“If people can’t say fuck in the Pit they might start mauling schoolchildren.”
Is that it?
Venkman: This board is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”?
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Venkman: Exactly.
Ray: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes …
Winston: The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!
My sig-line, catch-phrase, excuse, etc. has been the immortal words of Mark Twain - “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
How many people are actually discussing some posting that was treated differently than has occurred in the past? Now, that’s a face we can take a bite out of.[sub] Uh, out of which we can take a bite[/sub]
It’s fucking hilarious.
And it proves the point that we are pedantic, nitpicky and will debate shit into eternity.
I think it’s great and thought provoking, too. It just doesn’t help answer any questions.
In my life “old school” thinking has meant segregated schools, Jim Crow laws, being a woman in a man’s world, being considered too delicate to play full court basketball, needing to be locked in a dorm at 9:00 for my “protection,” being forbidden to wear anything other than dresses, not being able to take wood shop classes, being told to be a “nice” girl, being described by my behavior (lady) rather than my gender (woman). The list goes on and on.
I am probably the oldest woman here. I have adult grandchildren. Anyone using the Pit may call me anything they wish without my taking offense. It hasn’t always been that way, but maybe I’ve learned something here.
I think people are still here posting because they thought they could reason with you. But you are not in touch with your own feelings. Why do you want to run a business that censors people and trys to protect people who don’t want to be protected. Fighting ignorance leads to curtailing freedom? I think you mean well, Ed. But I think that you are very weak in your understanding of the human psyche.
Why is the moon round? Because it’s the moon. (Not really a good answer…)
There is a video game called (I think) Black and White that I think you might find fun and learn something from too.
As a poster who has rarely felt the need to swear and whose few Pit attempts have been lame in their politeness, and who has been sworn at on multiple occasions … allow me to second - we do not need your protection and do not want it. We are big boys and girls and can usually ignore it on our own just fine or make fun of it as we feel fits best.
It may be an extreme and excessive response by the Teeming Millions but it is a response to a silly rule that is insulting to those of us who do not swear, as a general rule, in its presumption that we need or desire protection from those whose lexicons lean to the lewd and lascivious. Even those of us who cannot get riled up by the change see that.
Again, the full form Pit was part of the formula that made this place work for us all. It was the place to flame to your heart’s content and having that place to go to vent allowed the snark elsewhere to be minimized. Those who wanted to avoid it could.
Please be a big enough Master to recognize your own mistake and reconsider this approach.
I’ve given some thought recently to Ed’s bewildering obduracy in the face of almost unanimous disagreement: how can someone so obviously smart simply not get it so badly? Ed simply doesn’t know what he’s created, and so he doesn’t know what he’s trying to control. Somebody else pointed out that he’s been absent from the daily running of the board for nigh on ten years now, and that in that time it’s long since grown from being a Cecil Adams fan site to a board with a culture which derives from the columns but has long been separate.
The trouble for Ed is that the columns that the board was originally founded upon, the example that’s constantly been held up as the ideal, and so the culture that’s grown up here is one of irreverence, of knowledge, of sarcasm, of wit, of the scathing insult and the pitchy quip, and above all of the questioning of authority and demanding of cites: if you could sum up the ethos of this place in two words, they would be “Says who?”. And now we are irreverent, knowlegeable, sarcastic, and witty. We are the masters of the scathing insult and the pithy quip, and we demand cites. As the home page itself would have it, we are the “smartest, hippest people on the planet”, or at least would like to think of ourselves as such.
But now Ed has come back to take control of his creation, to impose his authority upon it once again. And he’s bewildered when he tries to impose rules that say “You can’t use these words in here” and we reply “Oh, yeah? Says who?”. Ed, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have us as the smart, hip free-thinkers you vaunt on your front page and yet expect us to come to heel when called. “Because I say so” is not a reason we are prepared to accept, and until you can come to terms with what this board is and rethink these rules, the resentment is going to continue.
And if you can’t come to terms with what this board has become and what it is and isn’t prepared to accept, then as the man* said, “There is a world elsewhere.” I don’t want to go. Nobody wants to go. We like it here. We made it what it is here. But if your new rules are going to go against everything we’ve stood for for ten years, where we can question everything but must still do what we’re told, I’d rather leave for somewhere more honest.
*Coriolanus, as it happens.
I think the most frustrating part of Ed’s obduracy is his unwillingnes to repsond to intelligent, well thought out and well reasoned posts such as Scissorjack’s above.
I wish he would read it. I wrote it and rewrote it several times to try and and give as much insight as I could into the reasons behind all this dissent, to explain why we see these rules as running counter to the board’s culture. Unfortunately, like so many other good recent posts trying to clarify our stance, if it’s even read I suspect it will just be dismissed as so much static from another petulant malcontent.
I thought it refuted Miller’s woeful analogy perfectly.
Really? So, you think that Dopers don’t have a tendency to latch onto a subject and chew it down to a nub? Because I got, like, 5000 pages on this topic of this thread alone that say you’re wrong.
No, you’re wrong to compare them to pitbulls, that’s all.
Hoenstly, I too want to find a way to make this a more civil place, and not only in the Pit. But, Ed, you are going down a blind alley by choosing a list of BAD words. You will have posters testing the particulars of the list FOREVER. Can’t say cunt – well, then you’re clunt minus the l, or a cun*, or some damn thing.
What I think you need is a better definition of ‘jerk’, and stronger enforcement of the ‘don’t be a jerk’ rule. ‘Jerkish behavior’ should include personal insults against posters as opposed to their words, and attacks against mods for decisions they made.
I truly believe you had all the tools you need to enforce civility, you just need to enforce them more aggressively.
Possibly I’ve wasted my time.
Because…?
ivan astikov wants us to remember that pitbulls can be perfectly nice doggies. That being so, can we move on?
With all respect, this sort of statement seems disproportionate to the actual change in the rules. You’ll excuse me if I don’t reply at greater length, but I can’t think what else to say.
There probably isn’t much more to say. I’ve tried to deploy my best arguments, you’ve read and considered them, I can’t force you to agree with me, and so there’s little point in endlessly debating the same points. I genuinely hope that I and others are over-reacting to what will prove to be a minor rule change and that the recent strife will soon be forgotten. I beg leave to doubt it, but only time will tell which one of us was correct. Either way, I wish you the best in your management of the Straight Dope, and when here, as always will do my best to co-operate in its smooth running. Good luck, Ed.