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.
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.
I don’t think that’s quite right. The word “trolling”, in this sort of situation, is an internet misspelling/mispronunciation of the word “trawling”.
“Trawling: to fish with a trawl net or seine”
Norwegian mythology really doesn’t come into it.
Hah! Don’t put that on me. Twixter said the guy was “coming across as a complete twat”. I don’t know what he’s mad at me for.
Maybe cause Twickster is a female?
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.
Uh, both of those are warnable offenses as well. If this is the line in the sand you think you’ve drawn, you’re still several feet on the wrong side.
n/m
I think that you’re making the point that the warning was justified, because not only is calling someone a troll specifically and unambiguously against the rules, but so is junior modding.
Seriously, when you call someone a troll, you’re basically breaking at least one rule - calling someone a troll. If you’re right, you’re also junior modding. And, you’re probably breaking the rule of insulting them, too. For good measure, you may also be being a jerk (although I don’t think Monkey was here, at all).
I guess that that’s why accusations of trolling are “verboten” - they usually break a handful of rules at once. If someone trolls, you click the little “report” button. Seems simple enough.