Just for shits and giggles...

The BBQ Pit
1

…I’d like for someone to explain why, when I open a thread called “Watch Family Guy or I will have you murdered” the title gets edited and I get a stern warning from a moderator that death threats, no matter how obviously in jest they are, will not be tolerated. Yet another member can open a thread titled “And Now Fenris…You will die” and not a word is said about it.

Along the same lines, I would like to know why a member is allowed to call me stupid (by quoting a line from a movie about IQs dropping), with nary a comment from the mods, but when I indirectly call that person a “jackass” in the same thread I am admonished.

I’ve raised this type of question before, and the usual response is silence from the moderators and a rallying of support from the members, usually with gratuitous insults hurled at me for daring to question them. So let me pre-emptively offer my response to anyone who feels compelled to name-call: fuck you.

This is a serious question, and I think it’s deserving of a serious answer. That I probably won’t get one is indicative of the sort of moderator mind-set that led me to leave these boards once before for close to a year.

2

I’d like to see links to the threads in question before I make a final decision. That said, there probably is some bias by moderators as moderating strikes me as more of a subjective than objective activity. That is within the rights of the moderators as this is a privately owned board and they don’t have to be fair. They can ban you for improper grammer if they want to (not that they would).

All I can say is try not to take it to personally. My guess is that if this kind of bias is occurring, it is probably not a concious effort at favoritism.

3

Oh quitcher damn whining and email the moderator and let them know about the other, similarly titled thread, giving them the benefit of the doubt that (ohmygod) they might not have actually seen it!

Sheesh.

Y’all are SUCH babies.

4

Ya know, Otto, I wondered the exact same thing when I saw the “Fenris” thread title. Oh, well.

5

I think typing with a southern drawl should be worthy of a banning.

:eek:

6

Well after a mod edited your precious title from “Watch Family Guy or I will have you murdered” to “Watch Family Guy or I will hate you”. You were kind enough to post:

Maybe its just me, but I see this as defeating the purpose of the editing to begin with. Which I construe as you making the job the moderators have to do even harder. If you do shit like this, don’t expect to be treated like everyone else. Is that hard to grasp?

Plus “I will murder you” and “You will die” are actually quite different. Threatening an illegal act vs. forecasting someone’s doom. Mull it over if you must.

The fact that you are taking this seriously doesn’t make it a serious issue. A moderator edited your thread title. The murdering part of your title is inconsequential to your thread. Help yourself to a man-sized serving of Get Over It and move along the buffet table, please.

Not another one. Look, if you don’t like things here, leave. Don’t think that your threat of exit is going to sway us either way. We’ve heard these threats before. Some have actually followed through with them. And some of them have actually stayed away. Besides, the fact that you came back after your self-imposed exile makes your “threat” even less potent. Not that it affects our decisions either way.

It is quite possible to question a moderator’s actions, ask for clarification or even to point out a perceived inconsistency without getting all dramatic about it. See Ender’s thread for an example. So you’ll pardon me if my response to this post is loaded with sarcasm and a general cooler-than-thou attitude.

I dont like tantrums.

7

No, no Alphagene, you don’t understand. He didn’t say “I will murder you” - he said “I will have you murdered”. You know, like a Don Corleone figure, sitting in his leather chair in a darkened lounge…

8

And, um…just in case it becomes an issue, I thought Scylla’s thread title was funny, and once I read inside that he was “playing” the role of a tradition movie-villian, it became funnier.

At no time did/do I feel threatened by Scylla.

Not that that’s relevant to whether or not it’s OK within the context of the boards, but I just thought I’d say.

Also: Somehow when a friend like The Insidious Dr. Fu Manscylla intones “Fenris, You Will Die”, I find it far less threatening than a vague “Do what I sayI’m going to have you all murdered.” to me.

Bond, Fenris Bond

(Um…and sorry, I didn’t notice that you were gone either.)

9

Nah, all of you are wrong. The mods just hate palindromes.

10

Rather ironic that there’s a thread titled “Welcome, New Teenaged Dopers! Don’t make me kill you” just a few away from this one. I guess it’s o.k. to warn people against doing things that would compel you to kill them, but you can’t threaten to kill them directly.

Also rather odd that that thread title had to be changed given the astounding number of posts indicating a strong desire to do bodily harm to others, particularly in the Pit. Threatening physical violence is alright, if it’s directed against accused animal abusers/child molesters/bad parents, etc., but not if it’s directed against those who watch certain TV shows.

11

Well if we’re gonna be splitting legal hairs here, it is conceivable that one could be forced to kill someone and still be within bounds of the law. Self-defense for example. So it’s not necessarily against the law to ask someone to avoid creating a circumstance where their killing would be forced.

Whereas murder, by definition, is illegal. As would be having someone murdered.

And we have changed thread titles many times when they have been a bit too strong, even in the Pit. There was an Elizabeth Dole one while back that Tuba had to reword. We didn’t decide to pick on Otto on a whim.

Anyway, the real point is that thwarting the efforts of moderators is very likely to piss us off and also puts you at risk at being axed. If someone finds that this is unacceptable moderator behavior, then I wish them luck in finding a message board that has a higher prick tolerance.

12

but then, who doesn’t.

b.

13

That’s just not fair! Howcom Scylla gets to kill Fenris and Otto don’t get to murder nobody?

I think it’s 'cuz the like Scylla better’n they like you. If I was you, I’d go home and tell my mommy how they was treating you all unfair and stuff.

14

Or maybe they just really hate Fenris. :smiley:

15

Are you threatening me??? Don’t you swing that axe at ME!! I’ll tell mommy!!!

:smiley:

[sub]sorry…I’ll go now[/sub]

16

Eh. I’ve changed two thread titles since making that post asking our members to act with greater propriety. Out of those two, I got one nice letter from the OP, and one Pit thread. I’m shootin’ fifty-fifty here. That’s about what I would expect. Hell, George Bush would probably even settle for a 50% approval rating.

Otto, as Shayna has said, if you find something offensive on these boards, e-mail the forum moderator(s), and we’ll take a look at it. You ain’t being picked on by the staff; you’ve never even been the subject of any staff e-mail that I can remember.

To address the specifics you’ve raised, the title of your thread was changed, because it was brought to our attention by more than one other member as being potentially offensive. So, I took at look and found the same thing. I’m not going around changing titles because I, myself, find them lacking decorum; it takes quite a bit to offend me. I’m changing titles only after they are questioned by one, or more, of the members of this board, which is not the case in Scylla’s thread.

I’ve posted this small piece of Unclely advice several times on this board previously, but I’ll do it again. I’ll bet you’ve heard it from your father more than once, too. You should worry more about your own actions and less about others.

17

Your thread title made me uneasy. and yes I’d seen the other ones mentioned. differences to me included:

  1. Forum. Much that is acceptable in the PIt is unacceptable elsewhere.

  2. tone. this, of course if much more subjective - the Fenris/Scylla thread for example, once I saw the OP was Scylla I knew what it was about, since the two are both prolific and funny posters, and are often mentioned in tandem. In fact, Scylla will routinely come in and correct people so that his name comes first. IOW, there is a long standing admiration/friendship between the two. and the whole tone of the piece is of a comic book variety. The tone of the pit thread mentioned is that of the exasperated older brother type of figure ‘don’t make me smack you’ (and of course the fact that it was in the pit). In yours, it was more of a “do this or I will have you murdered” and it felt more vicious to me. Admittedly I am only one person.

  3. Most important though, Timing. You posted THAT title FOUR HOURS after UncleBeer had posted this thread entitled Announcement—in re: Overly Graphic Titles & Posts. So, shortly after a mod had requested, nicely, that people tone down thread titles and posts, you posted that thread.

On the other hand, once your thread title was changed, you had choices. You could have emailed a mod, or even posted the question itself (as Ender did in the linked thread). Instead, you posted in your own thread, reiterating the threat in your original title.

Consider this analogy. You’re tooling along about 8 miles over the speed limit - over, yes, but not a lot, and certainly at least close to what others are doing, you get stopped by the police who say 'you know, the speed limit here is 35 and you were going 43". Let’s see, would your response be:

  1. I’m sorry officer, I’ll keep a closer eye on the spedometer.
    or
  2. Yea, I was goin’ 43, and so what? Others are goin’ over the speed limit too .
18

First, to those who felt compelled to name-call, let me reiterate: fuck you.

Second, I did not “threaten” to leave these boards. What I said is that this is the kind of thing that led me to be so disgusted with these boards that I left for a long while. Statement, not threat.

Third, thank you, various mods, for finally responding on the thread title issue. Would have been nice had the response been in an email explaining the action at the time, but there you are. I still don’t understand why an obviously facetious “I will have you murdered” is more “potentially offensive” than “now you will die,” but again, there you go.

Fourth, as far as “thwarting the actions of the moderators” is concerned, since the moderators didn’t bother to explain their actions upon taking them, or indeed advise me that action was being taken at all (say, via email, or in a message to the thread), it seems ever-so-slightly disingenuous of them to claim their actions are being “thwarted,” especially since they allowed the repetition of the “potentially offensive” phrase to stand within the thread itself.

Fifth, while this addresses the thread title issue, no one has yet addressed the apparent double-standard of insults. “Your IQ has dropped” is acceptable in a GD thread, but “your behaviour marks you as a jackass” in the same thread isn’t.

Finally, I’ve already found boards which have a “higher prick tolerance,” those being the ACLU boards which I moderate. Whenever we take an action against a post, we advise the poster via email, and we’re accountable for the actions we take. I’m all about free speech, and I hope that I would never ask for something to be censored on the grounds that it might be “potentially offensive.” And I’m not “worried about the actions of others,” and I don’t particularly appreciate this being framed in terms of “Otto says he’s being treated unfairly” because that’s not what this is about. Otto has questions about what appears to be unequal treatment at the hands of the moderators and asked, in a fairly calm and rational way, what the fuck was up with that. Last I heard that was what one of the functions of the Pit was.

19

“I did not threaten to have people murdered for not watching a shitty cartoon. What I said is that not watching a shitty cartoon is the kind of thing that led me to have people murdered a long while ago. Statement, not threat.”

:rolleyes:

20

Nobody thinks this is an attempt to get everyone to peek at the other thread, (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=79439&pagenumber=1) thereby greatly diminishing the supply of peanut butter and further jeopardizing (sp?) Fenris’ life?

Um, did I say that out loud? Sorry Fenris.