For what it is worth, as a mod, I have no respect for Rules Lawyering anyway. Never did as a poster either. Careful clever wording to try to skirt the forum rules won’t help. I’ll admit I’ve seen clever putdowns are more likely to just get a note though.
This isn’t to Snowboarder_Bo but in general:
I have said from day one, no bright lines.
A warning doesn’t have to be for a single post but is often for the series of posts in a thread.
As far as note vs. warning: Your body of work and prior warnings absolutely affect my decision and probably every mods decision.
This is important. It appears that Bo did not act on his own but was being provoked by another poster. What’s described here would be convern trolling, and the whole point is to try and make people angry.
If you don’t like rules lawyering, well, concern trolling is one of the ultimate forms. You try to piss people off while hiding it as “concern.”
While I can understand Bo’s comment being so out of line to deserve a warning, I do think you should look and see if there are reasons why. If you have a poster bring dismissive and imply there is something wrong with people (or thresdshitting), then you need to make sure you moderate them, too.
You know, cut off the problem at the source. Too many posters were the real cause of problems in threads for years, resulting in others being modded, when, once they were finally modded, the problems got better.
It’s why I approve so much of the new mods, actually. Y’all are on the ball with that.
Oh, and to @Snowboarder_Bo: the stuff you wanted to say here is why we have the Troll thread in the pit. I got tired of not being able to point out trollish behavoirs, too.
This is a silly characterization. The OP was literally, specifically, about “please tell me I don’t need to worry about Trump stealing the election.” My response, literally, was “it’s not going to happen, but folks are determined to freak out anyway.”
Everybody else in that thread hijacked it to talk about long-term institutional damage instead. Nobody wanted to hear the dissenting answer the OP asked for; it’s nothing but scoffing because I obviously don’t know Trump has broken every single part of democracy and can steal the election and physically levitate and whatnot.
This is part of a larger disease that’s going around the board, IMO. There is simply no way to talk realistically about what Trump can or can’t do, without launching directly into a jeremiad about woe is us, all is lost. Yes, there’s been damage and danger. No, all is not lost. This isn’t a black-and-white question.
Are folks allowed to call one another concern trolls outside the Pit? I didn’t think so, even if we’re playing the cutesy game of putting “concern” conspicuously in italics.
IMHO, posts such as the OP’s should be acceptable if they followed or were accompanied by a substantive discussion of the targeted posts, and were simply summing up and amplifying legitimate points which were made. But addressing another poster’s posts with nothing at all other than an empty assertion that all their posts are complete and utter shit etc. seems like a personal attack to me.
Modnote: To all, avoid hints of trolling please. If you think someone in the other thread was trolling, flag it. If you want to call them out for trolling, take it to the pit.
This thread is pretty close to closing before we have to hand out more warnings. No one wants to do that.
I feel like when it’s entirely impossible to convince folks using fact, then it’s fair game to speculate on the mental state that may be leading people astray. But obviously a number of folks took issue with that, so I’ll tone it down in the future. I made the thread about my frustration with a certain strain of argument, which in hindsight was probably not a good thing to do.