Marley, you're letting your opinions and interactions as a poster influence your modding.

[Marley23]

@Sailboat

OK, here’s where I have to take issue. I was warned in a thread once and the person I was supposedly insulting had insulted “the other side” in the debate and the moderator said, after review, that the person was merely referring to all his opponents and thus not to me or anyone specific and would not be warned. IMHO the situation was very strongly analogous to this one, and yet here Marley23 says “You don’t need to name the individuals. You made it clear you were talking about people who disagreed with you - apparently all of them.”

I think you’re referring to this thread from a year ago, where you received a warning that was later reversed.

Our rules about group insults are essentially this: you can insult a group of people that includes SDMB posters, like Democrats or Republicans. You can’t insult groups of posters, i.e. saying that everybody taking a contrary position in a thread has his tongue in the ass of Barack Obama (or George W. Bush, etc.).

Your warning was issued and reversed by C K Dexter Haven and I think his opinion matches mine:

@C_K_Dexter_Haven

@Sailboat

Is this comment not an insult because it uses big words?

No, it’s not an insult because it’s referring to a large group of people with a political agenda. It’s not different from insulting Republicans or anti-gun activists or … Those are all large groups of people with a strong stand on an issue, some of whom happen to be posters.

We don’t have rules against insulting such groups (or any outsiders, for that matter); our rules are against insulting other posters. Yes, I agree that there’s some slight awkwardness – insulting “all Democrats” is insulting some of our posters. But it’s usually a question of the thrust or implication. I see Left Hand’s comment as being addressed at a large group with a stance on an issue; I saw your comment as being addressed only at one poster.

@C_K_Dexter_Haven

@Sailboat

OK, although I intended it to apply to everyone who ignores a greater threat while cherry-picking a much smaller threat (the collective “you,” in other words. But I understand intent is obscure. I apologize to all concerned.

Hmmm. Since the prior statement was about “every second you spend on this message board,” I took the “you” in the next statement to be a continuation. It can be a problem with the word “you” in American English. I’m in a rush at the moment, I will reverse the Official Warning but I won’t change the verbal (post). Fair enough? And please be careful in future.

Does that help?

@Sailboat

The poster moderated in this case, ivan astikov, is (was?) generally frustrating and definitely crossed the line during his career here – but I’m not sure this specific thread was ban-worthy

This wasn’t a very serious infraction, no, but it was par for the course with him and I think it was obvious he was picking a fight, since he said just yesterday that I was correct to give him a note for his comment and he kept going after I gave him a few chances to handle this in a less confrontational way. He also got two warnings on July 31, and if we hadn’t already been moving toward consensus on a banning he probably would have received another warning or two yesterday for insults to another poster by private message and some other posts.

I’m speaking for just myself here, but my take was that he’d crossed over into open trolling and it was time for him to go. His behavior never changed after any warnings, so the consensus was that there was no point in suspending him and hoping he improved. Lately I think he was just stirring up shit by taking a stand against whatever he perceived to be the consensus on the board. I don’t expect anybody to read all of his posts in this 17-page World Trade Center collapse thread, but by the time he was arguing the plane that hit the Pentagon might’ve been ditched in a river or Lake Erie because everyone in America was watching TV and no one would have notice - or the previously discussed Birther thread, where he showed up on page nine asking questions that had already been answered and posting nonsense. I posted in both those threads so I thought it would be inappropriate to comment on whether he was trolling at the time, but I think that’s what he was doing. Playing devil’s advocate is always fine, but attacking the consensus on every issue just to be a nuisance because the idea of a consensus offends you is trolling.