From today in MPSIMS:
My open zipper, Crunchy’s balls and his big wet ass. (kinda long)
i’ll give a blowjob to the first doper who brings me soup…
Not that I find these particularly offensive, but it isn’t as if MPSIMS is the Pit, and it seems as if the standard is, well, not so standard. I mean, are these kinds of thread titles taboo in that forum, or aren’t they?
Arnold Winkelried, are you saying that you judge (draw conclusions about) people based upon a single characteristic? 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pldennison *
**
I find it offensive . . . crass and banal, too.
C’mon, guys, can’t we do better than this? BE better than this?
I can’t get over to MPSIMS right now to check out more lovely titles, but this has got to stop.
Y’all can be more creative and I challenge you to do so.
your humble Tubadiva
Administrator
I looked up the following words in the Merriam-Webster® Collegiate® Dictionary (to which I provided a link in a previous post): zipper, ball, ass, blowjob. Whereas all of those words, in the definition used in the thread title, were described as “vulgar”, none were qualified as “obscene” or “derogatory”. Therefore I think that those words are not offensive enough to warrant removal in thread titles in MPSIMS, whereas the removal of the word “cunt”, described as obscene and (in another meaning) derogatory, is justifiable.
Thank you for the effort and time you have expended in patrolling the boards looking for thread titles that don’t meet the SDMB standards. We are very grateful when posters take a few minutes out of their busy day to help the SDMB staff in their task. If you find any othere occurrences where the moderators or administrators seem lax or inconsistent in the enforcement of the board policies, please do not hesitate to bring it to our attention.
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 07-19-2001 at 01:22 PM]
Yes.
Or to be less cryptic, I draw conclusions about people based on all the information available to me. In the case of a message board, sometimes the information available to me is only the language they use.
I don’t mean to seem like I’m picking on you, Arnold, but I am asking if there’s a consistently applied standard or not. (Which is what, when situations like this arise on the board, most posters really want to know: Is there a standard, and is it applied consistently?)
If the standard is “Whether or not the Merriam-Webster Dictionary uses ‘obscene’ or ‘derogatory’ for one or more definitions of the word in question,” fine, then say so.
But I suspect that, applying the old U.S. Supreme Court “community standards” ruler, most posters would place “cunt” in approximately the same neighborhood as “dick,” “balls,” “cock,” “blowjob” and “balls,” albeit perhaps not the same house.
If we’re going to go with the dictionary standard, I nominate the OED, rather than M-W’s online edition.
pldennison, you are not the first poster to ask “do the SDMB staff have an explicitly defined algorithm for determining what behaviours are (dis)allowed at the message board?” The answer to that is no. Obviously, if we did have an algorithm, we could have moderator-bots patrolling the boards and we could spend out day at the beach sipping Mai-Tais (to repeat an analogy I once used in another thread.)
I don’t presume to speak for the other moderators in this case, but let me give you an example of how I operate in the forum assigned to me. I read every thread I have time for (which, in my case, is pretty much all of them, since the forum doesn’t have a lot of activity) and make a quick judgment as to whether or not the post is acceptable or not. Do my decisions always go the same way? No. I’m surprised anyone would seriously suggest that we would be able to achieve perfect regularity in the rules we apply when moderating. If you know anyone that is 100% consistent when making judgment calls, please introduce me to that person, because I’d love to meet her/him.
In addition, the task is complicated because whenever a staff member reaches a cusp of decision, after muttering “I am only an egg” the moderator attempts to deliver a sentence that is acceptable and grounded in SDMB precedent. The verdict is all the more difficult to reach, knowing that there is a group of bright and argumentative posters (the kind of people we like to have here at the SDMB) ready to dispute every ruling and (in the extreme cases) drag you to the pit in a flurry of insults, which (to be perfectly honest) can eventually become extremely tiresome.
As far as using the OED rather than M-W online: M-W online has the great advantage of being available for free and easily accessible. I can check in my moderator budget to see if the funds allocated this year allow me to purchase the OED, but I’m sure you can guess what the outcome of that inspection will be.
Regarding your statement that “I suspect that most posters would not be much more upset by ‘cunt’ than by ‘balls’, ‘dick’, ‘clock’, or ‘blowjob’”, all I can say, in the best SDMB manner, is “what evidence do you have to support that assertion?” As a counter-example, I can see a thread started in ATMB about the word “cunt”, but where are the threads complaining about those other terms? And I don’t mean the inevitable threads that may be started as a joke in ATMB as soon as this message is posted.
Gee, I’m sorry I asked. :rolleyes:
To address a few points:
“A consistently applied standard” is not the same thing as “an explicitly defined algorithm.” We have (relatively) consistently applied standards in the United States for what constitutes obscenity, but we don’t put judgebots on the bench to rule in obscenity cases.
I said (emphasis added):
to which you replied:
Well, my first piece of evidence is that that is not what I said, and I don’t even think it’s a reasonable intepretation of what I said. If my wording was unclear, I apologize. I was attempting to state that your average (perhaps mythical) “reasonable person” would recognize them all as “words you don’t say in front of the kids, or when out in public,” whether one in particular occupies an elevated plane of rudeness or not.
3. To your question, “I can see a thread started in ATMB about the word “cunt”, but where are the threads complaining about those other terms?” I would respond in a few ways:
–Does a poster have to complain about a word in a thread title before a mod can alter it, or are the mods permitted to exercise their own judgement? I suspect it is the latter. In fact, did Coldfire change it before reading this thread, or after?
–The fact that nobody has complained at “About This Message Board” does not mean nobody has been offended. That’s almost laughably weak evidence for a counter-case to the idea that most people consider “cock,” “blowjob” and “balls” to be obscene.
–Not to be a post-count snob, but the person who started this thread has all of 112 posts, 4 of them in this thread, and referred in the OP to the word “cunt” being “hateful [and] misogynistic.” This implies a particular socio-political objection to the word, one countered easily by matt-mcl’s link to a feminist book with that title. Meanwhile, quite a few longtime posters said, “Gee, I don’t see the problem at all. Why that word above the others?”
Is there a consistently applied standard? If, by that, do you mean we have a list of proscribed words? Nope, not as of this moment. Are we going to compile, and publish, a list of words that will be proscribed henceforward? I certainly hope not. Will we be patrolling more diligently for words used in an offensive manner? Yup.
How about we stop arguing about it and use a little common sense, all the way around.
We depend on our Teeming Millions to do the right thing. When they don’t, we step in. Thankfully, it’s usually a sometime thing, mostly our folks know how to behave.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
That’s cool with me, Tuba – if anything, I ask these questions in the interest of not seeing yet another Pit thread along the lines of “Why was my thread closed/changed/altered/whatever and these were not?” The better the standard and the more consistently it’s followed, the easier it is to avoid those.
As I said, I generally support the mods wholeheartedly (I wouldn’t want to do the job); but it’s not a secret that, among current, former and banned posters there are questions about consistency in decision-making both on the board as a whole and from forum to forum. Understandably, you rely on the membership to police themselves for the most part, but it’s just nice if people don’t have to worry about being blindsided.
And it’s nothing personal, Arnold – I’m not questioning you as a person, I’m questioning moderating the SDMB as a process. You certainly aren’t required to justify yourself to me or any other poster, but if you take the trouble to do so, and it sounds fishy to me, I can’t help but ask more questions.
pldennison: 1. “A consistently applied standard” is not the same thing as “an explicitly defined algorithm.”
If you want to use that definition, then yes. Our “consistently applied standard” is that we remove text that is deemed offensive by the moderators.
pldennison: I was attempting to state that your average (perhaps mythical) “reasonable person” would recognize them all as “words you don’t say in front of the kids, or when out in public,” whether one in particular occupies an elevated plane of rudeness or not.
The SDMB is not intended for children, as a matter of fact if we find out that a poster is a child we ask them to please stop posting at the SDMB. So the child test doesn’t really apply. A better test would be “is this word that you don’t see in front of adults?” I personally would use the words “balls” or “dick” in public, but I would not use the word cunt.
Does a poster have to complain about a word in a thread title before a mod can alter it, or are the mods permitted to exercise their own judgement?
A poster does not have to complain about a word before we change it. But the complaint may make a difference since we might not notice something if a poster doesn’t bring it to our attention.
The fact that nobody has complained at “About This Message Board” does not mean nobody has been offended.
In all my time here as moderator, no one has ever complained about the words “balls”, “dick”, etc… I would think that is evidence that those words fit the “SDMB community standards”.
pldennison: Not to be a post-count snob, but the person who started this thread has all of 112 posts, 4 of them in this thread, and referred in the OP to the word “cunt” being “hateful [and] misogynistic.” This implies a particular socio-political objection to the word, one countered easily by matt-mcl’s link to a feminist book with that title. Meanwhile, quite a few longtime posters said, “Gee, I don’t see the problem at all. Why that word above the others?”
And a (admittedly lesser) number of long-time posters have said that they found the word offensive or that they had no problems with the moderators removing that word. (on this subject, see more below) In any case, arguing the merits of a poster’s argument based on post count has always seemed to me to be particularly silly. As far as the word appearing in a title of a feminist book: I was unaware that all feminists were of one mind on which words they consider to be derogatory. At the Los Angeles Gay Pride festival I saw a group of people wearing T-shirts saying “Faggot and proud of it.” Does that mean that gay people don’t consider the word “faggot” to be offensive?
Nobody expects 100% consistency, but when you have a whole lot of people standing around scratching their heads and asking, “Huh?” then maybe the call was the wrong one. Or the right one for the wrong reason.
The point I am making is that a great number of moderator decisions are accompanied by people “standing around scratching their heads and asking ‘Huh?’” At a consumer satisfaction seminar I once attended, I was told that customer feedback is approximately 9 to 1 in favour of customer complaints vs. thank yous, assuming an approval level of around 80%. So I don’t necessarily assume that when I see a very small proportion of our member base disagreeing in a thread, the vast majority of the posters at the SDMB are unsatisfied with the decision. As a matter of fact, from reading this thread and the MPSIMS thread, I draw the conclusion that the majority of posters are either content with the decision or don’t care, since, as mentioned above, satisfied customers rarely bother to voice their agreement.
In general, I have always supported the mods in their duties, including bannings of popular posters and removal of certain threads. But the application for sympathy/martyrdom/whatever implicit in your third paragraph is, I’m afraid, rejected. … Moderating is an unpaid, uncontracted position from which you are free to walk away any time you would like.
The obvious parallel to the argument would be “if you don’t like the way we moderate at the SDMB, you can go find another message board”, but let me say that I dislike both your argument and its parallel. I moderate because I enjoy contributing to the SDMB, even though there are some parts of the moderator job that I enjoy less than others.
As far as your statement that you have always supported the moderators and reject the “plea for sympathy” - I will repeat what I recently said in a BBQ Pit thread. When you say “you support the moderators”, I personally can’t say that I’ve ever noticed that to apply to me, or noticed that you’ve ever said “good job Arnold for doing such-and-such”. The only interaction I’ve had with you on the subject of SDMB moderation is this thread where you disagree with my statements. Which relates again to my argument above - satisfied customers don’t bother to voice their approval. Every time a poster decides to publicly state that a certain moderator is misguided, I would suggest that the poster ask him/herself “how many times have I agreed with that moderator’s actions and not bothered to say anything?”
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 07-19-2001 at 05:23 PM]
Oh sure, add that requirement now. I don’t remember that being on the moderator application. Thanks a lot.
All right TubaDiva, I think you’re correct in saying that we’ve beaten this subject to death. Sorry.
A bit late, but still: we’re permitted to use our own judgment, and I did. So yes, I did change the thread title before reading the complaint here. Of course, I renamed it incorrectly because of my currently somewhat rusty experience with the female anatomy.
Since one of my threads was mentioned in here, I just wanted to check in. Yes, I admit I went over the top in naming that thread and in doing so, used poor judgement. I agonized over what to call it, because in all honesty, I wanted it to be read and felt I was almost trying to “compete” with Scylla and Fenris. [sub]Though I can only dream of being at that level of writing style and humor[/sub] So, I went for the shock value to try to draw the TMs in. I understand why it was changed, though at the time I honstly didn’t think anyone would be offended by the title. I wasn’t pleased with what it had been changed to, so I emailed UncleBeer and requested he change it to something I could live with. Kudos to UB for prompt and friendly service on that one.
Personally, I think the mods and admins do one hell of a great job on this board and though I may not agree with them on every issue, I think they deserve a lot more credit than they are given. I’d like to say thanks for giving up your time and being the people you are. This board is a “live with it or leave” kind of place, and though I think it’s difficult for anyone to offend me,(not impossible mind you) I cannot presume everyone holds the same views as I. I hold too many posters in high regard to try to intentionally offend them. I think I can certainly live with the thought of “tone it down” especially given the other option. 
Thank you Tequila Mockingbird. Your kind words are much appreciated.
For those of you reading the thread, I don’t want you to conclude that I’m angry with pldennison. His questions were sensible, though it seems we might not agree on this particular issue. I think his presence adds a lot of value to the Straight Dope Message Board, and he’s one of the valuable presences that make this community the place where I choose to spend most of my online time.
So I used the word “value” twice in the same sentence. Sue me.
I obviously know far too little about our humble Tuba since I found this, and some of her other statements in this thread, surprising and charming. Even cute.
{Original post deleted because it seems to be a Call for Action, or possibly lunatic ravings, and therefore totally inappropriate for ATMB. Lynn}
[Edited by Lynn Bodoni on 07-21-2001 at 12:46 PM]