Policy Advisory: Spelling, Grammar, and Personal Attacks (Members, please read)

General Notice — Avoiding the Issues (Spelling and Grammar)

I am no longer inclined to tolerate certain criticisms of people's spelling and grammar. To the one, I understand if those basic difficulties obscure a member's message. To the other, though, this is rarely the issue. A particularly harsh example of this expression:

There are four sentences in that paragraph. The final three reflect useful issues for consideration. But as the first shows, that's not really the point. In the end, that post is nothing more than a personal attack designed to avoid answering issues.

And avoiding the issues is exactly the problem I have with this criticism.

Sciforums is intended as a place for rational and civilized discussion. In the first place, that does not prohibit impassioned expression, but we do aim for some measure of decency and utility about our conduct. In the second place, I recognize that moderators and the administration have generally failed to enforce this standard appropriately in the past, but if we intend to correct the situation, we must start somewhere.

Henceforth:

• If spelling and grammar obscure the issue, ask for a clarification or leave it alone.

• There are legitimate criticisms of spelling and grammar to be made. To wit, I always wonder about those who have much to say about a given subject or public figure, but cannot even spell the names correctly. After all, just how does that work? One spends how much time poring over partisan rags, blogs, and email lists, yet cannot even spell the words and names so vital to the issue. But these issues do not always obscure the underlying ideas, and should not be exploited as a means to avoid answering the point.

• We can never be entirely certain just what it is we are insulting. In the past, we have witnessed abominable spelling and grammar because of reading disabilities (e.g., dyslexia), simple carelessness, and deliberate calculation. And each has, at some point, been subject to deliberately-insulting criticism designed to attack the person while avoiding the issue. If one ends up insulting a genuine educational diability, I will not be sympathetic.

• This form of attack is subject to sanction.

• Only the most extreme examples of this form of attack will be subject to accelerated sanction schedules. To be clear: I approach problems in this jurisdiction more slowly than many of my colleagues in their own. I intend to maintain my personal standard of moderation in regard to this issue. But extreme attacks will be subject to an accelerated standard, which means one can expect on those occasions that I will skip the green ink, stuff the private messages, and move straight to yellow and red cards.

• Assessment of an offense is entirely the moderator's discretion.

• If a member should disagree with my assessment, they are welcome to contact me directly via private message; do not muck up the thread complaining about it.​

This policy is effective as of zero hour, Monday, June 21, 2010, Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7). This thread shall remain open for member questions and comments until that time. However, barring administrative veto, the decision to implement this policy will not be reversed.

Thank you.

 

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Down with the grammer nazis!

 

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Are you saying a sentence like this should not be ridiculed?

What kind of mind thinks that vomiting up words in random order constitute rational discussion? I'm sorry for the personal attack, but if this is the quality of humanity that we are preserving by advocating the end of abortion rights, what hope for the future do we have?

 

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A matter of purpose

A certain amount of ridicule is generally acceptable. People do say some stupid shit on a fairly regular basis. But laying on the spelling and grammar is at best a useless exercise. The logical discord and hypocrisy ought to be enough.

We need not advocate the end of abortion rights to preserve that quality of humanity. Ignorant people breed more quickly than the educated, and often voluntarily.

Remember, please, that antagonizing the ignorant, superstitious, and fearful only drives them further into ignorance, superstition, and fear. As such, the greater part of ridicule heaped upon them by the allegedly educated and enlightened seems to serve more directly personal satisfaction instead of any greater cause such as the quality of humanity.

If you think someone is an idiot, please bear in mind that you cannot beat intelligence into a moron. It just doesn't work.

It is, simply, a matter of purpose. If we aim to enlighten, educate, or otherwise raise the human condition, that is part of what an Intelligent Community aspires to. If we simply seek the satisfaction of bullying the stupid, we might as well be in junior high.

 

OK, it's a fair criticism.

 

Sorry: I think you mean "I will place this form of attack under sanction".

The way you're putting it now, it actually means "permit". It's an auto-antonym.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sanction
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sanctions

You could also say "This form of attack is sanctioned" or "This form of attack is under my sanction" or somesuch.

 

Sorry, sorry: this link is actually better -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_auto-antonyms_in_English

 

Thank ye

Fair enough. I read and watch too much news. Heavens, those folks can butcher the language.

Or I could split hairs and ... er ... never mind.

Thanks for the note.

 

No worries.

 

D'oh!

Members please note I have corrected my stupid error on the effective date.

Anyway, that's this coming Monday.

 

So the op had an error?

 

isnt thinks a very slippery slope?

 

Tiassa, I agree in general. Many people have English as a second language or are dyslexic (a couple of notable examples spring to mind) and some are just retards or of very low intelligence (lots of examples spring to mind) so exposing their grammatical or spelling errors serves no purpose.
I do believe there's a place for hanging a bit of shit in regard to spelling or punctuation errors and that is with the spelling antagonists (nazis).
Very recently, Gendanken made a particularly shitty return from the dead and was belittling people left, right and centre (English as a first language spelling).
She was being a right little pratt and I have to admit to feeling an urge to correct a couple of her errors (even if they were only typos) in an attempt to knock her off her self proclaimed perch.

Is there a time and a place for spelling Nazism?

 

For everything, turn, turn, turn ....

There is a time and place to be useful to those who have fundamental difficulties expressing themselves. It is hard to believe in the allegedly enlightened, however, when they choose barbaric cruelty for the sake of ego over utility. Of late, things have gotten out of hand, and so we come to this.

Consider the example quoted in the topic post. I would suggest there is a difference between hanging a bit of shit (e.g., tagging a self-righteous member for making the same human mistakes he or she excoriates others for) and openly denigrating someone for the sake of personal satiation.

As people who can't tell the difference create more and more problems, I have decided to undertake the task of establishing that difference for them. One alternative would be to abandon my longstanding habit of green ink and occasional private discussions with members in favor of the penchant some of my colleagues have adopted for suspending members.

I once witnessed one of my colleagues destroy the record of what was said, and then misrepresent it. Because of that incident, I changed my own policies. Deleted posts can be restored. Edited posts cannot. Thus, when I am compelled to edit a post, I first make a copy of it, soft-delete the original for a longer-term record, and then edit the copy. That way, if I fuck up, I can restore the original post. After years of being accused of wild fascism, I started keeping a public record of the actions I take as a moderator. Quite quickly, those complaints dried up. But all this takes time, and I admit that the stupidity some people are showing in the offenses they commit is more than a little annoying. I could spend all day cleaning up after the the barbarism committed by the allegedly enlightened, and not catch it all. Still, as I have disagreements with some of my colleagues about their thresholds and triggers for suspension, I am unwilling to simply give over and imitate them. This new policy falls somewhere in the middle ground. If I think of anything better along the way, please rest assured that I will try it.

The enlightened will make the sacrifice because, unlike the stupid, they are capable of doing so.

 

Can we have base level of intelligence, worldliness or common sense as a prerequisite for posting????
It need not be a particularly high standard and maybe you only have to have some aptitude in one or two areas, I mean we all know the maths (Australian spelling, down boy) and physics afficianados (again Australian spelling) are about as worldly as a goldfish but at least they know their thing.
I've been frequenting this forum on and off for a few years now and the general level of science (it's a science forum), intelligence (I know it's very subjective) or general knowledge is at an alarmingly low level.
It seriously needs cleaning up.

 

The challenges of getting smart

This proposition is not unheard of in the past. The primary challenges are:

(1) Where to set the bar.
(2) How to enforce it.​

The decline of late is alarming. Theists argue personal faith, with little connection to psyche or history. Atheists treat history and psyche like toys for the sake of ego inflation. Liberals and conservatives clash in a battle of will and arrogance. Plenty pretend to stand on some noble middle ground, asserting that the one is just as bad as the other, as if scratching your initials in the paint on a dumpster is the same as throwing acid on the Mona Lisa.

Sciforums has become a refuge of the Self Denied. People project arrogant fantasies of themselves, and duel not with fact or reasoned perspective, but childish obsession and a wanton disregard for anything real.

As an absolute dictator, I could probably clean this place up, but to the one, I haven't the will to stage that sort of coup (nor would it succeed, as the ownership-administration is squarely behind whatever caprices the membership-administration wants), while to the other it would be my version of propriety or perfection. To yet another, it would be drastic.

There was a time when we could insult each other freely, and most members taking part in that bacchanal did so with a nod and wink that they understood what was happening. Those days are over. As Sciforums grew, it was inevitable that averages should decline; we could not expect to be so lucky as to attract only people intelligent enough to understand these fairly simple conventions.

And with the new ownership, priorities changed. Before, one might suggest getting rid of the moron fringe, and what stopped us was a myth of noble, albeit relative, freedom. Now such a culling would be so severe that, as near as I can understand, it would undermine the Company's intentions.

In the old days, high traffic threatened to kill the site, as the owner could not afford the bandwidth. These days, though it is never said outright, one gets the distinct impression that too great a reduction in site traffic will render Sciforums useless to its ownership, and thus kill the place.

The Intelligent Commuity, as such, starts to seem like an antithetical notion. I'm not sure it has to be this way, but it is very difficult to find the balance point when one does not know how much weight is on the other end, or even if that sum is consistent.

So we make little changes. "Get smart or get out!" sounds attractive some days, but it's an unwieldy standard.

 

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(I just realized that whoever made the poster didn't capitalize 'Grammar Nazi' hehe)

 

Mod Hat - Closure

Mod Hat — Closure

Held over a week mostly for the sake of my disorganization. At any rate, thank you to all who offered their thoughts. And, as you see, it's not like folks are dropping like flies around here.

Policy is definitely in effect.

Further inquiries or comments may be directed to me via Private Message.

This message will remain in Sticky status for a short but undefined period, as an informational notice.