Why did you feel the need to redefine the rules in order to stamp out the types of posts that you disapprove of? Why not simply enforce the “don’t be a jerk” rule more rigorously?
Would it have been unworkable to simply ask the Mods to take a more liberal view of their job to limit abusiveness? Reading your responses to the complaints so far it doesn’t seem that there’s a universal issue with the words being used in all cases hence the “if it makes us laugh, it’s probably OK” codification. It seems that you simply want to eliminate the posts that are nothing but an excuse to swear loudly. Posts with no purpose but to hurt peoples feelings with curses as opposed to legitimate criticism. That, and Moderator abuse.
So, if “these rules will only pop up a few times a year”. Why couldn’t the Mods simply have been more proactive in warning posters and editing/deleting needlessly cruel or profane posts.
It seems from my point of view all this ill-will and worry could have been averted with a simple statement to the effect of “Folks, I feel like things are getting out of line in the Pit and I’d like you to tone down the abuse and invective a bit.”
I don’t mean to belabor the point, and I’m asking other Dopers to not hijack this thread with another litany of complaints and queries that probably belong in the Assholes and Dicks thread or the original Pit Rules thread, but I’m curious why you decided to go with the “New Pit Rules” route when you’ve repeatedly said it’s probably not going to be in effect very often. Isn’t that the whole point of the Don’t Be a Jerk rule?
Ed’s made it clear in several places that part of these new rules are not merely in order to make the Dope a kinder, gentler, happier place, but one that’s more attractive to advertisers. You can not be a jerk and still include profanities in the title of a thread, fer’instance.
Because everybody has a different notion of what constitutes jerkiness. I’ve said this before: when we first went online, and I think this was in AOL days, the sum total of rules was (and I think this is pretty close to verbatim): “The rules for the Straight Dope Message Board are as follows: Don’t be a jerk. Don’t make us think up other ones.” You see how long the registration agreement is now. You and I may know what we mean by jerkiness, but the rest of the world doesn’t know. You have to spell it out. So that’s what we’ll do. The trick in managing any large online community is to make the rules so clear and obvious that they’re self-enforcing. Give it a little while. We’ll get there.
Fair enough, but few people have a serious issue with the censorship of thread titles. That doesn’t seem to be where the rub is. No profanity in thread titles and complaining about the staff only in ATMB seem to be pretty acceptable changes.
It’s the whole not swearing at someone thing that has all the pitfalls and drama. It just seemed like it’d have been easier to just call out people for crossing the line as opposed to all this upheaval. If more liberal enforcement was tried (I never noticed or heard about it) and failed, that’s one thing, but if I never heard about it it seems to have not had a chance to be self-policing.
Thanks for the reply, Ed. I’m not sure I agree that defining “jerkiness” is a achievable goal. I tend to think that more specificity creates more complexity and less understanding as it applies to something as amorphous as that. I’m not sure that simply trusting the Mods judgment (and conveying your expectations clearly to them) on a case-by-case basis isn’t more practical.
There was a period when trusting the mod’s judgement on who was a jerk was impractible. We were told, “document, wait and document, otherwise the usual suspects will cry.”
Frankly, if the new rule had been devised solely to allow mods more leeway on jerks, I likely would be climbing on board with torch, screaming, “Pull the rope!”
Everyone who has ever been chosen as a mod has been chosen, at least partially, because of their ability to identify jerks, and should be fully trusted to take appropriate actions. A jerk should be quickly identified as such, and as quickly dealt with. The usual suspects should be allowed to cry to their heart’s desire, and ignored. Who cares?
But the new rules are not devised to identify jerks, they are to identify posters who don’t follow rules; different people entirelyl
With due respect, Frank, people who can’t follow rules are acting like jerks. They may not think so, they may think they’re entitled, they may have any subset of reasons that they think they’re a protected class.
And, to repeat somthing that has been posted along these lines–if you screw up and act like a jerk, under normal circumstances, you get warned to not do it again. If you screw up again, you probably again get warned to not do this. If you repeat your screw-ups, you finally get suspended/banned.
Some people think that Hulu will match the ad revenue of Youtube next year. Hulu has 6m unique views compared with Youtube’s 86m.
In 2008 Hulu generated 70m in ad dollars while Youtube made 100m.
It is not just about the page views. Advertisers don’t want their products ending up next to someone kicking a small child in the balls. There is a difference of 80m viewers between Hulu and Youtube and yet Hulu might soon make the same amount of ad revenue.
The SDMB has attracted a lot of users precisely because the people here are more civil than the other forums you see on the internet. It’s a pretty smart strategy to take this one step further and market yourself that way.
We can still insult each other, but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t make advertisers think we’re the same breed as 4chan.
Let me start by saying this is not an advertising-driven thing. I’ve been getting some flak this week from the ad sales guys, but it’s mostly because we had a whole collection of sex columns on the home page, since we’re running TSD classics out of the sex chapter of book 1. Be that as it may, a very big deal to advertisers is the editorial environment, never mind the page views. One of the selling points of Maxim, believe it or not, was that they could tell advertisers: we’re not like Playboy, we don’t have totally naked ladies. In the alternative newspaper biz, taking “adult” advertising is a dicey proposition - there’s money in it, but it chases other advertisers away. Other than getting razzed about the sex columns (and razzing is all it was - nobody said I couldn’t run sex columns), I’ve heard zero from the CL honchos about cleaning up the site. But over the years I’ve had lot of people tell me: you could get wider column distribution/sell more books/get more mainstream acceptance if Cecil wouldn’t run questions like (for example) why is shit brown. My attitude has always been: Listen, our mission is to tell people the facts, even if they’re a little icky. But my other thought has been: if we’re going to get hammered for being too out there, it’s going to be because of stuff Cecil decided he wanted to tackle, not because some potty mouth in the Pit decided he wanted to say “cunt” whenever he felt like it. You see what I’m saying? We’re putting up all the damn money; it’s our butts that are on the line. We don’t need freelancers screwing up the act. I’m sorry if I come across like a crazyass tyrant at times, but I gotta keep this thing focused. Anybody in my shoes would do the same.
If you’re selling ad space to Google, all that matters is the page hits. Ed noted in another thread that he was talking to an actual ad person. If he’s selling directed ads to someone in Chicago who will pay a premium for ads that will hit a directed market (the viewers of SD Chicago), those advertisers might be interested in site quality in addition to quantity of traffic.
Part of the issue, I imagine, is that the Dope (and Pit) that you and I love and have become used to are based on a more liberal enforcement code than what’s going to be put in place. That’s not the environment that Ed wants to see in his fan-board.
The fact that it is possible to follow the rules and be a jerk does not mean that the inverse must be true. As a rule, for a conditional statement, the converse and inverse are logically equal, the conditional and the contrapositive also.
If you don’t follow rules, you are a jerk. I agree with this for the most part, and the times I don’t are so few and far between as to be inconsequential. Indeed, I explain to my classes at the start of a new semester that what I won’t tolerate is a student being a jerk, and then make certain they understand that failure to follow the few rules I have is being a jerk.
This readily explains Rule Three about naughty thread titles, but leaves inexplicable Rule Two, which I repeat for those who have forgotten the exact wording:
Emphasis added.
What, exactly, do you accomplish by forbidding the statement, “BJMoose, you’re a cunt!” while permitting a statement like, “Mother Teresa was a cunt!”? (I do hope folks will forgive me for using her in this example. I’d rather not, but it seems to make my point better than anything else I can think of.)
I’d wager most folks would find the second statement far more offensive than the first. But under Rule Two, it is permitted. How the heck does it not count as “screwing up the act”?
For now, I’ll stand by my wild-@$$&% guess that Rule Two exists because some members, personally known to you, have complained about being on the receiving end of abusive language, and this is your way of combatting that. All it does is protect members. It doesn’t otherwise “clean up the place” one bit.
I really wish you would explain the reasoning behind Rule Two and its quite specific limitation. To paraphrase Dirty Harry: “Go ahead, fight my ignorance.”
