I’ve never voted for a Republican in my life… I attacked Biden from the LEFT.
Thanks for the offer, but if you didn’t get it from the Pit thread, I hardly think that’d be a productive use of my time. I’ve told you there what I needed to tell you. What you do with it is up to you.
As is well known, I try never to participate in Pit threads. But this is the common refrain- “I can’t tell you in open honest adult discussion, so I have to call you names.”
I like how you put that in quotation marks, as if that is what I said. It reinforces my decision.
Yes, the side that hasn’t bothered to do any research and uncritically believes what they have been told. Meanwhile anyone who has is forced to tapdance over landmines in an effort to debunk the misinformation.
Exactly. Has anyone pitted the WSJ yet for saying the Hunter Biden laptop is real?
Which one was you? Calling someone mentally disabled, a troll, or a hateful racist fucktard?
I think this, and DrDeth’s posts, illustrate why the Pit is necessary: even with it, people who refuse to use it feel the need to clutter up other fora with highly personal posts like this one. Without the Pit I’m sure such posts would be even more common.
Hard to take that seriously when the last effort from you was a cite from the bottom of the barrel coming from the extreme right wing media.
This thread has turned into another argument with the “get rid of the pit” crowd, so I just want to reinforce the results of the poll in case anyone reading along so deep into the thread is swayed into thinking that that is a popular opinion. Only 9% want the pit abolished, and only 14% want attacks on other posters banned. The most popular change only received 27% of the vote. The majority of people want the pit to remain as it is. Granted, a slim majority, but still a majority. It’s also a majority that I suspect would grow if you removed the option “disable discourse showing links to the Pit”. I would actually favor this option, but I didn’t vote for it as I know that it is not technically feasible at this time.
It’s not necessary to say such things for any of the stated purposes except venting… venting at the expense of other people, and of the board.
I wish the eager pitters could experience what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the mob. Then they might have some empathy for once.
I already experienced that when I defended climate science 15 years ago, thank you very much.
Maybe we should make a forum called The Cross where our more martyrdom focused posters can compare their tales of being persecuted.
This, I think, is the fundamental disagreement. Of course I could experience that: I would just need to post in the ways that engender a pitting. I think that generally means posting in an asshole manner; you don’t. But I could experience that if I wanted to. I don’t post that way because I don’t want to post in what I consider to be an asshole manner, though.
Your lecturing me about empathy is–well, again, one of those subjects best left to the pit. And your feeling the need to make things personal here is one more piece of evidence that the Pit is a useful forum, and I encourage you to take further conversation about my emotional health or moral probity there.
Then you really haven’t been paying attention.
I would agree with this. So what are we doing in this thread? It feels like we’re spinning our wheels over something that most users don’t want to change.
Oooh boy. I think we have taken very different messages from what happened with them.
No. It’s not. We could make the opposite argument though. Some people would like to be able to post whatever they like, and not get called on it. Their argument could be questioned, if you word it just right. The statement could be refuted, with care. However, the poster in this model, would never get called out on their larger narrative because the Board does not allow any way to do that without the Pit.
We need to keep the Pit if only for the Fantastic thread titles it generates.
Catholic Bishops can…
Rand Paul is…
Poetry!
There are really two aspects to calling someone out in the Pit
- Highlighting their problematic behavior
- Describing their behavior with a profanity-laden personal attack
The utility to the board of the first part doesn’t require the second part. I certainly agree that arguing with some posters can be like arguing with a rock, but that doesn’t mean they should be subjected to unrestrained, mean-spirited personal insults. The intent of the insults seem more like a personal vendetta to drive the person away rather than highlight problematic behavior. If the behavior really is so bad that it can only be expressed with degrading insults about the person, let the mods deal with it and ban the problematic poster.
Again, though, there’s the “vent about someone being an asshole” aspect. If someone is sealioning, or treating me with withering condescension that comes from a place of ignorance, or otherwise absolutely getting on my last nerve, it’s helpful for me to have a place where I can express my frustration safely, and then return to the other forum and not respond to them in kind.
If the board were a lot less tolerant of dishonesty and passive-aggressive nonsense, then a lot of the folks who currently get Pitted would instead get banned, and the vent wouldn’t be so helpful.
I admit I’m not really well versed in the Pit since I don’t really follow all the Pit threads. I don’t know your posting style there, but plenty of posters in the Pit are as hurtful as possible in their insults. Even if you are doing a kind of “healthy rant”, that’s not what everyone does. Like this example “Bricker is a Pile of Shit Sculpted into Human Shape”. In my opinion, that is an abhorrent insult that should not be allowed on the board in any category. There’s nothing that Bricker could have done to warrant that kind of insult. If Bricker is really that disruptive, report him and the mods will ban him. If that was said in any other category or on practically any other message board, the poster themselves would be banned. I can’t comprehend how we agree that kind of speech is hurtful and not appropriate anywhere else in our lives but it’s a-okay in the Pit.
After 20 years, I still find it appalling.