Scylla flounced over not being heaped with adulation for making up a story about being cruel to a small child.
Making threads pitting an individual poster expire seems like a good idea. Preventing newbies from seeing the pit until they have reached a higher trust level seems like a good idea. The mods could also ban linking from the pit to the rest of the board, which would be inconvenient for those posters who like to pit others, but would eliminate the ‘Oredigger77 is a troll’ type of messages in non-pit threads.
But much as I hate to agree with @MrDibble, I don’t think it’ll make a whole lot of difference. Message boards are dying, and tinking with the board is just rearranging the deckchairs on the sinking ship. Sorry.
Get rid of it. I decided that I simply won’t go there. If a thread of mine gets moved there, I’m done.
Wait, is that supposed to be a defence of him?
“OK, he was a troll, but it’s because he had no self control” ?
I’ve been pitted several times, didn’t turn me into a misogynist troll. Is there a set threshold? How many pittings is enough to earn a Get Out Of Misogyny Free card?
No other message boards I frequent have anything like the BBQ Pit.
They likely know full well the laws and rules regarding internet/online harassment, and know that just allowing such in one forum does not cut it. I think that allowing harassment is going to get the SDMB shut down. Another board started such harassment of a member here- and the Mods shut them down- but said it was Okay in the Pit. That is most certainly not true. The laws do not allow such a exemption.
Not to mention, it makes us look like a bunch of 8yo Internet bullies. I have seen newbies come in, get pitted, and leave. Yes, they were mostly sorta goofy, but it does take a while to get those boards temperature to know how to fit in.
I see your point about Trolls, but I have been told my “troll-o-meter” is so bad I was asked to stop reporting trolls. I blame this upon my fantastically great genre savvy in Fantasy Roleplaying Games! 
Now, if I were to have my druthers, as my Dad used to say, I would certainly allow rants vs the world, businesses, politicians, and so forth. Some of those are great, and I wouldn’t mind participating except them someone will start calling me names over some imagined slight in another post or forum.
I concur here.
Look, I agree with Czarcasm! He is absolutely correct. Internet harassment of a poster. even when limited to the BBQ Pit is not in any way shape or form “outside”.
I love the way you put that! But…
Can we still hate politicians, crappy products, a bad day and nasty companies?
Yes, good points.
Report this post.
Discourse will constantly remind you of it, over and over and over and over and over.
I suppose if pit threads were for just discussing disagreements you had with another member or continuing a thread-derailing argument, that would be one thing. But quite often the pit threads are just a dumping ground for vitriol about a poster, and the worse the insult the better. So rather than discussing a legitimate issue about how someone is lying or being problematic, it’s a curse filled rant about how awful the other person is. To me, all that name calling and derision towards the person seems like it’s just cyberbullying being legitimized. No matter what you think of the user, they are still a real person who is very likely to take the insults personally.
One change that should probably be done is that the subject line of a pitting should just be generic and not disparaging. Lots of people see the subject line of threads even if they don’t visit the Pit, like in the Latest, New, and Suggested thread lists. A newbie coming to the board seeing a thread title like “Soandso99 is a shitstain sewer scum!” is going to have a negative view of Soandso99 even though they may have no idea who that is. So make the pit titles something neutral like “I declare a pitting of Soandso99” and keep the name calling inside the thread.
I want to establish that there is a difference between tweaking the Pit to make it more appealing to outsiders and tweaking it because we want to improve the community for ourselves. I’m talking about the latter.
- No more omnibus pittings of posters
- Pit threads started about other posters eventually expire
- Linking to other threads from the Pit is not allowed (especially if they concern another poster)
I’d support those changes.
While I might agree with some of the rest of your post, this is just plain silly. As far as I know, there is no law in the United States that would have thing one to say about the Pit.
I’d be happy to read an authoritative link that says differently (an actual link to a law, not to some random person’s opinion).
ETA: I wouldn’t mind seeing anti-poster rants directed at, say, specific bad actions; get rid of the “Kron is such an asshole!”-type omnibus threads, but “Kron, your ill-informed defense of Gremlins 2 as a worthy sequel to Gremlins based SOLELY on the strength of Christopher Lee’s performance is BULLSHIT!” threads should be allowed. Keep it limited in scope to bad actions in a thread; links to OTHER threads allowed in that (Pit) thread, to show a pattern, rather than constantly dragging the same shit up in random discussions (sometimes on the flimsiest of pretexts) by linking an omnibus We-Hate-This-Guy-Don’t-We Pit thread.
ETA2: Wow, I’m sure I missed five other mistakes in this that I won’t get fixed before time expires… 
That is not a thing that can happen. You cannot be driven to troll by how people respond to you. A poster is responsible for their own actions.
Also, um, Shodan admitted years before he was banned that he would often post to get a rise out of people. Like, flat out. I remember, because I reported him as a troll when he said it.
(I’d find it via search, but Discourse doens’t let you search by a banned user’s name.)
And there’s no way you can say it was a response to us when he decided to attack someone (a veteran) for having gotten psychiatric treatment for their PTSD.
I have. And I’ll admit it’s not the greatest feeling. But I’ve yet to see anyone leave the board over being Pitted. And, the vast majority of the time, there is at least some underlying point in there.
The Pit threads that turn into pile-ons mostly so because people don’t just get in, respond to the actual underlying criticism, and then get out to let people rant. In the past there were more unfair pittings, but it’s rather rare now.
That said, I would love a forum where we were allowed to hash out problems without it becoming a flamefest. That’s the main flaw I see: there’s no real place to work out things amicably.
Sure, in theory, you could do it in PMs. But it’s rather hard to bring up the actual offending behavior without coming off as insulting. And no real way to check and see if it’s just this one person having a pet peeve, or a bigger issue.
I actually like the Pit threads where people come in, discuss the issue, but avoid going too far in ranting. Occasionally I’ve seen people actually work things out that way. It would be nice to have a place where attempting that was the norm, rather than the exception.
In the world of criminal law, federal cyber-stalking laws, in place since 2011, include language allowing prosecutors to go after people using electronic tools to harass. These laws specifically stipulate that an “interactive computer service” cannot be used to threaten. Citron said approximately half of the states in the U.S. have also updated their laws to allow authorities to press charges against people engaging in cyber stalking and cyber harassment.
Now it is true, there are something on the order of 51 definitions of what is cyber bullying or harassment. Not to mention international laws.
A Closer Look at Cyberbullying
In simple terms, cyberbullying involves inflicting emotional pain and humiliation upon another person, or group of people, using technology. This means kids, and some adults too, may send cruel or harassing text messages, post embarrassing information or rumors to social media, or make vile comments in an online forum.
Now, Ianal. And I can not point to any one specific law that says the BBQ pit would qualify. But do we know all 50 states laws? All international laws? I do not think so. Why take the risk? Just so a few bullies can be happy?
This makes some sense.
I like this idea a lot. Banish them to the Boo Box for 6 months instead of a perpetual ban. Added bonus of getting to watch the trolls troll each other if one is so inclined.
We know who you really mean. 
I agree with Spice_Weasel that these are good suggestions. I’d also support long suspensions instead of permabans in most cases.
I don’t think I’ve ever pitted anyone, and for some perverse reason I tend to be more civil in Pit threads than elsewhere.
That said, it’s a board institution that serves a purpose, and it would be a duller place if the Seething Masses had to pretend to be nice to each other all the time. There are too many posters who take things way too seriously in any case. Everyone but you is a random assemblage of electrons and not really human, so why get all bent out of shape if their orbitals are non-congruent?
Eliminating the Pit is not going to help the S.S. Dope stop taking on water.
This is the solution. Period.
So what? Ignore bot prompts. Very easy to do.
Again: so what?
A long leash? There’s a poster, in this very thread, who has admitted to getting multiple, if not in fact, double digit warnings. Yet, s/he’s still here. Why is that?
I don’t know who you’re talking about, but if true, that would only demonstrate that someone else is getting a long leash too.
I don’t see how this one could work, at least not well. If you’re pitting someone, especially due to something they posted, you have to provide context so people know what you’re talking about. Even if it’s just an overall 'I’m pitting this person for these reasons), you need to provide examples to defend your position. That will require quotes, which will generate the tags in the other threads. It’s just the way discourse is set up.
Think about how often someone goes off on a rant in ATMB about a mod action and a bunch of people reply with ‘uh, link?’. I think sometimes people don’t realize that not everyone reads every thread, so something that’s a huge deal to one person or a group, even a large group, of posters may be something others aren’t even aware of.
Perhaps the workaround would be to break those links/quotes so they don’t generate the tags in the offending threads.
I’m not a twitter person. Literally the only tweets I see are those posted into other websites (and even then, only if my browser, for some unknown reason, doesn’t block them). However, I learned a while back about a subtweeting. Which is when you leave the @ symbol off a user’s name. So you can trash them to your followers without them getting notified about. What I’m suggesting is the same idea. Different reason, but same idea. On here, that might mean just cutting and pasting a post and leaving out the ID portion or linking to a thread but breaking the link.
Eh, I’ll accept a Pit if the pitting of other SDMB posters is no longer allowed, but evil politicos, corps, and other assorted newsmakers can still get dragged mercilessly. That’s an acceptable compromise.
I also like the idea of a Purgatory Forum replacing permabans.