“Blunt”!? Hell, man, I threw a brick through a window. Can’t get more blunt than that.
Somebody needs a nap.
Heh, heh. You said “comes”.
Talk about your jejune. I really hope you were trying to be ironic.
deleted
Criminy sakes, I learned on another board that the way to deal with this sort of idiotic drama is to ban the troublemakers, not muzzle everybody from saying a specific word.
It seems to me that I can happily accuse fellow dopers of being pedophiles, plagarists, incestuous pedophile plagarists, unabashed Nazis, or pus and STI-filled infections at the lower end of humanity’s intestinal tract, but using a common if obscene insult is verboten. I honestly don’t get it.
You can (possibly) call them such names in the Pit, although I think it would depend on the situation. Accusing someone of plagiarism or other illegal acts, for instance, might be over the top (well, under the bottom, perhaps.) In any case, you certainly can NOT use such terms elsewhere on the boards. And, frankly, calling someone a “pus-infested scourge on humanity” has nowhere the sting that “fuck you” does.
This was debated and discussed, what, eight or ten months ago, so the horse is quite dead, but… The point is that there’s a limit to how insulting one can be to other posters, even in the Pit. (Threats, for instance, are a no-no.) The tone in the Pit had become disgusting. The mods and Ed discussed for a lonnnng time, how best to turn things around. I mean, if you want a non-moderated area, there are plenty of other boards. On the other hand, there are plenty of areas where no profanity or insults are allowed at all. We want to be somewhere in the middle. How to reverse the direction? A general concept, like “Let’s try not to be quite so venemous,” would have been too ambiguous. The only approach considered both enforcable and reasonably clear was to limit “fuck you” and few other such phrases. That doesn’t mean that anything not prohibited is permitted; it means that, even in the Pit, there are certain minimum standards of civility.
And, please: this issue is dead, and there’s no point in rehashing again. I’m assuming that we have a legitimately confused poster returning after a hiatus; so, I’m willing to bring him up to speed. Once.
Thanks, Dex. That’s all that’s needed. It is a bit like coming home and finding out that your wife neutered your dog, but if the dog was starting to bite people…I see it. I didn’t mean to re-open old wounds, sorry.
I’ll be a good boy, just please don’t put that plastic cone around my head.
Thank for the cogent reply, Dex. I’ve been on a long hiatus from these boards so I missed whatever debacle you described. In any case, I understand your position. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I can accept it. You’re the Admin, after all, not me.
Oh bollocks, no form of complaints really accomplished or accomplishes much relative to board administration. This passive aggressive nonsense.
Then I hope it can be agreed that the ridiculous idiocy of Fornicate This can and should be mocked until its usage slinks off…
Oh please, don’t be so bloody precious. The OP, a returnee (hmm like from labour camps…) followed old practice and was hardly terribly offensive. A faux pas perhaps, but way out of line would be attacking the current faux Cecil or the admins in some violent manner.
eh, not in my experience, but perhaps you frequent more milquetoast boards.
Amusing.
The first item is a reasonable observation, although I was out for the period that probably brought this, but the whole Stasi closing is so very much off putting. accumulated grudges I suppose.
That’s too funny. I appreciate the support and all, but I wasn’t exactly in a “labour camp”.
Now that I know what’s up, what I should have done is start a pit thread about how stupid “Fornicate you” is, and if I see another thread title with that, I probably will. Just don’t make me out as some kind of martyr. If you read through all the mod responses, you’ll notice they never even gave me a warning.
You can’t climb up on my cross when it doesn’t exist, man.
I still don’t understand why we can’t pit moderating decisions with the caveat that no moderator will actually respond. Heck, I could’ve sworn I’ve seen say Dex say as much.
Oh, well. I’ve recently learned that there is another board for this sort of thing, which cannot be named*
*well, linked to doesn’t sound as good
I think it can be named now. Or did that change as well?
That simply is false. Ed’s original set of rules was far more strict. He negotiated with the membership, and the community as a whole settled on the final construction. Dex recently had an outburst, and then apologized for it, and changed a ban to a suspension. Other mods have done similar things, admitting “oops, my bad” and then re-opening a closed thread, or retracting an official warning. TubaDiva has changed so much that she is barely recognizable. Her posts (official admin posts) are calm, descriptive of the problem, and very business-like in their tone and tenor. So, you’re simply wrong. Sorry.
This is true…like any board there are "people here with entitlement issues who think they should be able to say anything they want, any time they want. "
There are also sniveling delicate flowers who mis-categorize any disagreement as fighting, overstate the problem by pretending that a whole lot of people feel that way and who’s noses are buried so far up the mods asses that they can smell it when the mods burp.
Luckily for me, I don’t think there are an “awful lot” of dopers who behave either way so I’m sure I have a more pleasant experience than you.
There’s an old Rabbinical story (and it’s probably in every other culture too). A couple, pulling a wagon with all their belongings meets a rabbi on a road just outside of a town.
“Rabbi” says the man "We’re moving and looking for a new place to settle. What are the people in your town like?
The rabbi says
The wife says “They were spiteful, mean people who had squawling brats for children, they never helped anyone, they were selfish and angry and bitter.”
The rabbi shakes his head and says “You wouldn’t like it here. You’ll find the people in this town exactly like that.” and the couple wearily leaves.
Another couple shows up the next day and asks the same question “Rabbi, what are the people in your town like?” and the rabbi asks the same question in return:
“What were the people like in the town you came from?”
The husband and wife both start talking “They were wonderful! We love them and already miss them so much! They’d give you the shirt off their back. Their kids were so wonderful! They were the kindest people we’ve ever met.”
And the rabbi says “Come into our town–you’ll find the people there exactly like that.”
You’re right, Fen. I’ve heard that story before as well. It really is multi-cultural. I think my grandmother — full blooded Cherokee — told me.
Also…
There was a time when a critical mass of posters would reflexively defend the moderation on this board because the mods are - you know - volunteers. For example, when Manhattan singlehandedly supervised GQ, he could be gruff at times. And yet most of us were tickled when the thin skinned or clueless would come whining to the pit.
Then management started charging for membership. Then management stopped requiring payments. Posters came and went. The balance of vitriol shifted in the pit and Ed proposed a few changes. Drama ensued. And here we are.
Anyway it’s all good. Two new boards have been enlisted in the fight against ignorance, providing needed backup should the worst occur at SDHQ.
I’ve been on boards where forbidden words are automatically replaced by webmaster-approved images. We could try that here: have the server replace the F-word with a bar of soap or maybe the word “Love”.
[Peter Gabriel]
We do what we’re told…
We do what we’re told…
We do what we’re told…
Told to do.
[/Peter Gabriel]
“There are also sniveling delicate flowers who mis-categorize any disagreement as fighting, overstate the problem by pretending that a whole lot of people feel that way and who’s noses are buried so far up the mods asses that they can smell it when the mods burp.”
Personal insults are always a pro move, Fenris. Keep up the good work.
I don’t know you well enough to know whether you’re one of those people who seem to think the rules don’t apply to them. But is an undeniable fact that there are people here who are will piss, bitch and moan over almost every little thing the moderators do. Whether that rises to the level of “an awful lot” is entirely up to the reader to decide.
As far as having ones head up the moderator’s asses, well, that’s one way to see it. Another way to see it is that some folks choose their battles more carefully and SDMB rules don’t even make it to the radar screen. The rules here aren’t particularly burdensome, especially compared to some other boards I post on. And yet some folks will still bitch because they can’t tell someone “fuck you” or a few other words here. Amazingly and stupidly bizarre.
“Luckily for me, I don’t think there are an “awful lot” of dopers who behave either way so I’m sure I have a more pleasant experience than you.”
Pointing out certain behaviors here doesn’t lead to any conclusion about my experience on the board. It’s not like board jerks affect me in any way. I get a certain amount of entertainment from then, but they don’t substantially alter my experience.
It was no more an insult to you than your statement was an insult to me. I know yours didn’t apply to me, and as to mine, I wasn’t thinking of any specific poster when I wrote that–there are a contingent of people who, on EVERY subject of disagreement between mods and posters resort to demonizing the posters who are disagreeing: “They only want the right to say “cunt””, “They only want to attack the mods and this is just another excuse”. You’ve seen the type and so have I. If you choose to apply it to yourself, hey, whatever floats your boat.