Nope, nope, nope.
The MODS are reserving the right to add NPRA tags to the TITLE of a thread. People who wish to start threads that don’t adhere to Pit thread rules are, as always, strongly encouraged to not start them in the Pit, as they will be moved.
Again, they’re actually reserving the right to do any dang thing they want to, but in this specific instance, so that we recognize it when we see it, Ed’s telling us about it ahead of time.
Ok, gotcha. Still seems silly, but I don’t hang out in the motherfuckin Pit much anyway.
And yet, even though you don’t like the way they run things, you haven’t fucked off yet.
[quote=“Shodan, post:18, topic:477743”]
Not exactly.
[ul][li]Euthanasiast started a Pit thread whose title said that Planned Parenthood didn’t care about the rape of a thirteen year old. This was about a nurse that worked there, and it was a sting. [/li][li]Lynn Bodoni warned him for trolling.[]He told her to fuck off. []She had a mod discussion about it, and Ed Zotti told her to suspend him for a week, so she did.[]The week of the suspension the mods spent circling the wagons and contradicting themselves about the rules.[]Now Ed Zotti started a thread where he thinks that, if a Pit thread gets out of hand, he will put NPR in the thread title, and then Non-Pit Rules will apply to that thread for the rest of the discussion.Penis has ensued.[/ul]All that remains is the repetition of “If you don’t like how we run things, fuck off” a few hundred times.[/li][/QUOTE]
This is largely a good summary of a long and complicated situation. I take issue with your first and last items. The first leaves out the salient facts that Euthanasiast simply cribbed the title of his post from a youtube video. The video was a sting operation by a pro-life group trying to prove Planned Parenthood employees disregard their duties under state law to report cases of child abuse. As such the video was suspect as to it’s reliability in predicting actual behavior of Planned Parenthood employees. The only thing someones behavior in a sting demonstrates is how they would behave when the whole world really is out to get them. Basic objections to the video being a silver bullet for PP was that it was tainted by the “sting” nature of the operation(and the video editing was at the sole discretion of the group performing the sting), and one nurse is not all of the organization. Thus the video title, which Euthanasiast adopted en toto, with no apparent additional critical thinking, was inflammatory and of dubious accuracy. Still, every indication was that he put it forth in good faith, thus the accusation of trolling seems to require further justification.
It’s a lot longer than your bullet point, but some of that background may be helpful, and it’s significantly shorter than the actual threads.
The last statement I quoted was “All that remains is the repetition of “If you don’t like how we run things, fuck off” a few hundred times.”
I also feel this is unfair. The moderators and staff of this board have adjusted their views and rescinded moderation decisions multiple times in the past. They have allowed banned members to re-join, they have forgiven old warnings, they generally adopt a more lenient policy than “my way or the highway.” In fact, bleeding heart liberals that most of them are, they’re often hand-wringing whiners when enforcing board policies(with notable exceptions in Lynn and Giraffe). People get more than three strikes more often than not. I’m going to reserve judgment until I see what the final conclusion over Lynn’s warning to Euthanasiast is. I’m going to need to see some strong evidence/argument that it was proper if they decide to let it stand. Every indication I’ve seen was that Euthanasiast believed the thread title was an accurate reflection of the content of the video, and I’m not comfortable with warnings for trolling when the poster was acting in good faith.
Enjoy,
Steven
I guess I don’t need to do a detailed, point-by-point discussion of your post to simply say that your analysis is reasonable (whether or not I agree with it), and we are perfectly in agreement that it was not trolling.
But isn’t it a shame that we could not have had this discussion with Euthansiast involved? Ed Zotti complained in the other thread about otherwise worthwhile threads being ruined. Maybe that was one of them.
From your lips to God’s ear.
Maybe you are right. Ed mentioned that they were reviewing the issue of misleading thread titles, and if I am not mistaken, a thread title got edited in GD for that reason.
Maybe more will happen on that issue. It would have been nice to receive some kind of acknowledgment, though.
Regards,
Shodan
The mods might (I have no particular complaint with any mod or mod actions), but I don’t think Ed does. I am not at all comfortable with Ed playing an active role as a Pit moderator; his past actions don’t inspire confidence in me at all. He strikes me as severely out-of-touch, and when he does touch us, it leaves a bruise.
Yeah, it’s his board, and yeah, he makes the rules, and yeah, I can leave if I don’t like them, but that still doesn’t make it right. This is all leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
The thread title in GD was edited (prior to my seeing this thread) for the same reason that dozens of thread titles have been modified in GD: it was reported by a couple of posters that it was inaccurate and a review of the OP and its link demonstrated that the claim in the OP was actually one made by Matthews (although not challenged by Gaffney) as the result of clipping a soundbite.
The following recent threads also had their titles modified to avoid confusion or misdirection:
Monster turns on Dr. Frankenstein [“Joe the Plumber” and John McCain]
Did the republicans fool [the Democrats on the financial bailout plan]?
Should we prevent children from killing themselves? [8 y.o. w/Uzi incident question]
Obama puts McCain in his Cabinet: Brilliant or Foolish? [What if?]
Changing thread titles strikes me as so routine, in fact, and such an excellent solution to this entire “crisis/problem/issue” that I can only why this wasn’t the obvious answer to a week of intense staff-onlly powwowing.
I may have missed something here, but isn’t the problem that there were two issues? #1 - inaccurate title and #2 - the title suggesting that the poster was trolling? #1 can be easily remedied - as tomndebb has said. #2 is not so easy, partly because of determining that the poster actually is trolling.
If the thread title can be changed so easily, and so routinely, and so quickly, and so totally, and so unilaterally, does it really matter if the poster is trolling? If we could do the same to actual posts–i.e., remove any trace of trollery–why would a troll even be tempted to try? For the glory of having some misleading shit up there for about three minutes, or as long as it takes someone to report it and a Mod to decide “Yup, gotta be changed”?
Yes, but this whole thing started because there was a dispute as to whether he was trolling. Your solution wouldn’t help in that situation.
I can think of one obvious situation: you’re Pitting someone or something off-board, but you don’t want that to be an excuse for posters to use Pit invective against one another.
Suppose, for instance, that I Pit Rick Warren for giving GWB that PEACE award. (I didn’t, but let’s suppose.) I’m not putting it in the Pit so that we can have a Pit-style brawl. I’m putting it there because, while its subject matter would normally put such a thread in GD, it belongs in the Pit rather than GD because there don’t seem to be two viable sides to the debate.
I suppose we could put such threads in GD, but that hasn’t been standard practice here. So the ‘Non Pit Rules Apply’ moniker seems perfect for such threads. Or if you’re Pitting Britney Spears for being a skank, or Pitting the Redskins’ front office for having gone nearly a decade without drafting any linemen, or whatever.
So I’m hoping the mods don’t decide to make the NPRA designation a mods-only thing. Seems widely useful to me.
I don’t understand this at all.
Are you saying that even if there is just a whiff of trollery in a title, then the best thing to do would be to amend it, and therefore to avoid any possible unpleasant consequenses? Because the problem I see with that is that I suspect that some people would get worked up over the implication (implicated because of the amendment) of trollery, particularly if their intentions were genuine. Actual trolls: yes, it would work. Arguable trolls (e.g. Euth’s post), I see problems.
This makes a lot of sense, IMO.
I don’t. I think, had Lynn changed the title, he wouldn’t have said “Boo.” Let’s ask him.
But think of the anger that has since been directed at Lynn - by the OP and many others - since her accusation. If she had changed the title, I’m sure she would have given the reason, and we’d be back to where we are.
Thread titles are changed all the time, with nary a raised eyebrow. The problem arose, as I see it, because she COULDN’T bring herself to change the title without nattering on about trollery, which was IMO incorrect, inflammatory BS.
+1
Regards,
Shodan
Maybe. Some of the seeds of a discussion about the accuracy of the video, the title, and the charge in general were sown in the thread early on, but they didn’t really blossom. It seems Euthansiast, among others, was certain what he had seen was the whole story and all the evidence he needed. Others seemed equally certain there was no wrongdoing or anything worth investigating. The two groups inflamed each other and the moderate voices who said “let’s look at this with a critical eye and see where the evidence leads” tended to be drowned out. Maybe it could have been saved if it had been moved to GD at that point, or with the new “N-PRA” technique Ed has proposed. Maybe not. I’ve seen threads go both ways.
GD and GQ have explicit standards for descriptive/accurate thread titles. They’re part of the forum rules. As tomndebb has since demonstrated, it can’t be viewed as a data point on this issue to see a thread title changed in GD or GQ. I’d support a broader policy of descriptive thread titles in every forum.
Enjoy,
Steven