What is allowed in the Pit is noted in the stickies at the top of the BBQ Pit page.
Changing your claim now from “ever” to “consistently”?
yeah I’m gonna go ahead and guess that a poster who thinks its A-OK to commit rape by deception (and in fact brags about doing it) may not have the best grasp of what is or isn’t hate speech.
Find out when it was. Proving a negative is rather difficult, as you well know.
On what research did you make your claim that there haven’t been warnings before? While proving a negative, depending on the situation, can be hard, making blanket statements of “fact” without showing your work is next to useless.
The silence from the mods is deafening…
Not really. As has been pointed out so many times before there are many reasons why the mods involved might not give you the instant gratification you are asking for.
I did. See my first post here. Now show that they have ever modded “Retard” as hate speech before.
Your first post in this thread showed some hand-picked posts that weren’t warned, which doesn’t even begin to answer the question as to how you determined that NONE of them been warned for that reason.
Why would they post in this cluster? They made their point clear. Referring to a mentally-disabled person in the pejorative isn’t tolerated. The end.
Moderator Note
Take the insults to the Pit.
You can certainly disagree with someone in ATMB, but try to be respectful to all other board members here.
Actually, this looked like an insult to me, too, and I almost reported it, but if you look at the context, it’s pretty clear that he’s talking about someone worrying about getting warned and is using “you” meaning “one”. So, I don’t think he was actually insulting anyone here.
You probably noticed that, too, and that’s why you didn’t warn him. I’ll just see myself out.
I have never used “libtards,” to refer to liberals, but I would like to know if I can start without risking a warning. So their silence on this point is significant.
Nor do I believe the answer should be obvious already. A reasonable person could rely on the frequent use of that term without sanctions and conclude it’s permitted, or a reasonable person could read this thread and conclude it’s forbidden, even in the Pit, as “hate speech.”
Similarly, I have never called BigT by that odious other nickname that’s relevant to the discussion, but perhaps I’d like to start. May I, without getting a warning? A reasonable person could rely on the frequent use of that term without sanctions and conclude it’s permitted, or a reasonable person could read this thread and conclude it’s forbidden, even in the Pit, as “hate speech.”
So, no, not “the end.”
What silence? Did you not see the first link I provided in post #74?
I did.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t answer my question.
That post was not a warning, merely an admonition. It appeared in Great Debates. It cautioned against “inflammatory” usage, which is certainly to be avoided in GD but equally certainly permitted in the Pit.
Hate speech, on the other hand, is not permitted in the Pit. Since the warning at issue in this thread is “hate speech,” my question remains unanswered.
Didn’t we used to have a rule about messing with someone’s username?
I don’t know, but here is a thread with that construction in the title.
No warnings for hate speech, so far as I can see.
Here would be my argument as to why retard might not be hate speech when used in certain contexts but would be in the context used by the OP.
First, even the OP recognizes that calling someone a retard is generally meant as an insult. When the OP is called a retard tomorrow or someone calls another person a retard in the pit, it is because of some action or attitude that the insultee took that was disliked by the insulter. Now when the OP used the word retard to describe Forest Gump, it was not due to any actions or attitudes of Forest Gump, it was due to who he was. So using this insulting word to describe Forest Gump’s mental imparement effectively insults all other people who are mentally disabled. This is what makes it hate speech.
Maybe so, but up until very recently (2009) the Mass. state agency mandated to assist the developmentally challenged was known as the Department of Mental Retardation. Only then was the name changed to the Department of Developmental Services. Have the services the agency offers changed? Nope. Only the name was changed to protect the … whoever…
Here are a few that fit your criteria to get you started. If you want more I can certainly find them. But first I would ask you to provide even one example that supports your position. So far none of them have.
Since the term is offensive to many I’m not going to quote all these posts here with every iteration of the myriad ways it’s been used on these boards throughout the years without moderator intervention. In fact several of the links below are to posts written by moderators. You’ll have to search each thread for the word after you open it to find the particular posts.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=397074
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=541685
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=83664
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=38218
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=678878
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=66239
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=457516
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=353340
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=257210
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=304779
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=24854
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=210206
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=823776
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=15191
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=478729
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=550040
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=260327
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=526588&page=2
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=505899&page=2
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=696248&page=3
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=106687
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=353705
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=28445
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=639140
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=766219