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Comments
It really didn't seem like anyone was complaining about Rott, Louie.
I believe I was trying to respond to what Myrmidon said about criticism of Rottweiler vs. what he saw as the apparent lack of complaining about Tongpu, but I might have misread his post. Sorry, I probably was editorializing a bit there anyway.
Khwarizmi,
We're not trying to shut down other opinions and make everyone hold
hands, we just want people to be polite to one another. I don't think
that's too much to ask.
I think that is very true. It bothers me when being nice to other people is spun as "making everyone hold hands" or the like. In my opinion, it is very possible to have views that differ greatly from those of many other members of a community and express those views without being rude or getting into heated arguments. I think sometimes the issue can be that rather than looking at a specific post's points narrowly and responding to them if one disagrees, people (myself included) can and do overreact and start talking about how offensive another person's views are.
Now, I can understand that the opinions expressed in a post may very well be rather annoying or outright disgusting, but I feel like a more effective approach to answering them is to stick to concrete reasons why those views are bad ones to hold. It may be true that simply arguing against the other person's viewpoint will not persuade that person. However, I think that at the very least one will be much less likely to slip into insults or attacks when one focuses strictly on making a good argument.
I realize that holding back one's impulse to berate someone for having backwards or scary views can be quite difficult so what I said may be a bit overly idealistic.
Elbeem,
The fact that the forum staff is so quick to punish directly targeted
personal attacks, but lets disparaging remarks against wide groups that
are bound to have members included in the community slide has always
been strange to me. (Rott is not the only person guilty of this, of
course. But complaints about such have been very common in his case.)
I dislike those kinds of disparaging remarks too, but I wonder how the rules could even be set up to guard against that kind of thing (without having some kind of informal "protected groups" setup). I guess we could just have a rule that says you generally should be sensitive to other tropers' circumstances.
What I like even less is when people say that "some people on TVTropes just bother me," implicating that there are certain people on the forums that they just really do not like and who they would name if not for the personal attacks rule. I mean, I think the personal attacks rule is a good one, but I wish it would encourage people to drop their grudges altogether instead of talking about them indirectly on TVTropes or directly here.
hands, we just want people to be polite to one another. I don't think
that's too much to ask.
But he is nothing if not polite.
Rott can't support that.....did he? Because someone earlier on in this thread said he did.
Everyone who says "just use the ignore extention" annoys me.
If everyone needs to use the ignore extention on Rott, clearly there's something wrong with Rott, isn't there?
Also I've noticed the things Bon and Elbeem brought up myself.
I find Tongpu much less infuriating than Rott. The fact he's still around is actually a pretty good proof Rott wasn't banned for having unpopular opinions.
I think the reason I find Rott more annoying than Tongpu is that Tongpu sounds honestly polite when he's being all nihilistic, whereas Rott always passive-aggressively attacks people. Also Tongpu doesn't make every thread about himself.
(Not to mention that the mods can't factor in the existence of the ignore extention into their decisions at all, because it's an extention and not a builtin part of the forum.)
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The thing is that, even if saying "gay history is anal sex LOL" is insensitive, I've seen much worse all over, and hardly anyone has been banned for saying those things. I'll just assume that it was more of a straw that broke the camel's back.
Well, maybe. I'd say it was rude enough to be thumped, but I was surprised he got banned.
@ Meeble: The problem is, we don't want to stifle debate or show unfair preference. A disparaging remark about a group with which you identify can be just as upsetting as a personal attack, but virtually everybody makes disparaging remarks about some group or other. So we try to judge how those remarks are stated - are they intended to rile people up, or are they merely opinions? Maybe we don't always get it right, I dunno. But that's what we aim for.