A nice experiment in the limits of truth, Shoddy. Point of fact, GeeDubya, The Man Who Fell Up, was attempting to limn himself in egalitarian colors, i.e., suggesting that “some people” don’t think “brown-skinned” people can deal with the complexitys of democracy. He’s quite right, of course, some people do think that, and are deserving of rebuke.
But his suggestion is obvious to the meanest intellilgence: that it is his critics who are saying this, leading to the droll insinuation that GeeDubya is boldly defending democracy from his racist critics. “George Bush is a racist” is almost certainly a lie. But “George Bush is nobly defending democracy by his Iraqi policies” is a gross canard. A subtle distinction, I grant you, and exploited for all it was worth by friend Shodan.
In terms of honesty and straightforward debate, friend Demo is worth two of you, Shoddy, and thats before he pounds down his first Foster’s.
As to Manny’s priveleged character status, oh, well, what the hell, Mebitabel. Its a minor distinction, one can afford some charity. After all, I am conceited and can be a bit of a sarcastic dink, whereas Manny is an arrogant prick. Room for growth.
When did this message board turn into a third grade playground at recess?
RT: But, Moderators… manhattan’s being mean to meeeeeeee.
Manhattan: I know you are but what am I?
RT: Butbutbutbut, none of the teachers are responding fast enough for me. I’m tellling on them
Manhattan: You’re a poopyhead.
Gaudere: OK, you two knock it off.
dantheman: Butbutbut. Gaudere didn’t spell out the right section of the playground rulebook and I’ll…I’ll…I’ll… Well, I’ll take my stuff and go home.
Fucking babies all around this goddamn place. Manhattan was an asswipe. RT was a crybaby. And people are bitching about not getting a fucking warning? Puhlease. Grow the fuck up.
Sorry, but that’s not the same thing. An argument can be stupid - or, more politely and more accurately, logically flawed. A post cannot logically be a troll. Cannot. Only a poster can be a troll.
Amazingly enough, most people here don’t read every single thread. Even if your example were valid, it’s hardly fair to expect the rest of us to pick up on it.
Heh. You’re right, Hamlet, how foolish I am to want to know what the rules actually are. Is this “rule” actually in the rulebook, or are you simply talking out of your ass?
Maybe you’re not foolish. Perhaps a nitpicking busybody who needs to stir up trouble over something so minor as an ex-mod not getting a warning when he acted like an asswipe. Yeah. Thats a better way to describe it.
Watch it, or I’m coming over there and putting your pigtails in my inkwell.
I did warn manny, in case you missed it. And I have laid out clearly what the rules of GD were in this instance: we’ve allowed liar before, we’ve allowed “this post is trollish” before, and “you should be banned” has been allowed in the Pit before w/o a junior mod warning. It is the last, and the overall tone that got the warning; “liar” and “insult the post, not the poster” has been around FOREVER in GD, and any attempt to say we’re only allowing it now because we wuv manny is rewriting history.
Tell me, were you as ardent a supporter for “non-infantile” behavior in GD when collounsbury was posting quite inflammatorily barely within the boundaries of what’s allowed?
Sure a post can be a troll.
Main Entry: 2troll
Function: noun
: a lure or a line with its lure and hook used in trolling
Saying “this post is a troll” is saying “this post is a baited hook”. Now, DNFTT is calling a poster a troll, not the post, which is why I don’t allow it. Troll-as-a-post cannot eat and so does not need to be fed so in this case I don’t think it can be considered referring to the post.
“I am unaware of the rules and it’s your fault.” You could always have, say, emailed us to ask, or perhaps simply accepted what we are saying here? No, of course it’s that we are trying to cover for manny, not that I know I’ve seen “this post is a troll before” and not warned for it. It happened so rarely and no one kicked up a fuss about it before that we didn’t see any reason to change our age-old “insult the post, not the poster” rule. Now we shall probably have to disallow it completely if only because people will see it as an ideal way to make things a pain.
Hamlet, in all fairness, if you were the poster who had accused another (or a “post”) of trolling, I would be saying the same thing. As far as I’m concerened, this has nothing to do with the fact that he is an ex-moderator.
I get the “stupid” distinction: a person can make one stupid post without being stupid, or make one false statement without being a liar (I would say a liar habitually lies).
Can someone post a troll without being a troll? Maybe. I’m not sure.
Etc. That’s the point, though - the rules apparently depended upon that instance. You’ve generally allowed some things but not others and claimed that those were the rules at that moment.
No (er, maybe yes, I lost count of the negatives there), and why are you bringing that up anyway? There was, as you know, extensive discussion on the board about him as well as (I’m sure) off it, including the ways he detracted from the board as well as added to it, and I had nothing new to add to any of it. Are you keeping a scorecard somewhere?
Etc. You’ve seen fit to draw a line between “You are lying” and “You are a liar”, and between “That post you wrote was trolling” and “You are a troll”, even though the meaning and tone are essentially identical in either case for both the writer and the reader. If you’re now ready to go to a common-sense definition instead, that’s all to the good - but please be consistent, okay?
I think you’re really splitting hairs, here. Is there really much of a difference between a post that’s intended to lure people and the person who wrote the post? If someone says a post is a troll, isn’t that person by extension saying that the person who made the post is trolling?
Gaudere, is it not your responsibility to make the rules known to everyone, not just the cadre of GD denizens? It’s my responsibility to follow the rules, certainly, but it’s a daunting task when so many of them are implied or were mentioned in one thread that I simply never visited.
Now, I understand the distinction between “attack the post, not the poster”; in essence, we should tear down an argument logically, whereas insulting a poster falls under the heading of personal attacks. We’re a wiser, better-informed group when people debate the argument, not the person.
But that’s not the same as calling a person a troll versus saying their post is a troll. If the former is disallowed, then the latter should also be disallowed.
Like where? I mean, of course I allow some things and not others; some things are against the rules, some are not. And then I say “this is against the rules” or “this is acceptable.” That’s a terribly ominous way to say, “You make judgements based on a set of rules you tell us about!”
Actually, it’s RT which is attempting to draw a line between “that’s a lie” and “you are a liar” (as if I wouldn’t still be dealing with this if manny had said “that’s a lie!” rather than “you’re a liar!”); I beleive that anyone who lies can be called a liar (“You fuck ONE sheep…”), so I treat them as the same thing. Not everyone who posts a trolling post once is a troll, though. People do, sometimes, exaggerate a point maybe a little more than they believe, or allow others to be misled…but we don’t ban them for it unless we think that’s one of their main purposes. It’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a person who makes poor arguments and has unusual opinions and a troll. december posted many trolling posts before we decided he really was a troll. If he had had only, say, ONE trollish post and the rest of his posts were not, I do not think it would have been accurate to call him a troll.
But again, I think maybe we’ll just disallow the “T” word altogether. Sheesh, what a tempest in a teapot. It’s not even a very old rule.
I have said “attack the post, not the poster” dozens of times. I thought “that POST is trolling” v. “YOU are a troll” was self-evident under that rule. To support it, I pointed out an instance where exactly that sort of thing was discussed. As well, I mentioned other times when “that POST is a troll” was not warned for. What more should I have done, put up a sticky listing every statment we DO allow? It’s not like I warned you for something you didn’t know was a rule; my terrible offense that I told you something was OK before you even asked about it.
If one is simply exaggerating a point, one is not trolling. If one is, as you say, allowing “others to be misled,” then he or she is most certainly trolling. How can you say otherwise? If the post was intended to produce a certain reaction, it’s not trolling?
Now, I understand that one trolling post (made by a troll) is almost never grounds for banning, that one should establish a pattern first. But it’s still trolling. So I’m not arguing that every person who posts one trolling post should be immediately banned; I’d say (and you seem to agree) that if they did so repeatedly, they would likely be kicked off.
I guess what I’m trying to convey is that if a person didn’t intend a post to be trolling, then it can’t possibly be trolling, by definition, since “trolling” means that the person was basically fishing for a particular response. So intent shouldn’t really be one of the criteria on which a post is judged, at least not in terms of trolling.
I personally don’t think it’s self-evident, because I don’t think the two examples are similar enough. But in theory any actual rules should be in the rules portion of the FAQ. I realize you guys don’t have all of the time in the world for such things, but in a perfect world the rules listed there would be complete and up to date. In lieu of that, a sticky wouldn’t be unheard of - there is one for Pit rules, after all. Such a sticky wouldn’t have to list every single statement that’s okay, just the ones that aren’t okay and possible variations of them that are okay.
You mean, like the Great Debates sticky that says: “The general rule is to attack the other poster’s arguments, rather than the other poster him- or herself.”
Ok, you got me. You’re right, there is one. Of course, it’s not even a month old, but still, it’s there for all to see.
(It might be more efficient if you simply put all of the GD rules in one sticky, though. And you can add the one about how calling people trolls is verboten but calling their posts trolls is okay.)
Actually, that post is from 10-29-2003. It’s been there for a while, but using stickies for forum rules is fairly recent, most are from last year, a few in 02. IMHO doesn’t even have any.
Actually, the sticky with the most relevant title is yours, the one that clarifies the rules. That’s the one people would go to in order to find out about rules additions, although it merely points to the MEBuckner one, which talks about personal attacks, among other things.
Regardless, the distinction between a trolling post and a trolling poster is at least fine enough for clarification to be needed, wouldn’t you say? Do you think everyone “automatically knows” this distinction?
In addition, it’s a distinction that’s applicable to the entire board, not just GD, and therefore it should be in a more general-interest area (such as ATMB or the FAQ, to name two places). This is especially true if you want the most people to understand the distinction, rather than limit it to not only those who go into GD but also those who read sticky notes.
No, that’s NOT the sticky with the “most relevant title”. The “rule clarification” sticky is only to point people to the main sticky to make sure they see my recent addition, and it will go away in a few weeks. MEBucker’s thread of 10-29-03 is the one that contained the relevant language I quoted. C’mon, you can’t say that a thread made about 6 months ago only counts as having been made in the past month becuase I posted an extra sticky to point people there AGAIN about a month ago? That’s patently ridiculous.
Well, I did. This is the first time a bunch kicked up a fuss, so how would I know otherwise? Seemed clear to me, just like “this is a stupid post” v. “you are stupid”.
Huh. “No direct personal insults or ‘flaming’ in Great Debates” is more relevant than “Clarification of point of Great Debates rules”? Well, whatever. We’re not discussing here the rule of “no personal attacks,” but we are discussing GD rules in general. I submit that you’re wholly wrong.
I am not saying that the more-recent thread isn’t worthy. I am saying that a) this notion of troll post/troll poster is applicable to every forum, not just the sacred tomb of GD, and as such should be in either ATMB or the rules FAQ, if not both, and b) that the distinction of troll post/poster really should be made in an official sticky for all to see, not a post by YOU in GD.
This may be the first time it’s caused a brouhaha because for the most part mentions of this issue have occurred in GD. As I stated earlier, there are a lot of people who don’t go into GD and would have no idea that such a distinction existed. Now, you may wonder why the denizens of GD haven’t caused a stink about it, and that may be because a) I think most GD posters are much smarter than me, b) there are plenty of people who visit GD regularly and therefore did not miss your mention of it previously. And of course, with a higher sampling of people (those who frequent GD versus all posters), you’ll get a higher probabilty of someone causing a ruckus over it.