# Marley: Gun Grabber is not restricted to the Pit. **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [January 13, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086 "2013-01-13T19:41:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/41 "2013-01-14T19:29:35Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Dude, you’re losing it. Stop and think, please: is “you’re losing it” a good way to respond to a warning for insults? I attempted to explain to you that your comment about **Left Hand of Dorkness** was not appropriate for this forum. ‘You are up on your high horse’ is not advice or helpful commentary on tone, it’s an insulting dig at the person - and your post was even more sarcastic and dismissive than that. Saying he’s being priggish is also insulting. Now that I’ve given you a couple of notes and a warning, you seem to have figured out a way to make the point in an acceptable way: > [@magellan01](#): > > He wants this to be a super-duper-polite debate board, which is valid. I think that dehumanizes things and that people need to be able to demonstrate emotion, personality. Both positions are valid. Next time, try making your point this way _first_, not after half a dozen mod notes and the requisite bit of playing dumb (‘what do you mean I can’t take potshots at people in this forum and call them names?’). > [@](#): > > He wants it to be a bit more—and this is NOT an insult—“priggish”…more a monocled professor in a three-piece tweed suit. THAT is not an insult. It usually is, yes. _Prig_: “A person who demonstrates an exaggerated conformity or propriety, especially in an irritatingly arrogant or smug manner.” _Priggish_: [adjective] ‘self-righteous, smug, stiff, stuffy, prim, puritanical, narrow-minded, pedantic, starchy (informal), self-satisfied, prudish, goody-goody (informal), holier-than-thou.’ Sample: He was a priggish, self-righteous little sneak." > [@](#): > > I’m not looking to turn it into a barroom fight, I was just making the point that what LHOD had described seemed overly polite, stilted, unnatural. Then you should have said that instead of saying he was a prig and up on a high horse. If you’re capable of explaining your opinion this way, then you’re capable of doing it without all the extra instructions. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/42 "2013-01-14T19:40:46Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Stop and think, please: is “you’re losing it” a good way to respond to a warning for insults? I attempted to explain to you that your comment about **Left Hand of Dorkness** was not appropriate for this forum. ‘You are up on your high horse’ is not advice or helpful commentary on tone, it’s an insulting dig at the person - and your post was even more sarcastic and dismissive than that. Saying he’s being priggish is also insulting. Now that I’ve given you a couple of notes and a warning, you seem to have figured out a way to make the point in an acceptable way: > > Next time, try making your point this way _first_, not after half a dozen mod notes and the requisite bit of playing dumb (‘what do you mean I can’t take potshots at people in this forum and call them names?’). > > It usually is, yes. _Prig_: “A person who demonstrates an exaggerated conformity or propriety, especially in an irritatingly arrogant or smug manner.” > _Priggish_: [adjective] ‘self-righteous, smug, stiff, stuffy, prim, puritanical, narrow-minded, pedantic, starchy (informal), self-satisfied, prudish, goody-goody (informal), holier-than-thou.’ Sample: He was a priggish, self-righteous little sneak." > > Then you should have said that instead of saying he was a prig and up on a high horse. If you’re capable of explaining your opinion this way, then you’re capable of doing it without all the extra instructions. So, to be clear, characterizing one’s position as “priggish” is now an insult? Telling someone to “get off his high horse” is also an insult? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/43 "2013-01-14T19:50:13Z")
What do you mean “now?” ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/44 "2013-01-14T19:51:48Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > (‘what do you mean I can’t take potshots at people in this forum and call them names?’). Because it hasn’t been enforced so carefully up until now. Of course, I have the worst offenders on ignore so I’m not sure if they are still able to easily get away with what was Modded in that thread, but it seemed to come out of the blue since other comments of that nature pass unnoticed all the time. For this reason, I see no reason to add a further commentary on my analysis of the situation to take the harsh off the _percieved_ insult, since the equivalent continues to happen all the time. I see the other Modded comment as being only slightly worse, (even though it was of course factually wrong :)) So, either crack down a lot more on all the content free, veiled insults , or let these relatively mild invectives stand. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/45 "2013-01-14T19:56:54Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > What do you mean “now?” Leave the “now” out if it if you’d like: So, to be clear, characterizing one’s position as “priggish” is an insult? Telling someone to “get off his high horse” is also an insult? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/46 "2013-01-14T20:09:01Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > So, to be clear, characterizing one’s position as “priggish” is an insult? > > Telling someone to “get off his high horse” is also an insult? I am struggling to understand your surprise here. I probably wouldn’t moderate them immediately as insults and go straight to a warning (and I didn’t here), but these are both personal comments that we discourage. By the way, you gave away the game on “priggish” when you said this while signing off: > [@magellan01](#): > > Enjoy. And whatever you or any prigs anywhere might possibly do, don’t you dare lighten up. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/47 "2013-01-14T20:10:19Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Telling someone to “get off his high horse” is also an insult? After everything in this thread, do you really think it stood a chance of being productive? I mean, can you cite a single example in this history of our (or, hell, any other) species in which someone has responded to this statement by saying, “You know, you’re right, I’m sorry, I should be a lot more humble”? Because I don’t think you can. If you intended it to be given as advice, it was a remarkably incompetent attempt at advice, and again being charitable, I don’t think you’re that incompetent. Which suggests that a sincere offer of advice wasn’t actually your intent. If you’re happy with where your post has led, that’s one thing. But if you’re not, what can you learn from the experience? ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/48 "2013-01-14T20:35:08Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I am struggling to understand your surprise here. I probably wouldn’t moderate them immediately as insults and go straight to a warning (and I didn’t here), but these are both personal comments that we discourage. For future reference, please tell me which of these other descriptors you consider similarly insulting: pedantic didactic preachy punctilious doctrinaire dogmatic overbearing pompous fussy captious persnickety overly-delicate genteel finicky fastidious > [@Marley23](#): > > By the way, you gave away the game on “priggish” when you said this while signing off: You think this is some kinda “gotcha”? You were/are being priggish. THAT was the point. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/49 "2013-01-14T20:43:07Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > After everything in this thread, do you really think it stood a chance of being productive? Yes, I did. Perhaps it might have garnered a response from a human being along the lines of: “Yeah, maybe I go to far. But I’d just like GD to be a bit more formal than it is. You get the idea.” Granted, it would require the person on the receiving end to have a modicum of a sense of humor and not take himself so seriously. Which should have been clear by the “lighten up”. So, tell me, were you seriously offended by my post? Did you report it? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/50 "2013-01-14T20:50:55Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > For future reference Moving on. > [@](#): > > You think this is some kinda “gotcha”? I think it’s a waste of my time. > [@](#): > > You were/are being priggish. THAT was the point. I see. Let’s review: I told you a couple of times that calling someone priggish was insulting. I showed you a dictionary definition of the word that supported my opinion _and_ you called me and **Left Hand of Dorkness** “prigs” as an insult when you left the thread, for which (in part) I gave you a warning. Your response to all that is You were/are being priggish?" Does that seem smart to you? Does that sound like it would be effective and would get your message across? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/51 "2013-01-14T20:53:49Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > So, tell me, were you seriously offended by my post? I wasn’t offended, but if we’re being honest, that’s because I considered the source. Nor did I report it. At the same time, I thought it was foolish and unproductive. When someone phrases advice to me in an insulting tone, I’m pretty likely to dismiss it out of hand–and I think that’s a nearly universal reaction. But even if I were inclined to take advice, I can’t figure out what you think your advice was. I offered two posts that had different tones and suggested that the difference should be clear to anyone. There’s nothing high-horsey about that. I’m not saying I’m a particularly good arbiter of good behavior; rather I’m saying that this thread is silly in failing to distinguish between the two. I certainly have a sense of humor about myself, but as I suggested, your post to me wasn’t exactly scintillating wit; rather, it was tired recycled potshots from Great Debates that we’ve all seen a hundred times. In order for my sense of humor to be relevant, there’d have to have been something funny in your post. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/52 "2013-01-14T20:54:27Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Yes, I did. Perhaps it might have garnered a response from a human being along the lines of: “Yeah, maybe I go to far. But I’d just like GD to be a bit more formal than it is. You get the idea.” > > Granted, it would require the person on the receiving end to have a modicum of a sense of humor and not take himself so seriously. Which should have been clear by the “lighten up”. Again, this is all personal commentary that doesn’t belong in ATMB. I’m giving you another warning. You need to start comprehending this immediately: _this isn’t the Pit, and if you have to talk about another poster, it should be related to a moderating issue - not your opinion that he doesn’t have enough of a sense of humor or is a prig._ And as a free piece of advice: nobody in human history has ever lightened up because someone said “lighten up” after insulting them. Most people figure that out as teenagers. The ones who don’t wind up having to say “lighten up” a lot and can’t figure out why everybody’s so annoyed with them. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/53 "2013-01-14T20:58:17Z")
With that, **magellan01** and **Left Hand of Dorkness** , you need to take this discussion elsewhere. The thread was originally about the “gun grabber” mod note and at this point this has nothing to do with that at all. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/54 "2013-01-14T21:01:56Z")
Fair enough, Marley! ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/55 "2013-01-14T21:01:57Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Again, this is all personal commentary that doesn’t belong in ATMB. I’m giving you another warning. You need to start comprehending this immediately: _ **this isn’t the Pit, and if you have to talk about another poster, it should be related to a moderating issue - not your opinion that he doesn’t have enough of a sense of humor or is a prig**._ (bolding mine) Tell that to [this ATMB thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=638454). And yeah, I thought the mod note for “gun grabber” was ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Krav\_Manga](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/krav_manga/32/3153_2.png) [@Krav\_Manga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Krav_Manga)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/56 "2013-01-14T21:16:49Z")
[Here’s an example of Marley telling someone they’re on their high horse in ATMB](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12199184&postcount=66). ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/57 "2013-01-14T21:27:49Z")
> [@Krav\_Manga](#): > > [Here’s an example of Marley telling someone they’re on their high horse in ATMB](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12199184&postcount=66). Actually I was describing his behavior in a very protracted PM discussion. Please run down your logic here: because I told **ambushed** he wouldn’t get off his high horse when he was burying me under private message verbosity, I shouldn’t have told **magellan01** not to snark at **Left Hand of Dorkness** three years later? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/58 "2013-01-14T21:43:24Z")
That being said: yes, that’s usually something I wouldn’t say in ATMB for the exact reason I told **magellan01** to knock it off in this thread. It’s personal and it’s not constructive. I’ll say that I was exasperated after dealing with thousands of words of complaints from **ambushed** and that I don’t make a habit of saying that kind of thing here. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/59 "2013-01-14T21:49:03Z")
Back away from the thread **magellan01**! You are right. IMHO. **Marley** is wrong. IMHO. It doesn’t matter. He’s a mod and your not. Continuing on this course is not wise. Back away. Don’t get banned. You are like the guy in the horror movie who’s black, just had sex and is saying “I’ll be right back”. You are doomed if you continue on this course! ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2013, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/60 "2013-01-14T22:22:28Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > The thread was originally about the “gun grabber” mod note and at this point this has nothing to do with that at all. And my understanding is that I can use “gun grabber” at any time, in any thread about guns, with no further mod action taken, correct? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086.md?page=4)