Yeah, I heard he’s going out to shoot his old lady. Caught her messing around with another man.
From:
"the usual suspects:
the people you would expect to be present somewhere or doing a particular thing
“Who was at Adrian’s party?” “Oh, Paula, Roz, Lucy and gang - the usual suspects.”
EDIT: Awesome reference Oakminster.
But when I * use italics I intend *it to be condescending and dismissive, so perhaps the mods should intervene whenever I use italics, but not when you do since my intent is to insult and yours is not. This is the crux of the problem with putting a moratorium on a phrase that is not universally used as an insult. It requires that moderators decide what a poster’s intentions are, which just isn’t practical (or possible).
In fact, if the mods did implement such a rule, I predict that the regulars would be challenging every ruling in ATMB.
And if they do ban “the usual suspects”, then those who are inclined to use it as a veiled insult would simply change it to “the regulars”. And then “the regulars” would become unacceptable and that too would have to be banned. These situations are very different from accusing someone of rape or calling people niggers. Do you still not understand why people are having a problem with your logic?
Because you use italics to be condescending, this is proof that the use of italics is used only to be condescending. Its insulting, I dont like it, and I want the mods to do something about it.
Yes, by all means, please continue masturbating all over the straw man that what I really want is for all uses of the expression “usual suspects” to be banned now and in perpetuity, despite the fact that I have refined and clarified my OP repeatedly.
This whole thing reminds me of a stupid rule on the TWoP boards that bans starting any post with"umm…" because it’s condescending.
It should be banned because this is a written medium, not because it is condescending. Sort of like typing out **** when you really mean “shit” or whatever.
So if I start calling people I don’t like “robin”, which in my mind means something dirty and nasty and insulting, then my using “robin” should be banned.
Is that what you are trying to say, robin?
**** you mean I really shouldn’t be writing **** when I mean ****? Well **** me there goes my ******* posting style.
We appear to be talking past each other. I read your comment as, “I’m upset that no moderator has told me what they think this phrase means.” So I told you what I think the phrase means. You then proceeded to tell me I was wrong. Obviously, I do not have the power to look into the mind of every single person who uses the phrase “the usual suspects” and determine precisely what they meant, so you must have been asking for my opinion, right?
In other words, if you already know what it means, why did you bother asking for other people’s opinions?
I should have probably posted this earlier, but you (and CK Dexter, when he isn’t stuttering) make a good point.
How about your (personal and official) opinion of the phrase “the usual ass-lickers” in threads about the excellent and incisive moderation that sometimes appears on this site? I think that the use of this phrase will be beneficial, at least for illustrative purposes, to SfG’s point.
“The usual suspects” has an actual cultural tie to several artistic works in which it is employed as both a negative and a neutral descriptor. (Since the “suspects” in Casablanca will clearly be innocent of the crime for which they are to be rounded up, it actually began as a reference to victims, not perpetrators, so its denoted meaning is not straightforward.)
“The usual ass-lickers” has no artistic provenance and includes a clear insult–as you intended. I also do not recall having ever seen it employed on the SDMB prior to your use of it, so it appears that when you employ it it is clearly insulting.
The two phrases are not equivalent. Your game fails.
You forgot to issue a warning.
I propose the SDMB Gymnastics Club: Bending over backwards to justify moderator decisions! [sub](and sometimes forwards too!)[/sub]
I propose the Mucilage Equestrian Society for those who . . . well, the usual suspects know what I’m talking about. 
This is an idiotic standard. How long do you think it’ll take for Dopers to come up with a vague insult with “artistic provenance”?
Off the top of my head and with no effort at all, how about “Oh joy, it’s the Lollipop Guild here to blither on about how mods can do no wrong” or "“These mod sycophants here may talk like idiots, and look like idiots, but don’t let that fool you…they ARE idiots”*
I give it 10 posters before someone comes up with some better ones.
*Before you get pedantic on me, Grouch is clearly using that comment affectionately. It’s a buddy kidding a buddy.
SFG, I don’t want to get caught up in going around in circles over distractions (because you know we could, but it wouldn’t serve anyone’s interests). You have now stated that your complaint isn’t with any and all use of the phrase (which I don’t think was ever meant), nor is it even limited to just that phrase used in this particular manner; rather, your complaint is with the attitude that it and other similar comments displays. Am I correct?
The heart of your complaint is that you feel that some posters are being insulting to other posters by blanket dismissing their complaints because of who is posting rather than the merits of the complaint. Not just by dismissing them based upon who they are, but by labeling them with a nebulous label that indicates that the group is not worth listening to.
But how is that any different than “whiners” or “butthurt”?
The answer you have received is that it is okay to be dismissive of other posters based upon who is posting rather than the merits of the complaint.
Now, I’m curious. Do you know of examples of anyone using the phrase “You’re just one of the usual suspects” directly like that*, rather than in a more open form like “Cue the usual suspects in 3… 2… 1…”? Because my recollection of it’s use is to indicate “here come the whiners”, not “you are just a whiner” - but I could be wrong. If you can show me examples of the first, I might be persuaded that the specific incidents are being used to insult specific posters directly, rather than as a label for “the collective group of people that jump on any complaint in ATMB just to bash the moderators”. And if that is the case, I might support the moderators using the existing rules about not directing insults at other posters to apply in those cases.
But I’d be leery of cases where someone posts a whine, and the next post says “And here come the usual suspects,” because I don’t think that use violates my specific case, but someone might try to argue "but he clearly was calling me one of the usual suspects, because he posted that right after I posted. I would still consider that fair use. And that’s why it is tricky - it creates more of the subjective moderation that draws so many complaints in the first place.
You know very well that “ass-lickers” is much more pejorative than “suspects”. That’s why you picked the word.
- I would like to avoid examples from this thread, because by its nature it encouraged that use.
Hang on, let me pull on these hip-waders.
Alright, then. On the subject of threadshitting an ATMB complaint thread:
Honestly, I’m not entirely certain that’s possible. In some of the other forums, threads can be constructed to narrow the conversation down so that only a specific subset of posters are invited to the discussion. “What’s your favorite scene in the new Harry Potter movie?” is pretty clearly designed as a place for Harry Potter fans to discuss the movie. Coming into that thread to say, “Only idiots like Harry Potter,” is text book threadshitting.
In the case of threads like this, however, we do not have a narrow focus on what sort of replies are acceptable. Topics about how the board is run, or should be run, or is failing to be run, are topics that affect everyone who posts here. As such, everyone’s voice is equally valid (if not necessarily equally valuable). If someone feels that a particular complaint is stupid, or a waste of time, or too minor to worry about, that’s a reasonable position to take in an ATMB thread. Admittedly, just posting “Not this again,” or “Don’t you have anything better to do?” or “TLDR,” isn’t the most constructive way to make your opinion known, but as a general rule, we try not to moderate the quality of someone’s contributions, just the content.
On the subject of the phrase, “The usual suspects:”
Try as I might, I simply can’t see the insult in this. Is it dismissive? Yes, but that’s not against the rules: people are absolutely allowed to come into your ATMB thread and dismiss your complaint. Is it specific? Obviously not, but on this board, specificity, while appreciated, is not required. Is it helpful? To a certain degree, yes. The SDMB is not a democracy, but we do listen to our posters, and if there’s broad agreement from the Teeming Millions on a complaint, that’s usually a good sign that we need to check our reasoning behind an action an adjust our response. Naturally, that doesn’t work if only people who agree with a complaint post to a complaint thread. So even a curt, dismissive response can be helpful to us in gauging if we’ve genuinely stepped out of line, or if the issue is really just a problem for a small minority of posters.
Of course, I realize that the issue you have with that phrase isn’t the disagreement, but that the disagreement is being phrased in an insulting way. But like I said above, I don’t really see the insult, here. It is, as I just described, okay to say, “Your complaint is without merit.” I venture that it is further okay to say, “Your complaint is without merit, as was the complaint you made last week.” Extrapolating from there, I would further have no problem with, “Your complaint is without merit, as is typical of your complaints.” And this is pretty much where “The usual suspects” falls, in terms of meaning.
Naturally, I recognize that two statements can have the same meaning, but convey vastly different tones. “Your complain is without merit,” and “Your complaint is without merit, asshole,” both convey largely the same information, but one is clearly unacceptable in ATMB. Referring to an unidentified group of posters as “the usual suspects,” falls somewhere between those two examples, but, I think, significantly closer to the acceptable version than the unacceptable. “The usual suspects,” to me, suggests nothing stronger than mild snark.
I do feel that, in general, it’s probably better to be non-snarky than snarky in ATMB threads. However, the difference between one man’s snark and another man’s pointed comment is generally too thin to serve as a bright line on acceptable behavior. If we moderated that phrase, there are any number of other comments in ATMB that I would feel should also be moderated under the same logic, and many of those are not going to be as clear cut as this particular phrase - and note that the denotation for this phrase is sufficiently murky as to spawn a five page debate.
No “standard” was involved or invoked. prr tried to establish an equivalence between a vaguely dismissive phrase that may or may not actually be insulting based on its context and use, one that entered the language in an ambiguous context, and a nelogism of his own devising that was clearly and unequivocally insulting. The “artistic provenance” was only a nod to the long and conflicting uses of “the usual suspects” and not some sort of imprimatur established by it being employed in literary creations.
If you think that prr’s post made some sort of point, (beyond poking sticks at the staff), then I will have to conclude that your judgment is clouded, but trying to make a big deal about whether “the usual suspects” is sufficiently or insufficiently artistic is silly.