I think it’s fairly common to hear around GD/Pit especially “I didn’t say that” or “you’re misrepresenting my position”.
we’re all putting words up on a screen (my pithy comment for the day). Words subject to interpretation, paraphrasing, misinterpretation, etc.
The proper way to handle it (MHO) is
Poster Z : I think apples are jim dandy.
Poster Y: what, you got something against Oranges?
Poster Z: why no, I just really like apples.
Poster Y : Oh, ok.
OR:
Poster Z: I think apples are jim dandy.
Poster Y: you think apples like to be called jim?
Poster Z: that’s not what I said, I merely was saying that I like them.
Poster Y: Oh.
**not ** ok:
Poster Z: I think apples are jim dandy.
Poster Y: You hypocrit, there’s nothing about apples that make them belong to this Jim dandy, whoever he might be.
Poster Z: Um, I just really like apples.
Poster Y: Take it back!! My name is Jim and I can’t have anyone reading this trash and believing that I’m an apple, erase that post! NOw!! or I’ll sue!!!
While the nice folks at Fathom (and even those of us who are habitually cranky) do not feel bound by SDMB regulations (any more than the SDMB does or should feel bound by Fathom protocols), we are not really in the business of providing deliberate work-arounds to the SDMB. There have been “frank discussions” regarding the SDMB on Fathom, and there will be more, I’m sure, however I do not see passing that sort of information in the same category.
I am speaking only for myself, (and have not “checked in” with OpalCat or any other Fathom staff), but I would be disappointed to find folks using Fathom simply to thwart the anonymity that Ed accorded Poster A and Poster B.
I’m as curious as anyone else, but it is a Straight Dope situation and if the names are going to be revealed, they should be revealed, here.
(And how many of us are going to have our lives enriched by the knowledge, anyway?)
Sorry for the confusion, that banning of ‘A’ comment was in response to poster’s indicating that they felt that A’s actions were “jerkish”. The word jerk does have a banning connotation around here.
What’s really sad is it is no longer possible to view the posts that lead up to this. It’s all very well to have the mods give us a general rule, but nothing teaches what not to do like having an actual example of behavior that leads to banning.
For that matter, it appears that the word ‘banned’ no longer appears under a user’s name, so if you didn’t happen to see the train wreck, (or in my case, didn’t pay enough attention to who was speaking), you have no idea which user is never coming back.
Tejota the bannable offense here was threatening to sue the Chicago Reader over an on-board dispute. I was following this thread and saw ‘B’ blow up over the revised quote, lawsuits were mentioned in the thread, but I never imagined that ‘B’ would ever contact the staff officially to pursue it, and I don’t recall the Reader being mentioned. I just figured it was a bunch of hot air blown out in the heat of the moment.
AFAIK, nothing said inside the thread itself was bannable, unless there were lawsuit threatening posts that I missed.
Well, it was public knowledge when it happened, and until the thread was pulled. I read the incident, but I can’t for the life of me remember who it was. UNFAIR to ban one and not the other.
Unfair? These guys had a dispute over something that gets done here time and time again. Taking someone’s post and slightly revising it to make a point happens all the time. They got in an argument and one of them decided to threaten the Chicago Reader with a lawsuit over it! The other one was more than happy to keep it within house and just discuss, or argue, or whatever.
A lawsuit, no matter how trivial, is a very costly endeavor, the Reader will have to have it’s lawyers deal with it. Hours of time spent, and thousands of dollars, all for a nonsense dispute on a message board. Considering how much money they make on this board ($0) they would shut us down in an instant, and I wouldn’t blame them.
I need to confess that I pulled a similar stunt on fatherjohn about a year ago. I, too, did it to show that his words were inflammatory and prejudicial. I replaced the subject of each sentence that he posted with “fatherjohn.” Am I in trouble for this?
