Right, and if poking someone in the eye with a stick amuses you, it’s OK because the only consideration is whether you are personally amused.
I already stated that I won’t do any links. If I did, what would happen is that an argument over whether that was indeed a type 2 pile-on would ensue, thus moving further away from the larger question that I wished to deal with, with respect to board policy.
And again, I don’t expect the policy to change, at least right away. Even the administration has itself been the target of these pile-ons. My hope is that, over time, people who value this board for its high intellectual standards will recognize how parochial that sort of bullying really is. It’s just a few knuckleheads having fun at someone else’s expense, and dragging the whole board down a few notches in the process. It should become clear, in time, that these are nothing but trolls.
Thanks for the well wishes.
Essentially… yes, though I do my best to adhere to the standards of this board and invite anyone who feels I’ve crossed a line to use to report button.
We are being metaphorical re the stick and eye, I assume.
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Pile-on posts as lawnchair posts - I don’t think they are quite the same. In a lawnchair post, you’re posting that you think a thread is going to go badly, and you are going to enjoy watching the trainwreck, and in doing so, you create somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. A pile-on post is basically a “me too” post - you’re not contributing greatly to the boards, but you are posting your opinion, which I would hate to discourage, even if it is an opinion that’s basically not worth posting. I wouldn’t want to be the person to try to decide which opinions are worth posting and which ones aren’t.
Pile-on posts as trolling - again, posting “me too” pile-on posts are posting your own opinion, not just being argumentative to try to incite a reaction in other posters, so I don’t think I would call them trolling. It sounds like you’re ascribing motives to “me too” pile-on posts that I don’t think you can, Lib. You don’t know what anybody’s motives are in pile-on posting - it might seem obvious to you, but you never can know with certainty.
Understandable, and neither do I, which is why I’ve never applied to be a mod. But as I said before, it isn’t the expression of the opinions that bothers me; it is the interpretation of the opinions as statistically significant weight toward a conclusion that something is wrong with the person on the bottom of the pile — a sort of mindset that says, “Well, if all these people are complaining, then it must be true.” The problem, aside from being an outright logical fallacy, is that many pile-ons are nothing more than three or four people posting repeatedly and loudly in tandem, giving the appearance of some grand consensus where none exists.
But as Giraffe (I believe it was… maybe it was Dex) said elsewhere, just because a post pushes your buttons doesn’t mean the poster is a troll. The mods have to make subjective decisions all the time about whether buttons are being pushed. And I think it’s fair to say that sometimes, even if not all the time, the fourth person to join a member-kicking contest does so just because it is an opportunity to rile the other person up, hoping that she will “break”. If that isn’t pushing buttons, then what is?