That doesn’t read like much of an apology, Cartooniverse. Bricker noticed his error and apologized. Now you should return the courtesy, instead of taking an additional swipe at him.
I should apologize to him for pitting him because he did something that he went back in to apologize for ? Wait. You were kidding, right ? I should return the courtesy by apologizing for calling him on his rude and appalling behavior?
I’m glad he went back in there and at least admitted he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. ( He did not use that phrase but he was quite clear about admitting his ignorance on the topic. ) It was decent of him to do that, though he did not deign to address the poster who he slammed in Post # 29. Apparently admitting factual ignorance is much easier than sucking it up and apologizing to another human being.
Now you are telling me it is SDMB protocol for a pitter to apologize to the pittee?
Lordy god. Cite please.
Now, had I come in here this morning ( or, I guess, any time after 7:30 p.m. last evening ) and continued to rail against him as I did in my O.P. then you bet, I would be in complete agreement. I would owe him an apology for not reading his post that was linked to us by rhubarb.
That’s not what happened. People who Pit someone else in here are not expected to walk back in to the pitting and prostrate themselves apologizing for having pitted someone.
I’d say it’s got bugger all to do with SDMB protocol and it’s just something grown-ups often do.
I’ll draft it for you:
On the other hand you accused him of making a mistake and he went back and admitted that, so you’ve no need to apologise for that.
But that’s not what got your goat is it ?
Interesting.
OK, first off, the Pit is usually the last forum I check, so if my browsing time is limited, I likely won’t see a Pitting unless someone from a thread I’m reading nudges me in the right direction.
There seem to be three issues in play:
- I posted incorrect info in a GQ thread and wouldn’t acknowledge it;
- Even after much time had passed and I was still on the boards; and
- I posted with a snarky tone towards the OP in that thread and wouldn’t apologize for it.
Obviously, issue number one has been corrected already. I believe I have posted a number of crow-eating, I’m-a-Big-Moron posts in the GQ thread, and the OP here, Cartooniverse, has acknowledged that.
Issue three… is right. My apology was certainly intended to reach the OP of the thread, The Controvert, but as I re-read it it does does focus solely on the wrong done to the forum, as it were, and not to the poster at all. This is a fair criticism, and I will remedy that shortly after finishing this post.
That leaves issue two, and here I have no apology, but rather a defense. I posted my “Do you believe…” post and walked out the door, 7/6/07 sometime in the afternoon. I did not return to the boards until yesterday evening, 7/07/07.
I don’t think I acted unreasonably in being away that long and failing to respond further in the GQ thread, or failing to detect this thread until now. CarnalK mentioned a “last activity” time of 10:30 the night of the 6th, but I have no idea what or how that number is generated. I may have come back to physically close browser windows around that time and shut down the machine, but if that creates an “activity” event I have no idea.
I do think the level of animosity displayed by Cartooniverse over my actions here is a bit…eh… disproportionate to my sins, but since there were sins, and they were mine, who am I to say?
I haven’t hunted down a cite, but there have been many instances when a pitter was a bit trigger-happy and ended up apologizing to the pittee. One thing I’ve learned the hard way around here is that sometimes things break down, and it’s no longer a matter of who’s right or wrong, but of who is willing to make peace. If you still feel slighted by Bricker, just remember that forgiveness heals the forgiver.
Gee, I don’t know, being new here and all, and not knowing the rules, and not having a cite. But.
Someone asks a question. There is number of replies with varying degrees of detail and correctness. One of them gets pointed out as wrong in content and in tone. Without the poster of the offendind response ever getting a chance to see this, he gets pitted.
The offender comes back, admits error and continues to debate the matter (fighting ignorance, be it the OP’s or his own) from a humbler position.
Then you post this:
Now, I admit I might be missing the intended tone of this post, but it strikes me a a little bit dickish. To me, it sounded as “ok, you did right this time, but that won’t stop me from trying to put you down”
Which is just as fine, this being the Pit and all. You don’t **need ** to apologize. There is written rule that makes you do it. In your case, I think I would have, though.
Maybe you are God’s gift to the SDMB. Maybe Bricker is garbage. You can still win the war losing this battle. But you won’t learn from your mistakes if you refuse to accept them.
So, hey, carry on. Pit away. It is your right. No one can tell you not to.
The sun is a little star.
Bricker’s post contained errors.
So the fuck what?
The only ones of us who don’t sometimes post bullshit are omniscient.
There aren’t any of those, excepting possibly Cecil.
Well, I don’t think “being away that long” is unreasonable. I only pointed out that last online factoid because I thought it was unreasonable for mhendo and George Kaplin to assume a frequent poster like yourself wouldn’t have revisited the thread, especially when vB says you were online. Anyway, it’s not like I think it means much - I don’t know how vB figures a “last online” time.
Anyway, Cartooniverse: Liberal, Sapo and others just want you to call Bricker a “class act” for admitting his mistake. Then we can go back to pretending we are all noble gentlemen of some online neo-Athens.
I’m just happy that Cartooniverse is here to defend those who aren’t smart enough to know when they have been insulted. Keep patrolling those threads.
If you walked away leaving your browser on the SDMB, you would show as online, and your last activity would be whenever you came back and shut down.
Cartooniverse, I’ve never heard that double quotes are discouraged. Sometimes, as in your case, they’re absolutely necessary.
I appreciate you doing that. And that’s written without a shred of sarcasm or snarkiness. This is what I was hoping you’d do. ( I haven’t gone back into the thread but I am sure Bricker was honest in his assessment of how he handled his first post. )
Just so we are all clear- the issue of time online and who is or is not ducking a thread is a flame who got fueled by others. Again, it wouldn’t occur to me to try to figure out if someone was showing as “online” or “active” or whatever the phrase is. God- some days I leave Safari launched for 16 hours. It hardly means I’m actively reading or posting into The Dope. To me, Issue two is not an issue.
essell, the cheap shot about what grownups do or do not do aside, this is The Pit. The rules are different and the way people relate and speak is different. You know this. Find me some cites where an OP’er who started a thread directed at another Doper ( opposed to a Doper who came in ranting about an outside public figure, only to be proven wrong in their initial rant ) Five will do. Show me five OP’ers who turned around totally and abjectly apologized to the person they were Pitting.
There are literally thousands of posts in the Pit in the archives. Find me five. If it is what everyone who is an adult does, and most Dopers are over 18, then it should be child’s play for you. Not for nothing, but my thanks up there is completely sincere. I won’t apologize but ( cough… .as an adult… ) I sure as hell will thank someone who took my OP to heart and considered what they’d done and responded.
Loach, I’m just happy you recognized my efforts !
I thought calling someone a “class act” for admitting a mistake was something we finished doing in about 2000, maybe even 1999. Something akin to grade inflation in academia, as I understood it.
I could be wrong though. If someone wants to Pit me and show how I am wrong, I’ll be happy to come back here and do the classy thing.
It’s not against the rules to solicit a Pitting, is it?
You did, here . It’s not abject, but you admit in post #11 that
.
You at least admited you “may well have been” wrong.
Not at all. I have nothing to say in defense or favour of Bricker. Nobody deserves a medal for climbing his way out of a hole he dug for himself. All I am saying is that IMHO, the OP jumped the gun on flaming Bricker and should have been <insert virtue of choice> enough to admit it. Not because he has to by any divine comandment, but only because that is what he expected from Cartooniverse, and I believe that we should all hold ourselves to the same standards we hold others.
ETA: and if nothing else, the Pit is for people to vent about something that offended them and for the rest of the board to try to nitpick his rant to death. We are just fulfilling our duties and making sure the OP gets his money’s worth. 
When I need a spokesperson, I’ll hire one — preferably one who can actually relate what I said. I think he should let his anger go is all.
You know, I was thinking just now that with Bricker having apologized in the thread in question, this quote should come into effect:
How about it?
How are we supposed to know that he was really delighted to do it? Is he going to need to make the request in multi-colored, multi-fonted text, peppered liberally with smilies and confetti?
Just ribbin’ ya, 'toon.
Well, as others have pointed out, being online need not mean actively browsing the site. I can think of literally hundreds of occasions where i’ve left my browser open while browsing other sites or doing other tasks, and have then closed my browser or and/or turned off my computer. I also sometimes browse new threads on the Dope without checking my email to see whether there have been new responses to my old threads.
Given that there are so many plausible situations whereby a person might be officially online yet unaware of a particular post, i think it’s eminently reasonable to gauge their Board participation based on the time of their most recent actual post.
You say that it’s unreasonable for me to “assume a frequent poster like [Bricker] wouldn’t have revisited the thread.” Personally, i think it’s rather more unreasonable to assume that a frequent poster like Bricker would choose to ignore an argument just because it was contrary to his own position.
I’m not especially interested in playing advocate for Bricker; i’ve criticized him plenty myself, and disagree with him on many issues. But he has often shown willingness to admit when he was in error, and this whole thread was, in my opinion, a dramatic over-reaction to a minor issue.
So, you don’t know how it works, but you’re willing to argue that it’s a more valid indicator of Bricker’s behavior than looking at the time of his most recent post?
Most recent post isn’t much of a useful indicator at all, so probably yes. I assumed the vB “last online” has something to do with loading a page. Anyhow, my caveats were honest so I don’t know what bug got up your ass. I said it didn’t mean that much. However, since you and George came screaming in and saying Bricker "hasn’t been online since he posted in that thread so he’s probably just too busy ", I just thought I’d point out that vB disagreed.
Wait a second… you have to post to a thread in order to be qualified to comment on it? Damn, why do I always miss when they change the rules…