to pay you back for what the white man did to my people.”
That’s the kind of crap that really burns me up. Hell, I’m 31 years old. I didn’t oppress anybody. I’ve had it with minority-racism. You’d think of all people, those who have been oppressed would know it ain’t cool. And then everybody acts surprised when they get the same type of treatment from others.
Late last week, I “pulled up an armchair” on a thread. I used my remark to make a comment about how Pit threads tend to progress towards a rowdy conclusion. A few people found my post amusing, one person thought I was being smug. Ok. The thread ended up as an apologetic love-in, and everything died out without much fanfare or controversy. What I fail to see is how this sort of thing should be an offense to rules.
Part of the fun of The Pit, as I’ve learned in my short weeks here, is watching a couple people really duke it out. Sometimes, you have no direct interest in the outcome but you do have a mild interest because of agreements/disagreements in the past. Is it really that bad to say, “Boy, this is turning out to be a fun argument, I’m watching the sparks fly!!” We’re all doing it, but only a few of us are saying that we’re doing it. Does “pulling up the armchair” really aggravate the situation that badly?
Furthermore, even in the short months I’ve been here, I’ve repeatedly seen cunning posters goad a response out of potentially volatile Pit thread participants. They were more discreet, but are they any different from the people who just say “We choose: december and Esprix…two go in, one comes out, Thunderdome!” “Pull up a lawnchair” isn’t that bad by a longshot.
How do we respond to a flame now? Must we be directly involved to reply? Must we take sides between the participants?
And must we have a codified prohibition against “hate speech” in the Pit rules? From my limited experience, “hate speech” earns the scorn and ridicule of numerous replies from the teeming millions of dopers, it appears to be a self-regulated system.
It might be just me, but I’ve noted that lawnchairs often get pulled out when someone with a low post count has a bone to pick with a known, liked poster. It’s like a way of saying “Hey, newbie, this is an established poster you’re dealing with. And we can’t have that, can we?”
I AM reading and considering the comments made here. However, it’s gonna take me some time to think things over.
Part of the reason why we (the staff) don’t want folks to say “You’re going on my ignore list!” is because it’s bound to stir up really nasty feelings and this behavior won’t have a positive effect on the board. I’ve been on usenet/newsgroups, and I know that sometimes a “Plonk!” will notify people that they’ve stepped out of line, but that’s what the mods are here for. Most newsgroups aren’t moderated.
Incidentally, I’ve been meaning to put up Pit Rules for MONTHS, I’ve just now gotten around to it. That’s part of the reason I made this thread sticky, to remind myself that I need to look into this periodically.
“No lawn chairs.” Seems like the moderators are enforcing their own pet peeves here. How does this harm the SDMB, let alone the Pit, where catfights are commonplace?
“Parodies.” Yeah, I’d fully agree that this is helpful.
“No ignore lists.” Also agreed for the reasons Lynn mentioned.
“No hate speech.” As mentioned, a little clarification might be helpful, but most reasonable people here know that, if left to a moderator’s discretion, they’re usually right. Qualification is difficult in this particular gray area. Having a generalized rule, however, isn’t a bad thing, even without attempting to create a list of good and bad.
