Yeah. It was your smilie that annoyed him. Yeah, that’s it.
Perhaps it will help you to feel better about it if you remember that in the case of handy and Reeder (both who were banned) in effect the special rule for them was akin to a probation. It’s very possible that if the special rule had not been made that they would have been instead immediately banned.
I can’t speak for Evil Captor as he’s still here.
I actually wish there were more “final warning special rules” for more people. I can think of a couple of dozen continual irritants who, when they’re not trotting out their special ego pony to do tricks, can actually behave themselves and be interesting people.
While hit-and-run thread starting may or may not, in general, be against the rules, it is definitely against board culture and tradition, and board members may certainly chime in in the hopes that peer pressure will prevent an undesired change in that culture and tradition.
Board culture and tradition also comes down on the side of not having an animated barfing smilie, so it’s not all bad.
Dudette, if you don’t wan’t to read about someone’s concern or rant, maybe you’re in the wrong forum. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Muhammud
Do you own a mirror?
I can understand your point of view. It just seems cleaner from my point of view to tell him that he’s being a jerk which works perfectly under the existing rules and then ban him or give him another warning. My complaint is mostly procedural as opposed to substantive. While I find the guy amusing, I can see why others don’t.
My point, which Hostile Dialect doesn’t seem to get, is that making special rules for people is messy. The reason people like bright line rules is that they let you know what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t.
Hostile Dialect doesn’t seem to understand the difference between clarifying a rule and making up a new one for someone.
From Giraffe’s warning.
That is not clarifying a rule. If the rule applies to everyone, then it is a clarification, if it applies to one person, then it is a new rule. Do you see the difference?
Again, it’s NOT about someone’s rant. It’s about simply posting an OP and then running off. This isn’t the place for that.
How can one be an attention whore without one?
My God… at the rate individual rules are being created, we’ll all be under the jackboot in 600 years! TOPS!
I for one welcome…
Oh, never mind.
Possibly. Would you be more comfortable if they had instead said something akin to “Poster X is on probation, and as part of that probation they are no longer allowed to use the word ‘Bush’ on this message board.”
The point is to give him a specific way to get out of trouble without having to ban him. Just warning him would have had no effect, which we know from how he’s changed after being warned several times and then suspended (read: not at all).
Oh, I get it just fine. It’s just a fundamentally flawed way of thinking about the Dope, which ignores precedent and common sense.
It’s not that black and white. Giraffe’s post, even though it had the word “rule” in it, was a clarification of exactly what VCO3 needed to do to prove that he could turn off “jerk mode” and thus merit not being banned. This really isn’t as difficult as you’re making it out to be, trust me.
Meh, VC’s an unsympathetic combination of bigot, nut and troll.
Or as I like to abbreviate it, a b’ut’oll.
I agree with Lute. There has been a long history of moderation against ‘Let’s you and him fight’ threads. And from that perspective, this is just a special ‘You. REALLY no you and him fight threads’ clarification.
Every time this has been done its a precursor to banning. Its like a parent counting 1, 2, 2 and a half. So the “special rule” sits around for a long as the poster manages to walk the line - which is never long. So don’t worry about it, the rule disappear along with the poster it applies to in relatively short order.
Bryan, starting now you are to stop saying things that make Vinyl Turnip laugh. This rule is arbitrary, indefinite, and unenforceable.
Evil Captor’s still around. So it worked in at least one case.
Life is not so black-and-white as that. And, I repeat what I said lo! these many posts ago: it’s not really a “rule” per se, it’s more a probation.
We’ve used this approach when we have borderline cases. A poster does something, not jerkish in and of itself, as a one-time act, but becomes obnoxious when repeated over and over. The prime example was probably the poster who would start five to ten different anti-GWBush threads a day. We’re not trying to say that starting such a thread is jerkish behavior; the jerkish behavior is overdoing it.
Similarly in this case. Starting a controversial thread and then not posting to it again is NOT jerkish behavior. Doing it dozens of times IS. We don’t want to ban people, we give a couple of warnings, but we need to be specific. So the “warning” (or probation) is in the form of: here’s the behavior we want you to avoid (or, in some cases, tone down.)
We’ve done this perhaps four or five times in the past many years. Most cases, sadly, the poster doesn’t heed the warning, and so gets banned. At least two cases that I can think of, the poster did indeed heed the warning and so is still here.
Again, it’s really not a “rule” even though that word may have been used. It’s a term of probation expressed in very clear and specific terms so that there’s no confusion about what is meant.
Does it apply to only one person? No,on several levels:
(1) The process of giving probation has happened before, when we see a behavior that is not jerkish as a one-time event, but become jerkish with repetition after repetition.
(2) When we have others who start many (many!) controversial threads and never return to them, we will handle them the same way we’re handling this one.
So, speaking very loud and clear:
NO, it is NOT TRUE that this is applied to one person only.
My brain hurts!
It is not a rule even though the word “rule” was used.
It is not true that this is applied to one person only, even though the post in question says, and I quote:
Really, you folks generally do a fine job, but I think you should all get together for some in-service training. Get a hotel room, a keg, and some note pads, and come up with some consistent language to use when lowering the boom.
It sounds like somebody went to the trouble of tallying them up. Do you mind sharing the figures? I would be less outraged if it is truly (many!).
Also, I really DO question the hit-and-run assumption. How can you tell when an OP isn’t simply reading & learning? (When VCO3 pre-emptively said he wasn’t going to respond, I took it to mean he wasn’t going to be baited.)
Well, if it makes you feel better, when I posted I meant it to be a rule that applied to only one person. 
However, I think Dex’s view is accurate (despite the semantic quicksand he’s struggling against) – given VCO3’s past warnings and probation, this is as much a guideline about how to avoid future banning as anything. And while the current restriction applies only to VCO3, anyone who did the same thing would end up with a similar restriction, i.e. we’re not doing this because we like/dislike VCO3 more than any other poster.
Really, I don’t care what we call it. I just want VCO3 to participate in his Pit threads. I have no interest in banning him, and I hope he follows this new rule/guideline/whatever and sticks around.