Geez, you barely register for reported posts here. You’re more likely to be helpful. You might need to up your game.
Maybe we can start a GoFundMe for you here? Campaign money always comes in handy, you know.
If you’d like, I can start reporting a bunch of your posts.
Awwww… 
I can be a real asshole in the grammar threads. Maybe start there.
I, too, am curious about who and what gets reported most. Maybe somebody with access could post some general stats (leave the names off).
I wouldn’t mind seeing general stats on which forums generate the most banninations.
That would be cool, tho I doubt that it will happen. Maybe it would prove my theory that a lot of people get banned just because they annoy so many people over a long period of time. No left or right, just annoying to all.
You were a mod back in the day, what’s your guess? I don’t normally read it but I wonder if Politics is a front runner.
Back when I was a mod we used Roman numerals when keeping stats, and we dealt with far fewer forums.
Attack. v. tr.
- […]
- To criticize strongly or in a hostile manner.
The rule:
Attack the post, not the poster. We’re here for fun, not harming others. Personalizing posts is usually a bad idea. Comment on the content of the commentary and not on the person making it.
Your post:
No, you just don’t have a system of morality, you have a bunch of unexamined responses to things you find unpleasant. You are why we need laws, and why it’s so vital to apply them correctly despite the fact that it gives you a sad.
“You are why we need laws”, read literally, is a strong/hostile criticism of a person. It’s comparable to “you are what is wrong with humanity”. One might see ambiguity in whether you intended to attack him personally, or whether you meant “your approach or way of thinking necessitates laws”. But then you write, “gives you a sad”. That indicates that you are infantilizing iiandyiiii, and think of yourself as an adult mocking a child. It shows a lack of respect, which rules out any benefit of the doubt towards the previous attack resulting from an error of composition.
And in this topic, you further reinforced my suspicions by writing,
I can only wonder why you think an ATMB appeal of a warning for making a personal attack against a liberal in a politically charged topic is the proper venue to joke about wanting liberal tears. Is that part of your motivation for posting - to make liberals cry?
I disagree with this, however. There is a huge distinction between lacking a coherent system of morality, and lacking morality itself.
~Max
So if you disagree that it’s an attack on the poster, then explain how telling a poster that they have no system of morality is somehow an attack on their posts and not the poster themself, as in the rule you quoted.
Whether a system of morality is equivalent to having morality is a completely off-topic tangent completely irrelevant to ATMB and I’m not going to debate you about it here.
It’s not an attack of any sort, it’s an observation.
You are acting as if those things are mutually exclusive. They are not. You can attack someone through making an insulting observation. If you can’t understand that, I’m not sure how you are going to avoid future warnings.
The ol’ “it’s not my fault that you’re insulted by my completely objective description of your personal failings.”
Keeping your observations about other posters out of GD in the future will prove helpful then. It will avoid additional warnings for one thing.
iiandyiiii, by posting that certain actions were morally reprehensible, left his system of morals open to legitimate attack (civil criticisms).
Steophan jumped at the opportunity. But he equivocated on the word system.
“No, you just don’t have a system of morality, you have a bunch of unexamined responses to things you find unpleasant.”
This sentence in isolation does not strike me as hostile or particularly strong. The meaning here is, your system of morality is incoherent. That is an attack on the posts, specifically the system of morality relied upon (and thus exposed) by iiandyiiii in #480 and #482.
To interpret it as accusing iiandyiiii of being literally without a sense or system of morality is, in my opinion, a misreading that ignores the deliberate emphesis on “system” and the latter clause. Apparently that is not your interpretation either. But that interpretation, if it carried the day, makes that part of Steophan’s post out as a personal attack.
~Max
The meaning is “you don’t have a system of morality,” because that is precisely what was said.
The following clause then describes what iiyandiii has instead: a patchwork of kneejerk emotional reactions to what happens in the world.
That’s why “[he is] why we need laws,” because a moral person is capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong. The law protects us from amoral people, who only act according to what they personally like and dislike.
ETA: if we want to get super pedantic (lord knows I’m always up for it), the meaning of the sentence would have been completely different if one word and one emphasis had been moved.
“No, you don’t just have a system of morality, you have a bunch of unexamined responses to things you find unpleasant.”
This is not an accusation of being amoral, but is a legit critique of the worldview that informs an incoherent system.
@Max_S, you’re bending over backwards to make an explanation for Steophan that they themselves haven’t made. Steophan doubled- and tripled-down on their statement. They’re sticking to their guns here, that an insult isn’t an attack if it’s modified by weasel words, like “this is an observation”.
And morality is inherently a system, that is Ethics 101. It’s like trying to say that if you accuse someone of having a brain deficiency you’re not insulting their intelligence. “Morality” itself is simply shorthand for “system of morality”.
I didn’t want to get into that in ATMB but you’re like a dog with a bone about that.
I agree. Morality derives from principles that are applied consistently. @Steophan appears to be accusing @iiandyiiii of inconsistency, of making ad hoc responses without careful consideration of the underlying principles at stake. Such criticism would surely be within the rules, if it were substantiated with cites of @iiandyiiii’s posts that allegedly exhibit inconsistent application of moral principles. But it wasn’t. It was framed as an unsubstantiated attack on @iiandyiiii’s character.
In my opinion the superficial form of words should not be crucial in making the distinction about attacking the post not the poster. There’s a continuum of meaning between (say):
- Your posts are stupid
- Only a stupid person would make posts like that
- You are stupid
What’s important is whether the attack is substantied by discussion & critique of the content of posts. The attack here was
you just don’t have a system of morality
Although that form of words technically directed at the poster, in my opinion it should be tolerated provided it is then substantiated by cites and critique of the content of posts. In other words, whether it ultimately focuses on the issues and adds something to the debate. In this case, this did not happened, it was nothing more than an unsubstantiated attack on character.
I am not a mod, but I took the “childish” as the worst of the multiple personal attacks in the post in question. Not that any of them were egregious (those are pretty mild personal attacks IMO) - just seemed to me to be clearly across the line, akin to what I thought were mild attacks that I’ve been moderated for in the past.
You have a point there, that was an unnecessarily judgemental thing to say. I apologise for calling you childish.
Years ago I was a mod on another messageboard, and the “But it’s the TROOF!” protests of admonishments were my least favorite. The rules there–and here–don’t say, “No insults unless they’re true.” The rule ended after two words, as it does here. Claiming that the insults are backed by evidence, or are observations, or anything like that, is completely missing the point.
It’s just happened again here, to a different poster, for basically the same thing - observing that a poster can’t separate their emotions from facts.
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-rittenhouse-trial/953798/1563
This terrible moderation needs to stop, especially when it’s being used to shut down a point of view based on facts and support one based on ignorance and falsehood. This board is supposed to be about fighting those things, so if posters aren’t allowed to call others out on these things the mods need to clamp down hard on the lies and emotional misinterpretations of facts.