This relieves me. Thank you for thinking twice about it.
I have a question: can I post about thoughts or ideas I have written in places other than on the SDMB? Say, for example, I have commented elsewhere on skydiving and how it is bad to forget to pull your rip-cord. Can I repeat that thought here? Or say that maybe I had once posted on some other message board a joke I thought of and wanted to share it with the Dope.
For example: “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he wanted to take a walk.” Can I repeat this thought on the SDMB? Or does everything I post here have to have never been mentioned anywhere else? Do any ideas I post here have to have made their “World Premiere” on the SDMB? Or can ideas from outside the SDMB be talked about here.
For the sake of argument, in this hypothetical posting no mention would be made of the fact that my idea had been thought of and “published” before I posted it on the Dope. Although I am also curious to know if it would be OK to post something like: “Here’s a joke I once thought of and posted on another message board…”
Thanks for your help on this.
Oh… PS: Can unfunny jokes be posted on the SDMB, or is that forbidden?
I assure you this isn’t the case. We did have instances of staff being called cunts and told to fuck off. None of them made any demands or even suggestions for new rules in that regard; I just decided I didn’t want them being subjected to such abuse. I could have accomplished that simply by requiring that all comments regarding SDMB administration go in ATMB, which is what I did. However, as I thought about it, I realized I didn’t want ordinary users to be subjected to extreme language either. Let’s just say I’m old school in that way. Only a handful of terms are off-limits; I read threads that are crammed full of colorful invective and find nothing to object to. I think most Pit regulars will agree little has changed. That being so, can we move on?
This doesn’t seem related to this topic, and we already discussed it at length in another thread. If you’ve got other questions I’m happy to field them.
Actually, I’m requesting that someone other than you field the question because you don’t seem to want to deal with it fairly. Recuse yourself, please, as it is seems clear to me that this has become a personal vendetta for you. Will some other moderator or administrator answer my question, please?
PS: Marley23 has not, as of yet, directly answered these questions.
You’ll have to excuse me; there must be some discussion I missed. What are you talking about? You can’t post copyrighted material beyond that allowed by fair use, and you can’t post spam. Does that address your concern? If not, please explain.
But the ordinary users don’t mind being subjected to that language. Which is why you’re catching so much flack over this. You’re making a change that’s ostensibly for our protection, but no one wants your protection, much less asked for it. Moreover, you’re not offering to help us out on this issue, you’re forcing us to accept your “help,” with the implicit threat of sanctions if we refuse it. Surely, you can see how this attitude is extremely condescending to the majority of the posters here, even if they never are themselves involved in the sort of exchanges you’re trying to prevent? You’re not giving people the service they want, you’re giving people the service you think they should want. You’ve got to see why this is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Is it really worth all this hassle just to give someone something they don’t want in the first place?
Not likely, no. Setting aside the fact that most dopers will latch on to a debate like a pit bull onto the face of a five year old, if you do meet your goal of attracting fresh blood to the boards, you’re going to have this conversation over and over again on a regular basis, as you have to constantly re-explain the rationalizations behind this rule to every new face that comes along and wants to know why they got a warning for telling someone on the boards to fuck off, while another poster got a pass for saying Ann Coulter should have a rabid badger inserted into her cunt via pneumatic jack-hammer. If you’re going to forge on ahead with this, expect to see a new ATMB thread about it on a monthly basis. At the very least.
Fair enough. You may remember that I have suggested cutting on abusive language at some point. I have no objection to it. It was fun while it lasted (and only because it was allowed) and I won’t terribly miss it.
If anything, I will only say that it makes little sense to stop at that and not go all the way and simply ban abusive language, no matter who it is directed at.
And I hope you are successful with the SDMB. However, you’ll do it without me. I came here to unwind and escape a life full of administrivia, and for a place to say exactly what I think. The new rules have killed that and it’s clear there will be no turning back. So no hard feelings, but I can see it won’t work out for me here. Good luck and goodbye.
Thank you all for a decade of entertainment. It’s been a pleasure and an education. If your ears get warm, that will just be me raising a toast to you.
Everybody else who participated in your thread dealt with it fairly. The consensus is that your joke isn’t funny. Move on.
Miller-I love you.
Ed, this, unlike past issues, isn’t just going to blow over. Surely you can see that? Don’t you care at all about what anyone is saying? Anything at all about feedback from posters?
SDMB, I have three words for you:
“Ja, Mein Fuhrer!”
No, wait, wrong three words. Here are the ones I was looking for:
“Goodbye, dear friend.”
or maybe
“I’ll miss you.”
or maybe
“Hard to leave…”
To elaborate…
I find that a little hard to stomach coming from the leader of a community I’ve spent my entire adult life with. A partner of 5+ years does not say, “If you want to continue seeing me, that’s great. If you find some other person more congenial, that’s OK too. I hope you have an enjoyable experience with whoever you wind up with.” Do 5+ years and over 10,000 posts mean nothing to you? They mean a lot to me.
I guess in the end I just find myself asking: Why did I ever trust this place? Why did I invest so much in it? Why did I think this was a good place to grow up?
And then I remember how it used to be. When I registered, we had TMI threads a dozen pages long, where we could vent about things we’d never ask anyone to stomach hearing about IRL. We had beautiful rants full of colorful invective. We had people speaking their minds on everything under the sun and a community policing itself, perpetuating its own values and morals and passing them on to the next line of posters.
And through thick and thin, the community has been here for me. It was Dopers who got me through my tumultuous last year of high school. It was Dopers who talked me through the adventures and misadventures of the summer after. It was Dopers who wished me luck as I went off to college and did their best to make me feel at home in a different state among all new people. It was Dopers who helped me make sense of the world when I was a confused young lad getting booted from the Air Force and going home to chaos. It was a Doper who helped me get on my feet when I had an empty fridge and was running out of ramen with no money for rent.
And now I see the administration shooing everyone away with a big ol’ broom. Well, I won’t have it.
But this hurts me more than it hurts you.
Ed, I want a response to this post. I think mhendo has a very good point and want to what you have to say about it.
Ed, allow me to make a suggestion. (I am not sure this is the right thread for it, but it seems to be the one you are following and responding).
As a sort of reset on this whole issue, and assuming you still think of yourself in a fine tuning mode and not just in damage control, I propose that:
-
You start a questions-only thread with the following rules: Only asking questions, no griping, no voluntary answers. Just a place for people to ask the questions they consider remain unanswered. Some might try to sneak in a gripe ending in a question mark or volunteer an answer. Ignore the first time, mod the second. Allowing +1 of asked questions optional. I think it would be a good way to gauge the urgency of the questions.
-
Start a locked thread (where only you will post) with a FAQ. Here you would digest the questions on the first thread and post the official answer under the question itself.
No fighting, no talking back. If somebody is unsatisfied with your answer they can either make a different question or follow your advice and beat it.
No ignoring asked questions. If the question is asked and not flat-out stupid (such as “why do you hate us?”), then you should address it.
Seeing the questions acknowledged and responded might go a long way to placate the mood of the contras, which would then have the necessary info to either adapt or leave. Also, not depending on the answers of volunteer supporters would make your position clearer and not muddied by the well intended but misguided Edfan.
Maybe, edit the posts on the questions thread to somehow indicate that you consider the question answered. This would give people some indication of what has gone on and not repeat questions.
Again, that you think of a question as answered doesn’t mean that the person asking will be satisfied with your answer, but at least that person will know that you are not [un]intentionally ignoring them.
I realize that **Ed **probably doesn’t have the time to make following Sapo’s suggestion easy, but I sure wish he’d try. It would make me very happy. Bravo, Sapo.
I keep reading the comments over and over about how the Boards used to be good and everyone had free reign to spew colorful invective. How the Boards, in their freedom, have allowed expression and problem solving and a release from the strains of real life.
What I don’t see are the actual effects on anyone. If people have been warned or banned because of the change in policy, I haven’t heard about it, but then I don’t go looking for it. The most vehement posters here have not, to my reading, pointed out “Look at this sanction against here where they got warned but look here in the past where it’s been okay.”
So many seem to be saying “I’ve had such fun and now it’s all over” but no actual sanctions have been applied to their posting. All this fuss seems to be over hypotheticals. I suggest you post as usual and if a mod action occurs that you disagree with then you have something concrete on which to have a discussion. If you don’t agree then you have a valid reason to leave. Don’t leave because you might get warned or banned; leave when you do and you feel it’s undeserved.
Here I’d like to point out that, while it may arguably be more pronounced in dogs that were specifically bred for it, such extreme behaviour is possible in any kind of dog. Sudden unprovoked aggression is usually a result of irresponsible ownership. A result of people not noticing the signs in their dogs. Every owner should be aware of the latent instincts that exist in all animals.
Every dog needs an opportunity to live out their impulse for hunting and fighting. If you’re oblivious to their needs, and provide no way to vent these instincts, and instead try to keep them suppressed against their nature, all this unchannelled aggression will burst out one day. For no apparent reason they suddenly snap and get angry at innocent targets. Seemingly without provocation, they go into a frenzy and lock their jaws into the next best worthy enemy. If the targets struggle and respond as though in a fight about the dog’s hierarchy in their pack, that’ll only make the fight more satisfying, even if it means the dog may die. Dogs are funny that way.
That was either a remarkably insightful analogy or a really really useless post in the context of this thread. I have no idea which.
It’s a strawman.