How about restricting quoted material that takes up more than a full screen. I really don’t need to read the whole damn thing. Summarize and cite, for the love of god, that’s all you have to do.
On preview, what Loopydude said.
Non-malicious mistakes in terminology and pronoun use for members of sexual and gender minorities shall be corrected courteously.
The same, followed by some variation on “…or whatever the politically correct jargon is these days,” shall result in the Queer Mafia coming to the offender’s house and breaking the legs on his/her coffee table.
The same penalty applies to anyone who responds to “such-and-such is offensive” with “Why do you want to forbid me to say such-and-such? What about free speech?”, when forbidding people to say such-and-such was not even mentioned.
On the same note, stating that something is offensive without stating why it is offensive should garner the same response.
A sense of perspective shall be maintained at all times in all threads, especially relatively trivial ones: if an MPSIMS thread is entitled “Foods You Hate”, and someone posts their undying loathing for lima beans, do not angrily post that lima beans are the greatest and most under-rated vegetables of all time, and that anyone who dislikes them is an ignorant dolt. Smile tolerantly and pass on by, and later, if you feel the need, start your own thread about “Lima Beans: The Misunderstood Legume”.
This tolerance and perspective does not, however, extend to airing your Fourth Form French to reply “chacun a son gout”. It’s not big, and it’s not clever.
Anyone who inappropriately cites laws of physics is to be stripped naked, tarred and feathered.
Example: you can’t make economic alternative fuels from plant material, because the second law of thermodynamics means you must expend more energy from fossil fuels in harvesting them than they will yield as fuel.
- It might actually be true that you can’t make economic alternative fuels from plants because of the cost of harvesting, but this is not a direct, primary consequence of the laws of thermodynamics.
A few I’d like to propose…
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No more one-word posts saying “Cite?” Such posts come across as snotty, IMHO, and they’re often vague on what exactly the poster wants to see backed up.
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The GRAPPLE Agreement (GRAmmar Police Limits on Engagement) - Intellectual snots will stop pointing out minor typos in other people’s posts just for the sake of looking smart. On the other side of the table, those who occasionally make typos or misspell words will avoid immediately posting follow-ups with corrected spelling/grammar such that the Grammar Police don’t immediately jump down their throats. More of a treaty than a law, but I’d like to see it anyway.
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No more posting “My cat’s breath smells like cat food” or other Wiggum-esque non-sequiturs when it appears that a statement doesn’t logically follow in the OP. It’s just fucking obnoxious. If you think something doesn’t make sense, there are a ton of other ways to draw attention to it, like pointing out what you think is a leap of logic.
“When more than two consecutive posts consist only of line-by-line fiskings of the previous post, the thread should be abandoned.”
Some threads degenerate into nothing but posts of this sort – each post being four or five screens long. At this point, the thread is stuck in neutral, with each post rehashing the same points over and over again. No substantive new material will be posted, hence continued reading is a waste of time.
This seems to happen whenever a thread accumulates more than four or five pages – although there are some exceptionally clever threads which avoid this fate.
People who post one-liner jokes in serious GQ threads before anyone has even tried to answer the question will be… will be… well, I don’t know, but it’s going to be uncomfortable.
InkBlot’s Law, or the “I see what you’re saying, but…” law.
When two sides of an argument are in complete understanding of each other, and acknowledge it yet feel the need to continue explaining their side ad infinitum, both sides must immediately concede that they are not in the same argument anymore. This unfortunate occurance happens to me and Mrs. InkBlot all the time. We’ll go off about something for over an hour, before realizing we’re not actually arguing anything…we’re just restating our own positions over and over, as if it will impart some great ephihany if spoken just right.
I hope I’m explaining it clearly. I’ll try an example.
Person A: I don’t like how President Bush is handling the war, I don’t feel he has a proper grasp of internation politics and…(etc. etc.).
Person B: Yes, I see, but I think Rumsfeld is the problem, he’s pushing the troops too hard and…(etc. etc.).
Person A: I understand, but Bush…(etc. etc.)
Person B: Alright, but Rumsfeld…(etc. etc.)
And after several rounds of this all you come to realize is Person A has an opinion of Bush, Person B has an opinion of Rumsfeld, they’re not mutually exclusive but they’re not at odds either. That’s not really an argument. It’s close…if you want to discuss who was more dangerous or what have you, but it’s not even comparing apples to oranges. It’s two people talking over one another to establish what both know about an apple for one, and an orange for the other.
That’s my law. Thank you for your time.
InkBlot
:eek:
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
The SAB law: Anyone who links to the Skeptics Annotated Bible gets bitch-slapped.QUOTE]
Do I still get slapped if I cut-and-paste a relevant quotes from an online copy of the king janes bible, with my own word of why it goes against what the theist I am debating said? After all, they are the same bible.
[QUOTE=Scott_plaid]
What an odd usage of the word “theist”.
From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theist&r=67
“Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world.”
How is that odd? It is me using their own words against them. The original poster I was commenting on took offense to people using an anatated dictonary to prove points against religion, and I was asking if I could quote the bible, unanoted, when argueing against religous people. I know that many here refuse to respond to minor contridictions like the existance of witches and satyrs (Isaiah 34:14)
If not the SAB, then how about the http://www.thebricktestament.com/
I believe that it is acceptable to quote Jane’s in any discussion of military or transportation equipment, however, it does, I believe, require a paid subscription and there will be copyright issues if you quote too extensively. (Also, while Jane’s is recognized as a premier source for information on ships, planes, armor, and weaponry, we generally do not feel a need to genuflect before it or identify it as “King Jane”.)
Odd because it made you sound like you had a burr up your ass about theists. When you talked about “the theist I am debating”, it struck me like one of those caricature safari hunters telling stories, and talking about “the wild boar I was chasing”. I mean, is your every encounter with theists a debate? Do you debate theists exclusively?
(Incidentally, I have to ask about your grammar and spelling. I mean this question with all due respect: is English a second language for you? If it is, you are passably proficient with it, and are to be congratulated on how much you’ve learned. But if not, you really should improve your presentation because it will inevitably hurt your debates. A typo here and there is one thing, but coming across as though you do not read does not help.)
Actually, the poster did not “take offense,” so much as point out that the SAB is one of the silliest efforts to oppose religion that is in circulation. It uses a literalism to which no Christian or Jew actually adheres and contains sufficient errors in its own right to make it a parody of an attack on religion or the bible.
There are plenty of profound attacks on religious belief, but the SAB is a puerile shadow of any of them.
Oooh… how about:
-Newbie OP, asks a GQ
-Several members post lucid, factual, correct answers
-Newbie tells them they’re wrong
The teist I am debating is my own family, I constantly feed them points for my cause, and they contanly put up points for their cause. In addition, quoting from the bible comes in handy since many people I have spoken to on other *board * do get reliant on literalism, as did christians and jews for 2000+ years. As for the typos, please elaborate. If not here then on another forum such as general questions or the pit. A possible title is "Scott Plaid, you are not a good typist. "
You insinuatin’ I’m a fop? You castin’ nasturtiums about my manhood? I’ll rip yer bones outta yer throat, grind ‘em inta library paste, an’ feed it ta inqusitive toddlers! I’ll fop yer good, ya lily-livered dilettante.