“Rules
We have one basic rule: Don’t be a jerk.
…
You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this BB to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar,hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, or otherwise violative of any law. You agree not to post any copyrighted material unlessthe copyright is owned by you or by this BB. You agree to abide by the wishes of the board moderators in interpreting and enforcing these rules. Refusal to cooperate withboard moderators or to abide by these rules is grounds for revocation of your posting privileges”.
Why then, are “abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening” personal attacks allowed in the Pit? Cecil does not use language like that in his column. Why should it be used here?
yes, best to close it and let people just bottle up their frustration, that’s bound to work.
Or just let them run riot and post abuse in any thread anywhere, that would be great too.
No, I think the BBQ pit does exactly what it says on the tin; it’s a way of containing (to a greater extent) the bad-mouthing that seems inevitable on any message board.
If you don’t like it, just don’t look at it, sticks ‘n’ stones and all that.
Oh, and I’m sure that someone will be along shortly with an example of Cecil letting fly.
I can understand your viewpoing, Mangetout, but the Pit isn’t the only way to vent. Real life? Friends? Family? Support lines or message boards for specific problems?
I don’t really mind the Pit, but I do wonder how healthy it is. How many people end up there in slanging matches that don’t end in anything positive? How many people rush in and say something stupid that, given the chance to calm down, they might never have said?
Eh, it’s no big deal, I just wonder whether the Pit has ever helped anyone.
I like the Pit. On other boards, flamewars are uglier, longer, and more of a distraction from the conversation. The Pit gives a place for them to happen, gives those who enjoy flaming as a sport a place to do it and those who don’t a way to ignore it most of the time.
Just to explain myself a bit more; I’ve never seen a message board like this one before; where hugely controversial topics can be debated by people with radically polarised viewpoings ;), but (usually) without descending into bitter Ad Hominem attacks or tangential diversions. If people want to do those things, they are invited to do so, and provided with a self-contained place in which to do so.
This board is unique in a good way; much of that is due to the diligence and even-handedness of the moderators, some is due to the restraint and self-discipline of members, but the pit makes a valuable contribution too.
The only problem I have with the pit is that I learned flaming on Usenet, where flames are cruel and personnal. I can’t flame someone for fear of going overboard. So I just read most of the threads and sometimes post something, but definitely stay away from flaming posters. I’d rather play it safe than annoy everyone by unleashing a deeply hurtful flame. You know, the kind that wishes all the pain, despair and misery existing on one individual :D. If you’ve been on newsgroups even a bit, you probably know what I’m talking about.
Seriously, though, am I right in thinking these kinds of flames would be inappropriate even for the pit? ([sub][sup]I know you don’t have examples, but I don’t even want to try to post something like that in the pit, so I sure am not going to post the here.[/sup][/sub])
Because, Mr. George, there is one thing that you missed in all your (apparently) infinite wisdom on the subject: Flame wars happen. There’s no way around it. So there are three options for dealing with flame wars…
Allow them to burn through a Great Debate or General Question unabated (hardly a viable option).
Close a thread as soon as it becomes a flame war (at the cost of stifling any other pertinent discussion going on in there).
Keep all the flames in a single place, where they can be controlled and isolated from the rest of the Board community.
Now, Mr. George, which of those three solutions do you think is best? Or do you have another solution to the inevitable flame wars that arise?
This strikes me as either fatalistic or short sighted, especially on a moderated board. Its normal to expect three-year-olds to throw things at each other, but you also teach them that it is wrong, and you also expect them to grow out of it. I’m idealistic enough to believe that even places like Northern Ireland will eventually become peaceful, no matter what the history.
C’mon, you’re not thinking outside the box. The obvious solution is to ban people who can’t control themselves. This is a privately owned, moderated message board. It would be simple to set up a rule that if you can’t control yoursef, then you’re not welcome. If you don’t like it, you can go someplace else. I sometimes get the feeling that various flamers consider themselves to be positive contributers to the SDMB, when in reality they would barely be missed.
Y’know what? I don’t like flamefests, either. I think that they’re silly and counterproductive, and I’ve never yet participated in one… And that’s exactly why I do like the Pit. It’s sort of like chopping the onions really big in a salad, so folks who don’t like them can pick them out easily. If someone, like myself, doesn’t like flames, then we can easily avoid them completely, and there’s no harm done. If someone likes flaming, well then again, there’s no harm done. It works.
Look, this place is geared toward bright, outspoken, maybe (!?)sideways-pissant folks to hash things out. The goal, generously interperted, is to fight ignornace. But issues differ in direct proportion to the madly variable human capacity to embrace them.
Everybody has opinions, problems, questions, beliefs, etc. so the practical question becomes how to encompass, and channel, means for people to hash things out. There’s a distinct difference between encouraging ranting and recognizing the its utility.
If this place has a benchmark it’s GQ, with its emphasis on attribution and truth. But the ethic widens–wisely, IMO–to embrace full fledged debates, casual shit-shootin’ and even wall-eyed, frothing hissy fits. The approach is the key. The Pit is a safety valve but one equipped with outer AND inner pressure gauges.
Ranting for its own sake may be a peculiar art form but our sidewalk howlers aren’t ignored: they’re recognized, listened to, held accountable and answered. In fact they’re frequently discombobulated by onlookers pulling up lawnchairs, passing around drinks/munchies and JUDGING every damned by-play.
In our rowdy “market place of ideas” The Pit surely isn’t the focal point. But it has a useful function in the broader body politic. For those who get overly pissy about it, Cece–love 'im–dubs willful idiots “maggots”. And THAT’S in his warm, fuzzy moments.
Weird indeed–and maddening.
BTW, thanks to Mangetout and a stealth kindly poster for the heads-up.
I previewed several times–coding, grammar, saying what I meant?–but only hit “submit” once.
Grrr. We’re working on it.
Actually Jerry’s working on it. (Wizards are swift, subtle but not to be trifled with…)
I’ll excise that 3rd redudant post when possible.
Apolgies, folks.
Obviously cyber gremlins are infuriating but VERY democratic. Where did I leave my dust pan…?
No, it’s just realistic. People will disagree, and sometimes it will become heated. The Moderators cannot be everywhere at once, and cannot stop someone from taking a potshot at someone else over a long-standing grudge.
That, in my opinion, is an even WORSE option. It is narrow-minded and based on the assumption that people who get angry are incapable of contributing to the message board. These are PEOPLE posting these things… sometimes they lose their temper. Sometimes they just need to call someone else out on mistakes made. Sometimes they just need to rant. Sometimes they just need to say “fuck” a bunch of times.
My less than $.02 worth. (Yes I’m a newbie but I’ve been a lurker for a while so I know what and why goes on in the pit)
I think the pit is needed. It does keep the rest of the board clean but, certain situations I’m not sure about. Such as:
Personal attacks. Why not just e-mail the offender? I know sometimes you just get SOOOOO mad you gotta tell the rest of the board what a dipshit ‘member X’ is (apologies if there is an actual member X), but for every little thing?
Rants about things that do not pertain to this board (e.g. “Someone’s dog shit on my lawn and I’m pissed!”)
Rants (as opposed to thoughtful curiousness about their actions) against the mods - again, e-mail them personally.
The reason I (trepidiously) posted here was to point out that uneccesary flaming would seem to gobble up tons of bandwidth. When mods/admins are asking for shorter sig lines, there’s 5 pages on why a student baked dope brownies for his class.5!!!
5 on ‘Fear me I’m Jewish’, 5 on ‘Wildest Bill -AGAIN!’ (Lord knows how many pages in all have been wasted on that puppetmaster), and so it goes.
Again, I think we need the pit. But shouldn’t we limit the stuff there, at least for bandwidth? I mean, we are adults after all.
While not wishing to speak for Mr George I can offer a simple solution to the ‘inevitable’ flame wars.
Be an adult
Even the two times I did ‘call someone out’ (such as it is) in the Pit I remained (I hope) polite about it.
Quiet, thoughtful discourse is what a message board like this one should be about. Nothing strikes me as more childish than the habit of posting something in the Pit and then saying, “And I can this XXX because we’re in the Pit”.
One question: If it’s rude elsewhere what makes it less rude in the Pit?
I swear, sometimes I feel the Pit is like that silly episode of Star Trek (I think it was the ‘Landru’ one) where an entire repressed society gets to cut loose with a festival once a year. If you’re so repressed elsewhere that you need a special area to cut loose you should re-examine what you’re doing.
Not directing this at you specifically, SPOOFE. You’re just the lucky one to whom I replied.
I don’t want the Pit gone. The forum itself fills a role. And it’s a useful one. But let’s try to keep it polite.
Jonathan “Leading the lost cause for civility and consideration” Chance
I used to be one of the people that studiously avoided the Pit. I would click a link, find out I was reading a Pit thread, and back out quickly.
Then I got pissed and needed to vent and posted a Pit thread. And recently I contributed to a number of them. Most of it was still reasoned and calm.
But it is nice to have a place where I can post “Saturday Night Live Sucks Big Green Greasy Donkey Dicks!!!” when I’ve mistakenly listened to people who told me it was funny again, and tuned it to watch “Dog Show”.
Hombre said:
I disagree. See example above. Sometimes you just gotta scream something and share the misery. Maybe somebody else has the exact same gripe, and you can get a cathartic release and a gripefest.
While I agree the ranters only show their own lack of mental acuity, face the fact that people will complain about the moderators. It is a given. If they don’t post in the Pit, they’ll post in ATMB, or GD. It is appropriate to send the complaints to the Pit, and then watch the rest of the membership show the complainant just how ridiculous is post really is. Look, discussions about moderator actions will happen - better to contain them there than flourish on the rest of the board.
Not the same thing at all. The board is supposed to be here to be used. Pages on topics are not a substantial drain on the bandwidth. The drain on bandwidth is the resources to link to the user profile information and update post counts for each poster on each thread each time the page is loaded. That’s 50 people a page, for their post count and sig file. That’s why sig files are such a drain on bandwidth. Also, long sig files are a problem from purely an aesthetic view point - they often overshadow the actual post content, and make it hard to sort out what is the comment. Whey you have a 1 line comment and 4 different sentences of sig file, you have a serious post imbalance.
While it is certainly appropriate to suggest members look and see if their topic is already posted (5 different threads on Wildest Bill’s posting abilities would be unnecessarily redundant), we shouldn’t start limiting the content of acceptable topics purely to save bandwidth.
