Have I mentioned that I like the word “asshat”?
Scylla, manny’s not pointing his thing at you, silly! 
So, your original nitpick in that thread was wrong. You tried to start a shitstorm over your own mistaken assumption?
aslan, I think the general sentiment here is, that while you are basically correct, you should try to let it pass now. Water under the bridge and all that.
While I felt a similiar irritation to Zenster’s reaction, it is not very offensive or so. It is a pity that you were the subject of his ire, but it is insufficient for a huge rant. I value your contributions to this board greatly, as I’m pretty sure most people here do. But Zenster is a good contributor as well who isn’t usually so snippy, as far as I’ve seen. Nothing good can come out of it if you continue to harbor ill feeling toward him. I say show yourself the greater man (yes, I know you are a teenager, but so much the better 
) and let the matter rest at this.
I 'm looking forward to read much more of you, hopefully in other fora than the Pit.
Mine too.
Since Manhattan said that mods don’t ban regular users, and zenster was referencing Brutus, who would qualify as a regular user, I was actually right.
Don’t get bogged down in the details of this, Aslan2, and let it go. The more you nitpick this, the worse it’s going to get on your side of it. Zenster acted like an ass, regardless of the facts. You’re starting to act like a crybaby, and it’s going to ruin you. Let it go.
Fine then.
I won’t pursue it anymore.
Aslan, I like your stuff, so please permit me to offer you some constructive criticism. 
<< Aslan clutches head and moans, “Here it comes…” >>
No, really, I don’t bite.
Anyway, look, file for future reference.
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A week is, in actual practice, here on these boards, too long a time to wait between the offense and the Pitting. A Pitting gets more respect if it’s obviously done in the white-hot heat of the moment. “YOU ASSHOLE!!!” someone shouts. “I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS!!” And so even if the offense itself seems a tad picayune, not to say trivial (“windshield wiper blades are that important to you?”), there’s a bit more respect for the OP if you obviously immediately leaped on your horse and galloped over to the Pit and left scorch marks on the Submit button. I saw the “You said moderator!” “Did not!” “Did too!” thing go past on April 2, which was over a week ago. That was IMO too long to wait.
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Just for future reference, as long as I’ve got you here–Pittings that drag a lot of old material down out of the SDMB attic don’t get a lot of respect. Ranting, “Two years ago you posted this personal attack on me!” tends to lose you sympathy points among the spectators, who will invariably post, “Well, why the hell didn’t you say something then?”
So, generally speaking, if someone pisses you off, you should Pit him immediately, or else be prepared to let it go.
- Pittings involving spelling and grammar are, IMHO, a total waste of time. Whether someone criticized your spelling and grammar and you’re hot under the collar about it, or whether you’re jumping on someone’s ass for his, I think it’s better left alone, not a fit subject for Pitting. I personally try to judge all posters by what they have to say rather than by how they say it, and I believe there are a goodly number of folks here who would agree with me, and who are similarly inclined to go, " :rolleyes: " when they see a Spelling and Grammar Pit rant.
There’s also the problem that Pit threads involving spelling and grammar tend to turn into messy Gaudere’s Law extravaganzas, which is the law that says that any post correcting someone’s spelling and grammar will have spelling and grammar errors of its own. An OP that you construct to lambast someone who criticized your spelling and grammar had better be perfect, or you’ll soon regret ever having started it. So sometimes it’s best not to begin.
- Similarly, when someone criticizes your spelling and grammar in the context of a thread, the only proper response is to ignore it completely, the way you would ignore any other dog turd laying there on the sidewalk. Step around it, kid, and keep walking.
If the purpose of a thread is to discuss Iraq, or abortion, or gun control, or April Lavigne, and not to discuss someone’s spelling and grammar, then posters who pause to criticize someone’s spelling and grammar in the middle of the thread are IMO basically performing a minor hijack. It’s like everyone suddenly has to stop thinking about Iraq, or abortion, or gun control, or April Lavigne, and now has to think about someone’s spelling and grammar, which is annoying. I didn’t come into the thread for that, I came into the thread to talk about April Lavigne, or whatever.
So don’t do it yourself, and when someone does it to you, just give it the attention it deserves, which is zilch.
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If you’ve got a complaint to make about another poster, make it in one place–a single purpose-built Pit thread. Generally speaking, don’t follow posters around the boards and nag them to address your personal issues with them by posting in other unrelated threads, “Oh, yeah? Well, what about what you said in this other thread?” It’s what amounts to a personal hijack of the thread and is rather annoying. If you have issues with a poster, start a Pit thread. Now, I’m not talking about political or religious debate-type issues, where he says A in one thread and then says B in another thread and you quite properly call him on it. I mean the “hey, what about where you were wrong in this thread, aren’t you going to admit you were wrong?” type of posts.
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Don’t allow yourself to get dragged into the “how many popular threads have YOU started?” or “how many posts do YOU have?” or “How much of a contribution have YOU made to these boards?” pissing contests. One word–“pointless”. Smart people don’t go around evaluating other posters on the basis of how many “popular” threads they’ve started, or how many posts they have, or what kind of “contribution” they’ve made to these boards (whatever that’s supposed to mean). I know two posters whose posts I enjoy reading who hang out almost exclusively in MPSIMS, and if you ask me they make just a big a “contribution” to the SDMB as the more august and profound Great Debaters. This is a community, not a meeting of the National Honors Society.
And many of us start threads that get only a dozen or so responses before the thing slides off to Page 2, and we at least understand that it’s not that people don’t like us, or that we’re not “popular”–it’s just that nobody had anything to say on that particular topic.
- Learn to use the quote function, okay? It’s important. Trying to wade through mish-mash posts with all those hypens like your OP is hellacious. I never criticize folks for spelling and grammar, but I do criticize them for not learning to quote. It’s really easy, and if I can figure it out, anyone can.
Watch. Just use put the text you want to quote in between square brackets and the word “quote” and then more square brackets and the word “quote” again and the slash (which means “end quote”) like this:
[ quote]text you want to quote
[/quote ]
But leave out the spaces between the square brackets and the word “quote”–I just put those in there so it would look right on the page, so you can see what it looks like.
And here’s the most important part of using the Quote function: Use Preview to make damn sure you got it right. Preview that sucker over and over again until it looks right, until it looks perfect, until your mother could eat off of it. Preview is your friend, Aslan. Preview is your lucky rabbit’s foot. Preview is the teddy bear that you got for Christmas when you were three and has never been out of your possession and that travels with you in your briefcase at all times. Preview is the SDMB guardian angel that makes us all look smarter than we really are. Use Preview.
You’ve been here since February. Figure it out, 'kay? Please?
Thanks for the advice, DuckDuckGoose.
You missed the real issue here.
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You’re insulting someone on the basis of the actions of who they took their screenname from?
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I love The Masters of Rome, I really do. Just finished Caesar’s Women today. But it is fiction. FICTION. FICTION. F-I-C-T-I-O-N. I cannot even wrap my mind around the irony of citing fiction in a thread about assertions without knowledge to back them up.
That, and resorting to making fun of somebody’s username is the lowest common denominator of lame web insults. Inserting lamer literary references in there is even more pitiful.
Easy for you to say, Crunch N Munch.
Oh what - you think you’re so cool naming yourself after Gustaf Munch-Petersen - he only produced FIVE crappy volumes of poetry before VOLUNTEERING for the Spanish Civil War, where he was killed at 26, you LOSER!!
For what it’s worth, a more effective reponse to Zenster in the original thread would have been something along the lines of, “Oh, I’m sorry…I typed ‘quit’ instead of ‘quite’. My error. I guess that lets you off the hook for being a complete fuckhole who can’t admit when he’s wrong. What a valuable ‘contribution’ to the boards you are.”
Wow, I can’t believe Zenster actually wrote that. That’s possibly the most misguided (and failed) attempt at being intentionally pedantic I’ve seen on the Boards in a while. What a twat.
I know that there are book on the Decline and Fall of Rome, Edward Gibbon are a good place to start.
If, however, you are interested in fiction about ancient Rome , the Marcus Didius Falco novels by Lindsey Davis are great. Also great are I, Claudius and Claudius the God both by Robert Graves.
I’d post a rebuttal, but I can’t for the life of me find a 1/2 decent insult to the name Dookie. I mean Pookie…er…Dooku.
Surely you could toss in a lame literary reference?
I thought you’d be able to pick up on my “Garfield” reference, but apparently that’s just too high-brow for you, Kudos.
Damn. And I actually used to read Garfield.