I saw the friendly reminder for what it was and quit what some others were perceiving as “junior modding”.
To those that are claiming that I never get called on anything? I’ve got two recent official warnings and a handful of unofficial "knock-it-off"s to my record that say otherwise, so can we just put that little rumor to rest?
Wait, really? Have you thought about maybe actually, I don’t know, modifying your behavior? Out of respect for your former colleagues, if nothing else.
This sums up my viewpoint pretty well. A suggestion that a thread might better be placed in another forum is not, in my view, junior modding. People make such suggestions all the time. I don’t recall ever having issued a note for such a remark.
On the other hand, Fenris was essentially giving instructions to other posters on how they should behave in the forum. Given that this was also clearly a jab at Czarcasm (despite Fenris’s disclaimer), it deserved a note.
Czarcasm was rather aggressive in the thread, but so are many of our other long-term GQ posters. At some point, I may request that someone dial it back, but I didn’t think Czarcasm’s posts had crossed the line at that point.
I don’t usually find that asking an OP to clarify his terms or what he exactly he is asking is out of line in GQ. Again, many other posters do this, including me.
In this case, the intent of the OP was not completely clear. He put the question in GQ, which presumed he wanted a factual answer. On the other hand, he spoke of his “thoughts” on the matter, which presumed that he was expressing his opinion. So seeking clarifications of those issues was reasonable. I didn’t see Czarcasm’s posts as being particularly out of line in this respect.
As it is, I think the thread at this point has turned into a interesting discussion of the factual aspects of the question. The OP, however, has not returned after my posts to clarify exactly what he was looking for.
I thought we all decided there was a Czarcasm exception to that rule? You know, like a cop not giving another cop’s wife a ticket for something that anyone else would have gotten a ticket for.
I might have been wrong though.
Oh come on, it’s never been regarded as jr modding to suggest that someone has posted in the wrong forum. Czarcasm was plainly within the rules, Fenris, with his accusation of derailing, wasn’t.
Any friends of Randall Munroe around (won’t answer my calls). There’s a cartoon here. The thread as well might inspire.
You’re wrong.
How about Fenris and Czarcasm arm wrestle for it?
That’s not only fuckin’ DEAD WRONG, but offensive.
PLUS, haven’t I said several times: this is NOT the place for a “pile on Czarcasm” thread. You want to make nasty comments like that about another poster, go to the Pit (where I don’t have to pay any attention to them.) I considered issuing an Official Warning for both (a) personal insult directed at another poster, and (b) failure to heed a moderator’s repeated instruction. However, I’m going to be generous… for now.
What this board seems to need, perhaps, is a seventeen volume lawbook for Moderators Emeriti.
Cite! Cite!! Cite!!! 
How is that nasty comment about Czarcasm? (I could certainly see how a moderator could feel insulted by the viewpoint, but that’s true of a lot of what gets posted in ATMB.). Moreover, how is saying someone gets special treatment a personal insult? 
I don’t agree with Morgenstern at all, but your response is quite confusing. It’s also becoming increasingly unclear how one is supposed to ask about a specific modding situation involving another poster without running afoul of the ever-shifting invisible boundaries of civility in ATMB.
Wow! This place has gone to hell in a handbasket.
No harm, no foul. Thanks for clarifying.
I don’t agree with you that C’s comments weren’t disruptive enough for mod intervention (I’ll note that it certainly didn’t merit a warning but given that the OP had came in and explained he wasn’t presenting the info as fact and the spirit of his question was still intact, a dial-it-back seemed in order). And yes suggestions of a forum change are common enough but in this case, given Czarcasms previous contributions to the thread, it appeared he was using it to further shame the OP.
That being said I’ve said my piece and you’ve said yours, this isn’t a hill I’m interested in dying on. I just think GQ should be a more civil place than that - technically against the rules or not.
Rather than discuss a particular poster, may I gently suggest that moderators consider the value of a GQ post? If someone is responding to a question in an informative, factual, accurate manner, then it’s legit to cut them a little bit (not a lot, a little) of slack in other ways. But if someone is not contributing anything useful, just sniping from the sidelines or making lame jokes or asking pedantic questions, less slack is necessary. Specifically, if someone engages in this sort of unproductive behavior, and the thread tilts off-course thereby, I’d appreciate it if the mods would step in and smack down the unproductive poster.
I’m wary of curbing so-called pedantic questions. I think some of them can be characterized as clarifying. And if they truly are overly narrow, it is possible to address them as such.
Snipes and lame jokes are another matter. Though wisecracks have their place.
Wow, you just insulted every moderator and member at once! So that’s like, what, 161,896* warnings under these new guidelines?
*and counting
I got $5 on Fenris!
Well, sure. Dude has freakish Popeye arms.
Oh, good, that way we don’t have to Pit Pooh.
I do do this on occasion, but I tend to allow a lot of leeway. As I said, many other posters do this sort of thing. I generally allow questioning the premise of a vague or non-factual OP, and in fact do so myself. It’s mainly when the posts become insulting to the poster himself, rather than simply directed at the nature of the question, that I think intervention is required. In my view, in this particular thread Czarcasm’s questions weren’t out of line, and in fact served to clarify the question and elicit a number of factual posts by other posters.
Trying to clarify a question does not in my view qualify as “derailing” a thread. You can’t really derail a discussion until the intent of the OP is clear. Daz’s responses to Czarcasm indicated he knew that the statements in his OP were non-factual, in which case Czarcasm’s suggestion of a move to IMHO or GD was appropriate. However, Daz failed to indicate that he was actually seeking a debate of his opinions, even in response to my offer to move it to another forum, so I left it in GQ.
LHoD, I will note that your response to Czarcasm,“Because Wikipedia is hard for some folks to find,” was a snarky as any of his posts. If I were going to issue a note to Czarcasm for the tone of his posts, I would have had to include you in the instructions to dial it back (as well as Labrador Deceiver, which might actually have deserved a warning.)