I didn’t say to to let the incident slide. I said to let the hurtful words slide. You’d deal with them, not as a personal insult out of a four-year-old’s mouth, but professionally as a sign that something’s seriously wrong here and you’d take steps to deal witih the root problem.
At the SD, if I were to call a mod a series of foul names, sure, a personal response would be for that mod to get up on his high horse, intone a few indignant ‘well-I-never"s and ban me, but I don’t think that would solve the root problem of whatever incensed me, I don’t think the example of my banning would frighten other posters into staying on their best behaviors at all times, I don’t think I would learn whatever I might have misconstrued that got me cussin’ and swearin’–all that would happen is that the mod in question might feel better. My point is that this is a place for us to express our ideas, primarily, but for the SD it’s primarily a source of revenue, and they should be as professional as they know how to be in handling problems from the often unruly clientele. Complaining about how hard their jobs are seems pretty unprofessional to me, and pretty irrelevant, though I might extend Lynn considerable courtesy and consideration on a personal basis. I know it can be tough to deal with people, and so do most Dopers.
Take another analogy (and please notice all of my analogies here concern businesses dealing with intemperate or impaired clientele from time to time). Think of the SD as a bar–you want a certain level of informality. You want to encourage people to drink and you’re aware that a risk is that people will get a little rowdy sometimes, often in ways that are irritating, especially to a sober person behind the bar or in the office. But if a drunken client ges overfamiliar, you’d be within your rights to have the bouncer toss the jerk out on the sidewalk unceremoniously–maybe other unpleasant drunks would learn from that example the behavior you’d like to see. But most bars try to avoid manhandling their clientele if they can help it. It would be a silly policy for the bartender to curse louder at the customer who just cursed at him. Far more professional, far more dignified, I think for him to realize “Hey, this is someone who spends money heree, who’s been pretty well behaved over the years–I can’t take this nonsense personally, I’ll try to talk him down, maybe ask him to behave better, and see if I can avoid getting belligerent back at him. I have the power to have him thrown out the door, but let’s try a little restraint first and if that doesn’t work, let’s try a little more restraint. That’s just good businesss sense.”
If I’m reading Ed’s tone correctly, he’s just about finished showing restraint, and is seriously considering cracking the whip to show us who’s in charge. I think that would be an error in judgment on his part, respectfully.
