Posters on this thread sure aren’t acting like it’s no catastrophe, which gets to the heart of my objections to the mainstream opinion here. If these changes truly are as destructive/unenforceable/Bull. Shit./Bull. Fucking. Shit./obtuse/arbitrary/etc as everyone in this thread makes them out to be, then that should be apparent in short order here and easily verifiable. After a couple of months you all should have a mountain of threads that point out the deficiencies of the new rule, right? And you can present your case then, with the overwhelming evidence on your side. Right now it is a mountain of complaints with a molehill of evidence.
In this particular situation, I would wager that the poster gets a pass in this particular case because he lays out several lines of text making his case, and at the end in summation calls the poster an ignorant asshole, as opposed to a post simply saying “FUCK YOU YOU IGNORANT ASSHOLE!!eleven”. This would allow the post to slide under the “creative insults” clause.
Bear i mind here, I am not defending that the rule is poorly written, difficult to enforce, etc. All I am saying is that it is clear to me what he is trying to accomplish with the rule and I feel that people in this thread are deliberately being obtuse/pedantic to avoid thinking for a few minutes to understand the spirit of the law.
Nope, still don’t see the problem. It only took me a few minutes to peruse the link, read the relevant posts and think “if I were Ed Zotti would this post bother me?” to come up with a satisfactory conclusion.
I’m lazy, and since you are the one making the claim I will put the burden on you. Show me what you feel are the unclear patterns and I will do my best to elucidate them.
Uhhh, “no spill blood?” I got nothing, the whole thing is so fucking stupid it makes my head hurt. I’d have an easier time trying to get telepathic with a geoduck on acid than to try and parse out Ed’s mincing, cockteasing, “nope, that’s not it (tee hee) nope, colder, warmer, nope, colder, oooh, red hot, nope, colder” routine. For fuck’s sake, come out and say what the fuck you mean. If you can’t spell it out in clear, iterative English sentences then perhaps it’s time to slip a Midol into your afternoon cuppa and reflect on the possibility that perhaps NOTHING NEEDS TO BE FIXED. Aside from perhaps a tendency toward easy butthurtedness amongst some of the staff, maybe.
Because nobody wants to be the guy who brought a cunt to a knife fight, after all. Or something. :smack:
Sure, to a point. If someone is doing nothing but being abusive though, they’d have gotten tossed out and rightfully so.
There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to tell someone to fuck off, if it’s deserved. And I’m a big boy. I can handle when told to fuck off.
Hobo, it’s not just that it’s unclear. It’s that it isn’t needed. If it really only affects .01% of threads, then why not just deal with those threads? Why cause people to walk on eggshells in 100% of threads?
Actually no, there’s already a mountain of evidence which you admit that you’re too lazy to go look for. For those of us who have been posting in the Pit and seeing these inconsistencies for months, there’s already LOTS of evidence.
Your point would be more credible if you were looking at the evidence and telling us why it didn’t apply. But you’re making a claim without even seeing the evidence simply because you’re too lazy to look at it.
Actually, you’re the one making the claim that we should wait and see since it will all become clear in time. But I’ll play for a bit. Here’s one:
That last part was directed at Q.E.D. (a member of the Dope)
which is deemed:
In contrast, this one:
That last part was directed at EJsGirl (a member of the Dope)
gets this response:
This is just the first example I found. How do you distinguish between those two?
This has been addressed before. The vast majority of laws in society are directed at an extremely small percentage of behavior. I don’t see anything in Ed’s posts that requires eggshell walking. I think you are projecting here.
Than it should be child’s play for you to find them for me. I’m not searching for evidence for the claims that YOU are making (ie that this rule has been enforced ambiguously). That is your job.
I actually already addressed this in my previous post. To re-summarize: it looks to me like you are allowed to insult other posters as long as you present your evidence first. If you just say “Way to selectively quote there, cunt.” looks like you get a warning, but if you list a set of facts that (you feel) demonstrate your claim, and then at the end of all that say “Way to selectively quote there, cunt.” then that is OK. In other words, think for a few minutes, present an articulate dissection of their argument(s), THEN call them a cunt. Why is this a bad thing again?
Frankly, I’m not interested in convincing you of anything. You came across as not understanding why other people are upset about what is happening. You have now made it clear that you don’t really care about what is happening. You don’t know what has been happening in the Pit for the past several months and you don’t care to know. You’re just here to poke at other people and try to force them to convince you of their point. You don’t have a point; you’re just trying to denigrate other people’s points.
ETA: And here’s why I like people to have the full range of emotion in the Pit. It’s so that posters who are admittedly lazy in their arguments can be mocked to the full extent so that they either increase the level of their discourse or they get out. For me, that dynamic serves as a self-policing which increases the level of play in the Pit, not decreases it.
You didn’t even click on the quote to see it in context, did you? The articulate dissection of the arguments came after the insult. Here’s the post:
*quote after the semi-colon was deleted for brevity
Are you really saying that the order of the insult counts when both had arguments in them?
Oh… I thought koufax was talking about the rapist all this time. I was so confused.
In fact, this whole thing confuses me. I can have as filthy a mouth as I like as long as it’s not directed to anyone registered on this board? But I can’t retaliate when someone’s being a condescending, closeminded prig by verbally flattening them (not, necessarily, that I could) whether I use bad words or not?
If the title of someone’s PIT is “Sonny Perdue Is An Idiot” and the body is filled with exuberant and pithy profanity, or if the title of someone’s post is “[Poster name here] Is An Idiot” and then goes on to list his idiocy (beginning with, but not limited to, the debating style and comprehension of a turd)… which post is worse, and who actually is the poster in danger of offending?
And how does that fit in with revenue streams? Because I doubt sponsors are going to care whether it’s a Doper that’s being called a filthy flea-ridden whore or Sonny Perdue. Unless they’re from Georgia.
I also wanted to ask people not to assume that new readers don’t want to have access to the Pit and thus it could be password protected. I think that’s a disservice to new readers, like me, who enjoy it the most.
I came here to read some of the global warming stuff in the GD section. I found the Pit. It makes me happy. I know what I want to read and what I will pass over. How that content is expressed is not as important to me as that it IS expressed. I think that’s what you’re in danger of losing, here.
Am I the only one who is getting pissed about what appears to be a mod gag order? Just dipping into a few other threads I see a lot of mod activity. In here, nothing. A couple of responses from Ed that cherry picked a few questions. One or two response from another admin.
Ed, I doubt you are reading this but I hope you understand. In the past there has been disagreement, confusion, irratation about some of your actions and from your staff. The anger is not because of those actions. The anger comes from the go fuck yourself attitude directed from the administration towards the posters. Right now you are telling us that these are the rules and we can go fuck ourselves if we don’t like it. Instead how about defending your position. Have your staff comment on it. There is overwhelming opposition to this move. More than I have seen about anything else. If you feel so strongly about it, answer all the questions. I don’t want to have to rely on Hobostew’s ability to read your mind.
Because it’s not listed in the sticky at the top of the Pit that says “Rules”? Asshole?
I don’t really mean you’re an asshole, but I couldn’t resist. Honestly, it makes no sense to me that calling you an asshole is okay if I do it after I answer your question.
I’m sorry I called you an asshole.
But…
Why do people keep missing the point? It’s not just about having expression stifled, it’s also about not knowing how or when it will be.
Uh huh. In other words: “I’m not going to bother to back up my arguments. I’m just going to say that they are there and if you are too lazy to do my legwork for me, then you don’t have a point.” Can’t argue with that logic.
Actually I just read the text as you presented it. I honestly didn’t think to check until you just pointed it out, because the text you presented made it seem like the case at hand. Upon reading the thread, my guess is that Ed saw it as I saw just your quoted text - he read the cunt line without really noticing the stuff afterwards. Anyways at this point Loach is right. Unless he comes clean here, it’s just speculation. All I can say is that it is not the end of the world and that we can just keep tabs on the situation over the next couple months and everything will be fine. This 18+ page of flipout is totally unnecessary.
What if a large number of dopers just started telling Ed to go fornicate with some sharp objects (except using the Forbidden Words) and thereby force him to ban them all en masse. I’m not advocating this, just wondering whether it would make an impression.
So you think that Ed cares as little as you about enforcing the rules correctly in context that he’s so lazy that he stops reading after the first sentence in the post when the rest of the post is clearly in view?
I hope not.
You’re right. It’s just speculation, and the speculation of the majority of people in this 18+ page thread is valid. And since many of the people in this thread have looked at the evidence that, due to your laziness, you have not seen, their speculation is based on evidence while yours is not.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying that everything will be fine. For some people, their message board participation will change. That’s fine for some, not fine for others. What you’re calling a “flipout” is people expressing their frustration over the situation. If you don’t understand the frustration because you can’t be bothered to understand, why have you so actively participated?
We are going to have to ask Ed to give us the final verdict. I was asked for my interpretation and I gave it.
And yet you still seem unable to provide anything to support this overwhelming tide of evidence. Surely with the combined weight of “the majority of people in this 18+ page thread” you should be able to come up with a tiny shred of linkage to support your claims of doom and gloom right? Oh right. It is MY job to find evidence to support YOUR claims. I forgot.
I mean that the board will continue to survive as it has in the past. Maybe with some tweaks here and there, but in general if you took a snapshot of the board circa 2004 it would look a lot like the board circa 2009.
Usually when a subject comes up for debate on SDMB, by the time I arrive my POV has been expressed prior to me, so all I could add is a useless “Me Too” post. In this case, I feel like the vast majority of posters in this thread are overreacting, and I don’t see the point I am trying to make already articulated yet, so here we are.
Reminds me of a MUD I play on and off. Everyone despises the control freak owner, and there’s always talk of telling him to get fucked en mass, but nothing ever comes of it. Same deal here. If someone organised it, it would work, but message board posters are little better than cats
