If I were to say “Ed Zotti is not normal” in Great Debates I’m pretty sure I’d get modded for that. The same for in IMHO, or Cafe Society. We criticise opinions. “Attack the post, not the poster.” And we criticise actions. “What you wrote is not normal.” But I would have thought that calling another poster “not normal” was behaviour that was reserved for the pit. It seems to me that the person who “wrote or approved virtually all the rules we have” seems to be a bit out of touch with how the rest of the board is moderated, but hey I could be wrong, and I welcome your clarification.
Why are you asking me that question?
The question was directed to the person who “wrote or approved virtually all the rules we have” on this site. It was a request for clarification. It should be freaking obvious that I considered essentially calling another poster “not normal” is an attack. And with the added context of these particular posts in this very thread:
In the context of Morgenstern’s posts in this thread: do you still not see characterizing Chimera as “not normal” as innocent, and not an attack?
I don’t see the problem in this thread as “arguments between posters” but with one particular poster using this thread to continue to bully and harass the OP, other posters pushing back against that poster, and the moderating team (including the person who wrote or approved virtually all the rules we have here) allowing it to happen.
Imagine taking a complaint to Human Resources about sexual harassment and allowing the accused to sit there and say “but yeah, she was a fucking bitch, and she deserved everything I said”, then when other people in the meeting pushed back Human Resources simply said “our mistake was allowing people to argue.” This is incredibly tone-deaf.
In the era of gamergate and #metoo many places on the internet have come to understand how devastating online harassment and bullying can be. How insidious it is. And in the wake of things like gamergate it became obvious how people were “gaming the rules” to try and pretend that what they were doing was “innocent” when in reality they are not. So do I think that Morgenstern is attacking Chimera here in this thread? Of course I do. And he isn’t even trying to hide it.
As the person who “wrote or approved virtually all the rules we have” you set the tone of this place, you decide what is and isn’t acceptable here so you take ownership of that and don’t put the responsibility back on me. If you don’t think that Morgenstern has been attacking Chimera throughout this thread then say that. Make it clear that you consider Morgenstern’s behaviour in this thread is acceptable outside of the pit, and the problem wasn’t the content of his posts, but the fact he was “arguing.”
As I said before you need to consider the chilling effect of not moderating this behaviour. I applaud the efforts of the moderating team to cut back on the misogyny here. But misogyny is not the only problem.
People get riled and It is refuted several times by other knowledgeable posters
He restated the exact same argument
People get riled and it gets refuted
He makes lots of inflamitory remarks and some other posters catch onto what he is doing
He is a smart guy and doesn’t usually post in the manner he did on that thread and he made no effort to respond to posts by the likes of Ravenman and a couple of others who are knowledgeable about the law but almost always responds to Octopus and other conservative posters he knows are not popular.
You could be right of course and I am reading it all wrong. But I have my doubts.
That’s not trolling at all, though. “Refuted” and “disputed” end the same, but they’re two very different things*, and just because someone disputed his arguments and he repeated them doesn’t mean he was trolling.
I have problems with specific behavior on his part, but this isn’t an example of it.
FWIW, “refute” is what I do to your arguments; “dispute” is what you do to mine.
I think this is bullshit. I post at GB somewhat, admittedly mostly in the Megapoll forum. I don’t conspire to attack other posters at any boards. You cannot blame the environment of the board for acting like an ass. If you acted like an ass, you chose to act like an ass.
**Morgenstern **needs no help or pushing to act dickish in the pit. He did such all on his own.
I was trying to use the definition Ed posted in 244. Posting what we don’t believe to rile up others. I thought Morganstern did a brilliant job of just that in the CalExit thread. Ill accept that I didn’t make my case persuasive enough.
As part of the mod loop discussion, I went back through the last three months of Morgenstern’s Pit posts by hand, looking for posts where he interacted with Chimera. I also did a search on his Pit posts, using his user name, and “chimera” as the search criteria, and no defined time frame. I found four threads where they interacted. Almost all of the insulting posts are in the original “Skald the Rhymer is annoying” pit thread and the “Male-Centrism on the Dope” spin-off. There’s two posts in the “Troll Omnibus” thread, and one other post from February where they cordially gang up on octopus.
That’s not really showing me a pattern of harassment.
Sure–but this isn’t like saying that the Pacific Northwest has always been rainy in the winter, it’s like saying that frats have always been full of underage drinking. This board has always had people who will weaponize personal trauma because this board allows people to weaponize personal trauma. It’s a decision.
It looks like, for now at least, the mods and admins think the cure of telling people to knock that shit off is worse than the disease of having folks attacked with the worst moments of their lives. I find that decision bewildering, and I hope that it changes–that they can figure out a way to tell people to knock that shit off.
I don’t want anyone to think that because the board has always been that way, it can’t change. Of course it can. It’s undergone other changes in the past, to the board’s benefit.
Honest question - at what point does it become harassment? Miller found four threads in which Morgenstern brought up unrelated information about Chimera’s divorce and used it to attack him (and now five including this one). There were multiple posts about it in each thread, so the post count is higher.
This was deemed to not be harassment. So what’s the limit? I know you don’t want a bright-line definition, but we need some kind of guideline if you ask us to report it.
I’m not a Mode here obviously but I’d say just report whatever you think is harassment. If enough people report the same posts, there may be a change of mind. The recent Skald in incident is a perfect example of that happening.
That definition looks pretty good to me. Pitting me for being an asshole in a thread in IMHO is fine; responding to me in another pit thread by bringing up something unrelated I said in a thread in IMHO is the kind of shit that doesn’t improve the board. I’d love to see the Pit adopt language similar to this.
Maybe something like, “Bringing up aspects of a poster’s personal [or off-board, or something] life–aspects they’ve discussed elsewhere–for the purpose of insulting them is not allowed.”
Argh, I just spent 90 minutes composing a long reply to various remarks which the fricking board software has now vaporized. I’m not about to retype the whole thing, so I’ll just say a couple things before closing this thread:
(1) The staff is now aware that a lot of posters think Morgenstern is a jerk. If you see further instances of this, please report them.
(2) Morgenstern, my advice to you is to dial back on the attitude of moral superiority. We have no specific rule against being a PITA, but we’re getting tired of our inboxes filling up with complaints about you. If in the future we tell you to refrain from certain types of behavior, please do so or face revocation of your posting privileges.