The not very active thread in question was literally called “a mild pitting” and not much of an insult there:
Seriously a pretty reasonable thoughtful constructive complaint. And moderately cleverly expressed with the “hot dish trutherism” bit. That’s a thread created to purely to insult her? That’s the savagery of the fearsome Pit?
I give it an 8. Not hateful and cleverly mocks her … thing. And right off Beck was complaining about being offended in the Pit, and @wolfpup was jumping in to call that beyond the pale … “needlessly cruel”?
Well no one has said that. The OP, who is on record as less sure, only suggested it might be
And pretty much that’s been the tone of the critique. The moderator instead pretty much celebrated and endorsed it, declaring (foolishly I think) that using it was Beck “winning the thread”. That endorsement of the tactic was the bit that got me to post anyway.
Your language lacks clarity. FTR, what I actually said (emphasis added) was “some of the comments above verge on being needlessly cruel and were certainly unnecessary”. Which comments also included a pointless gratuitous insult against Beck’s father. What was that supposed to accomplish? And Beck didn’t exactly complain that she was offended, she said that the ugly comment was offensive, which it was.
Take a look at the the post made just a few hours ago in that Pit thread (Jul 4 5:06 AM, post #1246 in the scroll bar, by Stratocaster). Stratocaster is taunting Beck to leave the board. So c’mon indeed – this is not mild or constructive criticism, it’s taunting and bullying. I’ve cited examples where we’ve lost valuable posters because of this kind of persistent harassment, and may lose another one who especially values this board as a source of companionship.
I repeat for about the tenth time that Miller carefully explained the reasoning for the moderation. Any other moderation would have been inconsistent with the way the Pit generally works (for example, tolerant of hijacks including very silly ones like posting recipes to disrupt a thread) and would rightly have been considered an unfair slam against Beck.
The “pointless gratuitous insult” was to my read neither pointless or gratuitous: it was a joking way to mock her folksy style of bringing “either her gut feeling as gospel truth or her grandad’s epigrams as divine truths” into most discussions that she would participate in in all fora. The complaint that the, yes mild, Pitting was about.
This is ATMB. Relevance to the thread is simply that the moderation judgement of allowing the tactic is something I can understand even if I would hope it was otherwise; the judgement use in the moderation to encourage the behavior, to not just allow it but to declare it as “winning” was bad judgment. And has not done Beck any favors.
