No we’re not.
Most of us think that BigT is doing himself no favours as he won’t gain anything from this course of action - it’s probably better for everyone if he just ignores it. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think he’s in the right… the facts speak for themselves.
What does that have to do with anything? I’m saying that everyone else in the thread understands my explanation. Czarcasm’s post appears to be needlessly trying to convert it into saying something I didn’t say, in order to make me look even worse than I already do.
While I’m being punished for “tone”, I think Czarcasm’s tone, in this and pretty much every other ATMB thread about him, has been the cause anger being expressed in those threads. I honestly think he would be a better moderator if he’d use some nicer, less “curt” and less antagonistic language.
Not that this is going to do any good at this point, but flaming someone (which should be done in the Pit) doesn’t have to include insulting them. Expressing anger and hostility toward them is flaming them as well, even if you don’t directly insult them.
Expressing anger at other posters, in the very hostile way you did it in that thread, is inappropriate in most forums. So don’t do it. If you want to express your anger, fine, but do it in the Pit.
But then he’d lose his membership in the Fascists ‘R’ Us Club. And then what would he do with himself?
Warn himself?
While I appreciate your trying to clarify what Czarcasm meant, I’d appreciate it more if he would try to do so. As long as we have a complaints forum, I consider it part of the job.
As for hostility, my problem is that I can’t come up with a definition that disallows my response, but allows the various responses in GD or even ATMB. While it pisses me off that they can be hostile and I can’t. I’ll deal.
I’m basically going back to what I used to do, but hate: rewriting everything I want to say as much as a dozen times until I’m absolutely certain I’ve not insulted anyone.
(This post has taken me a few hours, though just as much because I don’t want to be misinterpreted again on something this important.)
Finally, I’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t feel like going back and getting Czarcasm’s quote. But I find “This just isn’t believable, unless you’ve lead a very sheltered and pampered life.” to be quite insulting, especially after I’ve clarified that I was not exaggerating. My housemate even commented that they’d never seen me that angry before. I was practically yelling at the computer.
As for my life, I live in a foreclosed home, can’t work, am almost completely housebound, am still detoxing from a drug my doctor got me addicted to (despite being off it a year), have to deal with feeling like I’m going to die every day, being dizzy, not being able to think, often getting so depressed and hurting so bad that I want to die (but am unable to do it) feeling like I’m falling off a building when I try to move, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’d gladly trade you for your life, Except I can’t honestly wish the withdrawal symptoms on anyone, as that would be crueler than killing you Saw style. Did I mention I often feel like my body is actually on fire, and wonder if the way I felt was the reason for the Christian description of Hell?
If anything, those of you who have never been through this withdrawal that’s worse than even opiate withdrawal–you’re the ones who are sheltered.
In other words, you want a warning that you are going to get a warning.
No, in your way of thinking, they need to warn you that you are are about to get a warning.
Speaking as someone who had therapy for anger, you feel better when it is expressed in a controlled and fair way. You can’t play “See what you made me do.” You have to take responsibility for your feelings. No one makes you feel anything. You stop blaming others for what they feel. There is much more and all of it takes practice and a lot of soul-searching about why you are really mad.
You are right not to let it build up until you explode. But as lekatt said, you really must choose winable “battles.” And you mustn’t misdirect your anger as it begins to build.
I’ve told you previously that I admire your thinking. That still stands. I’ve had my own share of days at the SDMB when I wasn’t happy with the outcome. I’ve also taken a few days off from time to time. No one is insulting you when they suggest a break. You can shrug the suggestion off without reading anything into it. Or you can consider the idea without throwing up the usual roadblocks. (I know what extreme anxiety feels like, BTW.)
It can be the feeling, the action, or both.
He finally did respond, but you were lucky. If he hadn’t responded, you would have been left with a great big ball of “mad” and not much you could do about it. The same is true for demanding apologies. I’ve seen Dopers turn inside out demanding an apology from a certain Mod who just didn’t give a toot. Unwinable battles.
I haven’t found a good direct way yet. Sometimes people work off a little anger with exercise or getting out with friends or an insightful therapist. Sometimes you just work through the anger.
I hope that you feel better soon and have friends or folks or a doctor you can talk to about this (your funky year).
(Sorry for the sermonette. I don’t mean to be preachy, but I used to be a teacher and I can’t let go.)
No, I want the opportunity not to break a rule before a new one is made. I honestly believe that expecting someone to follow a rule that is not in the rule sticky is tyrranical. It’s essentially an ex post facto law. It’s like a king saying “No eating cake”, and then punishing the guy who was already eating cake before he was told.
As much as people want to act like a Warning is really just a warning, I cannot agree. I can go into my User Control Panel and see it. It is now permanently on my record. A warning is merely someone cautioning you, helping you out so you don’t get in trouble. It carries no official weight. These Warnings can be uses as reasons to ban or suspend you.
If it were up to me, Warnings would be called Citations, as that’s what they really are, and Mod Notes to a specific person would be called Warnings. The current names allow people to argue that they aren’t as serious as they really are.
Can’t you think of it in your mind as a citation?
Do we know for sure that they are permanently on a Doper’s record? I had one years and years ago and a Mod told me that since that was a long time ago and I hadn’t made it a habit to push the edges or break the rules, it had been removed – or words to that effect.
But even if it were there until my last day on earth, having just one warning would be a little like that “Unsatisfactory” that I got in Chapel Attendance in college years ago. I bring up that and the disciplinary probation to impress my grandchildren.
Angry Lurker has a good suggestion. (Sounds like someone who’s been there, huh?)
BTW, I hadn’t read about your withdrawal when I posted last time. That’s something I haven’t gone through. That must be rough and probably explains a lot. That might be something that we could talk about in another forum if you like. That’s your call.
I need to get some sleep myself.
It’s not a new rule. The rule is “don’t be a jerk,” and when you lash out in an angry, nasty, personal fashion – with or without obscenities – in an IMHO thread, you’re being a jerk.
It doesn’t disappear, but the significance attributed to a warning can disappear to near zero. As has been stated many times, there is no “magic number” of warnings that someone can get, and beyond that, poof, you’re gone. We look at the overall pattern of behavior. If someone gets three warnings in ten years, no biggie. If someone gets three warnings in ten days, we’d take a pretty serious look at what was going on. If someone gets three warnings in ten hours, he or she might very well be shown the door.
You are delusional if you truly believe any of what you just said. No - everyone does not “understand your tone” - we see it as needless whining and a failure to see what you did wrong. And there are many posters on this board who would rather see the moderation “tone” return to Coldfire levels.
He’s already clarified, and other moderators have explained it too. There’s no reason he needs to keep coming back to explain over and over again just because you refuse to accept his explanation.
If you have trouble understanding the conventions here, that’s probably the best course.
Different levels (and types, but let’s not make this complicated) of hostility are appropriate to each of the different forums here. Ranked in order from most hostility allowed to least hostility allowed, I’d say the boards can be listed as follows:
The Pit
Great Debates
About This Message Board
Cafe Society/The Game Room
General Questions
In My Humble Opinion
Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share
I may not have the order exactly right, (indeed, people are probably wondering why I put ATMB so high,) but that’s the general idea.
As you can see, IMHO appears near the bottom of the list. There should almost never be any kind of hostility at all in IMHO, where you were posting.
Great Debates, on the other hand, appears near the top. Now, there shouldn’t be anything approaching Pit-level hostility in GD. But there can be considerably more hostility in GD than in IMHO.
I wouldn’t expect a mod to fully explain every detail of this kind of thing when explaining moderation decisions because, frankly, to explain every detail would take a book, and this is the kind of thing we all just pick up as we go along. In fact, a lot of it is understood unconsciously and through barely-spoken social convention–the kind of thing that constitutes genuine norms, but which could hardly be effectively codified.
Picking it up is much more efficient, in this case, than trying to learn it by heart from a book-length list of rules.
Agreed. I think 1) the warning was frivolous, and 2) T needs to simmer down. I think a lot of people are just sick of arguing. The “don’t be a jerk” rule has been stretched and contorted in order justify issuing warnings any time someone’s feelings get hurt. There was a good definition given not too long ago by, of all people, Marley
That’s what I always thought, but sometimes it seems more like “I think I detect the slightest trace of hostility in this post. This seems jerkish. WARNING!!!”
You have a very interesting definition of “lash out.”
It seemed like “lashing out” to me too. Why didn’t it seem like that to you, MeanOldLady?
“I think a lot of people are just sick of arguing.” Oh Yeah, that would be me.
It simply struck me as an annoyed reaction to a comment he thought was dumb.
You make this sound like a difficult task, but I assure you, you aren’t the only one who re-writes and tones things down before posting - I’ve been doing it for ten years, so it comes more automatically, but I still do it - I read over what I’ve written, and more often than not, I’ll tone something down, keeping in mind that when all you have to go on is written word, it is very easy to take things harsher than they were meant, and I always assume that something will sound meaner than I meant it and attempt to prevent that.
I’ve had a bad experience with drugs for anxiety myself, and you have my complete and utter sympathy - I have never been as sick in my life as I was on the drugs my doctors were prescribing me (and giving me more drugs for all the side effects I was having). If you search my username, I did a thread on “Ask the person who is recovered from an anxiety disorder” to hear more of my story - the one thing I make sure to tell all new member of my anxiety support group is that there is help for them, and things aren’t hopeless.
I took a break from these boards at that time, because I was one big, raw, walking nerve. These boards can be a little hard to take if you’re not feeling sure of yourself; there’s a lot of good people here, but there are a lot of people who won’t coddle you, too. You need to make the decision if taking a break would be better for you right now.
You’ve got two different things going on here; one is the warning for getting too hostile in the wrong forum, and the other is the poor phrasing of that warning. You were NOT warned because you said, “fuck.” You WERE warned because you went too far in attacking another poster in IMHO, and the word, “fuck” was part of that attack. (My understanding - a mod can certainly correct me if I’ve got it wrong.)
Not to be too much of a phallus, but if there’s no “arguing”, what’s the fucking point of a having a message board in the first place? And, really, (though this is a whole separate topic) why is much moderation needed on the SDMB in the first place? I mean, snark aside, the board’s posters, in aggregate, are a fairly intelligent, composed lot. Why not just focus your attention (“you” meaning the mods) on the most obvious examples of assfacery (soliciting, posting links to porn, etc.), and acknowledge that the majority of us are reasonable adults, and that while we may get snippy from time to time, that that’s what gives the threads character, and largely stay out of our way? Why do we have to be policed by people who, at times, act like, well, fucking cops?
Ligten up, MoFo… I got 2 “warnings” within the first week I was here! "Warning"s ain’t the end of the world. “Warnings” ain’t gonna kill ya… “Warning” does NOT indicate “Hypocrite”…
and shit.