So it appears that SenorBeef’s primary sin here is engaging with a troll.
The troll, whose primary purpose is to stir shit, appears to have succeeded. A long-term poster has been given a(n extremely weak) warning. The troll has since been banned.
Rescind the fucking thing, replace it with a mod note. Move on. There’s a pile of precedent for not handing out warnings for shit like this. Lord knows I’ve had it up to my jimblies with Beef on occasion, but this is ridiculous.
mhendo, the problem with skating close to the line is that each mod sees that line in a different place. Some see it between the 5 and 10 yard line, others see it in the parking lot.
Actually, we have a loser.
There is nothing in the rules that says “Thou shalt not do X, unless you’re responding to an obvious troll, in which case it’s perfectly fine to do X”.
Beef broke the rules. Whether or not he gets a mod note or a warning is something that is subjective, depending on the mod.
Yeah, that was sort of my point when i said that the line was “very vaguely defined.”
My post wasn’t intended as real advice for the OP, but rather a somewhat ironic observation about the vagaries and inconsistencies of moderation. And it’s not even just when comparing one mod with another. Both of the posts i linked to were moderated by the same person who gave SenorBeef his warning, and yet neither of them received a warning, despite the fact that i believe that most reasonable people would argue that SenorBeef’s post was no more insulting than either of those posts.
I see your point. I also believe that somewhere, out there in the internet, is a troll who thinks he got one over on the SDMB. (or a member) I’d like to see the warning reversed and the troll left in the outer cold zone of the internet knowing he failed at dinging our board.
So if you called me a fucking cunt and then I called you a fucking cunt I shouldn’t get a warning?
First off, oh boo-hoo, getting a warning is such a burden how can I go on with my life. :rolleyes: Secondly why do you think long time posters should be allowed to break the rules?
So a long term poster that hasn’t gotten a warning in awhile should be allowed to break the rules once in awhile?
Not name calling outside of the Pit is about the brightest and clearest rules there is, especially for a long time poster. The warning is totally and completely deserved.
No, Senorbeefs’ primary sin is name-calling. And yes the troll did win because Senorbeef let him win.
Oh noes! The SDMB has been dinged! Raise the threat level to red! How will the SDMB ever get back it’s honor? This board which is the Holiest of Holies has been sullied. Satan has won. God is dead and we are all damned to be pitch-forked in the ass for all eternity.
You certainly should, but I think we can all agree there’s a reasonable separation between “loser” and “fucking cunt.” I guess I can’t really argue with the warning too much, but it does seem a bit weird that you can get warned for calling somebody a loser.* Especially since you can be well within the rules if you use much worse terminology artfully.
*I mean, what other basically harmless words get a warning? If I call Beef a doodoohead am I going to be sent to the principal’s office?
I can only assume you’ll get a warning for this. And it would be as deserved as SenorBeef’s.
I don’t get what the big deal is. I got my first warning (From Idle Thoughts too. heh, heh,) just a few months ago. I deserved my warning though. But still, I’m not really sweating it as I’m not normally a trouble maker and therefore in no fear of losing my membership status.
So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, I’m not seeing this as a thing to get so worked up about.
But now it’s on his permanent record.
Permanent. Record.
My principal warned me about that. Now SenorBeef is a marked man. TPTB are watching him. He’s probably on a no-fly list now, for ${diety}'s sake.
What this board needs is an explicit BBCode markup for sarcasm.
Honestly, when I read Dajn’s post I thought the rationale for the insult was not the post count but because Dajn assumed that SenorBeef believes that a high number of posts makes him correct and if SenorBeef truly believes more posts = more correct is pretty stupid.
If I were a mod and assuming no prior history, I would have responded “New children, play nice.” but the
escalates it and I’d consider a warning on it.
That’s the thing. If he had said “okay, cool it” or “mod note, this is inappropriate”, would anyone say “oh no, this is clearly warnable, you let him off easy?”
No, of course not. Going straight to warning for such mild behavior is very strange to me. It wouldn’t taken me aback even if it had happened to someone else.
That’s not the best analogy, though.
Imagine his name started with an S. And he said “anyone whose name starts with S is a fucking cunt”, and I said “I guess that makes you a fucking cunt”, that’s not the same as just calling the guy a fucking cunt out of the blue. I was saying he matched his own criteria, and therefore, his own insult fit him.
That’s what’s so weird to me here. Everyone is acting like I just said “HEY, YOU’RE A LOSER!” out of the blue, literally focusing on a few words to the exclusion of context. “You said loser, you violated the rules!”
The rule against insults in GD doesn’t have an exception for “he did it first”.
Regards,
Shodan
Did Dajn get a warning too? If so then what’s the problem? If not then why are they treated differently for the same insult.*
As a clarification I explain in my post above why I would have modded the two posts differently.
**Djan **got banned.
Some might, but they’d be a bunch of losers. 
In all seriousness, though, I do think a mod note would have been more appropriate. Not because you’re a “long time poster” but because it was pretty mild in tone. Had you called him a raving idiot, then a warning surely would have been appropriate. However, as I noted above, it’s subjective and depends on the mods. I think it’s a fruitless quest to expect all the mods to react the same way here.
In normal circumstances, a mod note to both people to cool off would have been the right move. But the now-banned poster was ramping things up across a few threads and needed a full warning. And at that point, the mod is kind of painted into a corner - he can’t warn one and not the other for effectively the same insult (no matter what your actual intention). So SenorBeef is collateral damage.
At least no one got any sexual gratification out of it.
I did…:o