I understand the distinction between criticizing the moderator versus the moderator’s actions; I guess I just don’t understand how “rude” and “unhelpful” can be construed as personal insults. Can you imagine anyone in GD being officially warned for calling another poster rude and unhelpful? Of course not, it would be absurd, just like this warning.
Especially if the poster in question actually had been rude and unhelpful. Wouldn’t it be less absurd just to have a rule stating “No criticizing the staff”?
The fact remains that Tubadiva hasn’t lifted a finger to investigate the issue and, as is apparently par for the course, foisted everything back onto the user base.
On top of it, rude and unhelpful comments were made.
It’s a double standard that is blindingly apparent, even in the short time I’ve been posting here. Tubadiva and at least one other moderator can say pretty much whatever they want without so much as a peep about their bad behavior. And when
one of the peons dares to call 'em on it, they get a warning. This thread is ample proof.
Surely, if you say what someone said was rude and unhelpful, that says the the person was being rude and unhelpful, because the person said it: it came out of his mouth, and from his brain. He produced it; no-one and nothing else had anything to do with it. It’s just two ways of saying the same thing.
And if the person was being rude and unhelpful, that’s a factual statement; maybe open to dispute, but if it was an honest summation, it cannot be an insult. You’re a f***** etc, is an insult, because it’s accepted as such. Observing character traits maybe uncomfortable for the target, but it is not an insult. If you say my post is very badly written, or that I wrote this post badly, they both have the same meaning, and neither is an insult.
I apologize for misquoting. The actual quote was “rudest and most unhelpful administrator ever.” When I condensed down to “rude”, I was reacting to Erdosain’s paraphrase.
I agree that simple use of “rude” and “unhelpful” might have referred to the post and just been clumsy writing. Similarly, “you are stupid” might arguably be a shortcut for “What you said in your post was stupid.” However, I don’t see any way to interpret “You are the stupidest poster I’ve ever seen” as anything other personal insult. And, this specific instance, I don’t see how “rudest administrator” can mean the post; it clearly means the person.
I apologize again for my earlier post that was far too generic.
It doesn’t change the fact that “You have got to be the rudest poster I’ve ever met” is not a personal insult and would not merit a warning in any forum on this site if it had been directed at anyone but an SDMB administrator.
So, no one answered my question. Are any of these SDMB positions paid? Or do you only get paid when you write an actual column?
The only reason I clicked this thread was to see what kind of witty put-downs the OP had received for referring to this message board as the STMB in the thread title, instead of the SDMB.
Well, when I reported the other thread which got merged into this one, I accidentally referred to the thread in “ADMB”, which I thought was too funny to fix…
Ed, as an employee of Creative Loafing, is paid for editing Cecil’s Columns and oversight of the board.
Jerry, as a an empliyee for Creative Loafing, gets paid to look over the Chicago Reader/Creative Loafing servers on which the SDMB operates.
No one else receives any money for the SDMB. TubaDiva has received what has been described as a stipend for assisting with the Straight Dope web site, (Weird Earl’s and such), but receives no pay for efforts expended on the Straight Dope Message Board.
Only Cecil and Ed are paid for Straight Dope columns, a weekly gig as a more or less steady job, that exists separate from the SDMB.
That is the extent of money passing through the SDMB.
Thank you for getting us back on target. I use FF and hadn’t seen any of the problems mentioned here until a few days ago. I redid the flash thingy and everything seems to be ok.
One thing I have noticed is, as someone mentioned above, The Huffington Post does some weird things to my browsers. It all but crashes IE7. And FF (3.0.1.5) just acts strange. Clearing out the cookies and rebooting seems to resolve the issue, but man, what a pain.
Can we start putting (Warning: Huffington Post) after links to that site?
I didn’t fix anything but the Back button is now working fine for me in Firefox and Opera. I bet it was a particular Flash ad that was screwing things up.
Even though this thread has gotten to be a mess… with the moderator rudeness, needless warnings issued, and general near miss of something truly awful… I’m glad we’re back to the subject.
But, if it was a flash ad that was interfering with Firefox, and the moderators know that that a significant percentage of their users run Firefox, shouldn’t the administrators look into the ads they’re putting up on the site?
Just saying.
ETA
No, it wasn’t. If you are going to split hairs, at least get it right.
For the context inhibited, this is my point: There was an interface problem between the board and the the browser a good population of the board is using. If the people that run the board blame it on the users, that’s bad administrating.
We haven’t been able to track down exactly what the problem was. But it was, again, site specific. I’m thinking that the administrators might want to know when their shit is fucking up and every other board on the internet isn’t. Villify me if you want, but I think they ought to know that.
The problem is gone now, so maybe this is moot. But if I was them them, I’d think, “maybe it’s our interface with Firefox?”