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!
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.
Personal insults are not permitted outside the Pit. There is a clear difference between “you are stupid” and “what you said is stupid.”* Moderators in most forums and most cirucmstances recognize that there is (often) a slight difference between “you are an asshole” [insult] and “you are behaving like an asshole” [constructive criticism.] However, that’s a matter of degree.
Note that neither elaborate hedging nor humour are excuses for personal insults. Thus, it is still a rules violation to say: “You sometimes have, under many circumstances, remarkable similarities (in part) to the creature known as a jackass.”
We long ago recognized that troll/trolling were a special subcategory of insult, and thus we devised a specific rule to cover it. So, the clarification you seek, Monkey with a Gun, was in the Rules long ago. The REASON for the special treatment is, as Colibri quoted above, that we do not want people feeding the trolls. There are two scenarios:
(a) They really ARE trolling, then they’re thrilled and delighted at yet further shit-stirring.
(b) They’re NOT trolling but just hold an unpopular opinion (for example), then it’s an insult.
Thus we ask you to refrain from using troll/trolling as an insult and instead report it to the mods. If you like, try this analogy in the real (non-Message Board) world: If you think someone is an asshole, you might tell them so. If you think someone is a terrorist, you keep your mouth shut and call the authorities.
[sup]Please note that “you” in this context is the generic “you” that does not refer to any individual, alive or dead, posting in this thread or elsewhere.[/sup]
People seem to be glossing over this part and concentrating on the “insult”. There really isn’t a need for a “special” rule for this insult, as what it come down to is the person doing the accusing is being a junior mod. Post #7 touched on this, but it was ignored.
And she kicked her own bum for saying that as well, which was pretty cool.
"[mod]twickster, you know better than to call another poster a twat in an MPSIMS thread – and, yes, saying that he or she is “coming across as a twat” amounts to saying he or she is a twat. Don’t do this again.
No warning issued.[/mod] "
So, in saying that she effectively closes out your argument about the difference about troll/ trolling.