Wait… so “Go to hell, you dripping vagina face” is NOT ok, but “Go to hell, Giraffe, you diseased smegma-encrusted urethra.” IS ok and it’s supposed to obvious???
Terrible, ridiculous rules.
Some of this is starting to remind me of the absurdities of FCC regulations over the years. You can say “anal sex” and you can say “bent over a sink,” but “anal sex bent over a sink” is gonna cost you $500,000.
Oh good, invisible hoops!
There’s an obvious growth strategy if I ever saw one.
My confusion as well. I suspect the child of some upper management at Creative Loafing read the word “assgoblin” or something like it in the pit, and now mommy or daddy is pressuring Ed.
After a full decade of us calling each other cuntwaffles and goatfelchers in the pit, I doubt all of a sudden this stuff is suddenly bothering the admins.
Wow, Arnold, less than an hour into the new Pit rules, and you’re making me nostalgic for the Pit.
Back in the day I would have pitted the ever-loving shit out of you. Back when there was a Pit.
I don’t post in the pit, so I can’t complain about what rules you set up for it.
I do make my living by manipulating words, and I care deeply about words. That’s one of the reasons I come here. Words count for more here than at more sites.
So I have to tell you that the following rule is insanity.
You make think you understood what you meant by this when you wrote it. Nobody else does. Nobody else can. It’s self-contradictory and against all human nature. It begs to be flouted.
I get your intent. Doesn’t matter. By setting it out this way you’ve set yourself up for failure. Didn’t we just have a thread about having one’s cake and eating it too? Once you’re bogged down in defining thoughtcrime nothing else matters.
So, I guess the real question with regard to the Abuse / Insult rule is “How much do the Members here trust the Staffers to rule in a fair, reasonable, and consistent manner?”
A follow-up question might be “How possible will it be, under the new rules, for Staffers to rule in a fair, reasonable, and consistent manner?”
I don’t know the answers to those questions. I do know that I wouldn’t want the headache of sorting it all out.
A few comments:
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First of all, relax. I read a lot of Pit threads. Posts I’d consider abusive are pretty rare.
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You’re not going to get banned because you called somebody a cunt. We’ll just tell you to stop. If you keep it up after you’ve been told to stop, then you could have problems, although in the early going we’re not likely to come down on anyone too hard.
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We understand this is a new rule and will take a while to get used to. We hope people will appreciate the intent - we’re trying to establish some minimal level of civility in the Pit. If you think this is impossible, we respectfully disagree. If you think the Pit won’t be any fun any more, I guess we’ll see.
The question was raised: Was I told to do this? No. I am trying to put things on a more businesslike basis. To the extent people think we’re running a biker bar here … well, let’s just say where I can see it would complicate my life. So I’d rather deal with the issue now rather than later.
So why change the rules to something that would require a 700-page document at all? WTF was wrong with the Pit before? Were posters ODing on sleeping pills because somebody called them an “asshole”? I don’t get it. The Pit was, first and foremost, entertaining for a lot of us. Now you’ve basically done the equivalent of telling posters (adult posters mostly, I should add) that we can no longer see R-rated movies and must content ourselves with PG-13 and below. Do you not understand why people think this is crap? Obviously you don’t, with your condescending “over-reaction” line.
I think #6 is supposed to be abusive as well, and the “2-5” was a typo. If not, then yes that’s pretty weird.
My apologies for the typo. I meant 2 through 6. Relax.
I just assumed it was as a result of the Puritanical fear of the word vagina.
I mostly lurk, because typically somebody else has said what I want to say, faster and better than I could. But except for that year that I was flat broke, as in depending on friends to feed me, I have paid my membership fee, because I wanted to be a Doper. Every day when I sign on the first place I go is the Pit. Only after seeking out the most over the top and outrageous insults do I then move on to forums with more social value. The Pit was a special treat, a place I could count on to have some reason to laugh during uniformly bleak days. If its going to be castrated, I fail to see any reason to continue to support this board…because I think we are all really clear that the whole fighting ignorance thing is futile. A noble pursuit, but about as effective as tilting at windmills.
Than why is a rule necessary at all? IME, legislation for the rare exception almost always is idiotic.
Can we speak in hypotheticals? How about:
“If it wasn’t against the new Pit rules, I would call you a no good motherfucker. But since it is, I won’t!”
Bingo!
Or the Hays Code that infantilized the movies for 30 years from the mid-30s.
“Male and female posters should always have one leg on the floor when posting from a bed.” 
You can go to Hell without dying. Just take I-40 westbound from Nashvile for about 2 hours. Bang! You’re in Memphis.
You misspelled “Fresno”.
Shhh… that’s hate-speech now!
I’d like to state publicly that I support Memphisensians and think that their oppression by The Man should end!
There was nothing wrong with the Pit. Now there is. I hardly ever post there, but do read it for the entertainment value of which there will now be zero. You haven’t fixed anything Ed, it seems you’ve smashed it to bits. 