I was surprised at this. I wouldn’t have thought condeming a specific action is a personal insult. But even more so in this case, because it was the condemnee who first made it personal. The structure of the exchange went like this:
Poster A: X is wrong.
Poster B: I myself do X and I’m justified in doing so.
Poster A: No, you’re wrong for doing so.
I don’t think disallowing the response from Poster A is the correct or smart way to do things. It allows people to force a level of acceptance for their own positions simply by making the focus their own actions, which the other side then can’t respond to.
[Note: this is not to endorse either madsircool’s over the top zealotry on that subject or his/her hijacking of that thread, but only about whether the particular response constituted a banned personal insult.]
Is that an implication that “over the top zealotry” is itself a personal insult? I would think that counts as commenting on the posts and not the poster. Those posts constituted “over the top zealotry”, IMO.
In any event, my intention was to head off a focus on the specific merits of madsircool’s position, which is the type of thing that frequently derails ATMB threads.
Depends on context. In this case, I would say no.
In this case, the specific act was already being discussed and condemned by madsircool. He/she didn’t force anyone else to step up and announce that they themselves engaged in it, but once that person did and decided to introduce their own actions to the discussion, then the only logical consequence of madsircool’s prior position was to follow through and say it was wrong.
If the other poster had not brought up their own actions and madsircool got angry at their opposing him/her on the issue and decided that they must be a child abuser, then it would be different.
I don’t agree that ‘you in effect forced me to insult you’ works. There are many ways to deal with such a situation that does not require a personal insult.
To name just one example - what’s wrong with saying ‘I cannot respond adequately in this thread, let’s take this hijack to the Pit’?
But seriously, I think the warning was justified. Kinda a gray area and I can see arguements for either side. But definitely worthy of a non official warning to tone it down at the very least.
Well, I think it’s a stupid circumlocution. Who reads that and doesn’t immediately think, “oh, that poster thinks the other person is a fuckhead”? Either it’s as insulting as saying, “You’re a fuckhead”, or we may as well not have restrictions on what people say outside of the BBQ Pit.
In general, I get what you’re saying. However, in this specific example, madsircool’s first post on the topic, to which Anamen responded, was
That’s a fairly mild expression of the idea. When Anamen responded that she made her decision because it was her right, madsircool ramped up to:
That’s far more condemning than the first post, far harsher language, and downright nasty.
Many years ago, I’m pretty sure I expressed the belief that someone (Bull hunter or something like that, I forget the poster’s name) should be prosecuted for animal abuse. He’d talked about setting out poison for cats or something like that. Even then, I was careful (IIRC) to couch my opinion in legal terms, quoting the ordinances locally that his behavior might violate.
Accusing someone of child abuse is no laughing matter–it’s far worse than accusing someone of racism, for example. An accusation of such a nature better be on very firm ground, and it better be phrased in appropriate language (“you shouldn’t have had” a child is probably not appropriate language). This accusation was out of the blue and was totally over the top and on shaky ground.
FWIW this appears to have been an Official Warning.
It’s not inherently any different than an accusation of racism, from a fundamental standpoint. But it’s different in that the racism accusation is (generally) addressing the poster’s posts to this board, while the child abuse is about a RL off-board situation. That said, if the other guy decided to introduce it and force the issue I don’t think it should be off-limits, especially to the extent that it’s a logical consequence of the discussion.
Well, it’s different from a legal standpoint, as “child abuse” is illegal: basically you’re accusing someone of a crime when you accuse them of child abuse. Saying something racist is perfectly legal.
An equivalent accusation would be to accuse someone of breaking nondiscrimination laws. Awhile ago, zpg zealot made a series of posts about her practice of not accepting African American customers in her business, and people accused her of such legal violations. In that case, she had explicitly described actions that were in violation of the law. In this case, Anamen had described actions that were completely 100% legal.
It’s a middle that is excluded elsewhere. I can call you a troll in the pit. I can’t call you a troll in GD and I can’t make comments about how there’s an unattended bridge somewhere you’re in GD so often.
To me, the etiquette of informing a poster that they’ve been pitted hails from a looser era when people weren’t so uptight about insults and I don’t think it fits with the current philosophy that is slowly eroding the old standard of attack the post and not the poster.
I don’t see why that would make a difference. No one is at risk of getting prosecuted based on someone else accusing them of things on this board. The risk here is of social opprobrium, and a lot of people regard many legal activities to be worse than a lot of illegal ones. I imagine that even here most people consider child abuse to be worse than racism, but that’s a difference of scale and not a fundamental difference.
But regardless of the above, none of this is relevant in a situation like the one at hand. It’s beyond obvious and was undoubtedly understood by all involved that from a legal standpoint a mother not breast-feeding her child is not committing child abuse. The accusation was about a (supposed) moral transgression, not a legal one.
The problem is that when you’re talking about criminal law, “child abuse,” is replaced by a very clear statute that places an individual on notice as to precisely what conduct is being forbidden.
Is withholding emotional support “abusive?” I suspect there’s no dearth of respondants that would agree that it is, yet so far as I am aware it violates no criminal law.
In this case, the accusation of abuse was clearly tied to the decision not to breastfeed. In my opinion, that pretty clearly places it as the sort of “abuse” that is outside the berm of criminal law.
I would characterize it as a personal attack (which is also prohibited), but accusing someone of child abuse is certainly an insult.
The “structure” isn’t what the poster was warned for, so this is irrelevant. As Left Hand of Dorkness describes, the response of Poster A was way out of line. Poster A was warned for an over-the-top personal attack in response to a very mild statement by Poster B. And poster B didn’t “make it personal” by attacking Poster A; she merely stated her own preference. Poster B was the one who made it personal.
I’m not sure I agree, but it doesn’t matter: even if it’s a difference of scale, a difference of scale is still a difference, and it’s totally reasonable to me for mods to treat events whose scale differs in different ways.
Well, wake me up when a mod warns someone for following that etiquette from a bygone era.
Until then, it seems to me such a “circumlocution” is perfectly acceptable, and adequately rebuts any argument that ‘the structure of the narrative requires me to insult you now’.
I think almost any opinion of consequence can be viewed as being insulting by someone. That’s not the same as being a personal insult.
This is a personal insult.
This is not. I may be insulted by the implication that I want children to go hungry, but if you try to keep anyone from ever being insulted, you’ve made it impossible to talk about anything. Similarly, if I ask for advice in IMHO about parenting or dating or budgeting, I may take offense to people’s opinions about my situation. Such are the risks inherent in talking to other people. Asking the moderators to protect us from ever hearing such statements (a) won’t work and (b) will make this place boring as hell.
Is there a personal insult in this exchange, and if so, where?
A: “I think the school lunch program should be eliminated entirely.”
B: “I think that letting children go hungry is basically child abuse.”
A: “I disagree. I never feed my children lunch. Is that child abuse?”
B: “In my opinion, it is.”
I know it’s a hypothetical, but I believe it’s an instructive one. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
