Oh wait, you asked someone else, but I can’t keep my nose out of other people’s business. So even though you didn’t ask me…
I would not consider that an insult, nor would I consider it equivalent to the OP’s situation. There are two main differences:
Poster A knew exactly what they were setting themselves up for in your example. Anamen couldn’t reasonably predict that the accusation was coming.
The “in my opinion” in your example is a lot more of a softener than the “IMO” in the OP’s example. The OP’s example, in addition to saying that the syllogism is satisfied, also told Anamen that she’d denied her child something “desperately needed” and told her she shouldn’t have had kids. It’s a significant difference.
Imagine your exchange like this:
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: Damn right it is, IMO. If you’re not going to feed kids, you shouldn’t have had them. You’re deliberately denying them something they need.
Even then it’s not as bad as the OP, ofr the first reason I mentioned.
I had thought that the “personal attacks” rule was not dependent on scale.
This is incredible.
And this is only slightly better. Obviously Poster B did not attack Poster A. No one suggested that. But Poster B introduced their own personal actions into a discussion that was previously theoretical.
The main issue with that suggestion from my perspective is that a poster might not be interested in starting and participating in a thread in which the entire focus is the wrongdoing of that other poster, and is only looking to maintain their position on the issues in this thread.
I don’t recall having ever seen that distinction made before. How nasty of a personal insult is still acceptable?
I did not suggest that “The “structure” is what the poster was warned for”, and what was incredible was that you somehow managed to misinterpret my words to mean that. (Several other people in this thread have had no problem understanding what I meant.) But I do agree in light of that that further “explanation” is probably pointless, which is why my response was somewhat cryptic.
That distinction is made constantly. I can’t imagine how you could think all insults, no matter how mild or how extreme, would be moderated the same. How nasty an insult is before it needs to be moderated is a judgement call on the part of the moderators, as it has always been.
I seriously don’t understand how you could have been posting here so long and not understand this.
Well I knew that, but I thought that’s because the moderators have discretion as to how or whether to moderate specific instances of rules violations. What you’re (apparently) saying now is that some personal insults are not rules violations altogether. This is the first time I’ve ever encountered this notion.
Again, I fail to understand how you could think that. Insults are a matter of interpretation. What one person may consider insulting may be acceptable to others. As moderators, we have to decide whether something is generally insulting enough to deserve moderation.
There are plenty of things that are technically rules violations, such as posting in the wrong forum, that we don’t moderate very often. That doesn’t mean they aren’t rules violations. I almost never moderate someone for posting in the wrong forum, and only have done so if they are very persistent about it despite requests to stop.
Once again, I find this extraordinary. We discuss this sort of thing regularly in ATMB in threads in which you have participated.
With that following “If you didnt want to raise your child the right way you shouldnt have had one.” it clearly goes over the top of debate/exchange and crosses into personal insult IMHO. If I agree with the thought or not, who are either of us to dictate this decision on anyone? Or to imply such in these terms? Warning valid.
If you reread the exchange into which you interjected yourself, I was discussing a distinction that LHOD was making between calling someone a racist and calling someone a child abuser. My point was that both of these are personal insults, and the difference is one of scale, which wouldn’t count in terms of whether it’s a rules violation. Your response initially seemed to be saying that lesser personal insults (e.g. calling someone a racist?) are not rules violations. Now you seem to be saying that some things (calling people racists?) are not insulting altogether, which is something else.
I too find this extraordinary.
I said I’ve never encountered some concept (specifically, that some insults are permitted). Your two part response is to 1) deny that it’s true altogether, and 2) to find extraordinary that I’ve never encountered it.
It strikes me as similar to the post that got Kobal2 suspended.
[ul][li]If you support stop-and-frisk, that’s the same as calling black people “nigger”.[/li][li]If you don’t breast-feed, that’s child abuse.[/ul]In both cases, the accusation is so over-the-top that it is deserving of Warning. [/li]
[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps]
I had thought that the “personal attacks” rule was not dependent on scale.
[/QUOTE]
ISTM that it is, and I would say that is more of a feature than a bug. We have always been able to get away with a subtle dig now and again, and it helps a great deal if the dig is funny. “Nigger nigger nigger” and “that’s child abuse” are neither subtle, nor funny.
Granted, I get a fair number of complaints about dancing up to the line myself, but neither of the above are doing much dancing.
Insults, either direct ones in the Pit, or indirect ones elsewhere, are (at least to me) generally more like “playing the dozens”. It is a ritual of one-upmanship, at least to me and most of the time. Screaming “you hate niggers” or “child abuse” isn’t the way the game is played. It should be mostly (not entirely - genuine anger can play a part) but as a rule genuine anger isn’t any fun, and the SDMB is just for fun.
There have been long discussions of misogyny as it pertains to posting on the SDMB, and this might be similar to coming into a discussion of a woman’s discussion of bras or something with a post of “show us your tits!”
Calling someone a nerd can be an insult, although a very mild one. It would probably never be moderated, even though it’s technically a rules violation. The difference in calling someone a nerd, and calling them a motherfucker, is only a matter of scale.
Right. Also, cops generally won’t give you a ticket for going 5 MPH over the speed limit. But the speed limit is still what it is. As above, I assumed that this was similarly a matter of moderator discretion.
OK. So my understanding has been that matters of scale influence moderator discretion in dealing with rules violations but don’t influence whether something is a violation (of the “personal insult” rule - the “don’t be a jerk” rule is something else entirely). ISTM that you’ve been back and forth on this, but at this point it looks like you’re in agreement, best as I can tell.
It appears to me that Fotheringay-Phipps holds the same black and white, all or nothing view of BF that madsircool does, which is why he cannot understand why someone would be warned for merely “speaking the truth”. Am I right here?
I think it is a matter of mod discretion, with the added complication that no one quite knows what the speed limit is.
In this case, it appears to me like a road where the limit might be 25, or it might be 35, or on weekends it might be 50. The poster in question was clocked at 90.
[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.]
[/QUOTE]
Regards,
Shodan
Posting in the wrong forum is technically a rules violation, but it is almost never moderated (aside from moving the thread). Mild insults or jocular ones are technically rules violations, but generally won’t be moderated. Of course, whether something is insulting at all is a judgement call. While nerd originated as an insult, many people almost regard it as a compliment.
My one warning came about in what I thought was a mild, jocular insult. I figured that since it was technically an insult, even though nobody could possibly think I meant it seriously, I didn’t fuss.
FWIW and best as I can tell, nerd is virtually always an insult when directed at someone else. People sometimes “almost regard it as a compliment” when they use it to describe themselves.
When folks direct “nerd” at me, it is always, since I was thirteen, intended as a term of affection–a joking ironic insult with no sting at all. I have real trouble imagining anyone using the word as a genuine insult toward me, and even more trouble imagining my taking them seriously if they did: it would be like trying to hurt my feelings by calling me a poopyhead.
