I understand why it feels personal to him but in the context of people responding to actual specific and recent posts and in so doing directly addressing the context of the posts, I do not think it should be considered a "personal attack" with respect to the forum rules. Because it's obvious that what is really being discussed is the content of posts.

Would it be clearer if everyone was exceedingly careful with their wording to say "I think these posts are racially insensitive/demonstrate racial bias/..." instead of saying that Bruce is "a racist"? Yes it would. But why should so much of the burden to avoid giving offense be placed on everyone else, and none on Bruce? I find it to be entirely silly to suggest that it's acceptable without caveat (again accepting the devil's advocate defense) to make inflammatory comments about racist witnesses and race hustlers, and yet entirely unacceptable to call the person making those comments racist in response. Especially if you want the privilege of making incendiary statements, it is only reasonable to accept the burden of explaining what you are doing, rather than demanding the right to never have anyone call into question your character based on what you are posting.

Given how personal political ideologies are to people in general, it's inevitable that sometimes criticism of posts is going to feel like attacks on ones person, and sometimes the line gets crossed. I fully support rules to try to ameliorate that difficulty, and people trying to be civil. As has been pointed out many times, and chips quoted all the posts once or twice, it was Bruce who escalated the incivility at the beginning of this.

Beyond that, when the situation involves a moderator of the site, and it escalates immediately into the moderator talking about taking mod action, it creates a lot of practical difficulties for the site admins to aggressively enforce rules against personal attacks against that moderator. Especially when he himself is right in the middle of dishing out a bunch of personal attacks himself.

This.

There's no excuses being made. Bruce accepts his mistakes.

Wookie and Tom and others including me do have some responsibility as well whether you think its worth apologizing for or not.

Are you an animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Animal!

Do you think bruce is only a little racist, normal racist, or kkk racist?

Are you an insect?

I think everybody is pretty racist, and lolno I would never call someone a cockroach

That's pretty much all we would need to agree on on that. Bruce does accept the onus was on him to be more careful and takes the blame for it. Can we get some acknowledgment that calling someone a racist requires a bit of care and if someone responds angrily and its not what you meant then it would be wise to make it clear.

Chez, that's more or less what I was getting at before with my implicit disclaimer of "I'm judging Bruce purely off the posts I've read and that I could be wrong about his true moral character".

I believe posts to this effect have been made by more than a few people

Jesus, TeamBruce, just stop whining about it for a few days and wait. You people just wont stop shooing yourself in your foot.

Where to set the line as a matter of forum rules is going to vary from forum to forum, and it's pretty much inevitable that the lines are going to be subjectively enforced. That is the nature of moderation, and especially the nature of moderating for civility.

One thing that I think you may not fully appreciate is that for a lot of us, the posts that were originally made in the Ferguson thread cross the line so far into being racially inflammatory that we would balk at leaving them be but taking moderator action against someone calling the posts "racist" instead. When tomdemaine said those posts would get you banned in politics, he wasn't being at all hyperbolic.

In this specific case, if I were the moderator in charge, I would never view it as an option to leave the original posts alone but censure people calling the guy a racist. On the other hand I can envision other scenarios in which I would take action against someone calling someone else a "racist" in a hostile way if it was in response to far more mild posts. Obviously in either case there would be people who disagree with my decisions. I don't think that can be changed.

All of the above is just my opinion, and is taking the posts at face value. In a case where I knew the original poster and believed them to be playing devil's advocate, I would probably edit the original posts with a disclaimer and suggest to them in private that they should tone it down because I don't think the specific word choices and tone are appropriate even as an intellectual exercise. I might still end up deleting the posts for that reason.

Yes but if its a judgement about his moral character then its still a personal attack. If its just a view on the post while withholding judgement then it isn't.

others may see it a bit differently but whichever way you look at it, it was seen as a personal attack so either it was a personal attack or it would have been better to clarify it (or have been more careful in the first place).


JJ I much prefer your new version. Much better than I have no insight.

People are always making judgements about your "moral character" based on what you post. This is true for everyone all of the time. We tell them they can't express some of those judgements in certain words or with an excessive amount of vitriol because we think that disallowing it makes the forum better for everyone.

The "excessive amount of vitriol" part is arguably essential, otherwise certain kinds of reasonable conversations couldn't even occur, where it's very difficult to separate disagreement about the content of a post and an implicit judgement of character. Racism is certainly such a topic. If I say your post demonstrates racial prejudice and animosity, I'm certainly implying either that you have failed by being ignorant of it, or that you are consciously prejudiced, or even "racist" (because people do in fact use the word to mean prejudiced).

I do not believe that it is the intent of the personal attack rule to make it impossible for people to criticize posts in this way. I do believe it is the intent of the rule to make such criticisms conform to some minimal amount of civility, and for the most part I don't think that line was crossed, excepting probably in some PU posts, but, well, that is PU.

I do accept that.

That would be a great approach. I hope you would also take the view that if later the contrarian approach is revealed then its still reasonable to take that action. One of the biggest mistakes by others has been the 'physiological theory' that as he got angry he cant possibly have been being contrarian. That's causing the most damage now as far as I can see because its used to justify personal attacks and its far too weak

Smear doesn't mean lying:

"4.
to sully, vilify, or soil (a reputation, good name, etc.)."

And yes, Fly would respond differently, but it would be the opposite of how someone with normal human emotions is likely to act. Also, trying to compare a "real" poster with someone who is pure troll is absurd. Of course the troll isn't going to get his feelings hurt, he's a ****ing troll!

Lol. First post you have made that I agree with.

On the other hand, as a halfway decent guy I will tell you that if you are bothered by Fly and believe him to be a troll, you shouldn't acknowledge him even the slightest bit. As a troll, he is enjoying your attention and you might as well be turning on your porch light to make the moths go away.

Something, something, something Batman/Fly signal.

Ignoring him doesn't seen like a very effective method for outing him to those who don't know.

"You people"?!?

You got the damn smiley face since you people (anais in particular) don't get satire.

You must think that everyone is an idiot and can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground. That isn't cool, bro.

Everyone knows that Fly is, at best, some sort of strange clown. Everyone. Stop disparaging your fellow man.

You should probably look at the definition of "vilify" on the website where you found that.

Are you claiming that calling Bruce a racist was a smear that was truthful?

He said things that were offensive and insensitive.

Of all people, you can't possibly believe that everyone doesn't recognize that this thread wasn't meant to drag things out for your enjoyment, right? The others recognize it, but just don't say it out loud. Plus, you have the whole making fun of the type of threads DS likes to start for added enjoyment and as cover, right?

Do you think that no one has noticed that you waffle between showing some amount of ability to be circumspect and some amount of disgust that others are breathing your air? That we differentiate between you and Fly and pvn? That I am not entirely sure that you aren't psychopathic, but I give you the benefit of the doubt because odds are against it and I am hopeful that you aren't (no harm done if you are)?

I'll have to ask my wife if she knows that.

Anyway, obviously the mods don't see it or he would have been banned long ago. Trolling is explicitly against the Politics forum's rules after all.

LOL guys not to ruin your gambit entirely here, but Brian, if your new scheme is to claim that I'm some sort of attention seeking "troll" who doesn't believe the **** I say, you may want to consider making some posts about ANY OTHER SUBJECT.

Having a conversation about me with another person that I'm not even involved in about the importance of ignoring me doesn't really sell the line as much as you might think.