From this thread: Fox reports GOP press release verbatim, w/o acknowledgment, & including typo
I thought the very title of the thread was a short summary of what’s being pitted. Would he have gotten the same admonishment if he had posted thusly. . .
Title: Fox News Media Arm of the Repubs!
Is this going to be one of the new Pit rules I’ve seen alluded to?
That was a strange one all right. This place has been getting weird lately.
I just posted to the thread in question, and I am still confused. Why would it be a warning, or a “strongly worded suggestion” at all?
If you don’t want to click the link, don’t admonish the OP for not doing 100% of the work for you.
Yeah, it is getting pretty weird around here.
I absolutely cannot keep up with the rules anymore. Was this already a rule or is this a new one?
I thought it was a little fun to try to spot the typo.
Having to ask about whether or not this is a new rule in a different thread from the warning sounds like something a government regulatory agency would design.
Especially as the linked article was all about the issue in question and emphasized the typo in the first paragraph. What more could you have said?
I understand the sentiment of asking someone to summarize their link, but I don’t get the suggestion/warning for it. Does that really require a Mod Hat? Or was it done without the Mod Hat on?
How about the OP of the original thread actually do something besides posting a link and a comment? And what’s it doing in the Pit anyway? It wasn’t a rant, it was just a boring Reeder-esque post. “See this link? It SUX!!”
I have as much befuddlement as the next guy for most of these, but come on. This rule goes back to Reeder, December and others well before that. Does anyone really want to read a bunch of threads that are nothing more than, “check this out”. I go to Fark for stuff like that. It is a lazy way to post and leads to a whole bunch of recreational outrage threads without any real content to debate. I agree with Lynn on this one.
Well she didn’t don a chapeau at the opening of her post, but she did say, “This isn’t a Warning, but it is a strongly worded suggestion,” so it sure sounded like an official something to me.
To me, this didn’t look like an official Moderator Warning/Suggestion, but it does illustrate how easily the line can be blurred by choice of language. If this really is a personal opinion rather than an official moderator ‘thing’, it could’ve been made clearer.
Hopefully the start of a much needed new trend in the Pit: If something doesn’t piss you off enough to actually WRITE about it, it should probably go in the “Mini-rants” thread. I’d love to see the Reeder rule used more often.
Nonsense. That’s not what BG posted at all. His thread title perfectly summarized the content of the link. Not to mention, Reeder and december pulled their crap primarily in GD, then never came back to the threads to participate, which made them trolls and was why they were banned. I hardly think BG was trolling with that thread, nor do I think he did an insufficient job of summarizing what the link was about.
Eh, this is far from the first time a poster has been asked to write an actual OP and not just post a link. Back when I was a moderator (heh), I usually locked threads in which I made such a request, with a recommendation that the OP write out some content and repost. Links to news stories followed by an emoticon just don’t make for a very interesting message board.
Edit: I would add that the suggestion to be explicit when she is speaking officially is a good one. Me, I like to use the title “Mod note” in all posts that were in any way not strictly posted as a regular poster.
While it’s true that posters have been asked to write an actual OP and not just post a link, that’s not what Lynn told BG to do. And what she told him to do (“give us at least a short summary”), he did, right in the title. If all she was looking for was a short summary of the link, what difference does it make if it’s posted in the title or viewable only after reading a more vague title and then clicking inside the thread? Would he have been given the same “strongly worded suggestion” had he posted what’s currently the thread title inside the OP? I don’t think so. Hence, the request for clarification.
I do understand that the blurring of rules can get confusing (What’s an official Warning? What’s a Strongly Advised Not-Really a Warning? You shot who in the what now warning?) but thankfully I’ve never had to deal with that confusion… Just observed from afar.
Designation aside, I do see that mod’s reasoning for saying something.
Topic: Bush makes gaffe with press
Message: oh jeeze man… :smack: he sucks. Linkity Link
You should at least say something.
Topic: Bush makes gaffe with press
Message: He obviously didn’t know the meaning between blank and blank. Link.
I’m not saying the OP needs to spell out an exact psychological study behind why the ex-president thought what he thought… But put enough work into it besides enticing people in with an interesting topic and leaving them with a link and a smilie face of some sort.
Its the rickroll of posting if you suck at writing the four word thread title.
I am always annoyed with the threads that say: Here, look at this article - and say nothing else. At the very least a quote might help. Some commentary would be great. We’re not Fark after all.
From the FAQ - Guidelines and Etiquette on the Straight Dope Message Boards:
Consistent with this, it would be not unreasonable to request that the OP provide some reasonable description of what’s going on, rather than just a link. Clicking on links depends on your computer speed (and age) and your connection service and many things. Lots of people don’t want to click on a link if they don’t have to. And moderators especially spend lots of time looking through threads and don’t want to check out links if it’s not necessary. Providing a little description in the OP is a courtesy to other readers. We’ve said such things before, from time to time, even it’s not included in the Guidelines.
This is not a big deal, and there’s no need for getting worried or upset about it.
You mean, a descriptive title like “Fox reports GOP press release verbatim, w/o acknowledgment, & including typo”?
I’d also like to ask Lynn to do this. And Ed, but I suspect Lynn will be around a lot more as a regular poster than Ed will.
I’m not going to speak for Lynn, but I will point out that the OP of that thread was not really a rant. As **Giraffe **noted here, and I noted when I moved the thread to MPSIMS last night, the rules require more than displeasure. If I have to follow a link and read an article just to figure out if the thread is Pit-worthy, I think I’ll take a hint from **Giraffe **and just start locking the thread. Is that clear?