Sure it is, when the argument is about a mod note. The poster in question has been here long enough to know you don’t do that in the thread where you got a warning. You open a thread in ATMB specifically about that warning.
This situation is exactly analogous to a cop pulling you over for speeding, telling you he’s letting you off with just a warning, then you arguing with him that you weren’t speeding. And it’s exactly the result you would expect if you tried that. Ticket.
Suck it up and don’t argue with the cop who just let you slide.
Especially if you also have a broken headlight and an expired registration.
Nailed it!
There is a difference between “<snip>” and “<blah blah blah meaningless drivel>”. One is a simple indication that text was removed. The other is an editorial remark about the content that was removed. It is expected to indicate content was removed, but editorializing on content inside the quote tag is verboten.
You might could have gotten away with “<blah blah blah>”, but it probably would have drawn a note for being too close to editorializing. “<irrelevant material deleted>” might have passed muster.
But you had violated the rule, so it was a false claim. At best, you didn’t understand how you violated the rule.
I agree with you here, but you should have taken your discussion to ATMB, and not posted it in that thread. Still, I’m not sure how “I don’t think I did anything wrong” makes the original offense change to a Warning.
If you take it to ATMB, or do it via PM, correct. But hijacking a thread to argue an act of moderation is a Warnable offense.
I do agree that even Mod Notes should be defendable, and posters should have the right to question them. However, the point often becomes a protracted debate over whether the fuzzy gray line is over here or over there, when the consequences of a mod note are very small. The cost/benefit analysis suggests that arguing that point isn’t going to make any headway, just continue to foster resentment. Saying “hey, I didn’t think this was what you thought,” and trying to clarify why it drew a note is one thing. Staking out a 3+ page defense over a rules violation that didn’t even draw a Warning on your record seems either pigheaded or else intended as an excuse to bitch about the mods rather than effect any change.
You don’t owe the mod an apology. But it’s one of the things of polite society that we acknowledge our wrongdoings. So when you you say “I’m sorry,” that is what you are doing, whether you really mean “I shouldn’t have done that” or just “I wish I hadn’t been caught doing that”. You can, of course, omit any direct response and continue participation in the thread but comply with the rules. But the subtext there is that you’re not admitting that you did anything wrong. That subtext can color perception of future actions, in that thread and elsewhere.
But why is tomndebb changing his ruling on the previous incident? Snowboarder Bo didn’t repeat the infraction, nor did he state that he wouldn’t comply in the future. He argued that what he did wasn’t an infraction, but that’s not itself wrong. The issue seems to be explained in tomndebb’s remark in post 229:
But I don’t see how he get’s that out of
There’s no claim he wishes to violate the rules, merely the statement that he does not feel that he did violate the rules. There is no indication at all of another jab at Ibn Warraq. So I don’t see where Tom’s perception arises.
My take - escalating the original Note to a Warning because he questioned the ruling was incorrect, but a Warning could have been dropped for arguing the point in GD. Seems like a wash to me, and I think Colibri’s point is that if the mods were to reevaluate the incident, they would do so en toto, and not just the one call. Ergo, the original infraction might be interpreted as an intentional jab rather than as a misunderstanding of how quote editing works, and then apply the rule about arguing moderation in GD as well, and Snowboarder Bo could come out with two Warnings instead of one, even if the Warnings are listed for something different. Of course, swapping the Warning to arguing the point in GD rather than failing to follow moderator instructions might help the sticklers feel better.
That’s my opinion. Asking for a review would mean reviewing all the circumstances involved. Based on my evaluation, the OP could at best hope for changing the reason for the warning, and at worst could end up with an additional warning.
The reason for the warning has little practical effect. If it comes to the point where someone has accumulated enough warnings for us to be discussing a suspension or banning, we’ll generally review the warnings individually. (At least I do.) Since the OP actually committed multiple infractions in the thread, it’s going to be evaluated pretty much the same regardless of what reason is listed.
So this is what, twice where Snowboarder Bo acts like a jerk and then complains about being called on it?
Sorry. I misunderstood the sequence.
Oh, wait. I said I was sorry because I was in the wrong.
I’ll start a new thread instead.
Let’s go to the Snowboarder Bo posts and yawn.
I didn’t want to carry the analogy too far…
“Marvelous Marv” Throneberry whacked a rare triple in a game against the Cubs during the NY Mets’ epically bad inaugural season. He chugged into third to the cheers of the Met fans, who were unaccustomed to see him (or any Met player) run the bases.
Cubs first baseman Ernie Banks strolled over to the first base umpire. “He didn’t touch first base, you know,” Banks said. Banks called for the ball, stepped on first base, and the umpire called Throneberry out at first.
Manager Casey Stengel stormed out of the dugout to dispute the call, but one of the Met coaches held him back. "Don’t bother, Casey, he said. “He missed second too.”
I don’t really have an opinion on the larger issue at hand, but I fail to understand how including a <blah blah meaningless frothing drivel> instead of the original text is an insult, or even bordering on one, especially under SDMB rules. I thought we’re allowed to call bullshit on posts, as long as we lay off the poster. If Bo had just quoted the text in question, and under it written “Meaningless frothing drivel”, no one would be arguing that he’d issued an insult to the poster.
We’ve had a very long standing rule that you are NOT ALLOWED to change the text inside a quote box. If you want to make comments about the text, you do that outside the quote box, never inside.
What about adding formatting, such as using bold or italics on a phrase in the quote, to specify which part you want to refer to? I’ve seen that done lots of times with no warnings. I’ve even seen moderators do that. Is it considered ok? Is it ok as long as we add a “emphasis mine” statement after the quote?
-D/a
Ever since the "Quotes are sooper-dooper sancrosanct rule was created to “protect” a butthurt guy who was going to sue, this has always been the rule. There are no exceptions. Putting ANYTHING into someone else’s quote beyond the absolutely neutral “snip” or elipses has been utterly verboten.
Sorry, totally fair warning and you got off lightly, IMHO, as paranoid as they are about quote boxes*
*Which is a stupid thing to be paranoid about, but them’s the (stupid, hyper-overeactive) rule and there’s nothing ambiguous about them. “Snip” fine “Snip stupid stuff” not.
Not a mod, but yes, as long as you put “emphasis mine” or “bolding mine” or whatever, that’s been ok too.
Any sort of personal opinion, comment, editorializing inside a textbox is a no-no.
I would say that adding bolding or italics for emphasis fall within “normal editorial rules,” although it would be good to mention that the emphasis was added by you.
What Snowboarder Bo did was quite specifically a rule violation, which he would have known if he had bothered to read the rules before he made his complaint.
I’m not sure it’s fair to say it was instituted to “protect” that guy, since, iirc, he was immediately banned for threatening to sue.
The rule makes a lot of sense. The board has some hard and easily enforceable rules that provide a minimum baseline for discourse. One concept is that you don’t insult other posters directly: outside of the pit, that’s a hijack. Here’s an example:
P1: Ron Paul ran a marathon in 1 hour, 45 minutes.
P2: You are a liar.
If P2 said that P1 is incorrect, that would be topical. Instead, he’s shifted the debate to one on P1’s character. That takes the thread off the point in an inflammatory manner. The character assessment might be accurate. But that conversation belongs somewhere else.
Another baseline rule is that you don’t distort your opponent’s position, then attack the distortion. Now that’s a hard rule to enforce. But the quote box manifestation is straightforward. The reader knows that if it’s in the quote box, it may have been taken out of context, but at least the words are accurate, subject to sanction by the person doing the quoting.
Of course every rule, no matter how sensible, has its downside. In this case, these rules limit the self-expression of some of the precious snowflakes on this board. This is unfortunate, up to a point. On balance, I believe this to be a good rule.
Thanks. I suspected that was the case, but [del]was too lazy to check[/del] wasn’t sure.
-D/a