Ahem…
OK, so I’m being a twit. Of course, I’m taking great care in my typing at the moment. I wouldn’t want anyone to invoke Gaudere’s Law on me. 
[sub]Don’t be mad at me. It’s not every day I get to take such an easy cheap shot at a moderator, and I couldn’t pass it up.[/sub]
It’s like this: Do you take a pee in the living room? Nah, you pee in the bathroom. It’s inappropriate to pee in the living room.
If it’s rude to pee elsewhere, what makes it less rude in the bathroom?
Answer: Because that’s what the bathroom is for.
Likewise, the Pit exists for the sole purpose for containing all those nasty, silly, rude, foul-mouthed posts that will, ultimately, inevitably happen. Just like how people will, ultimately, inevitably have to take a piss.
Jesus SPOOFE, don’t you ever sleep?
Your comparison doesn’t hold. Being rude isn’t a necessary (if unpleasant) act. You don’t have rooms in your house, your school or your work specifically for being rude. Simply put, there is generally very little excuse for being impolite.
The Pit fills a purpose. But that doesn’t mean that one’s posts in it have to be impolite, profanity-laced attacks.
It’s beneath you, it’s beneath me. Heck, it should be beneath all people of good conscience.
Flame wars happen yes. But it is not inevitable. I have never seen personal attacks on my other message board they way I see them here. That doesn’t seem to be the norm among message boards. People act this way because they are permitted (or expected) to act this way. People can debate and vent without personal attacks and senseless lines of vulgarity. I was shocked the first time I read a post in the pit. Does this mean I think they should get rid of the Pit? No. I personally would like to see it remain a bit more civil, but obviously I am in the minority. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to read it. I prefer to stick to the general questions anyway.
When I feel I have to take somebody to church in the Pit, I find I can efficiently dissect them using non-profane vocabulary.
On the other hand, there are times when inviting someone to have carnal knowledge of himself is a necessary response to a particularly inane post.
Satisfying, yes. (Oh, I agree…) Necessary? I don’t think so.
It’s possible to express your disdain for someone, their talents and intellect, while remaining polite.
And it’s more of a challenge.
Have you? I’ve read Cecil’s columns for years. I don’t ever recall reading anything as vulgar, profane, or threatening as some of the Pit threads. Cecil has an archive of his columns here. Can you show us any column where you think he is vulgar, profane, or threatening?
He sometimes makes whimsical jabs at readers, researchers, and so on, but never writes anything obscene or offensive.
That argument sounds like the old “violence/adult material on tv” debate. Let’s show anything we want on tv, and if you don’t want to watch it, or don’t want your kids to watch, then don’t watch that show/channel. This works to a degree. However, most people are going to end up ‘glancing through’ that tv show or Pit thread. It’s almost unavoidable. Every one will stumble in there out of curiousity.
Even if people who don’t like the pit learn to stay out of there, it is still disturbing to know there is a place here where obscene, profane, threatening personal attacks are allowed. The fact is, there are rules against it on this board, but the rules are not adhered to in the pit. I still think it does more harm than good.
Well said, thanks. Or “We have one basic rule: Don’t be a jerk”.
OK, maybe I shouldn’t have said the Pit should be gotten rid of. Maybe it just needs some cleaning up. Get rid of the ‘anything goes’ policy?
There are three moderators for the Pit. Why? What is it they are doing or enforcing?
Please. Don’t go there !
First things first - I’m not taking a hard line stance on this either way. I know the pitters have teeth and I don’t want to end up on the business of them, though I feel I could hold my own were it be needed. Anyway…
I have to defer to you about bandwidth. I am not a geek or techie, so my observations were made based on WAGs. However, you’re view of imbalance is subjective. Period. And, I would rather gain some insight to a poster by his sig that wade through 5 pages of useless, redundant insults just to get to a post that I’ve been refered to. Yes, I know, if you don’t like it, don’t go there. And for the most part I don’t. But for the times it’s appropriate that I do, I would like to see more adult dialog.
Second, let’s take your comment about the boards being here to be used. A little sweeping, wouldn’t you say? Without rules no one would ever be banned - even though they were just using the boards. Mods are constantly closing threads that were improperly started or used, and they should. Yes, the boards are here to be used, but used responsibly. That’s why we have mods and admins. I think CG makes a good point about 3 mods for the pit.
But let’s get to the real issue. Some people get off on ranting, flaming and beating people up in the pit. These posters are not going to be swayed by a thound pages of logic. They want it - that’s it. And they will fight for their right to do it. That’s fine, too. My guess, though, would be that the pit was concieved as a place for people to go when a GD or GQ thread dedate got out of hand (and for ?'s regarding the admin of the board). And I’m not suggesting that these members are less for it. I for one though, don’t think it seems congruent with the rest of the board as a whole. It seems to be some people’s reason for being here. I’ve been lurking here for a LONG time and there are a lot of really high count posters I’ve never heard of until I ventured into the pit recently. I’m just thinking it would be nice to have the really harsh flame-wars and non-board issues as an adjunct site. But, again, just my 2¢ worth.
I do think we need the pit, my personal feeling is we need to reign it in a little.
Nope. 
This is true. Nor is it limited solely to the Pit. Load up any GD thread regarding the past Election to see rudeness that would put most Pit threads to shame.
That can describe at least four forums on this message board. I believe it was Alphagene who said “If the Pit goes, them MPSIMS goes with it.”
Mr. George…
There is no “anything goes” policy.
They keep people from acting out-of-line. And if you spent more than five minutes in there, you would see it.
Christ, I wish I was still 18. Then I could stay up late, too. As it is it’s 9PM here and I’m drifting off.
SPOOFE, (and I still miss the ‘Bo Diddly’ part, you know) call me silly but I find most of the so-called ‘Great’ debates to be pointless for the same reason I find most Pit threads pointless. Too many people take things personally in both forums. Give it up with the attacks already.
Or…
“Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean that you are lessened. There is no need to attack your opponent as a means of redressing a perceived diminishment.”
I’ve always found that keeping one’s head goes much further towards winning your point (not that most people seem interested in that these days) than any amount of heated debate.
So stay polite. It’s better for all involved and carries the debate that much farther.
Think of what I’m saying as a variant on (what is it?) Godwin’s Law (hoping I have that right!). The first person to lose his or her cool by invoking Nazis (becomes rude/loses perspective/etc) automatically loses an argument.
Well, for one thing, we DO have rules in the Pit, and we do keep things from going too far out of line. For another thing, I am an administrator, not a moderator, and so most of my time is taken up by administrative duties.
My advice to you is to worry a lot less about the Pit, and a lot more about whether or not we regard you as a troll. One rule that we enforce all over the board is that we don’t allow wholesale reproduction of copyrighted material.
Lynn
Administrator
For the Straight Dope
Sorry… the “Bo Diddly” is gone (mostly 'cuz I don’t wanna bother Tuba about it again… it took me forever to build up the nerve to ask her to change it in the first place!)
Anyway, I agree about people taking things personally. That’s happened to me (I’ve been on the giving AND receiving end), and it’s usually more of a hassle than it’s worth.
However, the Pit isn’t just about personal insults. The vast majority of Pit threads are rants… very few are instances of “calling someone out”, and a good number of those usually get resolved in a positive manner.
Only a tiny minority of Pit threads become very heated. Some start with a burst of flames, but that quickly fizzles out and apologies are provided. But then we get some threads that… well… become epic. Some people like a good verbal battle (at times, myself included). Can it get personal? Well, sort of… usually, comments like “Yo’ momma!” aren’t invoked (and it’s only the small man who tries to drag a person’s personal life into things… usually, you can scathe them with just their on-board persona).
I still say that we keep the Pit. Sure, it’s not for everybody, but neither is MPSIMS, Cafe Society, or GQ (even though GQ is, technically, one of the main reasons for the creation of the SDMB). But the Pit serves its purpose, and testimony from Dopers who remember the pre-Pit days indicates that it’s performing its duties quite well.
Oh, I clearly agree that the Pit fills a worthwhile role.
All I’m asking for is civility in it from the posters. It’s so much more well…civilized that way.
And I find it absurdly childish when I see the ever present, “And I can say XXXX and not get in trouble 'cause this is the Pit”. Why not just say ‘nanny nanny boo boo’ while you’re there, children?
I personally don’t care much for MPSIMS. This is a board dedicated to fighting ignorance (so says the mantra), not flirting and sharing love stories. That said, I see no good reason to remove MPSIMS. Why?
I personally think the pit is a little harsh sometimes, but I don’t think its needlessly outa control. I’ve seen the Admin and Mods step in time and time again to curb things that aren’t by any stretch of the imagination welcome even in a flame center. (I am a pit lurker, mostly :))
I have utilized the pit for my own ends thrice, and really only as an extention of GD because my frustration with a single poster was reaching a breaking point. And, I’ll be damned if one of the threads I started didn’t show me what an ass I was.
Sometimes it takes that kind of rhetoric to get a message across. Sometimes that style of rhetoric is the message.
But, IMHO, if we were to remove any forum, we should remove all forums but GQ, and maybe GD (and that’s a strong maybe). Everything else is “technically” superfluous.
And all that said, why didn’t you take this to the pit where you can say what you really feel? 
Easy, if you don’t like the PIT don’t read it, I don’t.
I think it encourages people to vent & thus, I do think it should be taken out.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Lynn Bodoni *
One rule that we enforce all over the board is that we don’t allow wholesale reproduction of copyrighted material.
/QUOTE]
Are you implying I violated copyright laws? When? My last two posts were copies of email. I thought email was not copyrighted.
Most of the flames in the pit against other board members are really against their posts in other places. If someone in GD, for example, continuously posts statements that are illogical or without support, or if someone says something completely outrageous, a pit thread will probably appear against that person. One benefit of that, though, is it keeps the original thread free of any hijacks. With the pit, if somebody posts as to my example, a pit thread can be started saying, “Hey, Poster X. Here, here, and here, you made statements without proof. That’s a bad thing”. Without it, any post like that would have to be made in the original thread, which might not benefit from the hijack, because the original thread might have a spirited on topic discussion going.
Remember too, that the vast majority of members never have pit threads directed against them, and of those members who have pit threads directed against them, a number backfire on the OP, especially if his or her complaint is baseless. Many more, if the OP’s complaint has some merit, but there’s merit on the other side also, turn into debates, and are usually discussed very civilly. However, this is not always the case.
I’m getting into a controversial topic here, which is “Is this board a community.”, and without dwelling too much on it, will say that the board has certain common values, among them, the value of supporting what you say, making logical arguments, not denigrating or insulting entire groups of people, and writing coherantly. These standards, while to some extent are imposed (by moderators and administrators), largely come out of the community itself, and its desire, as a whole, to have intelligent discussions and be free of the juvenile, immature spirit that so many message boards now have fallen victim to.
Unfortunately, some posters find themselves unable to adhere to these standards. The most egregious examples get banned pretty quickly, but not everyone does, of course. For those individuals, sometimes a pit thread directed in their direction is enough to make them reconsider what they’ve been posting, and work to improve their behavior. In a sense, the pit is theraputic for both the ranter, who is able to share what is bothering him, and the person ranted against, who’s able to see that some of his posts have been inappropriate. The pit therefore serves a dual purpose. It is both social conscience, and therapist. This is why the pit is neccesary, and why I think those who criticise it are missing the point. It’s not a forum where “anything goes” and it’s not a forum where people randomly throw out insults. The same rules and standards are expected in the pit as anywhere else, and if you don’t believe me, find a pit thread which has backfired on its creator, because by the willing to criticize others, you leave your behavior open to criticism. This is just one of the things that makes this board great.