I don’t get this. Why is it okay to make sophomoric jokes on every other topic on the Dope but this one? Is there a rule I’m missing?
What one? A link would be nice.
i’m not sure if I was clear there. I get that these jokes might be offensive to big-breasted women. What I wonder is if I can start reporting jokes that are offensive to me. Seeing as I’m a semi-fundamentalist Christian who leans towards the right on almost everything, I could start reporting a bunch of posts.
ETA:
There’s a built-in link in the quote. Click the little image.
I don’t know whether Rico was thinking about this thread, but I suspect Rubystreak was. Short answer: a lot of women would prefer not to have to deal with prepubescent-style “wit” when discussing things having to do with their (our) breasts.
Well, that’s just tough titty, isn’t it? I mean c’mon. People tell penis jokes and stories all the time. Here’s one in an IMHO thread about doctors. And here’s an administrator responding to it without so much as an eyeblink. I realize that somehow, the penis thing will be spun differently to make the analogy fail. Or maybe the old “Just because Johnny does X, doesn’t mean we should all do Y” retort. Nevertheless, notwithstanding all of that, there’s too much crying and not enough laughing. Laugh a little.
Jesus. Are you guys serious?
Yeah, I was thinking of your ATMB thread and the Tracy Lord Pit thread when I posted my “There’s one in every thread” comment. Because there IS one in every thread. And it’s lame as hell.
I don’t think it’s a special rule. Thread shitting is thread shitting, and we’re advised by the mods to report it, not comment on it, engage in junior modding, or derail the thread to address it. Apparently Rico felt the jokes were thread shitty enough to ask the gentlemen in question to stop. He didn’t warn anyone or ban anyone, he just asked them to stop. Are you seriously suggesting he did something wrong?
I think, if you felt a bunch of sophomoric jokes was detracting from a serious thread on another topic, and you reported it or a Mod saw it and thought it was thread shitting, he or she would post something similar to what Rico posted. It’s not a special rule. It’s the same rule that has existed all along.
As I already said, I understand that some women are offended by them. (I know quite a few who are capable of taking them as intended, though.) As far as I know, other jokes that some people find offensive are perfectly allowable, as I’ve seen no other moderating asking them to stop. It thus seems like those who are offended by this type of joke are given special treatment.
Knowing this board, I would assume this is not quite the case. I would hope that there is at least a fuzzy line defining why a joke is considered too offensive. Heck, I’d be fine if it was based on rule by popularity: a certain percentage of Dopers find this offensive, so we are going to officially discourage it.
BTW, the one joke in that thread that I’d actually find offensive wasn’t mentioned in Rico’s moderation. I hope it was just overlooked. I’ll report it rather than repeat it.
I have no problem with you discouraging it.
This is totally news to me. So I will start reporting threadshitting more often. I didn’t know I could, or I’d have done it a long time ago.
You see, I assume that if a mod can make a note on something, they can also serve a warning for the same subject. And yes, I would consider that wrong. Or at least unfair and uncharacteristic of the modding I’ve seen on this board.
I guess I don’t see how the thread was being derailed. Two people (arguably three) made jokes. A few people aired their dislike for those jokes, but the thread itself stayed on topic. In fact, it wasn’t until after the moderation that the thread died.
If Rico had said that the thread was getting off topic and issued a reminder, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. I still wish Rico himself would have cleared this up, so I knew you weren’t putting words into his mouth.
But I’m okay with this now. Thanks.
The mods are, in fact, discussing this behind the scenes. We’re certainly not trying to censor sophomoric jokes or low-taste comments. On the other hand, when someone wants a serious discussion about a topic, then interjecting a coarse joke is pretty much the definition of thread-shitting, n’est-ce pas?
Telling jokes which some other posters find offensive is not, per se, a violation of the rules – obviously, excluding racist jokes, personal insults (however humorous) outside the Pit, etc.
Yes, you absolutely can.
See, I thought I wasn’t supposed to. That would be junior modding, right? I made a negative comment about it, but is that really discouraging it? It literally happens in every serious thread about breasts, and it’s annoying. If a woman says it’s annoying, she gets painted as a humorless, shrill feminazi who can’t take a joke or just shrug it off. If a Mod says something about it, maybe it’ll just stop.
There was a recent ATMB thread about thread shitting where we were told to report it, not go off on the person we thought was thread shitting, and leave it up to the Mods to deal with it. I thought that was pretty much standard policy anyway. We’re not supposed to discipline other posters.
Why? The jokes are sexist and lame. If they were racist and lame, for instance, I bet the person in question would get a warning, and not just a “knock it off.” The thread in question was not a flirty thread at all, not even a little tiny bit, so those jokes were out of line. Rico’s modding was restrained and on target IMO.
I didn’t say it was derailed. I said it detracted from the thread, and IMO it did. I noticed that the thread has died since Rico posted, but I wouldn’t blame Rico for that.
I’m not putting words in his mouth. I’m just giving my opinion, which may or may not reflect anything that Rico was thinking.
Liberal, I have no idea how your example relates to this situation. Seriously, I’m not seeing it at all.
As I don’t see it within the moderators powers to prohibit certain types of jokes, I wouldn’t call it junior modding. It’s merely asking people to be polite.
Must have missed it. I don’t expect anyone to discipline anyone else. But there’s a difference between disciplining and asking people to not saying something impolite. I would only call it Junior Modding if you acted like you had some authority to stop it.
You must have missed the other person who had already made it a flirty/filthy comment. I find that if you don’t say anything about someone else’s detraction from a thread, people tend to assume such detraction is okay. Thus the reason I promote at least saying something.
As for a warning, I would find it quite unfair, as, as far as I know, nobody else has gotten a warning for similarly offensive behavior. In fact, I suspect it would get overturned by the sheer number of people who would object to it, claiming the mods were just adding rules. (Despite the fact that “Don’t be jerk” covers it, IMO)
True, I misread. I do find that a moderator action can hurt a particularly passionate thread, but you’re probably right that Rico didn’t. He just was late to the party. I went ahead and tried to revive it a bit.
I know you aren’t. Poor choice of words. I would’ve rather heard his reasoning without being influenced by yours, which I feel is now impossible. It is just wishful thinking on my part. I don’t think that you did anything wrong.
Unfortunately, Lib, I have to agree. While breasts and penises may seem analogous, they really aren’t. Very few guys are ashamed of talking about their big penis, nor are they offended by women flirting with them because of it.
The problem is, it’s a loaded situation. I participated in that 12 page trainwreck on breast-related comments, and it got VERY UGLY. It’s not worth engaging in as a poster, IMO. It would definitely derail the thread if you try to cut someone down for their inappropriately flirty boob comment, then they respond negatively, and now it’s an argument instead of a discussion about breast pain or whatever.
I am positive that a person who made an inappropriate and unsolicited racist joke in an IMHO thread would get a warning. Why are the rules different for sexist jokes?
It’s not that breasts and penises aren’t analogous. It’s that Cisco was joking about his own penis in Lib’s cited thread. In the breast pain thread of your OP, neither the OP nor any of the women in the thread is joking around. Thus, joking in the first case is not out of line, but joking in the second case is, IMO.
Sorry, folks, I was out on a job.
Meatspace activities, I know…totally inappropriate…
My take: It was supposed to be a serious thread. We didn’t have women in the thread saying “Look at my 38HHH tits!” They were commenting on the OP, which was whether breast size increases back and other pain. And breast size is a factor to consider in people’s experiences.
Remarks like that are inappropriate in a serious thread. Back in March a poster stated in Twick’s thread about breast jokes:
No one point to this later and say that “Uncle Rico made that rule back in September of 2009.” I did no such thing. That is a very succinct and good sense post - but not a rule. We try not to make rules on everything. We’re not lawyers (well, most of us aren’t) and too many rules cut down the enjoyment for everyone.
Common sense, people, common sense.
Thank you.
(off soapbox)
I can understand how distasteful it is to make titty jokes in, say, a thread about breast cancer. Yeah, I’d say that’s threadshitting. But the same would be true about making penis jokes in a thread about a botched circumcision someone is having to endure.
In fact, in general, just dropping into a thread for no purpose other than to ridicule the participants is thread shitting. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. And I’m nobody in particular, so…
Thinking it over, ridiculing the participants is general ad hominem, already forbidden everywhere but the Pit. My sentence above should have read like this instead:
In fact, in general, just dropping into a thread for no purpose other than to ridicule the topic or subject matter is thread shitting.
Indeed they do. But nannying posters too much also cuts down on enjoyment, and that’s just what this is. The jokes were harmless and within the rules.
Thing is, women aren’t men (I know there was a memo about it). Men relate to each other differently. There’s more insults and humor used as bonding even when that humor is over their own bodies. Women are already self conscious about their bodies especially their breasts. Talking about that particular subject leaves one open to feeling ridiculed and that their pain (because it is painful dammit) is secondary to once again being treated like they exist for no other reason than to be stared at. After a lifetime of such jokes and comments it gets very old. As Rubystreak said it would be nice if just once such comments went unsaid. The fact that (some) men see it as just a comment is sort of an apples and oranges argument.
Whose enjoyment at whose expense?