I’m going to have the warning stay, Ambivalid. You say you were joking, others may have figured you were joking, but that still doesn’t give anyone a free pass to call other people names. As has already been pointed out, if that happens, it becomes too easy to start to find a way around it.
“Oh, I know I called him a shit for brains, but I grinned. Didn’t you see the grin?”
Reading comprehension fail:
I missed that and must have seen "I called him an asshole for being so insensitive as to put me “up in a tree” as not being familiar with the verse. Isn’t Ambivalid Canadian? We often have threads about who knows or was familiar with whatnot and how things vary across regions and time. Oops.
Please don’t call me a tree.
He’s from Michigan, so yes.
People insult each other all the time and indicate that it’s a joke by inserting a smiley. But because Jamie used a specific naughty word to “insult” someone as opposed to saying someone’s momma wears combat boots he can’t do that?
That’s a different situation. It was a song quote that looks insulting if you don’t know the source (as twickster didn’t because she’s not a South Park fan). If you know it’s just a song quote, it’s obviously not an insult. When you call someone an asshole, that’s an insult. Putting a smiley face after that doesn’t make it something else, and even with smiley faces, we don’t want posters to call each other assholes out of the Pit. I believe Ambivalid intended it as a joke, Idle Thoughts is on very safe ground in saying that he shouldn’t do that regardless. And frankly - although I did not notice this until just now - Ambivalid has an earlier warning for calling another poster an asshole. I don’t mean to keep picking on him here because I believe that he didn’t mean to cause offense and that he’ll think twice about this kind of thing in the future, but that other warning probably should have been a hint that you shouldn’t another poster an asshole at all.
BigT, I offer this as free life advice: when you start a conversation with someone by telling them you think they’re bullshitting you and insulting your intelligence, you are making it less likely they will change their minds. This kind of tack does not help you make your argument, it just pisses people off. Nobody is insulting your intelligence and nobody is trying to get one over on you. It is a difference of opinion.
I think if you have something that could be taken either way, we try to give people the benefit of the doubt. If you have a post that’s just an insult with a smiley after it, that’s not so easy - and it’s a good idea, formally or informally, for us to tell posters not to do that.
Sorry I got you in trouble, Jamie. When I saw your reply to my post I was like “Uh-oh, he’s gonna hear about that.”
:smack: Oh, yeah, I wasn’t thinking!
For the record, I took your “insult” the way you meant it and wasn’t offended. I’m actually more insulted that you called me The Chilean BOB, when I’m quite clearly a female BLOB!
Seems like a good time to give a mod note instead of a formal warning. A formal warning can be given if the behavior persists.
What makes you think I didn’t get the reference? I did; I was merely making a lighthearted joke out of it in specific reference to me. I even said as much at the beginning of this thread.
OOPS! That is my bad. Consider it an innocent oversight. :eek:
I had waited eight whole minutes. I was sure that would be more than adequate.
In the meantime Ambivalid had made nice and moved
(P.S. Thanks Spectre, for the edit in my initial post.)
I just want to ask one more thing: doesn’t the fact that the intended target of the supposedly insulting comment does not in fact share the mods feelings that an insult occurred mitigate the offensiveness of that comment?
Only if he’s the mod that issued the warning?
I don’t know about that, but Jamie I want to applaud the maturity you’ve shown in this thread.
Nice change there handsome.
No, because in the end, you’re still insulting another poster, whether you meant it as a joke or not.
You may argue that it’s a thin line, but where does it stop? Should “Shiteater ;)” get a warning? How about “You look like a fucking idiot typing that way 
;)”?
What if the recipient does get offended over it?
My point is that with the inclusion of the smiley, it obviously looks like a joke…which shouldn’t get a free pass because then it becomes an easy way for people to fall back on the “But I was only joking” card if called on.
Wasn’t what you’d expect, was it? 
To be fair, only a few of the mods have the ability to read for comprehension, and determine what the actual words themselves mean. Add in context they have to figure out, and all bets are off.
Incorrect - we can call people plenty of names around here without anybody getting their panties in an uproar. There are just certain names we can’t use. Apparently, a smiley-attached “asshole” is one of them.
Seriously, if I say, “really, you’re *NOT *a giant asshole - <wink, wink>” I probably wouldn’t get a warning. But replace that “NOT” with a smiley face and suddenly it becomes ancient greek incapable of being deciphered? C’mon - rescind the warning, give him a note, and let’s move on.
Can you give an example of using a smiley where someone isn’t joking? And if it “obviously looks like a joke” then what’s the difficulty? Preventing those too dense to figure it out from having their delicate sensibilities offended?
What if I called you a son of a birch?
See post #22
Can we get a mod ruling on this? It is/is not okay to call someone a “giant winking asshole”? If it’s okay, what about a new smiley for it?
ETA:
You couldn’t leaf it alone, could you?