Can’t remember who it was, but a Doper (maybe LSLGuy?) pointed out that our existence as a board may be dependent on the Chicago Sun-Times not realizing that it still owns us - and that it would be easy for a disgruntled ex-Doper (say, a banned troll) to go into the Pit, harvest a lot of the nastiest stuff there, and then present it to Sun-Times management in an attempt to get us shut down - considering that we aren’t an asset to Sun-Times at all, in a business sense.
Sure, it hasn’t happened in the many years the Pit has existed, but it could be done.
Agree, and IMHO if someone feels the need to hurl insults at someone else, it’s generally the insult-hurler who needs to express himself/herself in a mature way.
Plenty of other message boards get along just fine without an equivalent of the Pit.
Well, maybe it is technically possible, but there is no doubt that Mod would carry a grudge.
Are you new here? First of all, few both to read the "Trolls R Us thread, and second, even if they did, they would just order a 50# sack of Purina troll chow and a large bowl. It is to Laugh. The idea that the troll thread serves any purpose other than name calling is ridiculous.
And yet the mods have admitted that several actual trolls have been brought to their attention early via that thread. So it clearly does serve a constructive purpose.
It also occasionally results in disagreement over whether a person is a troll or not. Because we are not actually a hivemind determined to drive away all who stray from the approved dogma.
What’s the actually-a-troll to not-actually-a-troll ratio that would make that purpose constructive? You might catch a handful of trolls (who would have eventually been caught anyway), but you’ve unfairly attacked at least that many innocent new posters, some of whom say Fuck this place and leave.
It’s not worth the cost.
It’s not your call. Not alone, not in a group. Present your case to the mods.
Could the Pit be muted by default? That might help address the issue of it turning off newbies. Muting that forum would mean it wouldn’t show up in the list of categories and the active threads won’t show up in the ‘Latest’ listing. Over time the newbie would likely learn of it’s existence through mentions and could unmute it if they like.
Discourse can set certain forums as initially muted for new accounts, yes. I think that the link to the Pit thread will still show up under any post that gets linked to, though.
Yeah, the linking back to other threads thing is hard baked into Discourse, and can’t be turned off. Hence the new rule about neutral thread titles for Pit threads about other posters.
That would probably be okay. It’s not like newbies have to be blocked from seeing Pit threads or prohibited from going into the Pit altogether. If they see a link and want to follow it, no problem.
Voted other, and apparently haven’t posted in this thread before, though I think I’ve said this elsewhere:
Make it not permissible to attack or respond to another poster only with a string of swear words and/or other denigrating language and no useful content. Continue to allow calling another poster a troll or a liar or a racist or whatever, but only if specific evidence is provided.
Yeah, I’m not sure why it is important that only the people who get pitted want it to stop. Of course they do. I’m sure bank robbers would love for robbing banks to be legal, but its only the tellers who don’t like the guns pointed in their face. So what?