If you can’t stand the job, quit. And you’re not just ‘doing’ your job like some low-level drone. You are shaping board policy, and there has got to be a better guide than ‘this pisses me off’ as a basis for rules and moderation.
You stepped up to the job of Pit moderator. To declare that you can’t handle the stress is ludicrous. There are others who can and did, what is wrong with you that you can’t? Lose the chip on your shoulder, it will do neither you nor this board any good.
I would also like to add that as an official authority figure (with shiny badge and everything) I have to endure constant verbal abuse. As a professional I am not allowed to react just because someone gets lippy. If I do at the least I could lose my job.
Guess if we keep attracting posters like Jaglavak and Krav Manga we’re not dead yet. How bizarre to find myself laughing after being so frustrated.
I’ve no nag in this race, but this one still has me crying with laughter. Bravo, maestro! 
Well you weren’t really issuing any official ruling when he told you “FOAD”, you were just telling him “You’re a jerk so I’m not emailing you anything”. Just how easy is it in your mind to have someone challenge your authority, Lynn, or should I say Ms Cartman?
Also, where did he “make it clear” that he intended to be an asshole to the whole staff? I’ve seen a couple of the staff bandy this about. Any specific quote or just gut feeling?
I think that in context, it’s unfair to take that perfectly literally. He’s clearly saying that when he sees an arbitrary ruling he would want it recognized as such. He was also clearly just going along with the phrasing of the person he was replying to.
In fact, “unfair” isn’t quite the word. Willfully obtuse to the point of dishonesty describes it better.
I don’t understand this. I might have a friend who’s a cop. When he’s off-duty, we might be cussing and snarking at each other all day long. But if I’m speeding and he happens to be the cop on duty who pulls me over, I’d be a complete jerk if I treated him like he was still off duty, especially if he was trying to be professional about it. And if I told him to go fuck himself for giving me a ticket that he’s well within his authority to give me, you bet things would get really nasty really fast.
I see no difference here. Mods are posters and can be treated as any other poster. But when you see that Mod Hat, just as when you see a badge on a cop, then you don’t fuck around. You have a problem with how they handled the incident, then you step back, take a breath, and approach the incident from a distanced perspective (taking the ticket to court or complaining to the cop’s superior, and opening a new thread here instead of challenging the mod action directly).
Edit: And of course as soon as I make the post I see I’m making a cop analogy to a cop. Great. :smack:
The stated reason was not that he dissed a mod while wearing a mod hat, the stated reason was that “butthurt much” and “FOAD” were expressions meant to wish death on someone. No hat was involved and no hat was harmed in this ridiculos saga. If anyone was wearing a hat I must have missed it.
I was responding directly to Loach’s post. Plus I was keeping in mind an incident from a few weeks ago in which there was a furor over someone getting slapped down for saying “Fuck off” to a mod directly after getting a warning.
“Not going to completely ban”? Is it fair to infer that you’re going to partially ban them, then? Because that way lies madness. Any attempt to define some partition of acceptable/non-acceptable insults is pretty much doomed to failure, and if you leave the categories undefined, you’re just going to cause confusion and resentment. Principles like “no direct threats” work fine for the most part, but now we’re attempting to legislate boringness? Apparently so:
Is this really a serious problem round here? I hardly ever see people in the Pit responding purely with rote insults; other posters’ derision usually swiftly puts paid to that. So why the apparent attempt to force standards of interestingness? Some of the best discussions on these boards happen in the Pit, with no moderator intervention to maintain the highbrow level. Maybe someone will get called a penis in the middle of them, but by and large people converse fairly normally. It’s very hard to see what CL think is broken about this system.
I’m not going to argue with a policy of no abuse to staff members - that seems perfectly reasonable to me, assuming that staff members are courteous in return. However, it sounds from the above that you/TPTB are unhappy with the general level of discourse in the Pit, and are trying to somehow legislate quality. In my humble opinion, this is a flaky premise and a spectacularly misguided response.
Yes, these boards are moderated; but it’s very nearly a truism that every community needs some sort of release valve, be it official or not; the Pit is one of the most successful I’ve seen. The fact that it frequently contains some of the most interesting discussions (in addition to providing a place to resolve arguments without polluting the rest of the boards) is testament to the community’s quality, in my opinion. And now it’s got to be changed because telling someone to fuck off is boring?
If TPTB are concerned by the Pit because it’s got swearwords in it, or think it’s a bad advert for the boards at large, then I believe this betrays a complete incomprehension of how internet communities work. Moreover, nebulous “I’ll know it when I see it” moderation strategies are only going to make things worse.
I think someone else already mentioned it in this thread earlier, but just in case it wasn’t noticed by much: Color me confused why anyone thinks this is a new thing? 
Lynn being a pit moderator is nothing new. She was a pit moderator for about three years before it changed to Giraffe and fluiddruid. They step down, she takes the job back over/gets it back…
…seems normal to me?
And I know some seem to be taking issue with how she handled a specific situation rather than running the Pit, but I have to agree with Loach and Jaglavak. With that, a lot of things went wrong and each side messed up in some way (or ways). Just seems like a lot of hooha stemming from one thing.
So now there’s a hierarchy of insults and which ones are worse than others that has to be guessed at?
I never would have considered ‘Fuck off’ or even ‘FOAD’ to be that bad. ‘FOAD’ is what my friend tells me every time I have mentioned going to his favorite restaurant without him.
It’s pretty weak in terms of actual insulting language.
Agreed. And in terms of how literally to take “and die”, it’s about as serious as “go play in traffic, kid.”
Oh, but to tell a chiiiiiiiild to play in traffffffffic is wishing bodily harm upon them. Won’t some one puhleeeeze think of the children!!!
I’m totally cool with everything.
If I may offer a suggestion…
It seems to me that much of the current acrimony arises from a attempt to rigorously codify the “do not be a jerk” rule.
I can guarranty that no matter what rules are laid down, I can follow every one of them to the letter and still be a total jerk.
Nor is my talent particularly unique.
Being a jerk isn’t about wishing death or questioning a moderator or any other specific behavior. It’s a sum of the parts thing.
I would suggest dispensing with the bulk of the specific rules (some like those against threats need to stay) and, instead give a simple listing of the problem areas that have caused warnings and bannings in the past. My understanding is that banning rarely occurs as the result of a single action, but rather a pattern.
This approach has the dual advantage of putting an end to the brinksmanship game where people try to see how far they can push a given rule as well as avoiding penalizing those people who do something relatively innocuously but in technical violation of a rule.
I call it the Scylla method. Be somewhat vague and moderate from first principles rather than formulaically.
Well it gave me a good laugh if that makes you feel better. But believe me, I take a hell of a lot of verbal abuse. Its part of the job.
Personally I’d like to see a Department of Homeland Security style color chart. I’d come up with one myself, but it’s early. I guess I’ll just let the kids in marketing work that out.
How dare you say some colors are worse than others, you racist!
(No, not really)
You kidding? We can’t broadcast our battle plans to the terrorists! The moment we stamp out X, some enterprising young al-Snarkawi will try to get away with X+1, drawing the mods into a perilous game of “What? I’m not touching you!” No, better to keep us guessing with hermetic deliberation and mercurial adjudication, punctuated by the occasional hiccough of “Shock & Awe.”
Did I say us? Of course I meant them. Keep them guessing. The bad guys.