I like that idea. I rarely read those omnibus pit threads, but when we have a member and each time that member posts, directly below it I see a link to “[member] is a dumb jerk”, I feel kinda bad. Especially if it was a mostly neutral post, at least to someone not involved in the omnibus thread. I feel like they’re in a ‘can’t win’ situation. It’s like people are waiting for them to post, just to tear shit on it. Honestly, I’m often surprised that people put up with so much of that. Deserved or not, getting everything you post torn apart would drive most people away.
So, ignoring the logistics and minutia of it, I wouldn’t mind some type of time limit on omnibus pit threads dedicated to specific posters.
Ignore really screws up with the flow of a thread. Especially if you’re trying to hash out an argument and the poster is responding to you.
The only other board I’m familiar with that has debate topics is GiraffeBoards and they have a Pit and Box. Other, more specific boards (TalkBass or DPReview) don’t really discuss topics that would get people heated.
Option 3: Say, “I’m sorry, but this discussion is going nowhere, and we will never agree, I’m out.” Then stop posting to the discussion.
Nowhere is it mandatory that you must call out everyone with who you think is ‘lying’ with vitriolic attacks. I’ve been here 22 years and have never felt the need to run to the pit and smear someone because I thought their opinions were wrong, or even that they were being disingenuous. Life is full of such people, and you don’t do that to them anywhere else unless you are a raging asshole.
I guess it’s worth considering. There are a number of posters I vociferously disagreed with that I did not want to get banned. The problem is when people are constantly getting Pitted, they act out on the rest of the board and get themselves banned. Like Slacker. I had a personal issue with him, and I can’t argue he didn’t earn his banning, but it just seems like it could have been avoided.
Likewise I never ignored posters until recently and oh my Og what a difference it makes. There needs to be a way to Ignore the Pit.
My only problem with using ignore is that there are a number of posters that are only ignore-worthy when it comes to a single topic - the same tired (or disproven) argument over and over and over again. But they may have an interesting POV on a different topic. A couple of the omnibus Pit threads have made that point between ongoing attacks on those individuals posts.
For those people who inject said hot button issues into every, single darn forum and thread, yeah, ignore is a close personal friend of mine.
I guess I don’t see berating them in The Pit as a solution. It likely won’t stop the behavior. I think we have to rely on the well-paid moderators to warn/ban problematic posters.
I’ve pitted two people that I recall. The first was New Deal Democrat for being shockingly racist to the point that it derailed multiple threads. I don’t regret his banning at all. And Pantastic for saying some shit about my mother that really pissed me off. I don’t even remember what it was but they apologized pretty quickly. But the point is, I can see the function, if the norm is to Pit sparingly.
Quick question @JohnT, I have long muted thread games (just not my bag of tea and they often update so often they push stuff I want to see off my at-a-glance page), but does muting a forum prevent you from seeing links to it? As @Joey_P pointed out, I wouldn’t want to see the sub-link where that post has lead back to a pitting.
I’ve only started a couple of Pit threads, but it was a great way to let off steam and say the things I couldn’t in the GD or P&E threads. Maybe someday, I’ll say something interesting enough to get pitted and I’ll feel differently.
It’s very frustrating to read threads started by obvious trolls in forums such as IMHO or MPSIMS and not to be able to point out the trollery. However, I’m able to bite my tongue because I know that if the trolling gets truly out of hand, someone will point out in the Pit that we have a troll on our hands.
Personally, I love the Pit. Most of it doesn’t interest me - “no u” type of insults are boring. But some threads are thoughtful and amusing, and the ability to speak freely adds humor and color to the proceedings.
A few years ago I was a founding member and moderator of a message board that splintered from a poorly managed board. In the event, we succeeded - exactly one poster stayed with the old board. During the design process, I advocated heavily for something like the pit (the board we split from had prissy rules and no outlet for taking off the gloves).
We ended up creating a pit-like forum that is not accessible to newbies or anyone who is not signed in. To gain access to our “pit,” one has to have been a member for 3 months, made a minimum of 200 posts, and make a special request for “pit” access.
It’s worked like a charm. These days, it is rarely used, because we’re a smallish group and we like each other, so we don’t need to pick on each other. But racy stuff and the occasional argument still ends up there.
If the Pit was sequestered from new users I’d be okay with that. However, getting rid of the Pit entirely would be quite disappointing to me.
You can ignore them in specific threads by, well, ignoring them. Just don’t pay attention to those posts. Do you have to have a tech solution for this? There are lots of users I find fun and engaging in some forums, but completely toxic in others. So I completely ignore what they say in those forums, and happily engage with them in others. Why is that hard?
You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. You may say something dumb or mean, but for all I know it’s because you just lost your job or your partner left you. You might be extrmely liberal or extrmely conservative, but that’s not the sum total of you.
If I pit you for something you said and start calling out your character or trying to emotionally hurt you for yucks, for all I know I am attacking someone working their ass off to raise a sick child and working a shitty job to support your family and you are in general a prince of a person whose hour per day on thr SDMB is thr only respite from a hard life. I don’t want to ruin the day of someone like that. Or, you might agree with me on the board but you are a total asshole and a deadbeat in real life.
I ran one of the earliest large discussion boards (16 line dial-up, before the internet), and people fought on it like cats and dogs. This is not new. Do you know what fixed it? User meets. Because it was a local board, I sponsored occassional bar nights, or bowling nights, or whatever.
Once people could actually put a face to a post and understood they were talking to a real person with their own faults and good qualities, the fighting on the board dropped by about 90%.
We can’t do that here, but we can try to remember we are talking to real people and we generally know nothing about them. Therefore, you fight the argument and either treat the poster with respect, or disengage from the conversation if you feel you can’t get anywhere. Don’t take anything personally.
Since we have mods here, let them handle the situation. Problematic or disingenuous posters can be flagged and the mods will either issue a warning or a ban. If lots of people flag the person, then the mods will be more likely to take action. But if the mods don’t see a problem with the behavior, then that’s that way it goes. It might be just that Poster 1 and Poster 2 don’t get along with each other and they just have to live with it. There’s no need for them to create pit threads slamming each other about how much the other one is terrible.
It’s easy enough to ignore the Pit if you don’t like it.
I asked that the links to the Pit don’t show up in a non-Pit post early on in the Discourse transition, but no luck. I agree having “RitterSport is a doodyhead” at the bottom of many of my posts would be annoying, and really shouldn’t be allowed for threads not in the Pit.
I like the pit and the purpose it serves on this board. As we just saw in the recent Cecile thread if anger is held in too long it tends to boil over in inappropriate places. By being able to leave GD and tell someone to go fuck themselves we allow someone to get that off their chest without dragging the GD thread down with the bickering.
What I really don’t like is the discourse linking so the name of a pit thread can follow people around the board. If a “Fuck Oredigger77” titled thread was created in the pit everytime I posted something people didn’t like they could link it to the pit thread and now “Fuck Oredigger77” will follow me around the boards. That really defeats the purpose of the Pit same the Trolls r Us thread and now people can call someone a troll outside of the pit.
If you don’t like the pit Discourse makes it very easy to mute the forum and you don’t have to see if and there have been a bunch of posters over the years who have made it a point to avoid the forum.
I think the idea of a suspension board is good because it’s better than outright losing them. Right now we are having declining membership and when the admins banned someone like Shodan (who had been a contributor for 17 years and was banned for saying the word “harpy” - I mean, come on) - that hardly helps the board at all.
Someone like Shodan, HurricaneDitka, Barack Obama or WillFarnaby could have stayed with us, just serving suspensions of, say, six months at a time. Banning them was too extreme, IMHO.
Besides, a Box lets us observe the trolls in their natural habitat, like looking at them in a zoo. Fun to watch.
