> BANG! < ::: Moderator pounds gavel for attention ::::
There’s entirely too much sniping at other posters in this thread, by several people, and it’s going to stop NOW. I’m not going to go back and issue warnings, but from this point forward, I certainly will. Describing another poster as “whining” or “being snarky” is not permitted in this forum. If you feel you absolutely must use such terms, start a Pit thread. Not here.
There have been some mixed messages from you guys on how one can refer to the posts or posting style of another person in ATMB. For example:
I think it would be useful to clarify whether or not pejorative language is OK in ATMB when it is directed at posts/posting style and not the poster. Similarly, is it OK to complain about the actions of groups of posters if you don’t identify individuals, e.g. “a lot of people are being whiny babies about this issue and I think they all need to shut up”?
In addition to Giraffe’s notes, I might add that I got in crap with you guys when I said the same basic thing as you just did, i.e that “whine” is pejorative. There, I got a warning and DsYoungEsquire, the one using “whine” got no mention.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9757529&postcount=14
and just previous to that, moderator SkipMagic described my comments as “whining” in ATMB:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9754648&postcount=61
Really makes you look like you’re making it up as you go along.
I feel like I’m missing something really basic here so I’ll lay out my question slowly.
It’s ok for me to say ‘your comments sound like someone whining’ but not ‘you’re whining.’ The reason for this is it’s ok to challenge a person’s posts but not the person. My question is: If someone is whining, doesn’t that make them, by definition, a whiner? I don’t see a difference between ‘your posts sound like whining, knock it off’ and ‘knock off the whining.’
Well, one of them would be asking for a behaviour to stop while the other would be, basically, insulting another poster. Yes, it’s implied that you dislike the whiners as much as you dislike the whining itself, but since this isn’t the forum for resolving that dislike we’d prefer if people targeted the behaviour itself, not the people perpetrating it.
‘Knock off the whining’ is an insult? (And I’m not being snarky here) ‘Knock off the whining’ is an insult but ‘your posts sound like whining’ is not? I don’t see it.
Whining is a behavior.
Gukumatz, please don’t fall into the trap of twisting yourself in knots trying to rationalize this. I think Dex has contradicted himself. It’s no big deal, the rules are a bit in flux right now and it takes time to sort all these issues out. But it would be a huge mistake to let a handful of early thoughts on the subject dictate a confusing, illogical policy just so no one has to be wrong.
I hope this doesn’t become a big back and forth, as it really doesn’t need to. The staff needs to decide what level of discussion will be allowed in ATMB and announce it. Hopefully these threads will help sort out some of the nuances of whatever policy they decide on.
And now we might as well just close the thread. The debate over the moderation will drag this into the morass. All because some people insist on having a tantrum and drawing attention to themselves. You just successfully validated it as a tactic to unravel a debate that is “beneath” them…yet one they participate in vigorously.
As one of the posters that warning was directed at, I took it for exactly what it should be taken for: stop sniping at each other and address issues.
All you posters who want every action of a referee to make some sort of perfect sense according to increasingly complex, brightly drawn lines are asking for something that’s not possible. Just go, “Ok, I’ll back off, sorry.” It works, it really does.
Or maybe not, if this is sniping. 
It’s not intended to be. It’s intended to address a perennial problem in ATMB: the search for the perfect set of “rules.”
If hypothetically 1% care passionately about having a poster’s interests field displayed on every post and the 99% are indifferent, then surely the latter preference is relevant for decision making purposes.
It stands to reason that a representative of the apathetic 99% might voice their opinion now and then. Indeed, absent compelling reasons methinks we should yield to providing a shaky enterprise with a certain degree of marketing discretion.