Regarding the proposed change to the troll rule, my first preference would be to discard the rule altogether (in the pit). People are allowed to make all kinds of other accusations of rule-breaking against other posters, and allowed to say they think people deserve to be banned. I don’t see why an accusation of trolling is any worse than accusations of other bannable offenses. Prohibiting accusations of this one particular offense seems rather artificial to me. I believe the rule dates from a period about 5 years ago when there were some particularly intense troll wars going on on the board, and has kind of persisted by inertia.
Barring that, I think the rule should stay as it is. I think the distinction between bannable vs non-bannable trolling is too fine a one to police effectively. All or nothing.
My other pet peeve about the Pit is the ban on joke threads. Now, I wouldn’t allow faux-pittings or dirty-joke threads, but other humorous ones should not be prohibited. (Yes, I know they are technically allowed, but I think that having a broad “no jokes” rule puts a damper on them. One of the funniest threads of all time was *lno’s * “My rage burns with the fire of a thousand suns” one, and I think that one would possibly have been inhibited if the “no jokes” rule had been in place at the time.)
Banning the use of the word troll just encourages people to come up with tricksy ways of implying that other people are trolls. When they aren’t quite sly enough, people get upset, and clamor for more rules, or clarification of existing rules etc. etc. ad nauseum.
If the mods comply, there’ll come a day when people get banned because they didn’t notice that “Og” had become a synonym for “Troll” in some Godforsaken, 57 page Paris Hilton thread over in MPSIMS.
Screw that shit. We’re better off keeping it simple. A spade is a spade, a jerk is a jerk, and a troll is a troll. That I can keep track of.
Yeah, I say get rid of the rule altogether - the qualifiers proposed only serve to obscure things. I personally don’t give a shit if I see a non-mod calling someone a troll - either it’s true or it’s obviously somebody grinding an axe, and accusing someone of breaking the rules really does seem tame (as well as based on their actual behavior) compared to calling them a stupid fucking cunt or something. As for junior modding, I’ve seen many instances here where those who give such lip service to the rules of the board engage in it anyway whenever an accusation of trolling is brought up - responding with “Accusations of trollery are against the rules; report the post to a mod”, usually prefaced with “IANAM”. Well, if you’re not a mod, shut the fuck up about the rules, because it makes you look like you want it both ways.
Trolls offer no good to the Pit,
No wisdom, no humor, no wit;
Just drivelling pap
Or shit-stirring crap.
Why not call them plainly on it?
Don’t try to parse out when it’s right
Or wrong for that name to alight
On a bridge-under-dweller.
Just tell him or tell her,
“You goat-felching troll, say goodnight!”
C’mon Finn-that’s a thinly veiled excuse to continue to beat a dead horse. Hearty members of the SDMB will readily explore every way in which to beat the horse quite quickly within hours of the OP, as well as exercising those avenues without delay. If you’re not there for the initial beating, your moment of opportunity is lost and another thread won’t create it.
My point exactly. Starting new threads on topics which have been discusssed at length is a waste of bandwidth.
This is true of any board with fewer than a hundred members.
This board has more than a hundred members.
Sure, the topic has been discussed. But there are new people around to discuss it. What invalidates their right to do so other than your arbitrary idea that they didn’t get there in time? Perhaps they weren’t registered. Weren’t online for that time period. Didn’t see that forum. Didn’t see that thread. Didn’t click the title because they didn’t know what it was about. Who knows? There are always new things to add to a discussion. If there aren’t, the new thread will be pretty much stillborn without the help of rules, unless a pile of lemon cheesecakes decides to come along and pile onto it saying “This thread is stupid, no one post in it.”
The prohibition on trollery accusations:
Drop it. I agree with Giraffe on this one. It’s not “junior-modding” at all. If you can call somebody a ‘jerk’ (which is against the rules), then you can call them a troll. Also I’m not a big fan of taboo words, and the prissy tiptoeing around which they bring. But I don’t want to see a qualifier - simply lift the prohibition completely.
Junior Modding:
Even this isn’t such a terrible thing. Sure, crap like the first reply being “this should really be in IMHO” when a moderator is inevitably going to come along and move it anyway… crap like that is annoying, but in a more general sense, a bit of “citizens on patrol” mentality is likely a good thing. An example would be a newbie coming in here late at night when there are no mods about, and the newbie blunders straight through one of our rules. One of the regulars says, “Hey, you really shouldn’t have said that, because we have a rule against it.” Newbie replies, “Oh I see. I didn’t realise. Please accept my apologies.” Five minutes - case closed, and the thread doesn’t fester away waiting for a mod to eventually come and clean up an even bigger mess than the original one. It’s about members taking an interest in the rules (heck, the mods and admins are always exhorting us to familiarise ourselves with them), and that can be no bad thing - in moderation, as it were.
Joke Threads
The total prohibition on these is overkill, I think. It seems to me to promote the idea that “this is the Pit, so you HAVE to be as vile as you can”. That’s not a good thing. The Pit should be a forum where you are permitted to be insulting and nasty if you must, not a place where it is seen as a virtue.
Pit Heat Setting
I’m opposed to a free-for-all. This ain’t usenet. If anything, a reduction in bile would be in order. I’m one of those who believes the place has got a whole lot nastier in the last year or two. I think it’s time to reverse that, if only a little.
Yeah, but how do you regulate that? What’s “too much” bile? Everybody’s got different tolerances; I think the “don’t be a jerk” umbrella works pretty well, even if it can be similarly vague.
No, you are in favor of artificial control. I am in agreement with Pythian Habenero that discussions take care of themselves naturally according to whether or not anyone is interested.
Welcome to SDMB, Pythian Habenero! We have similar names. I am Zoe Chloe Phythian-Thayer. (But that’s a lie anyway.)
We should be allowed lawn chairs too. That’s a rule from a more bandwidth impaired era. And I like joke threads. Humor is a powerful weapon and even though most parodies and satires fall flat on their faces, the odd nugget of brilliance is worth it.
The one problem I see that this troll thing just can’t get past is that there simply cannot be a legitimate excuse for calling a person a troll. Why? Because if they are legitimately a troll you should be using the “report this post button” instead of the “new post” button. Anything else is just trying to play to the crowd.
But at the moment, you agree not to be a jerk, as that is not only a rule, but it is the main rule, yet I can say “Hey Harborwolf, you jerk!” (smiley - ), and nobody bats an eyelid. I could also say, “hey Harborwolf you crossposting goat-felc… blah blah” or “Hey Harborwolf, you filthy puller-up of lawn chairs”, and could do so within the same rules I’m accusing you of breaking. I’m not convinced there is any special characteristic of the word ‘troll’ that makes it any different.
In other words, either the (non-mod/admin) members can level charges of rule-breaking against each other, or they can’t. At the moment we have a halfway situation.
Well, the word “jerk” has a lot more potential usage than calling somebody a troll. I can call you a jerk for using me in your example (ya jerk) and get by because I really think you are a jerk. While the “don’t be a jerk” rule is a lot more vauge than the “troll” rule, anybody banned for that violation is going to have very clear evidence. They’re going to be doing a lot more than the usual pit variety insult and doing it a lot more than the typical pitmaster.
Pulling up lawn chairs and crossposting are rules that would have evidence in post form, so those are accusations that are relatively fair to make since you would have proof.
“Troll” is very specific. Unless you are referring to a d&d monster, a person that actually lives under a bridge and hates billy goats (I went to school with Billy Goats, so I can see why they would), or those in the lower peninsula of Michigan who only live south of one, then you are accusing a person of breaking the rules. You are also guessing at what you think the posters intent is.
We already have free use of the words “attention whore.” We can call someone a political “shill” or “mouthpiece.” Let’s stick to them and leave “troll” to the mods. We can’t even tell when a poster is joking or not without multiple smileys and a disclaimer (sometimes not even that). Why on earth should we be trying to guess a posters intent?
That’s what I meant about unestablishing a precedent. It is an old rule.
My concern about the rule is one that I don’t reckon Giraffe would share (nor Veb, by extension), since he has declared his support for pile-ons. But ten or twenty users can equal a mod in terms of weight of opinion and establishment of reputation. If enough people scream “troll!” — no matter whether any actual trolling took place — then the bell has been rung, and even a mod’s intervention on behalf a poster he liked would have little effect other than creating sourness.
Undeserved reputations are sometimes cited by weak arguers who can’t think of anything else other than to peck out an insult that cannot be differentiated from an accusation. You’ve been called a troll a hundred times, and so it is now safe and effective to tack on a trolling accusation to an argument. Some people don’t even care that it’s an ad populum fallacy. They’ll aver that since all these people are saying you’re a troll, then you should pause to consider that they may be right.
Giraffe says that it would be “one less thing to worry about getting warned for”, but that is not the case. There would actually be a whole new thing to be warned about: namely, calling someone a troll in a context that a mod will determine is an accusation rather than an insult.
Because of the long established precedent, one unintended consequence of a rules change might be a flurry of trollery insults/accusations, especially from new users who do not feel constrained by five years of history and habit. Get ready for a whole slew of threads with heated exchanges about whether it was a nit or a pick. Seems like a lot of new work for the mods. They already have to differentiate hate speech from hateful speech, joke threads from clever rants, and wishes of death from wishes of nonexistence. That’s why I recommend leaving things in their current bewildering state (rather than creating a whole new bewildering state) or else just dropping the rules altogether.
I have to disagree. When someone is trolling, it is almost always: a) obvious; and b) a pretty narrowly defined activity. If posters were accusing others of trolling when they were doing nothing of the sort, I have no doubt others would take him/her to task for it rather than playing up to the ad populum fallacy. I do agree that what Giraffe proposed would be a bit too much of a minefield, but if we did away with the ban on using the word “troll” altogether (at least in the Pit), I don’t think it would be that detrimental to the boards overall. In fact, unless people did constantly use it inappropriately, as in your example, I can’t see that it would have much of an effect on anything at all.
), and nobody bats an eyelid. I could also say, “hey Harborwolf you crossposting goat-felc… blah blah” or “Hey Harborwolf, you filthy puller-up of lawn chairs”, and could do so within the same rules I’m accusing you of breaking. I’m not convinced there is any special characteristic of the word ‘troll’ that makes it any different.