Far be it from me to start a “Why was UnCivil banned” thread, but it does seem like the rules of the Pit are blurring. In this thread, originally started in MPSIMS, Uncivil presented a stupid, goofball OP that was a) not funny and b) stupider than a sack of hair.
Predicting a trainwreck for some reason, Czarcasm moved the thread to the Pit where then Uncivil made a joke about it being in GD. At this point my head was spinning. It was turning into a giant cock up, where everyone was confused about whether it was parody, commentary on society or a stupid ass joke.
I, in fact commented in the thread that it was stupid, and if it was a joke thread it was probably against the rules. I assumed it would soon be closed.
What I didn’t assume is that Uncivil would be BANNED for a joke thread, particularly since he STARTED the thread in MPSIMS where Jokes are, as far as I know, allowed. It was a MOD who moved it to the pit, and it seems that Lynn should have taken it up with Czarcasm.
Also, Lynn accused Uncivil of trolling, which seems…odd.
So I guess my question is, if a mod makes a mistake in moving a thread, are we, the OP still responsible for its location?
I just read the other thread and I am curious, too.
The best I can come up with is…Czarcasm, never explicitly said, “I am moving this to the Pit.” He simply said, “Your heavy sarcasm, coupled with the pretty much guaranteed responses that will follow, make me think that The BBQ Pit is the place for this thread.” Because Czarcasm came along and found himself a possible pile-on, right where it didn’t belong.
I probably never would have noticed that it was moved, and it’s possible that Lynn didn’t either. The thread never exploded into a huge flame, instead remaining mundane and pointless. So Lynn came along and found herself a joke thread, right where it didn’t belong.
The thing is, it may have been a joke thread, but was a joke thread at the expense of the readers.
The OP did not necessarily literally believe the words of the post, nor the opposite, that gun control advocates may as well hold that extreme opinion.
No, the OP confessed to writing the post in order to get us to believe that he thought gun control advocates held positions nearly as silly as the ones in the OP, and thus provoke angry counter-argument. And we all know what that is.
But he said several times it was a joke thread (not a trolling thread, although it seems he didn’t quite know the difference)
The point is that if sarcasm hadn’t moved it from MPSIMS in the first place, would it still be around? Or are joke threads not allowed anywhere? AND, is a poorly conceived joke thread a bannable offense?
The OP did no such thing, so if you can point to me where you think he did, that would be helpful. At not point in the thread did he try to make anyone think anything of the sort…in fact, he said several times that the entire thread was meant in fun (and being that it was posted in MPSIMS and not GD, I believe this claim bears out) and that he is “not having a go at anyone, from either side of the gun debate.”
Calling him a troll for starting a fluffy thread, which no one seemed to take seriously except for the two moderators who stuck their noses in and riled things up, is ridiculous.
Perhaps he had some prior history of which we are not aware.
But I think it may have been a misunderstanding.
When he wrote, “Mods, any chance this could be moved back to MPSIMS please? As you can see, it’s turned into Monty Python references and Vogon poetry, and not flames as feared.” I took that he meant "flames as feared by Czarcasm. I think Lynn may have misread that as “flames as planned”.
Absent some prior history or a misunderstanding of that sentence. I don’t see a bannable offense (but then I don’t make the rules.)
But it isn’t. It’s a clear admission of jokery. He started a joke thread, without advocating a particular point of view one way or the other. Hence the quote, “It has nothing whatsoever to do with what I really think.”
It reads to me like a comedy of errors. Czarcasm mistakenly read the title as a flame and moved it to the Pit. Lynn then reads this joke thread – verbotten in the Pit – and then sees the aforementioned quote and decides it must be trollery. But the problem is, the OP never meant for it to be in the pit, it was just supposed to be a joke.
Of course, maybe there’s more to it than this and we just don’t know what …
And why does it not surprise me that your response doesn’t address the question in the OP?
Uncivil stated several times that it was a joke. Why you picked one sentence to emphasize out of several posts, one can only guess. So, back to the question, If some posts (jokes, etc.) are okay in MPSIMS (or another forum) and a mod moves it to the Pit (or elsewhere), how accountable is the poster if the move violates the rules of the forum?
Care to address the question, or, better yet, maybe you should just let Lynn speak for herself.
Then she could explain why she thought it was trolling.
Geez, you’d think you’d get tired of wanting to be the hall monitor.
I wanna know why people can’t just email Lynn with their questions. Only thing I can think of us is that perhaps others have the same question, but you COULD just post the answer in LJ.
I was wondering the same thing; it seemed pretty harsh to me, but not having been there through the whole rigmarole, I figured I’d let the authorities handle it.
Well sweetcheeks, considering that we’re not supposed to bring things from LJ or chat onto the boards, I figured I’d better not.
But while we’re on the subject, I find Lynn’s answer in the SDMB LJ to be insufficient. For those who don’t have LJ, she simply said she’s getting sick of trolls. The point of the OP is that I don’t think UnCivil WAS a troll.
It seems now the vogue thing is to delete threads entirely or lock them for further viewing. I tried to follow 2 different links in another mod accusation thread and I couldn’t access them.
Nor do I think Civil Defense was one. Didn’t stop her.
Though I appreciate the necessary and voluntary work by mods/admins on the board (been there, done that, thankless draining job), I think some people need a vacation. And a big super-sized piña colada in their hand while they bask in the sun.
Maybe I haven’t been here long enough to see the reasons why, but all I’ve seen are apologetic responses and ass-kissing like, “Don’t fuck with Bodoni, she’ll fuck you up.” Sorry, but having been in a ‘position of power’ like Lynn’s, those kinds of comments only garnered my disrespect. As for the average reader, you’re an ass-kissing prick; whatever respect I had for you is back down to zero. You didn’t win brownie points with Lynn. But you lost them with your peers, you shmuck.
I do my best to conform. In the Kurdt Kobain era, once he was banned, I wondered how they would keep him banned, logistically. I asked a question about it in About This Message Board. I was wondering if they had a specific IP#ban, or if they were doing a wide IP ban like we sometimes did on MSN chats with massive violators, or something in the registry. I was simply asking out of curiosity, due to the nature of the chatrooms I own and have volunteered for as Host on MSN Chat. My question was closed. The only answers I got were from the people who answered me before my thread was locked.
You do know, at the end of the movie, the Wizard of Oz was some shmuck behind a curtain, right?
On a positive side, once Dex hid a thread of mine, with good reason. He wrote me an email to explain it, and he was right. And that was cool. No complaints there.
I guess it never occured to you that posting specifics about how a board was planning on enforcing a ban on a poster wouldn’t lead to that banned poster learning the ways that they’d be blocked, hence giving them ideas on how to get around it?
Did it ever occur to you that you’d feel a hell of a lot less frustrated in life signing off:
“Wring
For The Straight Dope”
No it never occured to me. I had much more adequate means of keeping people out of places they weren’t welcome. With the readership of the SDMB, I expected they were aware of/employed AT LEAST those measures. BTW, how does ass taste when you’re kissing it?
Not only did I look at it, one of my posts was on it:
