Forums with varying levels of insults allowed...

I think that in a way, this may already be somewhat informally in place, but I wanted to see what people thought of the idea of having a sub forum that allows more insults and a sub forum that would allow less. So, here goes...

 

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Flaming can be an art form. I think it would be good to allow the odd flame festival to take place.

 

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I think it's not a good plan. People will start flaming just because they can..

 

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Something about a slaughterhouse

Used to be we had gargantuan flame battles. Not legendary by 'net standards, but still pretty impressive. And, yes, I was integral to a fair number of them.

But people started complaining. Once upon a time we used to tell people to attack the idea, and not the person. But enough members couldn't figure out what that meant. Another notion people couldn't grasp was permanence. You know, the difference between telling someone that they shouldn't act like a bitch and telling them that they are a bitch.

Everybody has their bitchy days. And among friends, you can usually point those occasions out. But here, no. People need to brand each other bitches and fools for all eternity.

Liars can stop lying. You know, as in they can stop saying things that aren't true?

Hatemongers can stop hating. Theoretically.

But how does a person stop being perceived in a certain way? Lying is an objective conclusion in many cases because one was caught saying something they should know isn't true. Hatemongering is often objective because so many of its devices are apparent.

But being a bitch? Well, fuck, that's a perception. It's beheld in somebody else's eye. Maybe someone thinks you're being snarky when in fact you've written a good, sympathetic joke.

All of this, though, is apparently too complicated for so many people. I tend to assign the transition to the site's transition, but that's only because I disappeared for a short while and nearly didn't recognize the community when I got back; I departed under Dave and returned under Plazma and friends.

There are, in fact, a million tiny daggers zinging about, piercing minds and souls, that people just don't see the need to stop and think about. Our political alignment, for instance, has transformed the attitude of the community. Once upon a time the "conservative" (by American standards) voice was mostly represented by idiotic things like evangelistic zealotry, warmongering, and eventually phrenology. Even today, having bent over backwards trying to accommodate our conservatives, it's still too much to ask for some that they stop and think about the idea of Sciforums being a continuous experience.

It's a tragedy that repeats itself endlessly:

• A and B are having a furious argument.
• C joins Sciforums, sees this fight, rushes to B's aid.
• C castigates A for being so mean and rude; the operating presumption is that B has done nothing to warrant it.
• B, however, has a history of lying, misrepresentation, and cruelty over which he and A constantly fight.
• Other people see C's rush into the fray.
• When the dust settles, C is associated with a local idiot; another voice within the movement is perceived as being an irrational zealot.
• C feels slighted, libeled, and abused. How dare people judge him the way he judged A!​

Watch. It's been going on for years. Hell, it used to be that the way to make a Catholic and a born-again get along was to throw them both into Sciforums' Religion subforum. They'll borrow each other's logic and philosophy to evangelize their message even though they would never actually suggest the validity of such concepts in their own church communities.

And in terms of politics, what do we have? Like the religious, the conservatives are generally a minority. So they band together, with the economic conservative standing beside the religious zealot standing beside the racist. And then they all start affirming one another. But when their behavior is viewed in that context, they're offended, because it's not fair to conclude that a spirited and protracted defense of a dubious proposition means a conservative actually accepts and believes the proposition. (Rather, it just means that there's a Democrat in the room, and conservatives need to rally around their talking points.)

The reality is that we've spent a lot of time—a few years now, at least—twisting ourselves into knots to be "fair" to certain vocal minorities. That they happen to be Christian or conservative is incidental; quite obviously, we also shout down pedophiles, paranoid conspiracy theories, and anyone who tries to brief us on the mystical merits of Kirlian photography. The common thread between the zealot, the warmonger, the would-be mystic, and the hatemonger is not necessarily a label like "Christian" or "Republican", but a behavior, like irrationality.

And in recent years, we've been asked to back off people like that. We've even gotten to the point that we are protecting some of them.

The result is predictable. I've seen a few good posters slip into the rhythms of fighting with our lowest elements. And I've seen good but frustrated posters get warnings and even suspensions for their conduct while the perpetrators of the real offense.

Well, why would we do that?

Because a shitstorm hits-both inside and out—whenever we try to do anything else.

Something I went through with a member today, for instance, the "non-threat". I've suspended people over it before. You know, not threatening someone, but wishing them ill? (The one I suspended was responding to people who disagreed with his stance on capital punishment by saying he hoped those members' families would be killed by a psychopath.)

But here's the thing: How many people remember a recent fracas we endured when one of our moderators, outraged at the possibility that one of our first-tier bigots might be suspended for a single day pitched a fit, posted a bunch of material from the moderators' private discussions, and lied to you all? Show of hands? Who missed that one?

Did you know it started because a moderator was sanctioning people he respected for responding too harshly to grotesque bigotry?

The problem then is the problem now: We've twisted ourselves into such knots trying to accommodate certain groups, trying to be "fair". ("Waaah! That's not fair! You're not letting us be unfair to other people! Waaah!")

Seriously, when we put infraction points up for a vote, does anyone know why? Because people were sick and tired of little red flags telling everyone else that they had done something wrong. Of course, the really weird thing about that was that people thought we were being unfair for telling members they had to support broad statements like all Mexicans are criminals, and such.

Really. People wanted to call each other nigger and gook, or tell someone else to fuck off, without facing sanction. But, of course, they complained about anyone else calling them out on observable lies, inconsistencies, or insupportable theses. It's like saying, "Fuck off, you faggot raghead nigger! You have no right to tell me I'm wrong when I say 2+2=5! Where's the moderator! Where's the admin! What the hell is wrong here! I can't believe this horrible liberal bias!"

Try it this way: Of the membership? In nearly ten years I've gotten to know strikingly few of you. Some of you I adore. Some of you I find repugnant. And most of you I'm indifferent toward as individuals. (And that's just the way it goes unless you want me to start playing the role of the Sunshine Welcome Wagon. No, wait. I won't do that.)

But for the life of me, when viewing the community as a collective, I have no idea in the world what it is you actually want, except to complain.

Here ... one of my favorite flame wars from the past. It starts on the fourth page of an old thread and runs on for a couple days, covering nearly a hundred posts.

What changed between 2003 and today? The membership. More people complained, and we responded to those complaints. Perhaps we made some erroneous decisions over time; I tend to think we did. But one thing remains clear. This afternoon I picked my way through a stack of complaints mucking up my inbox. This may be the heaviest load I've encountered over its period. And I presently recall that dreary exercise in trying to figure out what upset who and why because, reviewing that old flame war, it occurs to me that a lot of people who want the moderators to lighten up would not have survived in that other mode.

There are some people who worry that things are brutal now. They certainly would not have enjoyed the former era. And then there are those who think we should let people be brutal again, even more so than now. Yet there is an irony. I mean, we do know who's complaining about what posts and, frankly, no. This must be a joke. Really. Seriously. Some of the complaints I read today were unsettling for their oversensitivity.

We might as well host vegetarians at an abattoir.

 

I think one way to kill trolls, is with flames. Lots of people know what reaction they are going to get when they make their posts, but seem to think that having stirred up emotion, the people they deliberately provoked have to be generous in their replies.

If trolling were warned as easily as expletives, maybe we'd see less of both.

 

Tiassa, You raise a lot of good points. A few points I'd like to comment on:

Whether or not they should know something by x standard, it doesn't make them a liar if they don't actually know the truth.

I think I can understand this.

That is pretty bad, I must admit. Perhaps they should be called 'wishing harm' posts.

I think I missed most of it, just caught a tiny bit.

Interesting. Do I take it that terms such as faggot/raghead/nigger/gook are now off limits when describing people here atleast? It seems that the f word and its derivatives is somewhat off limits, atleast in Formal Debates. I'm happy for that anyway.

I personally believe that everyone does what they do to maximize happiness, minimize pain or some combination of the 2. As to how they feel they're accomplishing this in sciforums and what their goals are here to achieve these states, I can't speak for the collective, but I personally like making friends. I think I've managed making a few here. I also like trying to understand why some people see things differently then I do and attempt to come to a consensus with these people as to what the truth really is. I find this much easier with people who are more civil (you may have noticed that I'm one of the few people who takes the time to respond to your very large posts in great detail at times

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).

It seems to start out ok, poetry and all. I skipped to the ending, though, and it clearly turned into something else

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.

Well, I'm glad you intervened in an ethics thread recently:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2190504&postcount=169

However, I think that the best solution would be to delineate a set of insults that are off limits; people who use that -particular- set of insults can be reported. If someone uses another insult that's not in the list, anyone could have the right to either PM you asking that it be included in a future list and/or perhaps start a thread in the ethics forum suggesting that it be included in the list and see what people say. If majorities could simply -agree- on what insults should be off limits I think we could be going places.

 

I'm fine with it, so long as all those flame festivals took place in a forum I didn't frequent

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.

 

My idea was that people who like flaming could get set up in a sub forum with a mod that likes such things as well. I really don't think I'd apply for such a forum myself, but perhaps it would allow the people who like to vent in that way at times the chance to do so, somewhere where I don't have to see it

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. I personally think that only people who have applied for it can get into the forum so that innocent newbies don't stumble in by mistake. I think that 'wishing harm' posts and threats of any kind should still be punished though.

And ofcourse what I wanted even more was a forum that has stricter rules concerning uncivilized behaviour and that that forum is -also- only available to those who apply; and those who don't follow the stricter rules are given temporary and/or permanent ban from that specific sub forum, depending on whether they're a first time or repeat offender.

 

I dislike this solution. I'm not sure how you are defining a troll here. I do know that there are some fairly civilized posters who are shouted down simply because their views aren't common here. Some people don't really need to resort to insults; they can simply ban the person in question (labelling them a troll first) and that's that. And there are some people who -aren't- so civilized and there I think that what you're suggesting is to fight fire with fire; far from a solution, I think all you'd get is at best, the flamer being flamed getting tired and leaving and at worst an unruly blaze.

 

T, how could you be an integral part of them when 1. most of your posts are novel length and 2. most of those jackasses that would participate in a flame war wouldn't have the attention span to read all of your paragraphs of response. Haha.
^^Not trying to be condescending or anything. I just thought that was funny.

I think most people grasped that concept, but when you have posters on here who continually post stupid shit that make most go 'WTF??', it's hard to not attack the poster, or at least their goading/trolling/ignorant manner. (have to single you out Sam, but) how do you go about addressing Sam's incessant discriminatory rants about athiests/agnostics and western civilization?

T, some people are bitchy, ingnorant, trolling and goading almost everyday. Those are the ones I have to label permabitches/fools for all eternity; while you and I have definitely had our disagreements, you aren't one that I would put one of those 'perma' labels on.


Liars can stop lying. You know, as in they can stop saying things that aren't true?

Hatemongers can stop hating. Theoretically.

But how does a person stop being perceived in a certain way? Lying is an objective conclusion in many cases because one was caught saying something they should know isn't true. Hatemongering is often objective because so many of its devices are apparent.

Very, very true. But the way I go about it is that I'll not a person's behavior over several meetings with that person, and if they are consistently bitchy, it's hard not to label them as one.
I've gone through days reading some of your posts and thought that about you and I'm sure you have with me. But I think we both know that each other aren't consistently like that so there is no need for me to label you as such.
Now, some members on here I will label as such. Sandy was a prime example. While she was consistent and stuck to her guns, it still 'consistently' got on my nerves.

Concerning the bold statement, conservatives IIRC, still have that label. Just like liberals have the label of being whiny bitches who expect everything to be done for them.

No way. I've never ever ever seen even one example of that here.

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Watch. It's been going on for years. Hell, it used to be that the way to make a Catholic and a born-again get along was to throw them both into Sciforums' Religion subforum. They'll borrow each other's logic and philosophy to evangelize their message even though they would never actually suggest the validity of such concepts in their own church communities.

And in terms of politics, what do we have? Like the religious, the conservatives are generally a minority. So they band together, with the economic conservative standing beside the religious zealot standing beside the racist. And then they all start affirming one another. But when their behavior is viewed in that context, they're offended, because it's not fair to conclude that a spirited and protracted defense of a dubious proposition means a conservative actually accepts and believes the proposition. (Rather, it just means that there's a Democrat in the room, and conservatives need to rally around their talking points.)

The reality is that we've spent a lot of time—a few years now, at least—twisting ourselves into knots to be "fair" to certain vocal minorities. That they happen to be Christian or conservative is incidental; quite obviously, we also shout down pedophiles, paranoid conspiracy theories, and anyone who tries to brief us on the mystical merits of Kirlian photography. The common thread between the zealot, the warmonger, the would-be mystic, and the hatemonger is not necessarily a label like "Christian" or "Republican", but a behavior, like irrationality.

I never understood that. Why would anyone need protecting on an internet forum? If they don't like the abuse here, then don't come on here.

I've seen that happen before. I've even been one of those good but frustrated posters before.

And I really wish you could find a way to cliff notes your posts. They contain a wealth of information but by the time I'm done reading even one post, it's already lunchtime. Haha.

 

I KNOW!!!
You can tell quite a bit of a person's character by how they react to someone calling them out on something.

 

Maybe I should try bullet points?

I figured that part. The length of my posts used to be fuel for those flame wars.

The WTF part is easy enough to handle by asking the question. As to the goading, trolling, and ignorance, well ... the way we've handled that has contributed to the problem. I don't think I've made a secret of my feelings on that count.

Honestly? I laugh at the people who get so frustrated.

Before 9/11 and especially the Iraqi Bush Adventure, the greatest conflict at Sciforums was between evangelical Christians and atheists. As the war machine sprung to life, that focus slowly shifted. Muslim-bashing became problematic, and eventually some Muslims showed up. The first wave or two were pretty lame. S.A.M. witnessed part of this transition, and over the years people took to the habit of prodding any of our Muslims, as if they were somehow responsible for Osama bin Laden. You might as well blame Kevin Smith for the Catholic priests diddling all the kids.

The major shift in S.A.M.'s behavior took place recently, and by that I mean sometime since I returned from hiatus. I remember originally being annoyed with S.A.M. because she would bury the place in short, fast posts. But I got over that because most of those posts had something of a point.

The behavior that seems to annoy so many people is, in fact, reactionary. That is, it is a response to extraordinary provocation. Indeed, the behavior that cost her position as a moderator was, in my view, at least somewhat understandable. As you noted, there are some who are permabitches/fools for all eternity (and no, I don't count you among those, either). And in my opinion, it was the decision of other moderators to not only accommodate, but protect some of those permabitches that led to the final problem with S.A.M. as a moderator. Sure, she made her choices, but in the context of dignity and decency, she never should have had to. Trashcan bigots should have been sent packing, but apparently denigrating Islam and Muslims was being looked upon as valuable posting.

So she played along. But what is good for the goose here has never been good for the gander, and even more so when you're a moderator. In the end, what was acceptable—and even considered a valuable contribution to the community—in other members was not allowed of S.A.M.

I have my own critique of her behavior, that she might have submerged a bit too deeply into the role, but that's for me to take up with her if I ever decide to. In the meantime, life is performance art, and she's putting on something of a show.

And those people should have been dealt with appropriately. Instead, we rolled and extended special rights and protections to them. Like with liars and bitches:

"Quit lying."
—You're a bitch!​

The other finds the one insulting in calling him a liar. So he calls the one a bitch. But the accusation of lying can either be substantiated or not. The accusation of being a bitch is entirely subjective. Still, enough people demonstrated difficulty understanding the difference that we adjusted our policy to accommodate them.

Yes, but the difference between the label and actually saying it? Like Sandy, since you mentioned her. She played a disingenuous, mean-spirited character. It should be enough to point out her vile hypocrisy and anemic "logic". There's no actual need to openly call her a bitch.

It's easier sometimes, sure.

They might have that label, but what is their representation? I have a certain amount of respect for two conservatives I regularly lay into, and considerable respect for a third. But that's it, as far as I can recall at the moment. The rest range from mildly irritating and disingenuous to being, literally, the kind of people who should never have children.

There are, probably, others I get along with and respect, but their conservatism isn't pinging me as obvious at the moment.

I think I got in my first fight in 1999 and didn't escape the chain until my unplanned hiatus six years later.

These days, the phenomenon is adulterated slightly by the occasional "new" member who has intimate knowledge of prior conflicts at the site dating back years. I mean, I understand lurking, but for three years?

They don't actually need the protection. They just like it. It's a lot easier to feel empowered if you have moderators refusing any complaints about you and reaching out to sanction your chosen enemies.

One of my favorites is a time when a fellow moderator contacted me to ask me to lay off one of his friends. He told me all about how the guy's a good chap and all, and I told him then that I wish we all could meet and know that person. My counterpart threw up his hands in a minor hissy-cow and let it drop for a while. And then, later, as my fight with the member grew deeper, I had occasion to do one of my infamous recap posts that probably prints over six or seven pages at least and is littered with reference links intended to document the basis of my complaints. My counterpart told me he didn't find merit in any of the complaints, and then later crowed proudly that he never bothered reading the post.

Funny thing is that he was a quota appointment selected—above all other criteria—for his political persuasion, and elevated in the interest of "being fair".

But, like they say, it's good to have friends. And, hey, choosing between friendship and duty? I can't say I blame him for choosing as he did. Unfortunately, we're moderators.

And it sucks, doesn't it?

I mean, either way is fine with me. If we're going back to the frontier style, then we ought to go back to the frontier style. If we're going to work toward governed civility, then we ought to work for governed civility. This patchwork arrangement we've managed only seems to be complicating the problems.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't help. On the one hand, you'd only be getting part of the point. To the other, I used to tell people who complained about the length of my posts that they can have it over the course of 3,000 words in a single post, or 10,000 words cut up into several.

Part of it is a base-covering theory. Like when you make a point that is so common that it's hard enough to understand how it was overlooked in the first place, and then someone pipes up and needs you to explain it further. In this case, when you write a sentence or paragraph or whatever, put yourself in your opponent's shoes and figure out what you would say in response. Then cover those points. Eventually, you'll get obscure enough that you'll actually be pleasantly surprised if anyone picks up on the question. At that point, your bases are as covered as they can be, and you're likely to be unpleasantly surprised at what people come up with.

The other is the choice to deal in either the blatant or the subtle. Running with the blatant has caused us a lot of problems. Not just in terms of Sciforums, either. Part of it is age, for instance, but the most part is changing technology; have you noticed that political rhetoric is becoming more erratic? The old, blatant generalizations and platitudes aren't working. People understand to ask certain questions. The politicians haven't caught up yet.

And, for us armchair critics, pundits, and advocates, the internet brings us so much information that we almost can't approach old subjects according to old methods.

Accounting for all that can pile up the words sometimes.

Then again, this is Sciforums, where we encounter a striking number of native English speakers who are apparently unable to comprehend the relationships between sentence, paragraph, and essay; who don't understand the notion of theme; and who wouldn't know a transition if it was crammed in their ass. So maybe I should just try posting entirely in bullet points.

 

Perhaps -she- would classify it as extraordinary provocation; but if someone said that pantheists were all terrible or what not (I believe I can be classified as a type of pantheist), I wouldn't call it extraordinary provocation. However, I have never seen S.A.M. respond with toxic insults and for this reason I definitely think she's generally a cut above most if not all of her detractors (remembering that a good detractor doesn't always have to disagree with a person). The only thing I consider to be extraordinary provocation is when a person singles me out specifically for some pretty toxic insult.

Interesting. I actually didn't know she was no longer a moderator.

I think I may agree, not sure what role you're thinking of.

I guess. Sometimes I find, however, that separating the actor from the part is not so easy.

 

heh.

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This forum needs all insults to be outlawed.

 

you are an insult draqon.

 

Something, something Burt Ward

Right. To the other, I once found myself in a long-running political debate with this guy who claimed to be a journalist. But he couldn't tell the operational difference between a newspaper and a major publishing house (e.g., New York Post and HarperCollins). Or there was the time that, despite his complaints about liberal media bias, he pretended to not understand the idea of framing a story, or how a headline contributes to the effect. You know, basic journalism. And this one time we got into an argument about, well, something. And media sources came into question. Not only was our journalist apparently ignorant of a widely-read report about audience perceptions of current events based on their primary news source (NPR listeners, for instance, had more accurate views of world events while FOX News viewers had the least), he turned around and blamed the viewers for being stupid. Now here's the kicker: When called out on that, he denied he ever said it. Even when provided with a quote and a link to the damn post. He never asserted that someone posted it under his name or anything like that. He simply denied he made the point. Seems to me that's a pretty naked lie. Then again, he thinks the reason I consider him a liar is that it's convenient to view all conservatives that way.

Really, he should have known better. And if he's too fucking retarded to understand that, it doesn't change the fact that he got caught in a lie.

And that's a fairly blatant example. But it's not unique.

Or the fellow moderator I described to Mikenostic. Either of his declarations would have stood on their own. But taken together? On the one hand, as a moderator, he didn't find merit? Fine. To the other, he proudly crows that he didn't read the post? Um ... so ... how, exactly, did he determine there was no merit to the issue?

He's not dishonest because he's a conservative. He's dishonest because he's dishonest.

And if you stick around long enough, and write long enough posts, you'll encounter it, too. They'll tell you they didn't read your post, and then they'll tell you what's wrong with it. I, personally, have a hard time believing these people are really so stupid as to fail to understand the conflict between those two conditions.

Where I'm from, it's considered either threatening or menacing language. Either of those terms suffice. And yes, you can be arrested up here for domestic violence on the merit of such statements.

It was a bit ugly. The thread itself still exists, but I can't find the screenshots that he posted, which is unfortunate because they included text that contradicted his original claim.

You had been here about two months when the episode occurred.

Such words aren't entirely verboten. But few applications meet the standard. It's not just the word, but a matter of context.

Yeah, it used to be that if someone invited you to a brawl, you were allowed to brawl. Like I said, a lot of our current membership would not survive in that other mode. It takes a pretty heavy toll.

Analogously, think of "big government". Now, yes, there is all sorts of unnecessary meddling that increases he size of government. But if you stop and consider someone complaining about the complexity of the tax code or the incomprehensible nature of bills that come before legislatures, the reason for that is that certain people in society look for any way around the rules. And with each new route discovered, governments write new legislation to close those holes.

We have something similar at Sciforums. There are members who look at the rules as a challenge. Their identity is significantly invested in finding ways to be insulting and demeaning. The more specific we get in delineating the insults, the more people will work to find ways around them. And then we add more to the list ... and so on, and so on.

The old motto of Sciforums was "Intelligent Community". We want people to be civilized, intelligent, and even useful. That doesn't demand that people never waste lines on jokes and such, but we've fallen a fair distance from the Intelligent Community.

It actually had more to do with anti-Islamic bigotry. We actually had one moderator quit because he wasn't allowed to cuss her out and tell her what a horrible piece of shit she is to his satisfaction.

I mean, S.A.M., as I understand it, is a Muslim of Indian descent living in the United States. I don't see why she should be expected to answer for Osama bin Laden or the Taliban. And I don't see how the fact of 9/11 makes her a bad person.

After a few years of that shit, and, being a moderator, seeing it not only condoned but actively protected, she tried to play by the operating rules. But while some of my counterparts were busy propping up white, American, anti-Islamic, jingoist hatemongers, she was taking heat from some of her fellows who pretended that they couldn't figure out why she was turning every broad condemnation of all Muslims because of some nut-case in the third world on the reflection that Americans, too, commit injustice.

Her dismissal was one of our lowest failures, if not the absolute worst.

When you look at a scene—in life or drama—how much do you see? Or, rather, what don't you see? That is, do you see only one person behaving inexplicably, or are you capable of seeing that behavior in the context of stimulus and response? If you only pay attention to one actor on the stage, as such, their role will seem confusing. When you view it in the context of what the other characters are saying, how that all relates to the plot, and what that implies about the themes at play, the behavior is considerably less mysterious. Perhaps this is all a rehash for you. Unfortunately, it was news to some of my fellow moderators, and if they ever figured it out at all, it was too late.

We let down our community and sold out our own standards with that disaster. And that's part of why I, personally, am cynical about so many of the complaints and recommendations we get. People might criticize us about this or that, but they tend to be clueless insofar as they have no real idea how fucking badly we've fucked up before.

What happened with S.A.M. was an ethical betrayal of striking depth, and emblematic of the more general problems facing our community.

People's problem with S.A.M. isn't toxic insults. Rather, it's something far more sublime. Emir Ali Khan once wrote,

The members of all communities, including nations and whole civilisations, are infused with the prevailing ideologies of those communities. These, in turn, create attitueds of mind which include certain capacities and equally positively exclude others.

The ideologies may be so ancient, so deep-seated or so subtle that they are not identified as such by the people at large. In this case they are often discerned only through a method of challenging them, asking questions about them or by comparing them with other communities.

Such challenge, description, or questioning, often the questioning of assumptions, is what frequently enables a culture or a number of people from that culture to think in ways that have been closed to most of their fellows.​

That, as near as I can tell, is what she's doing, or at least a major component. And it annoys the hell out of some people.

And that's why I enjoy watching people pitch fits about it. They're so wrapped up in denial I don't know what to tell them. I've tried arguing the point, I've tried railing and shouting about it. But no, even among my counterparts there are enough who would rather avoid the issue that it won't be resolved anytime soon.

Enough people complained that she shouldn't be allowed to make what, from other members, was considered a valuable contribution. The administration finally agreed. The demotion occurred in November.

I'll take it up with her if I think it becomes necessary. Still, though—

—that's one way of expressing it.
_____________________

Notes:

Ali Khan, Emir. "Sufi Activity." Sufi Thought and Action. Idries Shah, ed. London: Octagon, 1990.

 

This post is in response to the 1st part of Tiassa's post 17 in this thread.

Lying and the art of self deception

His definition of journalist may be quite different from your own. The beginning of wikipedia's definition of the term can be taken rather broadly in my view:

A journalist (also called a newspaperman) is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that aren't biased.​

A newspaperman I would take to be a reporter, which wikipedia certainly considers to be one of the types of journalists. However, it also mentions this:

Modern media, including the creation of Internet-based news sources and the possibility that citizen journalism will greatly expand the field, has made it all but impossible to identify which journalists are notable, in the sense that they could be identified in the past.​

Mm. They say that the best liars are those who believe their own lies. I think there are varying levels of these types of liars. This action of his that you describe seems to indicate that it ran fairly deep in him; what I'm very curious about is, did he ever look at the link? From my favourite melancholy movie, Memento:
Teddy:
I guess I can only make you believe the things you want to be true, huh?...
Look at your police file. It was complete
when I gave it to you. Who took the 12
pages out?

Leonard:
You probably.

Teddy:
No. You took them out.

Leonard:
Why would I do that?

Teddy:
To set yourself a puzzle you won't ever
solve. You know how many towns, how many
guys called James G? Or John G? Shit,
Leonard, I'm a John G.

Leonard:
Your name's Teddy.

Teddy:
(chuckles)
My mother calls me Teddy. I'm John Edward
Gammell. Cheer up, there's a lot of John
G's for us to find.

In the case of his viewing himself as a journalist, I think it would have been best to pin down whether he works for a paper or if his type of journalism is more of the citizen type. It seems to me that your view that he was lying about his being a journalist had nothing to do with his political affiliation and everything to do with what you consider a journalist to be.

Tiassa, what language, I'm surprised, laugh

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. I think that saying that someone should have known better is a rather slippery slope. It can easily be countered with a simple question: why? Calling someone retarded for not knowing something that one thinks they should know is also dangerous, in my view. As to the lie bit, I think I can agree with you there. It reminds me of John99's claim to knowing how insurance works. I can genuinely believe that he -thought- that he did, indeed, know how insurance works. This doesn't mean that he did, though, and when pressed, I believe this became clear.

Simple enough; he simply assumed that your points had no merit

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I agree with you that people who label themselves as conservatives are not necessarily dishonest. I don't agree with you that he's dishonest because he's dishonest. In my view, your are placing causation of a symptom on the symptom itself, which makes no sense. Speaking in general terms, I would argue that people are at times dishonest, to varying degrees, for the same reason that people are anything else; to maximize happiness and to minimize pain. The devil, ofcourse, is in the details; why do some people believe, frequently at an unconscious level, that it is better to be dishonest then honest? The answer to -that-, in my view, isn't simple at all, but I believe a shard of the truth can be found in a movie called "Girl, Interupted", starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. One of the characters is apparently a pathological liar. But Winona's character discovers an interesting fact:

Georgina lies onIy to peopIe who keep her here.
Sometimes I think she wants to Iive in Oz forever.​

Yes, I believe I've already encountered it, in the case of John's beliefs concerning insurance

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While I don't think I've had anyone go quite so over the top, I do believe it's safe to say that many here haven't seriously looked at the arguments that I have made for some of the viewpoints I hold.

 

This post is in response to the 2nd part of Tiassa's post 17 in this thread.

Yeah, you just called it a 'non threat', so I thought I'd use a concept that's not exactly synonymous to threat

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. I like to think that my term is somewhat more specific too

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I must admit that the difference between wishing someone harm and actually threatening to harm them can at times be very thin indeed. When it approaches the line, I can definitely agree that something should be done.

Ok.

What do you mean by 'few applications meet the standard'?

I certainly agree that many people won't tolerate too much toxicity in a forum; I include myself amoung them. Which is precisely why I believe that civility is so important.

 

This post is in response to the 3rd part of Tiassa's post 17 in this thread.

Not all insults are alike

This argument has been brought up before. I'm fine with this result. What I'm -so- tired of is that the same insults are being used over and over and over. Where's the creativity

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? Then, just when they start thinking they can settle in with some new toxic insults, the rules are changed again; keeps the creative juices flowing

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I think there are definitely some intelligent posters here and believe I'm speaking to one of them

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. I also think that an intelligent poster can certainly insult someone without the use of some toxic insults. I personally prefer tamer and subtler insults, both in the giving and the receiving, or even terms and phrases that can be taken in more then one way; if I receive something like this and would like further clarification, I can always ask for it if I wish (I believe that clarifying something never requires the use of toxic insults). For me, this is the type of insult an intelligent person uses, not the crass stuff that is frequently seen here. I also believe that the better insults focus less on putting a person down and more on gently trying to persuade the person being insulted to change their ways. Another way of putting it is that the carrot generally works better then the stick; and if one finds that a stick is, in fact, necessary, I think it's generally better to have a light one. I believe that in a forum, the insults a person uses frequently speak more of the mentality of the person using them (as in, do they try to persuade or do they simply try to repress), then the person receiving them.