It’s a well-known board rule, and you broke it. I’m not really seeing the problem.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re “protesting.” In the OP, you suggested that the rule “needed to be clarified.” We have pointed out that the rule didn’t need to be clarified, since it quite explicitly prohibits exactly what you said.
You’re welcome.
I guess what gets me is that it IS a board rule. I’m allowed to say “Stop fishing for a fight”, but I’m not allowed to bring up the “t” word.
meh.
If you were obviously using the euphemism “fishing” as a way to accuse another poster of trolling, then you would still be liable for a warning.
But see, that’s what I don’t get. Y’all have such a zero tolerance policy when it comes to trolls that it loses rationality. “Trolling” isn’t always a character trait, it can be a behavior. You know that.
Accusing someone else of trolling is an insult. That’s why it’s against the rules (outside the Pit), and why you were warned.
Whether someone else is actually trolling is for the moderators to decide. So if you think that’s what they are doing, report it.
I don’t think calling out a behavior is the same as a direct insult.
Maybe that’s where you and me differ. I’m not being a smartass here. Maybe the thing is that we DO look at insults differently.
Why would this be relevant? The point is that accusing someone of that behavior trait is against the rules. It has nothing to do with the desire to stop trolls. It has to do with the fact that it’s incendiary. Trolling even once is a horribly disliked behavior, and thus eve accusing someone of doing it once is considered an attack.
Trolling is not something you can do accidentally. You might not call it that, or realize it’s wrong, but you must have a fundamental desire to try and stir up needless confrontation. That desire is what is considered wrong. It’s so wrong that accusing someone of having that desire is itself considered wrong.
To accuse someone of trolling is to say something fundamental about who they are as a person. It doesn’t matter whether they do it once or make a habit of it. It’s still an attack on their character. The acceptable way of voicing your opinion would have been to say that it “sounded like trolling, but you knew it wasn’t due to his character.” Or to have just done what you said you wanted to do, and opened a thread in the Pit about it.
Wait, seriously? If someone posts that they are “baiting the hook” and someone points out that that is, by definition, trolling, they can get warned? That’s not an insult, it’s a definition! And could the other poster get warned simply for saying that they are “baiting the hook”? After all, they are literally admitting to trolling!
Thank you.
People forget. He said “I didn’t bait the hook properly”.
Everybody think about that for a second. Republican/Gay/Farmer is bait on a hook. Bait. Bait for a message board.
Then report it.
It’s not like the topic is verboten unless the guy admits to it. The other poster is not responsible for what you choose to post.
I think that’s different. Not sure what I would, personally, do in that situation.
That is NOT, however, what happened in this case.
From the thread:
Bolding mine.
It’s a pretty clear cut case of saying someone is trolling here and that’s against the rules.
If Monkey With a Gun had said “Baiting the Hook” and only that, it would have been a much more gray area, IMO.
Bolding yours?!
I underlined the “ing” for a reason.
So, you’re taking umbrage with it, then?
And that changes the fact that you said someone else was trolling, how?
Yep.
More to the point. It does seem obvious that a poster was intentially trolling in that thread.
Has that poster been warned?
I think this is what is troubling me a little.
MWAG got called out: fair enough. A rule was broken, but it also seems pretty clear that the other poster was intent on winding people up. If I admitted doing that I would expect to get my backside kicked.