You’re one of my favorite posters. I’m a fan, and I think you know that. But Dex (and many others) have made a very clear distinction. Since I know that you know that I know that you know that I like you a lot — whew! — I’m going to give it a shot.
Think parts of speech.
Parts of speech don’t say what a word is. They say how a word is used.
You can talk about crack (or bestiality, or gay bashing, or race). But you can’t talk about how to make crack (or how you can get bestial porn, or where to find gays to mug, or the best tip for screening blacks from your hiring list.)
It’s simple.
You can talk about illegal things. But you can’t ask how to commit illegal acts.
No, but if someone had posted a recipe (and it was easy) I might have been tempted. Note that whether I would or would not have has nothing to do with changing my sexual orientation.
Asking for advice is not encouragement. Approval is encouragement, as moderator **Marley **pointed out. My point, as I have made countless times, is that if what I was doing was encouragement, what **Cesario **was doing was encouragement squared.
It is not and never was about whether there were other legitimate reasons for closing the thread; it was only about encouragement.
Also, my thread was not a parody. So it could not have been a failed parody.
Asking for advice is not encouragement. Approval is encouragement, as moderator **Marley **pointed out. My point, as I have made countless times, is that if what I was doing was encouragement, what **Cesario **was doing was encouragement squared.
It is not and never was about whether there were other legitimate reasons for closing the thread; it was only about encouragement.
Also, my thread was not a parody. So it could not have been a failed parody.
You may want to re-read the OP. Pretty much the first sentence is a statement that you did not ask how to break the law. And yet you did ask how to break the law.
If you wanted your OP to instead say “advice is not encouragement”, I think it would have been wise to state that instead of encoding it in entirely different words that mean something entirely different.
It sounds like you think the board rules state something like the following:
"As long as you are not planning on carrying out illegal activities, it’s a-ok to ask for advice about how to carry out even the most heinous of felonies, as long as you promise that you will not use that information to carry out the act. Once you promise that, then we trust you, so then it’s not a problem, but you do need to promise that first.
Heck, once you promise that, we will even open up our secret archives we have compiled on illegal activities because, why not, we know we can trust you."
So if I were to open a thread asking how to violate some aspect of copyright law (to take one of this board’s most common examples of unacceptable questions) and state that I had no intention of actually doing so, but was merely curious about the best way of doing so, that would be perfectly okay, right?
Just in case this is a serious question – no, that would not be okay.
We do not allow people to post information that will enable people to break the law. We don’t give a shit whether that constitutes “encouragement” or not – we just flat out don’t allow it.
Yes, I do. And thanks for the kind words upthread.
I do despair of getting my point across, although I have stated it clearly and succinctly several times. I’m going to ask for this thread to be closed. Thanks for all the replies, everyone!