I really don’t agree that this kind of stylistic advice is a matter for moderation. Sometimes people do make really stupid arguments, and I think for the sake of healthy debate and fighting ignorance we should be free to point that out. Obviously just flinging back and forth “that’s stupid” should be moderated. I think the standard should be that it’s fine to call something stupid so long as you make your case - you address the content with a substantive post explaining why something is stupid. So long as you’re debating the issues and not just flinging insults, I think we’ve always allowed robust debate and we should continue to do so.
You’re attempting to make this a lot more formal than it is. You are also treating it like a rule change. It isn’t.
User notes are a part of the Discourse software. Like I said, Discourse uses them automatically for all kinds of things. We just have the ability to stick our own notes in there if we choose to do so.
That’s why I decided to clarify what @What_Exit was saying. Consider it the equivalent of “we are going to be tracking this”. It’s not part of our formal rules system. vBulletin did not have any feature like this, but under vBulletin we could say that we will be watching for a particular behavior, and we could track it manually if we chose to do so.
For moderators, they show up on your public profile, on the upper right. I honestly don’t know if you can see your own warnings under Discourse like you could under vBulletin. If you can, there should be a link on your profile labeled User Notes. You have received a warning under the new system, so you can tell us if it is visible to normal users or not.
Either way, you receive a PM when you are issued a warning under Discourse, so you do have a record of it.
Then close it.
I can’t find anything (although I don’t think I’ve been warned on Discourse - I take it the old warnings didn’t carry over)
Fighting Ignorance Since 1973, but don’t say a post is ignorant or we will put a note on your permanent record.
I didn’t say it should be moderated. I’m saying, stylistically, we’ll get better debates if we avoid insulting adjectives like stupid or ignorant. Even if it’s directed at the post, the original poster would likely feel insulted, and why go there?
If I said, “the sky is green”, I’m stupid and misinformed, true. But, if someone responded and called my post idiotic, stupid, or ignorant, I would feel insulted. However, if someone said, “That’s wrong. Here are pictures of the sky and here’s a wikipedia cite showing why the sky is blue,” I would instead be informed and less likely to be insulted. We can avoid the kind of train wrecks that we sometimes see in GD and P&E, with notes and warnings starting to fly around and threads getting shut down.
If you have a poster that continuously posts bullshit, report it and take it to the Pit. Respond reasonably in the Debate forums and you’ll get your point across. The mods have been better about stopping disingenuous debate techniques, Gish Galloping, and sea lioning, so there’s no reason to get nasty in those forums.
I would like to, but that will get yet another ATMB thread going. So as I’m going to go ahead and close that mess. Please make your complaints here. I will point to this thread for complaints.
You were told as a child certain things would go on your permanent record. Don’t say you didn’t know this could happen.
No, I’m not. I also said “And user notes are no more than annotations that help memory? Or do they have other purposes?” I was trying not to make it formal and giving you an opportunity to confirm that. Instead you ignored me.
You and What_Exit don’t seem to understand how this looks and sounds to us. As in, it looks bad and you’re making it sound worse. I understand that from your point of view, you’re just applying the tools you’ve been given and aren’t thinking twice about it. The rest of us, having no familiarity with those tools, feel blindsided and wonder what other surprises might be sprung. People who have demonstrably been freaked out by ephemeral mod notes over the years are obviously going to go ballistic when they see the words “permanent record.”
My suggestion is that you get out in front of this and start a thread about whatever the new mod tools are, however minor the changes might be. The changeover to Discourse is less than a year old. Memories of that disruption are fresh and raw. Don’t pull on those scabs.
Honestly, you shouldn’t have to do this. Explaining the board culture should be the job of the administrator. Ed is the administrator in extremis, to be sure, but he needs to be active and be heard or someone needs to assume the role. I’m certainly not blaming any of you mods for these lacks, just pointing out that because the body has no head the arms and legs get the whacks.
Not nearly as childish as constantly whining about said warnings for years.
I got a warning once when I forgot what forum I was in, and my auto insurance rates still haven’t gone back down.
Did you try switching to Geico?
But they didnt, they were lying.
They also lied about Santa and the Upstate farm where the pet went to play and live out it’s happy life. 
In fact our whole childhood was a lie.
Among the things I noticed here is that the quote from the OP shows a rule that was not there before. I did check the previous note and it was directed to how me and another poster were not behaving well. So I did agree on not replying to him in that thread. Thing is that while I was getting a note now for calling a post ignorant there was no note about that in the other thread linked in the OP. While the other poster in the tread that was closed said that I was “easy to ignore but I hope you are not ignored because your arguments only display how intellectually bankrupt, intentionally ignorant, logically flawed and inherently racist your position is.”
Thing is that there was really no evidence for that, just his opinion. And I really have to say that it is less logical to let that go with no repercussions when there is no cite or support for why is that what I posted was all that. (besides 3 or more digs against me there, there was the overall dismissal of the opinions and evidence that a Hispanic involved in education like me had.)
Having said all that, I will follow advice from @RitterSport and others, I will concentrate more on replying “You seem to be misinformed on this, and here’s why” and his other recommendations.
Thanks to @wolfpup, @Exapno_Mapcase and others for their support.
Well, now that we seem to be wrapping this up, I’m just going to go out on a limb here and add my frank assessment of the situation. And I’ll start by saying that I completely endorse the view stated here by @Exapno_Mapcase.
I believe that there is an objective principle we should be following here, and it should be that when a majority of well-established posters disagree with a moderation action, such action is probably creating more harm than good among the kind of posters we want to retain. And it’s been happening a lot lately. No one expects moderators to be perfect, and we all appreciate that they’re volunteering their time. But it’s not unreasonable to expect that when there is doubt, to leave things alone rather than over-react, and not to infer malice when there may be none. Less is more, as the saying goes.
To be quite frank, this place has been without leadership since the tragic loss of Jenny (TubaDiva). In the absence of her dedicated attention to the goal of growing participation in this place and making it a more welcoming community, it’s not going in a good direction, in my opinion.
As an aside, directed to the discourse software,: I got now a new badge:
First Mention
This badge is granted the first time you mention someone’s @username in your post. Each mention generates a notification to that person, so they know about your post.
I posted this already before when another badge like that was given.
I agree that some features are really underwhelming.
I’ve been trying to get GD closer to what Jonathan_Chance was striving for with his major GD and P&E Rule overhaul at the beginning of 2020.
Maybe look them over and tell me that trying hard to get posters to not insult each other wasn’t a central part of the overhaul.
This is great advice, this is what I’m trying to do. RitterSport simplified the goal in a great way.
This also says it better than I can. I will bold it in the rules.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for actually. Not joking. Along with the other dozens of new things with Discourse, there is the ability to leaves usernotes. So I think I have now twice chosen not to warn people but to modnote and leave a usernote for other mods. I’m not sure how else this function is being used or if anyone else is using it.
What more do you want to know about it?
Most of the time when I modnote (as several people get bent out of shape over modnotes) I included this little canned reply.
This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record.
My other canned reply I am starting to use is:
What Exit?
BTW: Canned replies is a Discourse future, I’m pretty sure users have these available also. It is under the gear button and they’re pretty easy to setup and use. Nice part is you can include formatting.
I only have Hide details, Blur spoiler and Build poll under the gear icon.
Glad to help! With the new badge, of course. Proud to be your first mention.