Yes, I do drink, but I don’t see how accusing another poster of “posting while drunk” isn’t considered an insult, and I’m certainly not alone in feeling that way as Dex he thinks that unless done as a joke or an honest question it’s clearly an insult and Marley may or may not believe since he felt that RNATB’s post was “somewhat inappropriate” though apparantly less offensive then using the term “racist” to refer to a post that was clearly “racist.”
For a moderator who has flat out stated that he doesn’t even consider accusations of racism or sexism insults his decision was hypocritical and intellectually inconsistent.
Beyond that, if the mods feel that they shouldn’t feel the need to mod posts where others are accused of drunkenness" then what else is ok.
If someone makes a post that I interpret as suggesting a certain hostility towards women can I ask, outside the pit, “I’m guessing you don’t get laid too often” or “did a girl laugh at you when she saw how small your penis is”.
I certainly don’t see how such comments aren’t insults.
Beyond that if you really think that “Are you posting while drunk” isn’t an insult just direct it at someone in GD other that me and see how the mods react.
Why is being drunk an insult? I have had a few pints over the last ninety minutes at the pub in my new apartment complex and am certainly not fit to drive a car. It is no problem if you call me drunk. I would not feel offended.
Incidentally, I should add that to his credit RNATB did publicly apologize to me for making the comment for which I will salute him for doing so since many people on the internet would refuse to do so, and I accepted his apology.
Also, he has clarified his post on Rajoub saying it was more about “ethnocentrism”. I do think my statement that his comment was racist was clearly correct, but it’s very possible for people who aren’t racists or stupid to make comments that are and I suspect most people have done so. I certainly have.
As far as I’m concerned the matter between him and me is dropped and while I’m still annoyed that Marley did feel the need to mod my post referring to RNALTB’s assertion as “racist” while refusing to do so for a clear personal insult, but C’est la Vie.
The distinction you draw between calling a post stupid or racist and calling a poster stupid or racist is a distinction you share with the mods, but it’s not one I think is especially valid. The only way to know a person is stupid is through their words or deeds, so calling a person’s post stupid is saying that you have evidence that they’re stupid. Same thing applies to racism. In each case, it’s possible there’s other evidence that they’re not stupid/racist, but you’re talking about evidence that they are. I think permitting the one but not the other is a poor decision (and yes, I’m thereby saying there’s evidence that the mods make poor decisions), and does not improve the quality of discussion.
That said, there’s a difference between calling someone drunk and calling someone stupid. In the morning, so the saying goes, I’ll be sober, but you’ll still be stupid. One is estar, the other is ser; one is temporary, the other is long-term. Personally I’d find it less insulting for someone to ask me if I’m drunk (with the implication that my post is not evidence of any sort of long-term stupidity) than for someone to say my post is stupid. Both, however, would be insulting.
Edit: As to “please don’t make racist assertions,” that’s not good argument form. I agree that his post had racist overtones (and yes, that RNATB might have some unexamined racism, as do I). But this sort of response is singularly ineffective. Rather than making snippy comments like that, wouldn’t it be better to say something like, “Actually, suggesting that Palestinians by their nature are untrustworthy in discussions of this conflict is kind of a racist thing to say; you can’t group and dismiss people by ethnicity like that”? A longer explanation makes clear what the flaw is with the post you’re responding to and is less likely to lead to snippy responses.
For starters, the former is directed at a person’s argument while the latter is directed at the person hence the phrase “personal insult” and “Ad Hominem.”
Moreover, it’s very possible to have stupid ideas or believe stupid things without being stupid.
To use some very obvious example, Eugenics, Phrenology and countless other ideas that were and still are extremely stupid were believed by virtually everyone at one point including both people who were stupid and people who weren’t.
Similarly, lots of people have made racist statements without themselves being racist.
For that matter, it’s also very possible to be a racist without being stupid, evil, or even necessarily a bad person. To use one obvious example related to the thread we were discussing, most Palestinians in the Occupied territories were they asked would probably express attitudes and opinions that most of us would consider virulently anti-Semitic.
Does that mean they’re all evil or stupid?
No, they believe such things because of the background they come from and how their information has been filtered. To a large extent, the same is true for the Israelis.
I’m not clear on what you mean when you say eugenics was stupid–do you mean something besides “incorrect”?
When I say “stupid”, I mean something along the lines of “incapable of effective thinking.” Not to get all obnoxiously dictionary on you, but I’m not sure what definition of stupid can apply to a post without reflecting on the poster.
Consider the opposite. If someone says, “That post was brilliant, Ibn Warraq,” haven’t they just complimented you?
Certainly, “lots of brilliant people, including the Presidents of every Ivy League college in the early 20th believed in an extremely stupid idea that is known as eugenics”.
The people who believed in Eugenics believed in a very stupid, bigoted belief but that didn’t mean that they were stupid or evil. It simply meant they were wrong.
I’m not trolling you. I can imagine using the word to describe an idea in such a way as to reflect poorly on the holder of the idea. I can imagine using the word (in an unusual fashion) to say that an idea is incorrect. But I don’t know what meaning you’re ascribing to the word if you don’t mean for its application to an idea to reflect poorly on the idea’s holder.
I would not describe the idea of Eugenics as stupid, for example. I would describe it as incorrect. I would describe most variants of it as racist (and would be happy to call its adherents racist, for the most part). I’d call it pernicious.
But if intelligent people reached the idea of eugenics after careful consideration, I don’t think it makes sense to call the idea stupid.
What does “stupid” mean in that example sentence you gave about Ivy League etc.? I’m seriously asking, because I don’t know of a meaning that fits.
I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s not true. I’m actually all that easily offended. I was actually more offended by RNALTB’s comment regarding Jibril Rajoub, then the personal insult directed at me.
Moreover, I wasn’t upset about being insulted, and very much appreciate RNALTB apologizing, I was upset that Marley decided not to mod a post containing a personal insult directed at me while feeling the need to mod a post in which I did not make any insults but merely critiqued a post.
I like and respect Marley, but yes, I agree with Finn that he made a bad call that was extremely hypocritical.
You’ve just spent 26 posts, and an astonishing amount of verbiage, expounding in excruciating detail upon the perceived offense. I’ve seen Master’s theses that weren’t this long.
I’m glad that you’re not easily offended, because who knows how long this thread would go on if you were.
In all seriousness, it’s dramatically easy to be misperceived on the internet and very easy to be perceived as being upset when you’re not. Some people tend to be long-winded and I am definitely one of those. Moreover, most of my posts were responses to others.
Well, the problem is that one is an actual rules violation while the other is not. The actual rules violation was kinda brushed aside by you while you intimated that Ibn’s charge was baseless, and you focused extensively on Ibn’s behavior which wasn’t against the rules. I think that, all in all, the issue was that you appeared to be coming down much harder on Ibn because his posting style is something you find to be negative, while you weren’t focusing on a rules violation which you seemed to have been minimizing.
Eh, it’s minor, but it’s worth paying attention to.
I think it was in reference to the “personal war”: i.e. go ahead and surrender, and stop making a fuss. Then again, I’ve had posts in the past where I meant something innocuous like that and gotten a Warning, so it’s probably not a good idea to post stuff like that without clarifying.
As for my opinion on the OP–it’s quite simple: people are under the delusion that the mods don’t allow insults. They do. They don’t allow name-calling, which they call “personal insults.” They do in general allow negative accusations. GD has an extra rule about attacking the post and not the poster, but it’s usually enforced only by mod notes and not warnings.
And that’s what happened here. In fact, I bet that, if RNATB had rephrased his statement as “That post could have been made by a drunk person,” I bet it would have been fine.
And, yes, when the mods do give a mod note, it’s generally a bad idea to ask them to change it to a Warning, particularly out in public. It comes off like whining that someone wasn’t punished hard enough.
