# Why Is This a Personal Attack?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-a-personal-attack/550619>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [August 18, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-a-personal-attack/550619 "2010-08-18T15:13:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-a-personal-attack/550619/41 "2010-08-20T16:10:47Z")

</div>

**tomndebb** said:

> [@](#):
>
> And Shodan was not threatened with a Warning for the use of “stupid.” He was told to stop the personal attacks. Telling another poster that his “beliefs” are “based on lies” when that poster has not even expressed any beliefs in the thread is a personal attack. Posted just following a Mod note to reduce the name-calling, (even if the name-calling note was too specific), is a red flag.

But that’s the point - the Mod note was **not** to reduce the name calling, and the threat of Warning was directed at **Shodan** only. Now I grant you that the sequence of posts means **Shodan** was the one to post a personalish remark after you had made your first Mod note, but I don’t concede that the Mod note was clear enough that the comment he made was related to it. I understand you think you were right to single out **Shodan** for the personal remark after you tried to tell the whole thread to knock off the personal remarks, but the thing is by singling out “stupid and its derivatives” you failed to make clear that your issue was with things like “your beliefs are based on lies”. Which was stated numerous times before **Shodan** said it.

I can understand how the perpetual “ **tomndebb** is out to get me” cries get old, and how it makes it difficult to worry about because you get accused for silly reasons all the time. But one has to wonder if your history with **Shodan** colored your response a bit. Certainly the effect of the statements actually made appears to be selecting **Shodan** out for things that other posters are getting a pass on.

I can accept that your intent with the original remark was to shut down a lot of the more personally directed remarks, and that “stupid” was the one in the posts right before then which is why you flagged on that as opposed to the “lies” comments. It appears that you acknowledge your Note was too specific and therefore not clear the extent of remarks that you intended. Is this accurate?

> [@](#):
>
> I committed the cardinal sin an SDMB Mod can commit and made a smart-assed remark.

Yeah, it’s going to take more than a dozen Hail Mary’s to get over that one. 😉

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-a-personal-attack/550619.md?page=2)