You’re correct. It never should have happened. The reason it never should have happened is because you never should have used a term like “gun grabbers” in GD. “But other people do it!” is a wholly unpersuasive defense. You shouldna dunnit. Not necessarily because it’s against the rules, but because such a term doesn’t promote a civil exchange of ideas. If you’d make an effort to stay civil, you’ll avoid running afoul of the mods.
Debaser, as a crazy lefty far beyond most liberals, I’ve also managed to post here over a decade without a single warning. (Closest I ever got was many years ago when, in a true display of naivete, I linked a radical feminist messageboard over to a thread here that consisted of criticizing that messageboard, thinking that doing so was only fair). How have I done it? By doing my best to stay civil. I don’t always succeed, and frankly you’re better at it than I am, but when I fail–when a mod tells me to knock it off with the snark–rather than starting a thread in ATMB fussing about the instruction, I take it to heart and knock it off with the snark.
It works really well, and I encourage everyone who finds themselves fussing here in ATMB about mod directions pointed at them, whether it’s a conservative like Oak or a liberal like prr, to try it out.
Are you joking? What civility in GD? Is it where pro-life posters are accused of hating women or where Christians are called psychotic and delusional? Or is it the constant comments about how Republicans don’t care about the future of the country and would rather us descend into a third-world hellhole just to prove Obama wrong? Those seem to be universally allowed as is “teabagger” and others. Those aren’t civil and don’t promote civil discourse.
But an extremely minor jab like “gun grabber” gets a note? That’s absolutely absurd moderation by any standard.
If you disagree that he walks this fine line, I invite you to show me where he resorts to name-calling like “gun-grabber” instead of going for his sincerely held delusional claims about Republicans, and where despite such name-calling posts getting reported in a timely fashion, he’s not moderated for it.
If you agree that he walks this fine line, I hope you’ll join me in exhorting the mods to increase their moderation of such posts, whether they’re made my Der Trihs or pkbites (yes, I hope you won’t pretend that it doesn’t come from your side as well). I definitely don’t think that sincerely-believed demonization of the opposition adds anything to great debates.
No it’s not. It’s excellent moderation by my standard, as it’s just a nasty little exercise in petty namecalling. I want more moderation like that, not less.
In light of this thread, I have to ask…why was anything raised about using Gun Grabber (which, all things considered, does seem pretty mild for GD) while terms like Gun Nut and Gun Fetishist are tossed about seemingly offhand and with, afaict not even an eye blink from the mods? It just doesn’t seem balanced here on this issue. Personally, I don’t see the problem with using any of this stuff…it’s fun to point out how using something like Gun Fetishist is over the top and actually detracts from the credibility of the person using it, since it refers to a large percentage of the population (considering that it’s being used basically to mean gun owner), but why make even a comment about one and ignore the others?
I agree. Plus I think that “gan grabbers” is even a bit more benign than the other terms. And sometimes these terms act as useful shorthand to identify who one is talking about, as I think it did in the instance being discussed.
Nobody in the thread had proposed confiscating any guns. They did discuss the concept of registration, and Oakminster responded by calling them “gun grabbers” and saying they wanted to punish gun owners instead of killers. It was entirely useless.
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I agree. Plus I think that “gan grabbers” is even a bit more benign than the other terms. And sometimes these terms act as useful shorthand to identify who one is talking about, as I think it did in the instance being discussed.
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I’d say that measuring how benign a term is depends on who’s gore is being oxed. However, it’s pretty obvious that there is a certain level of variability going on wrt labels and mod attention. My guess is that Marley was responding to a user who was flagging the post and label ‘Gun Grabber’ directly, and wasn’t closely following to see what other labels were being tossed around. I think the mods like to get back to the user community when posters take the time to flag stuff, and that is part of why there is an uneven (seeming) stance on labels. There are simply more potential posters who would have an issue and who might flag a thread and post for being offended by ‘Gun Grabber’ than there are folks who would even notice ‘Gun Fetishist’ or take offense from the term.
No, I wasn’t responding to a thread report. And I did look through the thread to see what other labels were being used. I didn’t compare that thread to lots of other gun debates, however (that might’ve taken ages).
Why do gun grabbers always want to punish someone other than the shooter for gun-related crimes? *
The fucking point of registration, other than as a first step on the slippery slope towards confiscation, is an attempt to hold gun owners criminally and/or civilly liable for acts committed by third parties with stolen weapons. I was on topic and raised a valid question.
Or to help solve crimes committed with stolen weapons. But I’ll let you fight that out with the people in the GD thread who want to discuss the issue with you; I don’t want to do that here.
I see that. All you want to do here is accuse me of saying something I did not say, and editorialize about the thing I didn’t say. You say my comment is “useless”, now you won’t defend that ridiculous comment.
Ah, well, in that case you might want to rethink your stance on this Marley. I really think that ‘Gun Grabber’ is pretty innocuous, and unless you are going to bust chops all around it looks to be an uneven underscoring of the use of a label on one side while letting stuff slide on the other. Just a thought.
I accused you of saying what you said. If you want me to defend my interpretation of the comment (which is why I moderated it), I will: I thought you deliberately made an overly broad and rather ludicrous comment about people who support gun registration because you wanted to accuse them of supporting even more draconian measures despite the inconvenient fact that they hadn’t said they supported those measures, and because you wanted to accuse them of having the wrong priorities even though none of them had advocated punishing any group of people instead of any other group. No one had said gun owners should be punished if crimes were committed with weapons stolen from their homes. So your post didn’t bear much relationship to anything that was being discussed. You accused people of supporting some things based on some other, barely-related or unrelated things. If you had made the point the way you made it in post #151 of this thread, maybe I would have thought you believed your comment was pertinent to the subject. Based on what I read, I didn’t think that.
I don’t think it’s innocuous. I think it’s a nasty bit of namecalling that has no place in a reasonable discussion. Nor, of course, do terms like “gun fetishists.” If you’re unable to discuss an issue using civil language, GTFO of GD and go to the Pit.
Oakminster, I am so sorry for the terrible persecution you have endured on this board. God, I wish I could understand, and truly feel, how this must impact your life. May you find true freedom someday! (Liberals, yeah, I hear you. Don’t get me started, Brother! )Fight the good fight!!
:rolleyes: