Rather than the Pit making things better by letting people vent their wrath, it may actually make Dopers and the Dope worse off:
Yeah, and a previous warning prior to harpy of all things that.was a complete farce since it was allowed behavior previously.
The fact that folks now use links to pit threads as a way to insult others outside the pit is another problem. The pit doesn’t serve any good purpose other than to enable online bullying.
There’s even a movie precedent for “putting trolls in a box”
Who is it? Don’t be coy, just speak up.
For everyone’s convenience, here is a list of who has posted in this thread so far (in order of appearance) - one of them is presumably the “double digit” warning individual that D_Anconia refers to:
Czarasm
ParallelLines
Velocity
Tricoteuse
Spice_Weasel
JohnT
RitterSport
wolfpup
Sam_Stone
Acierocolotl
Deeg
Joey_P
CairoCarol
filmore
Oredigger77
MrDibble
Velocity
mordecaiB
Frodo
BigT
Babale
ThelmaLou
Elmer_J.Fudd
Exapno_Mapcase
Sam_Stone
DemonTree
Gatopescado
Darren_Garrison
dalej_42
DrDeth
Kron
Dark_Sponge
Jackmannii
D_Anconia
octopus
I shouldn’t have said anything. Personally, I don’t feel it’s appropriate to call out another poster in ATMB. I was referring to the moderation, i.e., the fact that some posters get a longer leash than others.
I beg your pardon! 
leave me out of it.
Absolutely. Some out our best rants are there.
Being the subject if a pit thread always brings to mind Mark Twain’s comment about being tarred and feathered: " If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all."
If someone had to resort to the pit to make a point, who would want them as an ally? It’s useful to congregate them all into one place.
When I first started posting here, I never went to the Pit and wondered why people needed a place to be mean to each other. Over time, I found some valuable threads there, including one where a huge group of us found incredible support and understanding.
I’m strongly opposed to temporary bans. Bans don’t happen unless there’s a long list of serious transgressions, usually over an extended period of time. Is the idea that during the months away, the recalcitrant poster is going to reform and stop being a racist or misogynist or whatever? Based on what? And if the guilty party is allowed back, how many transgressions before they’re banned again? How many times will they skate juuuuust to the edge of what’s allowed?
It took a long time to get rid of some persistent misogynists who continually made this place seem less hospitable toward women–so much so that we lost quite a few women who used to post here. Why would we want to go back to that?
Because they improved their behaviour and their warnings stopped. Rather than accelerated in pace, as they did for Shodan.
As to whether the Pit is a boon or not - it generates posts like this (that that poster can’t put in the MPSIMS thread he’s been banned from). I’d say that’s a positive.
I would prefer a two-stage pit. One for just complaints and rants. Another place (inner circle?) for pitting people.
I have very little interest in pitting people, whether Dopers or politicians, but a little ranting can go a long way. I had muted the Pit for a long time, and will probably do so again, but I like the monthly mini-rant. So I’ll should subscribe to the monthly rant, and then mute the rest of it.
Moderator Note
Treat others with respect in ATMB. Don’t try to call people out.
Note to all: This is ATMB, not the Pit. Post accordingly. Things that fly just fine in the Pit are not welcome here. Further Pit-style behavior in this thread will result in warnings.
Okay, sorry.
You can search using the search bar on that page and then use the advanced features to refine it.
I don’t really go to the Pit except for a rare post in a Mini-Rant thread. I think it’s a good place for letting off steam about things, big ideas that are real problems, and some prominent dangerous people. We all need to do that sometimes.
But the way that members can get piled on, often with no resolution or changing of minds, doesn’t seem healthy to me. I would hate to be targeted this way, even if I earned it.
So I would shut down the Pit, and replace it with a Rants, with some restrictive guidelines to limit what’s reasonable. I don’t mind the language free-for-all, but the specific targets should not get personal about fellow members, but instead (aggressively) debate the merits, or lack thereof, of their ideas.
Keep it. This place has a long-term problem with people weaponizing the rules to pick fights that can’t be honestly responded to in the threads where the misbehavior occurs. The moderation of these events has gotten better over the last couple of years, but there should still be a place where telling the plainly-observed truth* isn’t against the rules.
*I, of course, only say correct things, but in the interests of fairness the wrong people should also be allowed to access this venue.
I cannot support any policy change that would have prohibited me from posting, in exactly the form I posted it, my Telemarketer thread, or punished me afterward for having posted it. Full stop.
So this is your idea of a good policy? We can’t prove that it’s illegal anywhere, but it might be illegal somewhere, so rather than take a chance let’s ban it. Anything not compulsory is heretofore forbidden. That’ll attract a lot of authoritarians, but is it what we’re looking for?
Keep it. I’m not certain if I would continue lurking here as much if it was shut down. For one thing, Lord_Feldon is absolutely right - the pit is pretty much the only place to deal with the “I’m-not-touching-you” type of troll, disingenuous arguments, and thread hijackers. The mods give a lot of leeway to this sort of thing, which is fine as long as there is a place for posters to respond without getting a warning themselves. Besides, it’s not unusual for the discussion in a pit thread to actually be better than the original - fairly often the discussion continues either without the offending party, or with the offending party being directly called out. As for the idea that the vitriol in the Pit is excessive or drives off posters…have you guys been on the internet? The Pit is a very, very mild place, and complaints are usually substantive, even if there’s a lot of invective thrown in. Go take a look at Youtube, or Tumblr, or 4chan, or hell go on Twitter or Facebook sometime. All of those places are significantly worse than the pit.
And for all the complaints of the Pit being primarily for vitriolic attacks against other posters, that has not been the case for years, if it was ever the case. Currently only 5 of the top 40 threads in the pit are about a poster at all - so 12.5%. The rest make up some of the best, most entertaining and longest-running threads on the boards: the stupid republican idea of the day thread, the controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians thread, trolls R us, Living while black in America, the Bundy thread, the Antivaxxer thread, and on and on and on.