# How reprehensible do YOU want to be in the Pit? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 27, 2019, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084 "2019-11-27T19:57:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/21 "2019-11-27T23:35:14Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > AIUI, we may call anyone of any gender a “cunt” in its originally British and basically non-gendered sense of “despicable person”, “shitheel”, “asshole”, “twat”, etc. I’m not sure whether we could in fact get away with calling a female poster a “cunt” in its American sense of “worthless trashy sexually promiscuous woman”, a la Tony Manero in _Saturday Night Fever_. If not, I’m not sure how the mods would adjudicate that distinction. I’m not sure how I’d _make_ the distinction, tbh. What’s the second one look like, beyond just saying, “You’re a cunt, Karen”? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/22 "2019-11-27T23:50:03Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m not sure how I’d _make_ the distinction, tbh. What’s the second one look like, beyond just saying, “You’re a cunt, Karen”? Well, the way I’ve heard it described, which is not a 100% reliable discriminator, is that if the insult would still make contextual sense if you replaced the word “cunt” with “diseased prostitute”, you’re using “cunt” in the American sense. If it wouldn’t, then that’s the British sense. “My boss can really be a dictatorial diseased prostitute sometimes”: not meaningful, hence British sense. “That dumb diseased prostitute acts like she’s worth anything”: still meaningful, American sense. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/23 "2019-11-27T23:57:06Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m not sure how I’d _make_ the distinction, tbh. What’s the second one look like, beyond just saying, “You’re a cunt, Karen”? I’ve always taken the uglier, American usage as implying that a woman is trashy and worthless simply by virtue of HAVING one; no implication of promiscuity necessary. So, just to be on the safe side, I’d personally steer clear of finding it (marginally) acceptable when applied to any woman; it’s distasteful to me, but as a bog-standard vulgarism it strikes me as being in a class with “son of a bitch” and “bastard,” neither of which is commonly deployed against the fairer sex. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/24 "2019-11-27T23:59:53Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I don’t see saying “You’re a pedophile” as necessarily worse than, “You’re a motherfucker.”) The difference between these two things is that “motherfucker” is generally understood to be nothing more than a simple insult - it’s not a serious claim that someone fucks his mom. Calling someone a pedophile, though, is generally much more of a specific, serious, actual accusation, and more defamatory for that reason. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/25 "2019-11-28T00:00:17Z")
This one might be impractical to enforce, but: How about we can call a poster a troll, a bigot, a racist, a mysogynist, a liar, willfully ignorant, a creep, a pedophile, or whatever – as long as it’s relevant to the behavior we’re calling out the poster for. If somebody posts that they like hiring prostitutes who look as young as possible, in circumstances in which they can’t be sure of actual age: pit them and call them a pedophile. If somebody persistently or glaringly says something racist: pit them and call them a racist. If somebody keeps derailing threads: call them a troll or a jerk. If somebody keeps posting what you think is obviously untrue: pit them and call them a liar, or willfully ignorant, or, if you must, stupid. But if they’re being pitted for possibly lying, you can call them a liar or a troll or willfully ignorant – any of which may be relevant – but don’t call them a pedophile, barring some actual reason to think that they might be one. If they’re being pitted for mysogyny, calling them a mysogynist or a general bigot or willfully ignorant can be relevant – but don’t call them a racist unless there’s some reason to think they may also be a racist. If they’re being pitted for saying they’d throw out their kid if the kid were trans, accuse them of bad parenting all you want, as well as of bigotry in the form of transphobia; but if whatever they’re being pitted for has nothing to do with parenting, then don’t call them child abusers. And so on. As far as calling people fuckheads and so on: I don’t really see that it serves a useful purpose; but I don’t see that it does much harm as long as the terms used are on the level of casual insult, rather than screamingly over the line, for everybody. Problem is, that a number of them fall on one side of the line in some social groups and on the other in other groups; and there are people from a lot of places and a lot of cultures on this board. How badly do people want to be even inadvertent jerks? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/26 "2019-11-28T00:04:57Z")
> [@Dropo](#): > > I’m sure I haven’t thought this through well enough, but what if the Pit only had one thread reserved solely for pitting other posters and insult contests between posters. No other discussion would be allowed. Any topic outside those parameters that would normally go in the Pit would have to find a home elsewhere on the board and be subject to the usual rules. > > Non-political rants against institutions, businesses and (off-board) personalities could go in IMHO or MPSIMS; politically based rants could go in Elections, which could be retitled “Politics” (as a number of posters have suggested in the past), a name every bit as dull and unimaginative as “Elections.” Alternatively, it could be called something like “The Ruling Class” or even “The Ruling Voice” and deal political issues and leaders. I like \*\*Dropo’s \*\*suggestion here. The Pit should serve mainly as a WWE-style cage for Dopers to go against each other. The other things, like rants about Trump, mass shootings, healthcare or the treatment of migrants should go elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/27 "2019-11-28T01:15:41Z")
I wanna take it sideways. Fewer rules, but more enforcement of “don’t be a jerk,” with a new standard being, “Goddamn, you suck.” People can post whatever they want here. But if it becomes clear to you that they’re just a terrible person, you ban them. Maybe they’re being terrible by poking people right in the trauma. Maybe they’re being terrible by being supercilious trolls. Maybe they’re being terrible by insisting on pedantic rules-parsing down to the individual electron. Whatever: in the Pit, they’re revealing themselves to be awful posters, and they got to go. Instead of the lawful neutral modding elsewhere, moderate the pit chaotic good. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/28 "2019-11-28T01:57:40Z")
The mandatory Pit uniform should include flame-retardant big-boy pants. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/29 "2019-11-28T01:57:49Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I like \*\*Dropo’s \*\*suggestion here. The Pit should serve mainly as a WWE-style cage for Dopers to go against each other. The other things, like rants about Trump, mass shootings, healthcare or the treatment of migrants should go elsewhere. At the very LEAST, we’d need to have “rounds,” as it were, so people could keep up with the thousands of posts that would accumulate. Maybe start a new one each week. On the whole, I don’t much think of the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/30 "2019-11-28T02:04:50Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > (For the record, yes, actual pedophiles bother me, but I don’t see saying “You’re a pedophile” as necessarily worse than, “You’re a motherfucker.”) I don’t see them as one more serious than the other either, but from anybody other than an American it would be a “you don’t repeat that outside”-level insult. Or in my case “I’m not talking to you again, ever” insult, as the last time I voluntarily got into a fistfight I was 10yo. Then again there’s musicians to whom I never listen live because they pepper their addresses to the public with equivalent language and that makes me want to answer back “motherfucker your inbred nonworking dick, you and I have never shared so much as a bag of potato chips so fuck off with the ‘we’re all pals here’ insults”, so it’s possible I’m the one being a prude. From my point of view it’s never kosher to insult a private person who can’t defend themselves, whether poster’s minor child or adult anything. At the same time, the right to whine is universal, a diagnostic is not an insult and as for public figures and when it’s for their public behavior, go at them. Calling Mel Gibson an anti-semite (diagnosis), Trump a sexual abuser (self-reported), or your boss a controlling jerk/your subordinate a lazy good for nothing/your coworker a thieving imbecile (mini-rants, work rants) are fine. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/31 "2019-11-28T02:14:03Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > At the very LEAST, we’d need to have “rounds,” as it were, so people could keep up with the thousands of posts that would accumulate. Maybe start a new one each week. > > On the whole, I don’t much think of the idea. Yeah, I don’t see how it would work, given that it would basically excise context from the insults. It’s after some period of back-and-forth on a particular topic that the urge to post an insult would arise, after all. If there are twenty posts back-and-forth in a thread on (say) ‘super-fans of various Dem candidates,’ and then one person posts a link to the Insult Thread… …well, I guess it would work in some fashion. But I can’t see how it would be an improvement on just calling one’s opponent a self-absorbed parochial fool (or whatever) in the original thread. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/32 "2019-11-28T02:18:39Z")
I think family members should be off limits, other than that don’t really care. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/33 "2019-11-28T02:19:47Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Yeah, as someone who posts a lot in the Pit but treats it more like a version of Great Debates where other people can lose their tempers if they want to, I don’t have a problem with the way it’s been moderated so far. > > I agree that the general principle of permitting insults and invective, but not outright hate speech or nasty gossip about off-board personal lives, is a good one. But I have no idea what specific policies would do the best job of implementing it. This. (And what Left Hand of Dorkness said while I was slowly typing this.) _If_, GD is philosophical discussions over cigars and brandy in the study where all fights are limited to ‘Marquess of Queensberry Rules’. _Then_, The Pit is (often is) philosophical discussions at the pub with occasional fist fights and bloodied noses . . . but when someone busts a bottle to ‘cut a bitch’ everyone wants that person banned from the pub. Miller, as Giraffe before him, ‘gets’ this part of the board and their moderation is/was exemplary. CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/34 "2019-11-28T02:57:31Z")
There should be no sanction for using the Pit more effectively than another. Nobody is forced to read it as I’ve been told multiple times. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/35 "2019-11-28T03:06:57Z")
I see how insulting other posters is different from losing your temper about some external thing, but I haven’t had any trouble with them both being in the same forum. If we are rearranging forum content, I’d prefer to have “elections” renamed “politics” since I am genuinely confused as to how political topics are supposed to be handled here. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/36 "2019-11-28T05:10:05Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I want to make attacking someone over deep personal trauma out-of-bounds, but that’s going to necessarily be a lot of subjective decisions on my part. I’ve certainly seen a lot of people report posts because they were “traumatized” by the most picayune insults, or even simply criticism and disagreement. On the other hand, as an able-bodied white guy, there are entire oceans of trauma out there of which I have only the vaguest understanding. I think the standard should be - if a cross-section of _other people_, not just the insulted poster or their political fellow travellers, are posting or reporting that something crossed the line, that should suffice. > [@](#): > > Someone posting about how they’re not vaccinating their kids deserve to be roasted at least a little, for example. I think there’s also some value in the idea that, if you introduce your kids into a debate, you’re inviting commentary on your relationship with them. Absolutely agree. > [@](#): > > **Calling other posters “pedophiles”** > I don’t see saying “You’re a pedophile” as necessarily worse than, “You’re a motherfucker.”) Calling someone a motherfucker is just swearing at them, it is not saying they literally fuck their own mother. I don’t think it’s the same thing. I see it this way: People have been banned from the site for paedophilia, no-one’s been banned for incest. Having said that, you’re right about retaining the calling out of skeevy posting. Overall, I think you’re the best Mod left here, and think you are on the right track. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/37 "2019-11-28T07:19:21Z")
> [@margin](#): > > Shodan wasn’t even talking to me when he added a cheery, “Hi, margin, you’ve been gone for a while! Make any friends in the psych ward?” (Paraphrase. I ain’t goin’ back to look, thanks. I thought the moderator asked us not to re-litigate previous issues? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/38 "2019-11-28T08:02:24Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > I thought the moderator asked us not to re-litigate previous issues? :dubious: And I’m sure you’re aware of the rule against junior modding, yet here we are. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/39 "2019-11-28T10:16:52Z")
I like it the way it is. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2019, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084/40 "2019-11-28T15:06:54Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > There should be no sanction for using the Pit more effectively than another. . “More effectively”? What does that mean? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reprehensible-do-you-want-to-be-in-the-pit/844084.md?page=3)