The Senate Floor: Debate the Ban Process Here

[ISUCKATTHIS]

It seems like complaining about new posters and sucking up to the moderators should be cause for automatic banning.

[Miss P]

It seems like complaining about new posters and sucking up to the moderators should be cause for automatic banning.

lol.  Dude, let it go.

[ISUCKATTHIS]

Says the queen of "OMFG don't you dare tarnish my internet personality or I'll have you banned!"

[Miss P]

Says the queen of "OMFG don't you dare tarnish my internet personality or I'll have you banned!"

This has really gotten out of hand.  For the record, I have never tried to get someone banned, whether for insulting me or for anything else.  And, to be more specific, I did not try to get PILOFOLO banned.  I explicitly suggested in my PM to Sands that I thought the outer limit of appropriate sanction would be an admonishment, though all I really said was that Sands had been too hard on comotellamas.  The idea was, if the moderators are not going to admonish someone like PILOFOLO, they surely shouldn't admonish comotellamas.  Also, your stated concern about people using the report-to-moderator function indiscriminately would be more credible if you were less focused on my individual behavior.  For what it's worth, PILOFOLO very likely reported comotellamas for calling him a feminine hygiene product, as it would be unusual for Sands to have jumped into the thread to ask him to play nice otherwise. At the least, it's somewhat ironic to defend someone who in all likelihood reported "feminine hygiene product" by attacking someone who openly admits that she complained about "Nazi" and even shared the content of her complaint with you.

Your sarcasm about the value of being kind to each other even in this pseudonymous forum (e.g., "don't you dare tarnish my internet personality") indicates where our real difference lies.  You seem to see our interaction here as a kind of joke (albeit not a very funny one).  Like Matthies, I tend to see my online persona as an extension of my real-life personality, and I try not to say things here that I wouldn't say if I were talking to someone face to face.  I have asked for and received helpful advice, responded to important questions from underclass and entering students at my law school, and even met good friends here, and I don't think I could do these things if I didn't take my internet persona somewhat seriously.  I may be occasionally hypersensitive, and I am certainly high strung, but I have definitely enjoyed and gotten more out of my interactions with others who do the same.  Of course, a lot of people don't, and that's understandable too.  I just think it debases the conversation when those people believe their pseudonyms give them license for personal invective and harassment, and there are times when some form of moderation is appropriate.

***

Sands, if you misunderstood me and thought that I wanted PILOFOLO banned when I said that "any admonition to 'play nice' should have been directed at both PILOFOLO and the OP if it was going to be directed at comotellamas," or if my informal complaint about his behavior was a significant factor in your decision, please, go ahead and reinstate his account.  I think he is an obnoxious troll, but I didn't ask for him to be banned.  I'm not going to lose sleep over the fact that he's no longer around, for sure, but I'm sure we all feel that way about plenty of posters who have come and gone (and sometimes reappeared).

[Jake_MONDATTA]

Oh come off it.  PILOFOLO_REGIL was not even the first one and you know it. 

[Miss P]

Oh come off it.  PILOFOLO_REGIL was not even the first one and you know it. 

I didn't realize you had a problem with me too.  In any case, I don't think this claim is going to further the productive discussion Sands has started.  If you and ISUCKATTHIS want to speculate wildly about my interaction with the moderators on this site, perhaps you should start another thread.

[Jake_MONDATTA]

I don't have any problems.  No need all bonzai on me too.  I just call things as I see them.

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

Says the queen of "OMFG don't you dare tarnish my internet personality or I'll have you banned!"

For the record, there are currently only 3 people who have the ability to ban other posters:

Andrew
Earl Cat
Myself.

That's it.

And we don't work at the behest of any one individual poster, but rather in the interest of the entire board.  As I'm sure Earl Cat will verify, chances are, if somebody has been banned then there have been a few reports to warrant it from multiple people. 

[Matthies]

ISUCKATHIS, I’m saying this because you and I had a similar go around, not because I’m taking Miss P’s side, I did not ever really read what you guys are fighting about anyway. BUT my first encounter with you went the same way, you got all upset about something I said that was in no way aimed at you or any particular person, yet you took it that way. It took us a long time to work out that I Was NOT attacking you, but we did finally come to that conclusion (partly because I would not counter back with personal insults while I was getting trashed). So we avoiding escalating beyond a misunderstanding that is common to message board communication.

I’m saying this because just maybe you might sometimes take things as offensive where the other poster did not really mean it to be, then escalate it. Its often hard in a written medium to really figure out a posters intent, its easy to misread things, or take offense at something, that maybe was not really written to be offensive to you. We all do it. But then its get escalated and gets out of hand I think.

 Just something to consider. Life too short and none of this is worth anything enough to continue bashing each other online. You share some good insights and so does Miss P, but this back and forth fighting means you are both using your time for that, rather than giving advice from your personal perspectives on threads that need it, and I think we all lose because of that.

[UnbiasedObserver]

ISUCKATHIS, I’m saying this because you and I had a similar go around, not because I’m taking Miss P’s side, I did not ever really read what you guys are fighting about anyway. BUT my first encounter with you went the same way, you got all upset about something I said that was in no way aimed at you or any particular person, yet you took it that way. It took us a long time to work out that I Was NOT attacking you, but we did finally come to that conclusion (partly because I would not counter back with personal insults while I was getting trashed). So we avoiding escalating beyond a misunderstanding that is common to message board communication.

I’m saying this because just maybe you might sometimes take things as offensive where the other poster did not really mean it to be, then escalate it. Its often hard in a written medium to really figure out a posters intent, its easy to misread things, or take offense at something, that maybe was not really written to be offensive to you. We all do it. But then its get escalated and gets out of hand I think.

 Just something to consider. Life too short and none of this is worth anything enough to continue bashing each other online. You share some good insights and so does Miss P, but this back and forth fighting means you are both using your time for that, rather than giving advice from your personal perspectives on threads that need it, and I think we all lose because of that.

Exactly.  Let's get over this.