First, I didn’t pick a fight.
Second, I think it’s clear from the OP that I understood what the policy is, so what you are saying here is superfluous.
Not exactly the same but similar. I had a thread that was a very minor rant - in fact I didn’t consider it a rant at all but others did. I allowed the mod to move it to The Pit (under duress) and sure enough, what I feared would happen did. It turned into a typical Pit thread with attacking other members with civility thrown out the window.
How does that pertain to the OP? When mods say “Take it to the Pit” they are saying “Welcome to Thunderdome” which is just punting so the Mods do not have to control the thread.
Yes, exactly. It’s not a solution to the problem.
And don’t get me wrong. Some times it does get so out of hand before the Mods show up that “Take it to the Pit” is the only reasonable solution. But
“You are an idiot.”
“Compared to you I’m Einstein.”
Mod: “Whoa! Take it to the Pit.”
is not the solution.
Agreed. Also, I think this kind of thing is inherently hard to moderate. A flame war? Yeah, take it to the Pit. But trolldom has advanced a lot since the early 2000s, and people have become expert at staying just this side of the line when it comes to the rules. So if “snark level x” is what triggers the mods, then the expert trolls will do their best to micro-dial it down to “snark level x - delta” (or is it epsilon?). It becomes a lot of hairsplitting.
I’m going to politely disagree with @Saint_Cad and @Aeschines then. Because the other option is (generally) a series of mod notes, and I do mean series. Because in some threads I’ve seen @puzzlegal and @What_Exit have to remind posters repeatedly to stop gouging each other, with the second note saying “Any more of this and it’s a warning.”
And right after each note, one or more posters are here in ATMB shrieking about not needing a note.
So in terms of work, being told to take it to the pit may be a ‘bit of a cop out’ as said upthread, but it’s better than the mods being more aggressive with warnings.
THAT’S the problem then. Give one friendly note if that. Longtime users should get no notes for especially egregious violations. We all know the rules. Honestly, I see some notes and wonder, “How is that not a warning?! That poster has been here longer than me and even I know that post is against the rules.”
The mod note you just drew makes that debatable, so I figured I should make sure you understood what’s not allowed. In that spirit:
What you call “light needling” and “gentle chastisement,” I call “being an antagonistic asshole.” And I should know, I moderate a whole forum for exactly that. If you want to post like that, that’s fine, just do it in the Pit. If you keep pulling that shit in other forums, you’re going to get kicked off the boards.
For context, the “duress” here was, “This thread isn’t appropriate for this forum. We can move it to the Pit if you like, otherwise we’ll have to close it.”
You’re not wrong, but again, those notes (much less warnings) all end up here. A lot. Sometimes hundreds of posts.
We are why we can’t have nice things. 
I think your observation is very reasonable, but I think there is also an assumption there that the mods need to be issuing a bunch of notes for such stuff.
I would prefer that mods ask people to put big, ugly stuff in the Pit and let them settle minor stuff between themselves.
That is true but the point still remains that by being in The Pit the thread turned into a collection of personal attacks because NOW it was a Pit thread. That was something I didn’t want which is why I originally did not put it in the Pit.
Then you should have asked to have the thread closed, instead of moved to the Pit.
I said, explicitly, that I wasn’t disagreeing with specific moderation, so it’s not debatable.
Yeah, we disagree. That’s whole point of my post, right? The moderation on this board is too heavy-handed for my taste. That’s what I’m complaining about here. And I am consistent in that I don’t report “antagonistic assholes” to the mods.
And before you or someone else says, “If you don’t like it, leave,” I will say: I have long adjusted my posting here, making it fairly anodyne and uncontroversial. Because it’s a waste of time to do anything else here because of the hair-splitting moderation (among other factors). It hurts the board and probably discourages a lot of people from posting here. I’ll continue to post here and obey the rules, but things here could be better.
You have made your point super-clear. Gold star. (And this is the kind of very mild snark I think draws mod ire. Is it allowed here in ATMB?)
But you are not really addressing the problem stated by the poster, that putting it in the Pit would create a situation that he wanted to avoid.
Put another way (and I do not know anything about the post in question) are certain types of posts forced into the Pit where they are subsequently ruined or poster is subjected to behavior that they do not want to experience because it’s, you know, the Pit? I.e., are certain types of posts or responses in posts made functionally impossible because of this rule? Absolutely.
Then that type of post (whatever it was) becomes in effect banned to those who do not want to deal with the environment of the Pit.
A general observation:
The mods participating here thus far are not addressing whether the rules being questioned are a good idea in the first place.
If you choose to participate in this thread (and you were not required to do so), I think that addressing the issue would be primary. Simply reiterating what the rules are and saying, “Follow them–or else!” seems like little more than bullying behavior to me.
Do we think the rule against being a gigantic dick to people is a good rule?
Yeah, I think it’s pretty solid.
I agree. But that’s a dodge. A solid dodge.
Is that not the rule under discussion? You want what you posted to be considered acceptable in that forum. That’s the rule that would have to be changed for that to be possible.
I don’t even know why the Pit is in this thread. We have that forum specifically for posters like you, so you can have exactly the sort of discussion you’re arguing for here.
What’s the problem?
The Pit is one of the coolest forums on the board, and what does the second part even mean?
I didn’t want to get into specifics, but…
Someone massively shit in my thread and made a fairly substantial accusation against me, then self-reported himself to mods more or less trying to get me in trouble. I would prefer just to handle that kind of thing myself without reporting it to the mods. I don’t think I was a “massive dick” to the poster in question, and I really wasn’t even angry or anything.
I haven’t started a Pit thread since 2008 because it sucks and doesn’t solve the kind of problems you are saying it does.
Since you asked…
I like this board well enough. It has its uses. But is it some great venue for free discussion? I don’t think so. I don’t think moderation here is horrible. I think it tends to be as consistent based on the rules in effect as one could expect from humans. But the rules are pretty strict, so the moderation ends up too heavy-handed for my taste and has the effect of making this a fairly prissy, humorless, and high-risk place to post. It’s pretty square, all told.