Exactly.
This is pretty much my take on the whole thing. If you get rid of the pit (or ban posters pitting each other), you’d need to moderate the rest of the board much tougher, otherwise you’d get a situation where people could post racist/sexist crap without responders being able to give their proper opinion on it.
So, either you keep the pit as it is, or you ban racist/sexist comments completely. Many other internet forums go for the second option, but to be honest the pit is a bit of a USP for the place.
Oderint dum metuant.
-Caligula 
Flat out lies and intellectual dishonesty by a mob isn’t holding people to account. It’s cyber bullying.
Which we don’t allow here.
Maybe notify FLATUS, that’s a special interest of hers.
I never said anything bad about the team. It’s the fans.
Let us not disregard the Excluded Middle - it can be both.
Semper ubi sububi
-my 11th grade Latin teacher
/checks “Member Status”
/checks neurotransmitters
Yep, I’m both a paying member and Bipolar and name your pick of other mood disorders. Wanna compare number of suicide attempts?
Calling out “ablism” is thankfully less common on this board, and almost invariably factitious, than citations of misogyny (for one).
I ignore the pit, unlike choie cited here, as well as the others in this thread. But I’d like add another quality-of-life notion of my own who feel burnt by the bluster in the Pit. Even IRL, WHO KNOWS how many people dislike or even hate you? Somebody does. And perhaps they talk about it and even share written notes to that effect.
What the hell do you care about people of no consequence in your life?
I’d just like to point out that most polite forum evar on the Internet just folded. It allowed no cursing to the point the name Dick was whing-a-dingy, you couldn’t argue with a mod or the owner anywhere, and, the last few years, you couldn’t even call a troll a troll (they said you could but then they said you couldn’t… much waffling between the mods and the owner ensued.) No rants allowed except if you couched it in the form of an Etiquette question and even then it might get closed. Owner said it was due to not being profitable because of ad-blocking but she used google-ads that caused a lot of problems for many members.
By the end you saw maybe 40 posts across the whole forum (multiple child boards) a day vs in it’s heyday you saw that many posts per thread per day.
RIP http://www.etiquettehell.com/smf/index.php
You can only ask and answer the same questions so many times until all that is left is Opinion and, unlike an onion, those don’t have very many layers. So even then you don’t have many posts.
My take-away is that in this day and age if a message board wants to keep regulars and attract new posters there has to be some kind of difference of opinion (whether uber repugnant or just left/right) to keep conversations going. Those who are uber repugnant will leave after being modded(banned eventually) or after being pitted but meanwhile there was a conversation had.
Reading and responding to Rape Month (s) JAQing , Never-ending September questions and a few other seemingly perennial topics that I assume people googled and found locked threads… there’s also News of the Day. It’s sad to say but these are the Meat and Potatoes Posts that help keep this board chugging along.
But the thing that I think makes this such a longterm community are MPSIMS, Cafe Society and IMHO threads that lets us know the other posters are actual humans. Even some of the dizzy, deplorable or “I dunno”.
The Pit is for when you can’t stand that human.
The other forums are for non-emotional, rational posting. Which is why now and then someone gets pitted for posts from those fora.
Take the Pit away or limit it even more would mean too many times “What? Not even I am that ignorant!” and then you go look at kitty memes and read BBC articles.
I’m one of the politest, most anger-avoidant person I know. And I love the Pit.
Because I love watching really smart people call out idiots.
NOT posters calling each other idiots (if a thread devolves into a slapfight, I’ll quit it). But evil politicians, bad bosses, selfish siblings… I’m a big fan of justice and karma, and nothing feels better than seeing the deeds that were done in the dark brought into the light (wow, that sounds Biblical, or at least Shakespearian).
This thread makes it sound like people who avoid the Pit see it as a Thunderdome of Rage. I’ve lurked in the Pit since the turn of the century (eventually I started posting…). And I have never felt personally attacked, or piled onto for having an unpopular opinion. I’ve had people tell me to quit making stupid jokes, or they doubt a fact I present, and I have to back it up (or apologize, that one time I was wrong).
But I’ll admit, watching the dishonest debating tricks of a few closed-minded hacks (on both sides) does get to me. (I went to a far-right-wing college, but I’ve become more liberal. Mostly by hanging out here, and watching Really Intelligent People tear apart Far Right Strawmen.)
I’m not going to come in here and advocate against the Pit. But I see an anecdote about how one forum has closed, so I will point this out: I know of no other forum with civility rules that has any place where there is an exception. All of the Reddit subreddits I use have these rules. All of the various forum communities based on content have them. None of them have any trouble generating content.
I do think that, without a Pit, some people would probably leave. But I don’t think that the ability to flame people is remotely the reason why we have content. And I do think it likely drives off people who might be willing to post here otherwise.
But that’s the character of the board, and asking to change that is a bigger ask than even I tried when I first got here.
I’m with you that if you’re posting in a Pit thread, you have accepted the rules of the Pit. Essentially, if you willingly enter the Thunderdome, you can’t complain about what goes on in there. But I created this thread because the Pit allows people to pull others into the Pit.
For example, if I didn’t like what you posted here in ATMB (or just didn’t like you in general), I could create a Pit thread specifically to attack you. How would you feel if you clicked “New Posts” and saw a Pit thread called “Digs is a [curseword] [derogatoryterm] and smells of elderberries!” And then when you opened the thread, you saw post after post from me where I’m saying all kinds if negative things about you.
I think this is okay: A thread titled “[Politician] is stupid!” and all the replies are personal insults on the other people responding to the thread.
I think this crosses the line: A thread called “[SMDBPoster] creates stupid threads in GD” and all the replies are why the OP thinks SMDBPoster is stupid and boring. I worry that some posters could take such a thread very personally, not want to respond in any way to the thread, and even consider leaving the board all together.
The pit back in the early 2000’s is what brought me to this board, it’s a sad shell of what it used to be, and I really hope y’all don’t make it even sadder.
This is hilarious. You actually post over at the giraffeboards, which also has civility rules and a pit, using the same username with an ‘e’ at the end. I can come up with multiple other examples of why you are incorrect about this, but none so funny.
I think either you or I have been wooooshed. Big Te is a parody (I think), though a fairly skilled one.
It’s not him. The parody account copied and pasted some of BigT’s content from here.
In 15 years on this board, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Pitting that was a gratuitous attack that didn’t backfire tremendously on the OP. Generally, if you are being called out in the Pit for being an asshole, a lot of people share in that opinion and a little self-examination and reflection might be in order. If it’s just one person that’s miffed, the Pit thread will probably turn quickly into a pitting of the OP. In any case, one could interpret The Pit as being part of this board’s mission statement: Fighting Ignorance. Assholes can’t correct their behavior if they aren’t made aware of it. Pointedly and enthusiastically. With gusto. It isn’t in said mission statement to shield delicate flowers from harsh opinions.
Oh, it’s almost certainly me that’s wrong here. I’ll stand by my point that a place like the pit is not unique to this board, while also being a great example of how making assumptions and jumping to conclusions can make you look like an idiot on occasion.
Which is stealing, is it not?