Jonathan Chance's warning of LHoD

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41

To have used any words other than the actual antecedent of Starving Artist’s “that” would have been, practically by definition, editorial in nature, and if inartfully done, could change the meaning of both what Superdude said originally, and what SA said in reference to it. By strictly using the actual referent phrase, rather than some newly coined restatement, cleaned up for the withering flowers among us, LHoD is bending over backward to honor the rules. He deserves praise, rather than some silly debate about choosing between a warning and a mod note.

If clarifying insertions are to be allowed, this is exactly how they should be done.

42

I agree. Replacing a pronoun with it’s exact grammatical antecedent is exactly what square brackets are for. I assume Jonathan Chance didn’t see that it was, in fact, the exact grammatical antecedent, which makes a huge difference.

43

Well said.

44

The changed quote clearly made it appear that Starving Artist either said the words himself or agreed with the sentiment regarding Trump, thats how I read it when I saw it first.

The problem being of course that its very much not a phrase Starving Artist would use or agree with, as such his quote was changed and in a way that misrepresented him.

I think the warning was justified, especially since there was no need to alter the quote in that fashion in the first place.

45

But it wasn’t an alteration – it was a clarification, as is explicitly allowed in the rules. And the words he used were exactly the words used by the post SA responded to, and the antecedent to his use of “that”.

46

The quote was not changed.

The explicit conventional purpose of square brackets is the opposite of this.

Starving Artist said that “that” is “just an act” (my bold). Whatever your opinion of the merits of LHoD’s bracketed insertion, how can you possibly infer that the referent is something that Starving Artist agrees with? He’s saying that the referent is something that is just an act, which is pretty much the opposite of agreeing with it.

Starving Artist did not use the phrase, and LHoD did not misrepresent that he used the phrase. Starving Artist referred to the phrase, and commented on it. LHoD simply annotated the reference, with perfect accuracy.

47

My opinion remains the same.

48

…and I will defend to the death your right to state it.

49

How could LHOD have used the allowed square-bracket-clarification to satisfy you? What should he have put in the brackets?

50

…
(underlining mine, square brackets at QUOTE changed to {} for proper formatting in the quote)
This has been discussed time and time again.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7697048&postcount=11

51

Huh? There were no editorial comments. He used the exact words that SA responded to.

52

I agree that changing for editorial purposes is not allowed. That is not what I did.

Look at the example appropriate use: “her [her sister’s] friend”. In that example, the brackets clarify the antecedent to the possessive pronoun.

What I did was use brackets to clarify the antecedent to the relative pronoun.

How is what I did anything different from what’s appropriate?

There may be some confusion because the antecedent to the relative pronoun was itself an opinion–but it was an opinion that SA was responding to. I quoted his response to that opinion accurately, including the opinion in brackets to make it clear. It was not my editorial comment. It was exactly the sort of “explain the antecedent to the pronoun” that the rules explicitly permit.

A few people, including Jonathan Chance, have said that it looked like I was saying SA agreed with that comment. This genuinely perplexes me. Here’s how things went down:

  1. Superdude called Trump some names.
  2. SA quoted him and said that he thought “that” was just an act.
  3. I quoted SA, clarifying what “that” meant so people could follow along, and then disagreed with SA.

Specifically, after quoting SA, I wrote:

Those of you who thought I was misquoting SA to make it look like he thought Trump really was a self-aggrandizing, egotistical narcissist, how the hell did you read my response?

Was I like, “SA, you think Trump is an egotistical, self-aggrandizing asshole, but how can someone act self-aggrandizing but not actually be self-aggrandizing?”

My entire post was predicated on SA’s disagreement with Superdude. I had to quote his disagreement accurately in order to object to it. If I’d posted him agreeing with Superdude, my post would have been unintelligible.

I get it was unclear to some folks, but I’m not seeing how, short of folks reading too quickly.

53

Maybe they are confused because it was a relative pronoun and the antecedent was a phrase? But it’s still exactly the same thing as replacing “her” with [the sister’s]. I mean, exactly.

54

Does that not still technically violate the rule as given?

Again, I think LHoD tried to stay within the rule, and I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding on what can be done with within quotes by the staff and members alike. But the rules are there, and have been for many years. It’s the interpretation that’s not consistent.

55

No. Again, the example of what’s allowed is to put the antecedent of a pronoun in brackets. That’s what I did. That’s technically allowed by the rules as given.

56

But the rule explicitly states that square-bracketed clarifications are allowed, and that’s exactly what he did – he clarified with the exact words for the antecedent to SA’s use of “that”. There was no editorializing.

As far as I can tell, his post was a perfect demonstration of the allowable usage of square-bracketed clarification. I can’t see how he could have done it (the allowed square-bracketed clarification) differently within the rules.

57

How on earth could it? We all understand the use and function of pronouns, correct?

58

Seriously, I’m holding back on the temptation to offer a refresher course.

59

So let me see if I understand how this works.
tomndebb flat out calls someone a liar against board rules and edits the post away using his mod powers 7 hours later. He gets a note from JC only after intense blowback from the community.

LHoD changes a quote to better clarify what was being said. Maybe he should have just quoted both posts but it is clear that he did not intend to break the rules and in fact the community is questioning if he even broke the rules yet JC gives him a warning.

60

As has been pointed LHoD, the wise way for you to have done this would have been to used multi-quote to make the point and avoided the appearance (possibility) of rule breaking. Adding anything to a quote, even in brackets, should raise red flags and be sufficient for someone to look for a permissible way to avoid the problem.