No big deal, I wasn’t Officially Warned or anything, but I believe Marley misunderstood my “you” here to mean **Stratocaster **personally, rather the section of the GOP he may (or may not) have been representing in that thread. How would I know Stratocaster’s voting practices or his support for various GOP candidates? (I suppose I could have cyber-stalked him and traced all his political posts for the past few years, but I didn’t.) Not only in that post linked here, but a few posts later (I think #41) I’m plainly using “you” to refer to all hard-line right-wing conservatives, not any one poster.
You could construe my posts to argue that I’m actually directly addressing a particular poster, but you’d be wrong to do so in this instance. I don’t think that Mitt Romney had **Stratocaster **personally in mind when (in my estimation) he outsmarted the right wing of the GOP to make the extreme candidates divvy up a majority of the primary votes to give him victories with a 35% or so share of the vote, so I don’t really understand how my parenthetical “not too tough” in referencing to “outsmarting you,” could be taken as a shot at **Stratocaster **rather than the GOP, when it was they he had outsmarted, and clearly not Stratocaster.
I think the underlined bit is clearly referring to the phrase “you right wingers” and it’s debatable if that refers to specific posters or just right wingers in general.
I think the OP proposes a defensible interpretation of prr’s post. Seriously.
But that’s not really the issue. Pseudotriton: why not level up? Why not proofread your posts to avoid the possibility of violating the rule? That’s what I do anyway. It’s not unusual for me to add softeners or find something in my posts that might be taken the wrong way. It would be better to avoid political slams altogether of course, but if you must do so, put some care into it.
You and Bob Ducca (and IMO any reasonable fair-minded reader) will easily trace the antecedent out and find that the “you” **Marley **objects to is “you hardline rightwingers” so I don’t see where careful proofreading would have helped here. (I proofread for a living, btw, and I haven’t gotten fired yet, making me one of the few SDers who make that claim.) No, the worst I can see **Marley **reasonably doing would be asking me if I was perhaps targeting **Stratocaster **personally with that general “you.”
We all use “you” to refer to a large group of people on occasion here. Enforcement of the “no-personal-attacks” rule should be performed only IMO when the attack is clear, not when it’s dubious or ambiguous. Inquiry costs nothing. Otherwise, be very careful when using phrases such as “you know,” because you’re (I should say, one is) risking the accusation that one is telling people what they know and what they don’t know, and making personal remarks about them unjustly.
It would have been very simple to say “those” instead of “you”, especially when the paragraph started with a reference to a specific poster on this MB.
And **Marley **cited me for referring to a different poster on this MB. Does that tell you *anything *about your (and his) determined over-reading of the post?
From observing the OP’s activities in this forum, it appears to me that barely crossing the line and then arguing about the resulting moderation is a hobby of his.
Or not crossing the line and then arguing about the resulting moderation, in this instance. But thanks for your valuable contribution to the discussion, nonetheless.
Because he said very clearly that he’s a Republican. Here’s post #35, which appeared to be the post you were responding to:
I gave you a note for post #37 (your first post in the thread). If you were not addressing Stratocaster I am not sure why you said “you” at all. The issue would be the same if you were taking a dig at OMG A Black Conservative (who you mentioned earlier by name). You went on to address Stratocaster as “you” in several subsequent posts:
And for whatever it’s worth Stratocaster seemed to feel you were talking to him specifically:
If none of that was intended, so be it. As you said, you didn’t get an official warning. Just be more careful. In your post you said outsmarting “you” Republicans was not too hard. Two posts earlier another poster had identified himself as a Republican. So I think my reading was very reasonable.
Which makes it kind of ironic that your defense of your comment is that you weren’t reading carefully.
See post #2 in this thread. There’s nothing wrong with the way I read your post. It can very reasonably be read to be an insult to OMG, ABC. In fact, it’s hard to make a case that it wasn’t an insult to him. And although Stratocaster wasn’t named in your post, the accusation was broad enough that it could have encompassed him as well.
While many of us may share your views of certain posters on this MB, most of us can keep those personal opinions and insults out of our posts. It isn’t difficult.
I wonder if any of the Mods have spanked the hand of anyone who says, “You Christians” – and then go on to describe some hideous things that some Christians have done. It seems the same guidelines should apply.
Do proofreaders have to be on duty all the time, Marley? I think that PRR gave a reason rather than an excuse. I was an English teacher for twenty years and I don’t bother with proofreading my own posts here and it shows. (I was also a proofreader before I became a teacher, and the work is not as easy as it might seem – especially when it is your own writing that you are proofing. (By “your” and “you” in that last sentence, I wasn’t referring to anyone other than proofreaders in general. Got it?)
You, Marley, used to be a really interesting poster with points of view that I most often agreed with. Since you became a mod, it seems to me that your adamant defenses of your own “facts” have grown. You argue opinions as if you have more knowledge of the truth than mere posters. And sometimes your own level of reading comprehension combined with your seeming stubbornness make you look arrogant and punitive.
I’m not saying that you are wrong or right in your comments about PRR’s post. And I think it’s a good thing that you didn’t give him a warning. But after a while, some of us have come to expect negative feedback from you and that’s what we see whether you intended it or not. Maybe you do the same thing with PRR.
I opine that PRR gave it as neither reason nor excuse, but as a credential. Meaning, that PRR thought that his reading was the correct one and that Marley and others clearly misconstrued it.
That’s eyebrow-raising. I can see and believe prr’s thought process and justification. But Marley’s and John Mace’s interpretation is also reasonable. Best practices dictate that some care be taken to not insult other members outside of the pit. A mod note would not seem to be out of line. And if this sort of thing became a habit, a warning would be appropriate.
He did too. I am front of mind in every candidate’s strategies. The sun also does NOT shine until I get up in the morning.
FWIW, I thought the comment was more directed at OMG, but I did take it as directed to the Republicans posting in the thread, whomever he meant. But I accept prr’s explanation, plus I tend not to worry about such things anyway.
And so can I, although I’m not sure his explanation makes a lot of sense. But I don’t think my reading of the post was hasty or a “determined over-reading.” And if I see a post that seems ambiguous I don’t think I have to ask posters what they meant. I don’t mind doing that if it’s necessary, but longtime posters should know to steer clear of potential violations of the rules. If you are posting and decide to address a group of people as “you,” take care to make sure it does not sound like you’re talking about another poster.