Kaylasdas99—I had no feelings, one way or the other, about the relaxation of the rule against calling posters “trolls” in the Pit because I was unaware that this would change one way or the other the way that term of art would be used by Moderators. (Maybe it’s in the link you provided—I never read it, never participated in it, never thought about it much.) The word “troll” is misused, and overused, here in that it has a serious meaning that can and should result in a poster’s suspension and banning, unlike other epithets such as “moron,” “asshole,” “fuckwit,” and several others that I’ve become intimately acquainted with here in recent days.
When a poster misuses it, usually it makes that poster, rather than his object of derision, look foolish. Posters, thankfully, have no power to enforce it, so I didn’t much care that its use was now being allowed in the Pit. But a Moderator who believes someone to be a troll would be in a position to start banning procedures, so I find its casua use by a mod troubling. From what I’ve read, I believe Tom did inquire about banning badchad, was shot down by the other Mods, who advised him to chill his hard-on for badchad in a bucket of ice-water, and is trying to cover his tracks by selecting parts of the “official” record for me to search through, but it’s obvious to me that he was thwarted early on in his pursuit of badchad’s banning.
Why was he thwarted? Because badchad is not a troll. But the loose and vague standards of trolling Tom is applying to badchad are mainly subjective ones, formed by his own personal (and, I argue, biased) responses to his content. Let’s look at them closely:
You are a one-trick pony, constantly harrassing other posters on that single topic, using language intended to rile up people rather than contribute to honest debate. Very much consistent with being a troll
“a one-trick pony,” as I’ve shown elsewhere, sound nasty but is pretty much without meaning here. Plenty of knowledgable posters (such as Colibri or Darwin’s Finch in threads on the natural sciences, for example) stick mainly if not exclusively to their area of interest, and no one is offended in the least. But **Tom’**s focus here seems to be that badchad is “constantly harrassing other posters on that single topic”—well, I have certain problems here: badchad’s interest in religion and atheism is hardly a single topic—it’s a broad and varied topic, with a range that can be explored at great length and depth without repetition. Now, “constantly” is plainly a judgment call but I’d question even whether badchad is guilty of “harrassing other posters,” constantly or not. I’m not being disingenuous here—in GD, we must allow debaters to follow up on points that haven’t been addressed or answered, else what’s the point of debating? Is pursuing one’s argument to be branded “harrassing other posters”? If so, badchad is certainly more sinned against than sinning, since there’s virtually no limit to the number of times he has been asked to return to a particular point he’s made and answer someone’s specific question? Are they being harassive when they follow-up on their debating points? I think not, and I don’t think he is being any more harassive than his adversaries. From their great numbers, and his small number of supporters, I’d argue that it’s unlikely that he could possibly be committing a majority of the persistent follow-up questions by his lonesome self. Is it to his credit that he often declines invitations to review some issue of great interest to his adversaries? That’s for the audience of Great Debates to decide, not the participants. If someone raises a point that seems relevant, and someone else evades that point, the evader might lose debating points, or he might gain them if audience feels that the point is irrelevant or otherwise inappropriate. Micromanaging a debate (and especially micromanaging a debate in which you hold a clear partisan position), rather than letting the debaters choose which issues they will address, and which they will not, is to stack the deck, unless you are taking great care to be even more even-handed than you’re inclined by your nature to be. Tom has ruled himself to be as even-handed as possible in Modding GD, and I’m voicing my strong objection to that self-serving characterization.
But of course when Tom writes “of other posters,” he means Polycarp. Here the issue of “protecting” selected posters and arguments arises. Again, **Tom’s self-interest here is sufficient to disqualify him as anything resembling a neutral arbiter. Since the much larger inherent bias on the SD (exempting religious views, and particularly those of Xianity, from the SD’s high standards of argumentation) supports Tom here, even a neutral arbiter of GD issues would allow leeway to Polycarp in GD that he would deny to badchad. (For one small example, I am denied by many the use of the word “ignorant” to describe Xians and their beliefs, while I don’t have the least problem with their attempts to characterize my atheistic views as ignorant. We are each tryng to combat the other’s ignorance, as I see it, but they choose to take offense at what I find to be an inoffensive term.) So badchad’s assumptions about Xianity are noted, and censured by Tom, who not only doesn’t note but doesn’t even notice as offensive certain assumptions that Polycarp is making about badchad’s pov. Naturally, he is going to conclude that all the offensive arguments that he has noted (having deemed polycarp’s ** position to be inherently inoffensive) belong to badchad, who is therefore a troll.
Certainly—and I think this is beyond anyone’s dispute—the tone of Modding in GD would be far different if it were done by an atheist as stuck in his position as Tom ** is in his. While I’m NOT advocating such a replacement (t would be exactly as awful as Tom’s ** modding is) it shows, I think, that there is a large area of Modding GDs that is decided by one’s biases. Instead of acknowledging his biases, Tom denies having them, which I find silly, and he refuses to restrict his Modding of GDs (which should in any case be minimal) to only the most objective of Modding decisions. This is to be regretted.
As to trolling itself—I can give you personal examples of precisely the behavior **Tom ** objects to in **badchad’**s pursuit of Polycarp, where he at least has a nominal subject, religion, to argue over. I have had my integrity questioned, usually by Zoe, sometimes by Miller or a variety of other nutjobs, in thread after thread (such as this one) in which I haven’t said a peep about my profession or my credentials. Is **Zoe ** being a troll because she follows me around from thread to thread, engaging (usually mistakenly) about some fine points of grammar? Not really. She’s a moron, don’t get me wrong, the worst kind of pedant, a harpy and a pest, to be sure, but I think that my posts speak for themselves in terms of their clarity and substance, as do hers. But she isn’t a troll merely because she stalks me and points out lapses in my prose (on occasion correctly) in some misguided attempt to malign me and impugn my personal integrity, but since she damages her own standing with such obsessive behavior, I’m content for the most part to let it go. (I’ve also issued a challenge in regard to her accusations of my being a troll, in that supposedly I’ve claimed to have credentials I couldn’t possibly have: if she can find a Mod willing, I will allow that Mod to do the work—it shouldn’t take but five minutes at most-- required to see if I have faked a syllable of what I’ve claimed to IRL—if I have faked anything, then naturally I’ll accept banning because false claims are, as Tom might put it, consistent with the behavior of a troll. But of course I would demand that the person making this charge against me accept a banning if those charges are found to be false. So far, no takers.) It’s true that I don’t always proofread my posts very carefully-- even Homer nods-- but I think I raise rather than lower the general standard of SDMB prose style, and that aim is sufficient for me. Obviously merely stalking a selected poster for purposes of irrelevant and personal agenda items is not the behavior of a troll.
Finally, in Tom’s complaint against badchad, there is the matter of “using language intended to rile up people rather than contribute to honest debate.” Two wiggle words, both of which **Tom ** uses prejudicially: “intended” and “honest.” If you consider that my hypothetical hard-core atheist Mod might well view Polycarp’s stance on certain issues as dishonest (probably wrongly), it’s at the least a very subjective call on Tom’s part to judge badchad’s stance on what constitutes “honest” and “dishonest” debate. If badchad wants to discuss issues A and Z as “honest” debate but Polycarp wants to discusses issues Alpha and Omega, who should make the call on which issues are the relevant ones in GD? I submit, NOT **Polycarp’**s friend, supporter and admirer. If Polycarp chooses to get “riled up” by badchad’s debating style or substance, that’s his problem. If he remains rational (something that may not be within his powers), Polycarp will emerge as far more mature and confident than badchad, which will only help his cause. But if he chooses to freak out from accusations of inconsistency, hypocrisy, abusiveness towards fundamentalists, or other charges badchad makes, he shouldn’t be able to call on Tom to tell badchad what to say or how to say it.
Likewise, Tom is providing protection to LDS apologists in providing a separate thread for discussions beyond a tightly restricted area of what Tom deems to be “theological” issues. He piously claims that we’re all perfectly free to join in the “other” thread on LDS he has created, neglecting to point out that of course the LDS OP is equally free to avoid that thread and answer only those questions Tom deems safe in the original thread. Some Great Debate: Imagine if I announced that I wanted to debate only some narrow issue, like the Catholic’s Church’s use of torture in official Inquisitions but didn’t want anyone intruding their views on the Church’s more positive contributions to western culture: would Tom set up a special safe haven for me to deride the Church’s approval of torture and send anyone with a different perspective to a different thread? Not bloody likely.
I hope I’ve answered some of your concerns, Kaylasdad99, in this long, long post. In response to **Tom’**s summation (where he asked if I “simply feel that Mods should never use the word troll unless they are laying a formal charge”) the brief answer to that is “Yes, but especially where they have a personal interest.” I would also like to ask if you could supply names of the particular staffers who called for badchad’s ban on a charge of trolling which you resisted nobly. I have a few questions for these numerous staffers clamoring for the ban on that specific charge.
